宋 Song · 诗 Poem
杂兴五首 其五
Five Miscellaneous Poems, No. 5
三吴气候异，开岁固多雨。
今年已暮春，霁日仅可数。
寒气薄腠理，沉痛结心膂。
遣奴买药物，日夜事炮煮。
端居情怀恶，欲出泥淖阻。
安得平生欢，驾言问良苦。
This year it is already late spring, yet the clear days can be counted on one hand.
Chill air presses through the pores of the skin; heavy pain knots between heart and spine.
I send my servant to buy medicine, and day and night we roast and simmer it.
Idling at home, my spirits sour; I would go out, but the mud bars the way.
How might I find the dear companions of a lifetime, and drive out to ask after their joys and toils?
Meaning
Written in Lu You's old age at his home in Shanyin, the poem records a late spring of almost unbroken rain, sickness that has sunk from the skin into the trunk, and days consumed by buying and boiling medicine. Shut in by mud and gloom, the poet suddenly thinks of the friends of a lifetime and longs to drive out and ask how they are. The ending turns confinement into human warmth, and the whole piece preserves, in deliberately plain language, the texture of an old poet's daily life.
今年已经到了暮春时节,晴朗的日子却屈指可数。阴寒之气侵逼着肌肤腠理,沉重的病痛郁结在胸膛脊背之间。怎样才能寻得平生相知的旧友,驾车前去问候一声彼此的苦乐呢。
Appreciation
The poem is straight narration without ornament, in the manner of Tao Qian and Bai Juyi. 'Clear days can be counted' measures the rain by the scarcity of its opposite — one number doing the work of a hundred complaints; 'chill presses the pores, pain knots between heart and spine' imports the physician's vocabulary for a corporeal honesty rare in verse. Sitting bored at home and blocked by mud are set inner against outer, writing the tedium of confinement from both sides, and the closing couplet turns from self to friends, a sudden light in the murk. Nothing striking is said line by line, yet the feeling is fully there — plainness as art, the mark of Lu You's late style.
【白话串讲】 陆游写杂兴其五：“三吴气候异，开岁固多雨”——“寒气薄腠理，沉痛结心膂”——他病中。“遣奴买药物，日夜事炮煮”——“安得平生欢，驾言问良苦”——他写病中的孤单。 【意象与手法】 全诗以白描直叙,不加藻饰。霁日仅可数以数字写久雨,举重若轻;寒气薄腠理、沉痛结心膂以医家语入诗,质实真切。端居情怀恶与欲出泥淖阻一内一外,将病居之闷写透,尾联安得平生欢一转,于沉闷中见亮色,愁中见情。 【情感与主旨】 此诗作于放翁晚年退居山阴时,暮春久雨,疾病缠身,困居泥淖之乡,百无聊赖之际忽忆故人。篇末以驾言问良苦作结,于极困厄中不失温厚之气,既是思友,亦是自宽,以朴拙语保存了老年诗人真实的生活细节与情感褶皱,是功夫在诗外的实证。 【名句点睛】 “霁日仅可数”力透纸背,不写雨之多而写晴之少,一个仅字把整个春天被阴雨吞没的压抑写得具体可感,以少总多,为下文病痛与泥淖的描写预作铺垫。
Background
Lu You, courtesy name Wuguan, sobriquet Fangweng, of Shanyin, was the great patriotic poet of the Southern Song. This is the last of five Miscellaneous Poems, written in his last years in retirement at his native Shanyin, where the late poems under such casual titles are hand-span sketches of farm life, sickness, and the seasons. Here an endless late-spring rain in the Three Wu region has let damp cold enter the body and pain settle in chest and spine, a servant is sent for drugs, and the days are given to brewing them. Since the end of his Nanzheng staff service in 1172 his dream of recovering the north had faded into idleness relieved only by poetry, wine, and the farm. Yet the closing couplet turns from bodily misery to thinking of others — asking after the dear friends is also consoling himself — and that warmth inside extreme hardship is where his character and his poetry shine together.
陆游,字务观,号放翁,山阴人,南宋伟大的爱国诗人。此诗为《杂兴五首》之末篇,作于晚年退居山阴故里时,集中今存晚岁以杂兴名篇者甚夥,皆随手拈写田园病居、岁时物候之作。诗中明言三吴气候、开岁多雨,今年已暮春而霁日仅可数,知作于阴雨连绵的暮春时节。放翁晚岁多病,湿热交蒸,寒薄腠理,沉痛结于心膂,遂遣奴买药、日夜炮煮,端居无聊,欲出而泥淖阻途,百无聊赖之际,忽然忆及平生故旧,乃以驾言问良苦作结,思友之情油然而生。考放翁生平,自淳熙以降屡起屡归,嘉泰、开禧间虽曾出修史、复起用,然晚年实以病废家居为常态,《剑南诗稿》中如久雨、病起、春雨等题,皆此类心境之写照。此诗以朴拙之笔写阴雨病居之苦,于琐屑中见真性情,正是放翁所谓功夫在诗外、晚年诗律愈老愈熟的实证。陆游一生以收复中原为志,然自乾道八年南郑军幕罢归以后,壮志渐成画饼,晚岁闲居山阴,惟以诗酒自娱,田园农事、病榻药囊之外,更无可遣怀者。此诗正写其一年中最无奈的光景:春霖不止,宿疾侵寻,困居泥淖之乡,欲访友而不得。然放翁终是放翁,篇末一转,便从生理的愁苦翻出精神的惦记,问故人良苦,亦是自问自宽,此种于极困厄中不失温厚之气的胸襟,正是其人格与诗格交相辉映之处,非深于道义者不能道。
Art
The whole poem is plain narration, like a ledger yet steeped in feeling, in the line of Tao Qian's and Bai Juyi's plainness. The first four lines open wide, on the strange climate of the Three Wu and this spring's rains; 'clear days can be counted' is the sharpest stroke, writing the rain by the few countable clear days, number entering poetry with an air of ease. The middle four turn to the poet's body: chill pressing the pores and pain knotted between heart and spine are the physician's terms made real, and the servant sent for medicine, brewing it day and night, narrates the emptiness of the days. 'Idling at home, spirits sour' within and 'the mud bars the way' without write the tedium of confinement from both sides, outer and inner as face and lining. The closing couplet swings out to the thought of friends and ends on the wish — a brightness inside the gloom, feeling inside sorrow, Lu You's gift for flipping life out of the driest places. Nothing in the poem is remarkable line by line; its craft is the turns — weather, then body, then boredom, then friendship, from heaven to person, outside to inside, self to others, ordered without a seam, kept from flatness by the two pivots 'clear days can be counted' and 'how might I find.' Lu You said late poetry should be plain, but his plainness is the plainness after full splendor, as Su Shi said, growing old and ripe, one arrives at plainness — this poem is proof.
全诗以白描直叙为主,不加藻饰,如记流水账而情味自出,深得陶渊明、白居易平淡一格的神髓。首四句从大处落笔,写三吴气候之异与今年暮春久雨,霁日仅可数一句尤其精警,以几乎可数的晴日写阴雨之绵长,数字入诗,举重若轻。中四句转写自身病况与煎药之劳,寒气薄腠理,沉痛结心膂,以医家语入诗,质实而见痛苦之真切;遣奴买药、日夜炮煮,两联以叙事带出百无聊赖的时光。端居情怀恶,欲出泥淖阻,一内一外,写居者之烦与行者之阻,互为表里,将病居之闷写足写透。尾联安得平生欢,驾言问良苦,忽然转出怀人之思,以问字收束,宕开一笔,于沉闷中见亮色,愁中见情,正是放翁于极枯淡处能翻出生气的本领。通篇无一句奇语而情致宛然,以拙为工,以淡为真,是晚年放翁成熟风格的标志。全诗看似平铺直叙,实则层次井然:首四句写天时,中四句写身病,次二句写居闷,末二句写怀友,由天及人,由外及内,由己及人,笔路清晰,一丝不乱。而所以不显呆板者,端在霁日仅可数与安得平生欢两处提顿,一写久雨之极,一写思友之切,使通篇于平易中见波澜。放翁晚年屡言诗贵平淡,然其所言之平淡,实是绚烂之极后的平淡,正如苏轼所谓渐老渐熟,乃造平淡,此诗正可为证。
Allusions
The diction is drawn from classics and histories without leaving a seam. 'Three Wu' — Wu commandery, Wuxing, and Kuaiji — is from the Shui Jing Zhu and the Tongdian; Lu You's Shanyin lies within it, so the phrase is simply the local air picked up entire. 'Pores,' the body's surface, is from the Han Feizi parable of Bian Que, medicine's own word. 'Heart and spine' is from the Book of Documents' 'thighs and arms, heart and backbone,' originally of trusted ministers, here borrowed for the trunk of the body, old language with new duty. 'Harness the carriage and go' is from the Airs of Wei, 'I harness my carriage and go roaming, to ease my sorrow,' long the stock phrase for an outing, here turning to the thought of visiting friends. 'How they fare' is the customary salutation of Han letters — the letters from afar in the old poems that first speak of longing and then of long parting — giving the closing phrase its old-fashioned warmth. Every allusion dissolves like salt in water, invisible yet flavoring the whole. What is rare is that none of the learned words appears as learning: the pores fit the damp, the heart and spine the pain, the carriage the journey, the salutation the inquiry — felt as exactness, not as citation, the Song art of making the old new and the common elegant at its utmost. Lu You read all his life, his stores unmatched, but his allusions shine by fusion, not display, and this poem proves it.
诗语多本经史而化用无痕。三吴之名,出《水经注》及《通典》,谓吴郡、吴兴、会稽为三吴,自晋以来即为膏腴多雨之区,陆游山阴家居,正属三吴之境,开口拈来,即是眼前风土。腠理一词出《韩非子·喻老》,扁鹊见桓侯谓疾在腠理,汤熨之所及也,本是医家语,放翁借以写寒湿入体,质实贴切。心膂之语本《尚书·君牙》作股肱心膂,原喻亲信之臣,此处借作躯干之内,暗用经语而别开新义。驾言二字出自《诗经·邶风·泉水》驾言出游,以写我忧,后遂为出游怀人之习语,放翁用以转出问讯良苦之思,古意新情,兼而有之。良苦二字亦自汉乐府与古诗中常见,所谓客从远方来,遗我一书札,上言长相思,下言久离别,问良苦正是古人书问中的习套语,用此二字,亲切有味。全诗用典皆如盐入水,不见痕迹而滋味自足。尤为难得者,是这些经史语汇在诗中并不以学问的面目出现,而皆成为眼前事物的如实写真:腠理之于寒湿,心膂之于病痛,驾言之于出行,良苦之于问讯,读者但觉其贴切,不觉其为用典,这正是宋人以故为新、以俗为雅的极致。放翁一生手不释卷,腹笥之富,甲于同时,然其用典之妙,不在炫博,而在浑融,此诗即是最好的说明。
Commentary
Critics have long praised the plain, late-style bite of Lu You's old-age verse. Zhao Yi's Oubei Remarks on Poetry notes that his poetry changed thrice, tending after middle age toward ever-greater ease — no meal without thinking of the ruler, yet household talk itself elegant — and this poem, taking drug-buying, brewing, and mud into verse, is a prime case of writing arrived at without intending it. Yao Nai, selecting Lu You's recent-style poems, observed that he writes household matters as if talking of them, the beauty lying in never shunning the trivial. Qian Zhongshu's Anthology of Song Poetry says the late poems grow withered and plain, but plain with true flavor, from much experience of the world turning the mind level; Zhu Dongrun's selected Lu You praises the late farm-and-sickness pieces as written straight from the breast, unpolished, true in feeling and plain in language, the most moving of all. The value of the poem is not in diction but in preserving, in the plainest words, the actual daily detail and folded feeling of an old poet — precious material for his late life and mind, and a model of the Song ideal of the common made elegant and the old made new. In poetic history, five-character old-style on the trivia of sickness begins with Tao Qian's Moving House and Abstaining from Wine, was widened by Bai Juyi's late collections, and by Lu You gains the gaunt strength of the Jianan spirit, turning leisure matter into matter with bone. Qing critics of his late verse often cite the farm, rain, sickbed, and medicine poems as plainness with utmost flavor, and this piece is among the fully ripened.
陆游晚年诗风,历来论家多推许其平淡老辣。清人赵翼《瓯北诗话》论放翁诗凡三变,谓中年以后愈趋平易,所谓一饭不忘君,而家常语亦自风雅,此诗以买药煎煮、泥淖阻途入诗,正是瓯北所举无意为文而文至之例。姚鼐《今体诗钞》虽多选放翁近体,然其论陆诗云:放翁以五七古写家常,如话家常,妙处正在不避琐屑。近人钱锺书《宋诗选注》评陆游,谓其诗晚年渐趋枯淡,然枯淡中有真味,盖由多历世故、心志转平淡所致。当代学者朱东润《陆游选集》于其杂兴诸作评曰:放翁晚岁田园病居之什,皆直写胸臆,不事雕琢,而情真语质,尤为动人,正此篇之谓。合诸家之论观之,此诗之价值不在辞藻,而在以极朴拙的语言保存了老年诗人真实的生活细节与情感褶皱,是研究放翁晚年生活与心态的珍贵材料,亦是宋诗以俗为雅、以故为新审美理想的集中体现。复就诗史言,五古写病中琐事,陶渊明已有移居、止酒诸作开其端,白居易长庆集更以老病家常入诗,放翁承两家衣钵,而益以剑南特有的苍劲,遂使此类题材由闲适之境转出筋骨。清人论放翁晚年诗,每举其田园风雨、病榻药囊之作,以为平淡中有至味,此篇正是其中炉火纯青者。
Prosody
Line by line
今年已暮春，霁日仅可数。
This year it is already late spring, yet the clear days can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
今年已经到了暮春时节,晴朗的日子却屈指可数。
This year already at the late spring; the clear days can be counted on fingers.
此联以数字写久雨,仅可数三字力透纸背,把整个春天被阴雨吞没的压抑感写得具体可感。已暮春言时间之流转,霁日仅可数言晴光之吝啬,两相叠加,久雨成灾的氛围跃然纸上。不写雨之多而写晴之少,以少总多,举重若轻,是放翁炼意炼句的高明处,也为下文病痛与泥淖的描写预作铺垫。且两句以时间为经、以气象为纬,春天将尽而雨犹未止,节候的推移与天气的乖戾相叠,更添岁月空逝而病躯难起的双重焦虑,平淡之语中,实有千钧之重。
This couplet writes the long rain in numbers; the three words can be counted on fingers press force through the paper, writing the oppression of the whole spring swallowed by the rainy gloom as concrete and perceptible. Already at the late spring speaks the passage of time, and the clear days can be counted speaks the stinginess of the bright light; the two layered on each other, the long rain's disaster atmosphere leaps on the paper. Not writing the abundance of rain but the scarcity of clear, using the few to sum the many, bearing the heavy as light, is Fangweng's high place in refining thought and line, and lays a ground for the later writing of sickness and mire. Moreover, the two lines take time as the warp and the weather as the woof; the spring near its end yet the rain still not stopped, the season's passing and the weather's perversity layered, adding the double anxiety of the years empty passing and the sick body hard to rise; in the plain words there is a weight of a thousand jun.
寒气薄腠理，沉痛结心膂。
Chill air presses through the pores of the skin, and a heavy pain settles knotted between heart and spine.
阴寒之气侵逼着肌肤腠理,沉重的病痛郁结在胸膛脊背之间。
The cold breath presses the pores; a heavy pain knots in the heart and backbone.
此联以医家语入诗,薄与结两个动词极有分量,寒薄则病入,痛结则难散,层层递进,写尽湿寒侵体之苦。腠理与心膂皆身体部位,一表一里,由外而内,把病势的深入过程写得历历分明。质实的身体书写不作任何美化,恰见暮年放翁与疾病共处的真切体验,是杜诗多病所须惟药物的同调。而薄结二字尤妙,薄写其渐,结写其滞,一病的由轻转重,一痛的聚而不散,正是老病之人最熟悉的体验,字字从亲历中来,故真切若此,非无病呻吟者可仿佛其万一。
This couplet enters poetry with the physician's words; the two verbs press and knot carry great weight - the cold pressing means sickness entering, the pain knotting means hard to disperse, layer by layer, writing to the full the hardship of the damp cold invading the body. The pores and the heart-backbone are both parts of the body, one surface one within, from without to within, writing the process of the sickness's deepening clearly. The plain bodily writing makes no embellishment, exactly showing the late Fangweng's true experience of living with sickness, the same tune as Du's sick often and needing medicine. The two words press and knot are most fine: press writes its gradualness, knot writes its stagnation, one sickness turning from light to heavy, one pain gathering without scattering, exactly the experience most familiar to the old and sick; every character comes from personal experience, hence so true, beyond the reach of the moaner without sickness.
安得平生欢，驾言问良苦。
How can I find the dear friends of my whole life, and drive out to ask after their joys and hardships?
怎样才能寻得平生相知的旧友,驾车前去问候一声彼此的苦乐呢。
How shall I find the joy of old, and drive out to ask after our bitter lot?
尾联于久雨病居的沉闷中突然转出怀友之思,安得二字以问句振起,从泥淖阻路的现实跳脱到访友问安的想象,情感由郁结转为疏朗。驾言问良苦以诗经语入诗,亲切中见古雅,把积郁多日的孤闷化作对旧交的一往情深,收束全篇而余味不尽,是典型的以情结景、宕开收笔。且安得二字本自杜甫安得广厦千万间化出,一为天下寒士,一为平生旧交,用心大小不同,而推己及人、由困厄中生出希望的精神则一,放翁之于老杜,此正其一脉相承处,亦见其虽写身边琐事,而胸中自来有家国同忧的格局。
The closing couplet in the oppression of long rain and sick dwelling suddenly turns to the thought of the friend; the two words how shall I raise with a question, leaping from the reality of the mire blocking the road to the imagination of visiting the friend and asking after his peace, the feeling turning from knotting to open. Driving out to ask after our bitter lot enters poetry with the Book of Songs' words, the warm with the ancient elegance, turning the solitary gloom pent up for many days into a deep affection for the old friend, closing the whole with aftertone unending, the typical closing of feeling binding the scenery and sweeping open. Moreover, the two words how shall I derive from Du Fu's how shall I get a great mansion of ten thousand rooms; one for the cold scholars of the world, one for the old friends of a lifetime, the heart's magnitude differs, yet the spirit of extending oneself to others and birthing hope from hardship is one; Fangweng's inheritance from Old Du is exactly this one vein, and shows that though he writes the small matters around him, his breast of itself carries the pattern of the family and state's shared grief.
Study
Word focus
Related Reading
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王维诗每逢佳节倍思亲,写重阳晴日里对兄弟的遥忆,以直白警句抒写普遍人情,明快爽朗;陆游此作则以久雨病居的压抑环境为背景,安得平生欢一句是郁结多日后忽然的怀友之思,情感由闷转舒。王诗因节而起、单点突出,情思明澈;陆诗因境而生、全篇铺叙,情致沉厚。对读可见盛唐抒情之清朗与南宋写实之绵密,同是怀人,心象自异。王维在佳节晴明中怀人,怀的是远方的具体之人;陆游在久雨病居里怀人,怀的更是旧日欢乐的时光本身,前者空间之隔,后者时间之隔,情感质地遂有浅深之别,而皆能写出人类共通的怀想之情。
茅屋为秋风所破歌 Song of My Cottage Unroofed by Autumn Gales 杜甫 · 同写病中风雨的窘迫境遇,一为天下寒士之忧,一为平生旧友之思 Related readingCompare this related work with the poem above through theme, imagery, tone, and emotional movement.
杜甫诗以床头屋漏无干处写秋雨之虐,而终以安得广厦千万间推己及人,忧在天下;陆游此诗以霁日仅可数写暮春雨霖,而以安得平生欢问讯旧友,思在知己。两诗皆以安得二字转出高远之思,而杜之襟抱天下、陆之情系故交,气象大小有别,用心则一。就笔法言,杜诗奇崛跌宕,陆诗平淡自然,正见盛唐与南宋两种审美范型在同题材上的差异。然两诗于困顿之中皆不失向上之气,杜望广厦,陆盼故人,皆以温厚之情济贫病之苦,可知真诗人无论如何穷愁,终不肯堕入绝望之境,此又是两家精神相通之处。