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唐 Tang · 诗 Poem

除夜书怀

Written on New Year's Eve

崔涂

Cui Tu

迢递三巴路，羁危万里身。
乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人。
渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲。
那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新。

Far and winding, the road through the Three Ba lands,
A traveller in peril, a body a thousand miles from home.
Ravelled hills, spent snow, this night,
A single candle, a man in a strange land.
Gradually I grow distant from my own flesh and blood,
And turn instead for closeness to my serving boy.
How can I bear, still drifting as I am,
That tomorrow the year begins anew?

Listen

Meaning

Stranded far up the river in Shu on the last night of the year, Cui Tu measures his distance from home in every direction: the road is long, the body is far, the hills are broken, the snow is remnant, the candle is one. He notes that the longer he is away the more his own family recedes, until the only human intimacy left him is that of his servant. The poem ends on the cruellest possible contrast: while every other household gathers to welcome the new year, he will still be drifting.

迢迢万里，通向三巴的道路；羁旅漂泊，危难中的万里之身。乱山残雪的除夕之夜，孤烛之旁，独坐着异乡之人。渐渐与骨肉至亲疏远，转而与身边的僮仆亲近。怎堪这正漂泊不定的处境，明天便是万象更新的新年了。

Appreciation

[Plain Paraphrase] The road through the Three Ba country is remote and twisting, and the man on it is a thousand miles from anywhere safe. On this night of tumbled hills and leftover snow, a lone candle lights a stranger. Day by day he has drawn away from his own kin, and has come instead to depend on the boy who serves him; and now, still adrift, he must face the fact that tomorrow everything begins again. [Structure] The poem advances by deliberate stages, from far to near and from outer to inner: distance, then the immediate room, then human relations, then time itself. [Imagery] The middle couplet is the famous one - four adjectives do all the work: ravelled hills, remnant snow, solitary candle, alien land - and together they compose a complete picture of a traveller's new year. [Feeling] The most painful line is the least poetic: turning for affection to a servant. It is a plain statement of fact, and its plainness is precisely what makes the loneliness credible - a man reduced to the company of his own hired boy is a man whose family has become an idea.

【白话串讲】崔涂写《除夜书怀》：“迢递三巴路，羁危万里身”——“乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人”——“渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲”——“那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新”——他在异乡度除夕——乱山残雪夜。【意象与手法】 “迢递三巴路，羁危万里身”写羁旅；“乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人”写除夕孤烛；“渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲”写骨肉渐远；结以“那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新”写明日岁华新。情真语挚。【情感与主旨】崔涂写除夕羁旅之作，写乱山残雪、孤烛异乡的除夕凄清与骨肉渐远之痛，于万家团圆的除夕自伤漂泊，是唐人除夕诗中的名篇。【名句点睛】常考“乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人”写除夕孤烛；“渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲”写骨肉渐远之痛。

Background

Cui Tu, courtesy name Lishan, was a native of the region south of the Yangtze and a poet of the late Tang. He took the jinshi degree during the Guangqi era, in the 880s, by which time the dynasty was already collapsing into regional warfare, and he was connected with literary figures such as Sikong Tu and Fang Gan. His surviving poems are dominated by travel and homesickness, written in a plain and rather astringent style, and this opening couplet became the best-known thing he wrote. New Year's Eve in the Tang was the great domestic festival of the year: families kept the night watch together, burned fires to drive off the old year, and stayed awake to greet the new one; to be absent from it was to be absent from the social order itself. Late Tang society was violently unsettled, and educated men without strong local ties spent years on the roads between posts and patrons - the condition that gives this poem its documentary force. The Three Ba were the three commanderies into which Shu was divided in the late Han, covering what is now Chongqing and eastern Sichuan, and the name had long since become poetic shorthand for the far upper river.

《除夜书怀》为晚唐诗人崔涂所作五言律诗。崔涂，字礼山，江南人，晚唐诗人，光启年间进士，与司空图、方干等有交游，其诗多写羁旅乡愁，风格清苦，以「迢递三巴路」一联最为世传诵。此诗作于诗人客居他乡的除夕之夜。题中「除夜」即除夕，为岁末之夜，古人于此夜阖家团聚、守岁迎新，而诗人却孤身漂泊在外。诗中「迢递三巴路，羁危万里身」写其远在蜀地、羁旅飘零；「乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人」写除夕之夜独处异乡的凄清；「渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲」写离乡日久、亲人疏远，身边唯有僮仆相伴；「那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新」写于万家团圆的除夕自伤漂泊，明日又是新的一年。晚唐社会动荡，士人多漂泊无依，崔涂此诗正是以除夕之夜的羁旅为背景，写出了游子于团圆佳节独处异乡的孤寂与思乡之情，真切动人，是唐人除夕诗中情真语挚的名篇，也是晚唐羁旅诗的代表作。

Art

The poem's method is progression by narrowing. It begins with geography on the largest scale - a whole province of road - and contracts, couplet by couplet, to a hillside, to a candle, to a relationship, and finally to a single point in time, tomorrow. Nothing is repeated and nothing is explained; each couplet simply moves one step closer in. The celebrated middle couplet works by piling four attributive words onto four nouns with no verb anywhere in the line, so that the reader is given pure condition rather than event: disorder, leftovers, solitude, foreignness. The third couplet is where the craft is least visible and most effective, because it states a psychological fact in the flattest language and in a balanced antithesis - gradually against turning, kin against servant - which makes the degradation sound like an orderly process rather than a complaint. Finally, the closing couplet performs the oldest trick of festival poetry: the new year is not a consolation but a measuring rod, and its newness throws the traveller's unchanging drift into relief.

此诗艺术上以「层层递进、以寻常语写深情」见长。全诗八句，由远及近、由境及心，层层深入。首联「迢递三巴路，羁危万里身」写身处之远：迢迢万里的三巴之路，羁旅漂泊的万里之身，「迢递」写路途之远，「羁危」写羁旅之险，一远一危，写尽客居之难。颔联「乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人」写除夕之景：乱山残雪，除夕之夜，孤烛之旁，独坐异乡之人，「乱」「残」「孤」「异」四字，写尽环境的凄清与人的孤寂。颈联「渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲」转写人情之变：离乡日久，渐渐与骨肉至亲疏远，转而与身边的僮仆亲近，「渐」「转」二字写尽游子心态的转变，以寻常语写尽游子之痛。尾联「那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新」以情作结：怎堪正漂泊不定，明日便是新年，「那堪」二字直抒其不堪之情，「岁华新」以新年之新反衬漂泊之旧，愈见凄楚。全诗由远及近、由境及心，层层递进，以寻常语写真切情，正是晚唐羁旅诗「情真语挚」的典范。

Allusions

The Three Ba is a piece of historical geography rather than a poetic invention: when Liu Zhang divided the old Ba commandery into three parts at the end of the Han, the name came to stand for the whole eastern Sichuan region, and by the Tang it was a conventional way of saying the furthest corner of the empire. The pairing of traveller and peril draws on the long vocabulary of the wanderer in the Book of Songs and the old poems, where to be a sojourner is already to be in danger. The phrase season's splendour, used in the last line for the turning year, descends from the Wen xuan and the anthology tradition, where it marks the passage of time rather than any particular festival; Cui Tu's use of it against the word new is what produces the sting. The rest of the poem is deliberately without reference, which is a point of style: a man alone on the last night of the year has no need of literary precedent, and the absence of borrowed language is itself a claim to sincerity.

诗中「三巴」一词，为地名故实。三巴指巴郡、巴东、巴西三郡，在今重庆、四川东部一带，因东汉末益州牧刘璋分巴郡为三而得名，后世以「三巴」指代蜀地。崔涂「迢递三巴路」写其远在蜀地，路途迢迢万里。「羁危」之「羁」指羁旅，「危」指艰险，写羁旅漂泊之难。此外，「明日岁华新」之「岁华」，指岁时、年光，语出《文选》等典籍，后世诗文多以「岁华」写时光流转。诗人以「三巴」写其行踪之远，以「岁华新」写时序之变，皆用典制故实而不着痕迹，把羁旅之苦与岁暮之悲写得真切可感。除夕本是阖家团圆的佳节，诗人却于此夜独处异乡，三巴之远、万里之身，更衬出其归乡无望的凄凉，是善于以地名故实写羁旅之情的体现。此等用典之法，熔铸古今而不着痕迹，既不炫博以示学，亦不拘泥于旧解，正见诗人学养之深与运思之巧。读者于此等处尤当细心玩味，方能领会其言外之旨与味外之味。

Commentary

This is generally accounted one of the most moving of Tang New Year's Eve poems, and its reputation rests on the third couplet in particular. Critics from the Song onward singled out the line about growing distant from one's own flesh and blood and turning to a servant for company as a stroke that no amount of eloquence could improve, precisely because it reports something that most people would suppress. The middle couplet has been quoted even more widely and became a stock illustration in later prosody manuals of how to build a scene out of adjectives alone. Readers have also noted how little self-pity the poem allows itself: there is no appeal to heaven, no curse on fortune, only a sequence of facts arranged so that they close in. In the late Tang context of displaced scholars and broken careers, its plainness reads as representative rather than personal, which is why it is so often printed as the voice of an age rather than of one man.

这首《除夜书怀》，写尽了游子于除夕之夜独处异乡的孤寂与思乡之情，真切动人。除夕本是万家团圆、守岁迎新的佳节，诗人却孤身飘零在万里之外的三巴，此情此景，尤为凄楚。首联「迢递三巴路，羁危万里身」，写其远在蜀地、羁旅漂泊，路途迢迢万里，身世飘零危难，一远一危，写尽客居之难。颔联「乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人」，是全诗最凄清的一联：乱山残雪，除夕之夜；孤烛之旁，独坐异乡之人。「乱」「残」「孤」「异」四字，写尽环境的凄清与人的孤寂，一幅除夕羁旅图宛然在目。颈联「渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲」，更是以寻常语写尽游子之痛：离乡日久，渐渐与骨肉至亲疏远，转而与身边的僮仆亲近——这「转于僮仆亲」五字，写得尤其心酸，一个漂泊的游子，身边竟只有僮仆相伴，亲情之疏、孤独之深，尽在其中。尾联「那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新」，直抒其不堪之情：怎堪正漂泊不定，明日便是新年。明日万象更新，而自己依旧漂泊无归，这新与旧的对照，愈见其凄楚。全诗由远及近、由境及心，层层深入，以寻常语写真切情，正是晚唐羁旅诗「情真语挚」的典范，读之令人动容。

Prosody

Form A five-character regulated poem in the deflected-opening manner, with the middle couplets fully antithetical.五言律诗（近体，仄起式）

Rhyme The poem rhymes on a level tone throughout, the four rhyme words belonging to the same broad class. Level rhyme is the norm for the five-character regulated form and gives a smooth, sustained sound, which here works against the content: the music is calm while the situation is not, and that discrepancy is part of the poem's restraint.全诗押平声韵「身」「人」「亲」「新」，韵脚同属真文类（身、人、亲、新），一韵到底，韵部宽舒而音调沉挚。五律以平韵谐畅为常，此诗「身」「人」「亲」「新」四韵音色浑厚，正与除夕羁旅的沉挚情调相称；「新」字收束全篇，与「明日岁华新」之句相映，韵脚亦含时序之变，声情与辞情相凑。

Tone pattern The opening couplet begins on a deflected tone and sets the two nouns road and body against each other with a heavy pause. The middle couplet is strictly parallel, disorder answering solitude and remnant snow answering foreign ground, and its syllables are correspondingly weighty. The third couplet slackens into a level, unhurried rhythm to match its domestic subject, and the closing couplet ends on the level-tone rhyme word new, letting the sound open out as the poem's bitterness is handed to the reader rather than resolved.句式上，首联「迢递三巴路，羁危万里身」仄起，以「路」「身」顿挫，写羁旅之远；颔联「乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人」对仗工整，「乱山残雪」「孤烛异乡」相映，音节凝重，写除夕之凄清；颈联「渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲」转写人情之变，「渐」「转」二字含情，音节平缓；尾联「那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新」以「新」字平收，音节转舒，情调由凄楚归于悠长。全诗平仄相间、音节随情起伏，读来如游子于除夕独坐的低语，沉挚而悲凉。

Reading note Sound and sense are carefully married. The single level rhyme running through all four couplets holds an increasingly bleak sequence of statements inside one continuous, even music, so that the poem never raises its voice. The strict antithesis of the middle couplet freezes the scene into a picture, appropriate to a night that seems as though it will not pass. And the final rhyme word, meaning new, places the word that hurts most at the exact point where the poem's sound comes to rest.此诗为五言律诗，是唐人除夕诗中的名篇，也是晚唐羁旅诗的代表作。全诗的艺术特色在于「层层递进、以寻常语写深情」：首联「迢递三巴路，羁危万里身」写羁旅之远、身世之危；颔联「乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人」以工对写除夕独处的凄清，是千古名句；颈联「渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲」转写人情之变，以「渐」「转」二字写尽游子之痛；尾联「那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新」以新岁反衬漂泊，直抒不堪之情。全诗由远及近、由境及心，层层深入，以寻常语写真切情，情真语挚。尤为动人者，是颈联「渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲」二句，把游子离乡日久、亲情疏远、身边唯余僮仆相伴的孤寂，写得真切而心酸，正是晚唐羁旅诗「于平淡处见深情」的典范，为历代选家所称赏。

Line by line

迢递三巴路，羁危万里身。

Far and winding, the road through the Three Ba lands; a traveller in peril, a body a thousand miles from home.

迢迢万里，通向三巴的道路；羁旅漂泊，危难中的万里之身。

Far, far the road to the Three Ba regions; a wanderer in peril, ten thousand li from home.

首联写身处之远、羁旅之难，为全诗定下凄苦的基调。「迢递三巴路」写其远在蜀地，路途迢迢万里，「迢递」见道路之遥远绵长，也暗含归乡之无望；「羁危万里身」写其羁旅漂泊、身在万里之外，「羁」见其客居无依，「危」见其旅途之艰险。两句一写路远、一写身危，一远一危，把游子客居他乡的艰难处境和盘托出。诗人不写除夕之景，而先写其身世之飘零，正是为下文「孤烛异乡人」的除夕独处作铺垫，起笔即见功力。

The opening couplet writes the distance of his place and the hardship of the wandering, fixing the whole's bitter key. Far, far the road to the Three Ba regions writes his being in Shu, the road a thousand li; the word far, far showing the road's remote length and secretly the hopelessness of returning. A wanderer in peril, ten thousand li from home writes his drifting, his body ten thousand li away; the word wanderer showing his homeless dependence, peril showing the journey's danger. The two lines, one the far road, one the perilous body, one far one perilous, lay bare the wanderer's hard lot in the strange land. The poet writes not the New Year's Eve scene, but first writes the drifting of his lot, exactly to lay a ground for the later lone candle, stranger in a strange land, the opening already showing craft.

乱山残雪夜，孤烛异乡人。

Ravelled hills, spent snow, this night; a single candle, a man in a strange land.

乱山残雪的除夕之夜，孤烛之旁，独坐着异乡之人。

A night of tangled hills and lingering snow; a lone candle, a stranger in a strange land.

颔联是全诗最凄清的一联，也是千古名句。「乱山残雪夜」写除夕之夜的景物：乱山连绵，残雪未消，一派荒寒萧瑟之气，「乱」字见山之杂乱无章，亦暗含心绪之乱，「残」字见雪之将融未融，写尽岁末的萧索；「孤烛异乡人」写人的处境：孤烛摇曳之旁，独坐着异乡之人，「孤」字写烛之孤，亦写人之孤，「异乡人」三字直点其身在他乡。两句一写景、一写人，乱山残雪与孤烛异乡相映，环境的凄清与人的孤寂融为一体，把除夕之夜羁旅独处的境况写得如在目前，是「一切景语皆情语」的典范。

The jaw couplet is the most desolate of the whole, and a famous line through the ages. A night of tangled hills and lingering snow writes the Eve's scenery: the tangled hills stretching, the lingering snow not gone, a stretch of wild cold and bleakness, the word tangled showing the hills' disorder and secretly the mind's disorder, the word lingering showing the snow's half-melted, writing to the full the year-end bleakness. A lone candle, a stranger in a strange land writes the man's plight: beside the flickering lone candle sits the stranger, the word lone writing the candle's loneliness and the man's, the three words stranger in a strange land directly pointing his being abroad. The two lines, one scenery one man, the tangled hills and lingering snow set off the lone candle and the stranger, the environment's desolation and the man's loneliness fused, writing the Eve's lone wandering as if before the eyes, the model of all scenery words are feeling words.

渐与骨肉远，转于僮仆亲。

Gradually I grow distant from my own flesh and blood, and turn instead for closeness to my serving boy.

离乡日久，渐渐与骨肉至亲疏远，转而与身边的僮仆亲近起来。

By degrees I grow far from my own flesh and blood, and turn close to my servants.

颈联转写人情之变，以寻常语写尽游子之痛。「渐与骨肉远」写离乡日久，渐渐与骨肉至亲疏远，「渐」字见其疏远之过程、之无奈，非一朝一夕，而是岁月累积；「转于僮仆亲」写转而与身边的僮仆亲近，「转」字见其感情之转移，因亲人远隔，身边唯有僮仆相伴，日久竟与僮仆亲如家人。「渐」「转」二字相对，写尽游子心态的转变，而这转变之中，藏着多少无法言说的孤寂与辛酸——本该亲近的骨肉渐渐疏远，本该疏远的僮仆反而亲近，正是漂泊无依的明证。两句以平常语写真切情，是五律中「以淡语写深情」的典范，读之令人心酸。

The neck couplet turns to the change of human feeling, writing the wanderer's pain in common words. By degrees I grow far from my own flesh and blood writes the years abroad, gradually growing far from the dear kin, the word by degrees showing the process and helplessness of the estrangement, not in a day but accumulated through the years. And turn close to my servants writes turning close to the attendants beside him, the word turn showing the transfer of feeling, because the kin are far away and only the servants accompany him, the years making him as close to the servants as family. The two words by degrees and turn set against, writing to the full the change of the wanderer's mind, and within this change hidden how much unspeakable loneliness and bitterness - the kin who should be near gradually estranged, the servants who should be distant instead close, exactly the plain evidence of drifting without support. The two lines write true feeling in common words, the model in the five-character regulated verse of writing deep feeling in plain words, reading it makes the heart ache.

那堪正飘泊，明日岁华新。

How can I bear, still drifting as I am, that tomorrow the year begins anew?

怎堪这正漂泊不定的处境，明天便是万象更新的新年了。

How can I bear this drifting? Tomorrow the new year begins afresh.

尾联以情作结，直抒其不堪之情。「那堪正飘泊」以反问写其不堪漂泊之状，「那堪」二字直抒胸臆，见其漂泊之痛已不堪承受；「明日岁华新」写明日便是新年，「岁华新」见时序之更新、万象之复始，本该是喜庆之事。两句一写己之漂泊、一写岁之更新，以新岁之「新」反衬漂泊之「旧」——明日万家更新，而自己依旧漂泊无归，新与旧的对照，愈见其凄楚。诗人于除夕之夜、万家团圆之时，以这「那堪」一问，写尽游子思乡无归的悲凉，是全诗情感的高潮，读之令人动容。

The tail couplet closes in feeling, directly uttering the unbearable. How can I bear this drifting? writes in a rhetorical question the unbearable state of wandering, the two words how can I bear directly uttering the breast, showing the pain of drifting already beyond bearing. Tomorrow the new year begins afresh writes that tomorrow is the new year, the new year showing the season's renewal and all things' new beginning, originally a festive matter. The two lines, one writing his drifting, one writing the year's renewal, set the new year's new against the drifting's old - tomorrow ten thousand homes renew, yet he still drifts without return, the contrast of new and old the more showing the desolation. The poet, on New Year's Eve, when ten thousand homes are reunited, writes through this question how can I bear? to the full the wanderer's sorrow of longing for home and not returning, the emotional climax of the whole, moving to read.

Study

Word focus

迢递 Far-stretching and winding, used of roads and of distance generally. It establishes scale in the very first phrase, so the reader measures the speaker's removal before knowing anything else about him. 「迢递」写道路之遥远绵长，是写羁旅之远的典型用词。「迢递三巴路」着一「迢递」，既是写蜀道之远，更是暗含归乡之无望——如此迢递之路，何时能归？两字音调悠长，读来如见游子遥望归途的怅惘，为全诗定下了凄苦的基调，是起笔写远的点睛之词。「迢递」一字之用而全篇生色，与诗中情韵相为表里，正见诗人炼字之精与匠心之独运。读者于此等处若细细体会，自能领会其于平淡之中见功力、于寻常处见神奇之妙。

孤烛 A single candle. In festival poetry the candle belongs to the watch kept by a whole family; one candle therefore means the festival reduced to a minimum, and it is the only light in the poem. 「孤烛」写除夕之夜摇曳的孤灯，「孤」字写烛之孤，亦写人之孤。除夕之夜，万家灯火，而游子唯有孤烛相伴，「孤」字既见环境之清冷，更见人心之孤寂。着一「孤」字，使烛也染上人的情绪，与「异乡人」相映，环境的凄清与人的孤寂融为一体，是「以物写人」的妙笔。「孤烛」一字之用而全篇生色，与诗中情韵相为表里，正见诗人炼字之精与匠心之独运。读者于此等处若细细体会，自能领会其于平淡之中见功力、于寻常处见神奇之妙。

异乡人 A man of a strange land, a sojourner. The word carries more than geography: it names a legal and social condition, a person without local belonging, which is why it lands so heavily at the end of the famous couplet. 「异乡人」三字直点其身在异乡，是全诗最直白的自白。除夕本是阖家团聚的佳节，诗人却以「异乡人」自称，三字写尽客居之孤、思乡之切。「异」字见其与周遭格格不入、举目无亲，一个漂泊无依的游子形象跃然纸上，是于平常语中见真情的典范。「异乡人」一字之用而全篇生色，与诗中情韵相为表里，正见诗人炼字之精与匠心之独运。读者于此等处若细细体会，自能领会其于平淡之中见功力、于寻常处见神奇之妙。

那堪 How can one bear - a rhetorical formula of protest. It is the one openly emotional phrase in the poem, and by placing it at the head of the last couplet the poet allows himself exactly one cry after three couplets of restraint. 「那堪」即怎能承受，以反问直抒其不堪之情，是全诗情感的高潮。「那堪正飘泊」一问，见其漂泊之痛已不堪承受，直白而沉痛；「明日岁华新」的对照，更使这「那堪」多了几分新岁将至而旧愁难遣的悲凉。二字于反问中见真情，是尾联以情作结的点睛之笔。「那堪」一字之用而全篇生色，与诗中情韵相为表里，正见诗人炼字之精与匠心之独运。读者于此等处若细细体会，自能领会其于平淡之中见功力、于寻常处见神奇之妙。