I go in a dream to the house of Hsieh - Through a zigzag porch with arching rails To a court where the spring moon lights for ever Phantom flowers and a single figure.
Original Poem:
「寄人」
别梦依依到谢家，小廊回合曲阑斜。
多情只有春庭月，犹为离人照落花。
Interpretation:
The poet Zhang Ju once fell in love with a woman, but later broke up with her, but the poet never forgot her. This is also the reason why this poem is titled “Sender”.
The poem starts with a description of a dream. The poem “Xie’s house” refers to a woman’s home, and is a reference to the talented woman Xie Daoxuan of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Presumably the poet had been in the woman’s house or had met her in her house. The winding paths and corridors were originally places where the poet used to visit or fixate on his love. Therefore, after entering the dream state, the poet feels that he has drifted into her house. The environment here is so familiar: the courtyard on all sides of the corridor, that is where the two once talked about their hearts; the winding appendages, as usual, seems to still have their own handwriting, but, in front of the corridor appendages are still the same, but not the person you are thinking about. He wandered and reminisced in disappointment, until he did not know how to get out of this embarrassing dream. The author’s melancholy feelings were doubly embarrassing as he could not find his loved one in his dreams.
The author asks, “What is left then? At this time, a bright moon, just its cold light spilled in the garden, the ground of the pieces of fallen flowers, reflecting the miserable color. The flowers have fallen, but the moon, which once reflected the fragrance on the branches, is still shining so amorously, as if it has not forgotten the love affair a couple had made here. The last two lines of the poem are what the poet wants to tell her.
The artistic image created in this poem is distinct and precise, yet subtle and profound. The poet is good at expressing his deep and tortuous feelings for each other through typical descriptions of scenery, which he uses very successfully. He only writes about the small corridor, the flowers and the moon in front of the garden, without needing more words, but with more power to move the heart than the author’s own direct speech of a thousand words.
Zhang Bi(张泌), a native of Huainan, Anhui Province, China, was a poet of the Tang Dynasty and one of the representatives of the Flower School.
Before and after the death of the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Bi was mainly active in the area of Hunan, Guizhou and Hunan province, where Ma Yin, the governor of the Wu’an Army, ruled, and promoted the literary prosperity of the Wu’an Army together with Yi Jing, the author of “The Soldiers Want to Look at the South”. Like the majority of poets in the late Tang Dynasty, such as Luo Yin, Wei Zhuang, Zheng Gu and Niu Highest, he stayed in Chang’an and wandered around in order to win a first place.
Zhang Bi now has 28 lyrics, 19 poems, and 2 novels namely “The Biography of Wei Andao” and “The Story of the Dressing House”. His famous poem “A Message” was selected as one of the “Three Hundred Tang Poems”, and his famous poem “Ruanxi Sha” was translated into vernacular by Lu Xun and named “The Nails of the Tang Dynasty”; his famous novel “The Biography of Wei Andao”, also known as “The Biography of Lady Houtu”, was included by Chen Han in his collection of novels “The Collection of Unusual Stories” at the end of Tang Dynasty, and was widely circulated in the late Tang Dynasty and the Fifth Dynasty.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
