Oh, but it is high and very dangerous!
Such travelling is harder than scaling the blue sky.
...Until two rulers of this region
Pushed their way through in the misty ages,
Forty-eight thousand years had passed
With nobody arriving across the Ch'in border.
And the Great White Mountain, westward, still has only a bird's path
Up to the summit of O-mei Peak -
Which was broken once by an earthquake and there were brave men lost,
Just finishing the stone rungs of their ladder toward heaven.
...High, as on a tall flag, six dragons drive the sun,
While the river, far below, lashes its twisted course.
Such height would be hard going for even a yellow crane,
So pity the poor monkeys who have only paws to use.
The Mountain of Green Clay is formed of many circles -
Each hundred steps, we have to turn nine turns among its mounds.
Panting, we brush Orion and pass the Well Star,
Then, holding our chests with our hands and sinking to the ground with a groan,
We wonder if this westward trail will never have an end.
The formidable path ahead grows darker, darker still,
With nothing heard but the call of birds hemmed in by the ancient forest,
Male birds smoothly wheeling, following the females;
And there come to us the melancholy voices of the cuckoos
Out on the empty mountain, under the lonely moon
Such travelling is harder than scaling the blue sky.
Even to hear of it turns the cheek pale,
With the highest crag barely a foot below heaven.
Dry pines hang, head down, from the face of the cliffs,
And a thousand plunging cataracts outroar one another
And send through ten thousand valleys a thunder of spinning stones.
With all this danger upon danger,
Why do people come here who live at a safe distance?
...Though Dagger-Tower Pass be firm and grim,
And while one man guards it
Ten thousand cannot force it,
What if he be not loyal,
But a wolf toward his fellows?
...There are ravenous tigers to fear in the day
And venomous reptiles in the night
With their teeth and their fangs ready
To cut people down like hemp .
...Though the City of Silk be delectable, I would rather turn home quickly.
Such travelling is harder than scaling the blue sky
But I still face westward with a dreary moan.
Original Poem:
「蜀道难」
李白
噫吁嚱，危乎高哉！
蜀道之难，难于上青天！
蚕丛及鱼凫，开国何茫然！
尔来四万八千岁，不与秦塞通人烟。
西当太白有鸟道，可以横绝峨眉巅。
地崩山摧壮士死，然后天梯石栈相钩连。
上有六龙回日之高标，下有冲波逆折之回川。
黄鹤之飞尚不得过，猿猱欲度愁攀援。
青泥何盘盘，百步九折萦岩峦。
扪参历井仰胁息，以手抚膺坐长叹。
问君西游何时还？畏途巉岩不可攀。
但见悲鸟号古木，雄飞雌从绕林间。
又闻子规啼夜月，愁空山。
蜀道之难，难于上青天，使人听此凋朱颜！
连峰去天不盈尺，枯松倒挂倚绝壁。
飞湍瀑流争喧豗，砯崖转石万壑雷。
其险也如此，嗟尔远道之人胡为乎来哉！
剑阁峥嵘而崔嵬，一夫当关，万夫莫开。
所守或匪亲，化为狼与豺。
朝避猛虎，夕避长蛇，磨牙吮血，杀人如麻。
锦城虽云乐，不如早还家。
蜀道之难，难于上青天，侧身西望长咨嗟！
Interpretation:
This poem was written around 742 A.D. when Li Bai first visited Chang’an. Li Bai grew up in Shu, and at the age of twenty-five, he left Shu through the Three Gorges and never went back. He had never been to the Qinling Mountains, so “Hard Road to Shu” is a typical product of artistic imagination. In the poem, he used his rich imagination and hyperbole to vividly depict the high and steep obstacles and charming scenery of the Shu Road, which is harder than the blue sky, and at the same time contrasted the evils of the world with the difficulty of the Shu Road, implying an infinite worry about the future of the Tang Dynasty.
The poet generally follows the clues from the past to the present, from Qin to Shu, and seizes the characteristics of each landscape to show the difficulty of the Shu Road. At the beginning of the poem, the poet is a sad aria out of thin air, with three exclamatory sentences to point out the theme, and integration of the five ding open the mountain and other myths, and greatly rendered the Shu Road is very dangerous, for the whole poem to set the tone. In the poet’s writing, the abrupt and high standard mountain can block the sun god’s dragon car, high Shu even thousands of miles of soaring cranes can not fly over, agile apes and monkeys are worried about climbing, people walking on the difficult. And under the mountain is surprising fear of the waves, twists and turns of the river. Qingni Ling for the Tang Dynasty into the main road to Shu, the poet captured the pedestrians on the ridge twists and turns hovering, hand touching the stars, breathing tensions, chest sighs and other details, in a few words, it will make the pedestrians difficult steps, frightened look as in front of us.
Next, the poet used the scenery to express his feelings, rendering travelling sorrows and the desolate ancient wood on the Shu Road, the sad sound of birds in the environment, to further accentuate the treacherous and majestic Shu Road. Then by the quiet and moving, write the deep stream in the waterfalls, valley thunder thrilling scene, scenery changes, dangerous images, resulting in a kind of mountain-like artistic effect. The poet finally writes about Jiange, the stronghold of Shu, advising people to learn from it, and linking it to the social background at that time, exposing the jackals in Shu, “grinding their teeth and sucking their blood, and killing people as if they were human beings”.
In the end, he exhorts his friends to return home as early as possible, and once again issues a deep sigh of “the road to Shu is harder than the sky”, which echoes with the previous one and closes the whole piece, closely linking the description of the dangerous mountains and the worry about the national affairs.
The whole poem has a rigorous structure, with distinct but unpredictable layers. According to the needs of the content, it constantly changes the sentence form and rhyme, and uses a large number of prose verses, which are uneven and jagged, forming an extremely unrestrained language style, and the poetic momentum is free and unrestrained, robust and powerful. In the ever-changing descriptions, the poet’s artistic genius is not manifested in the fine carving of the objective scenery, but in the excellent imagination which has been enchanted to artistically show a colourful landscape scroll. The poet is good at combining imagination, exaggeration and myths and legends into one, writing scenes and expressing emotions, full of romanticism, creating a vast and vast artistic realm.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Li Bai (李白), 701 ~ 762 A.D., whose ancestral home was in Gansu, was preceded by Li Guang, a general of the Han Dynasty. Tang poetry is one of the brightest constellations in the history of Chinese literature, and one of the brightest stars is Li Bai.
