Zhongnan Mountains, Wang Wei (300 Tang Shi #118)

[lnhammer]

Taiyi near heaven’s capital—
A range linked all the way to the coast.
I turn and gaze as white clouds join,
I cannot see through the blue haze.
Peaks part the separated lands:
Many ravines with skies dark then clear.
I long for refuge, to lodge with people—
Across the water I ask a woodcutter.

终南山
太乙近天都，
连山接海隅。
白云回望合，
青霭入看无。
分野中峰变，
阴晴众壑殊。
欲投人处宿，
隔水问樵夫。

Zhongnan, the range south of Chang’an separating the Wei and Han river watersheds, is where Wang Wei’s Wangchuan Estate was. Taiyi is both the name of the tallest peak visible from the capital and an alternate name for the range. Which, btw, very much does not run all the way to the coast, and I don’t know what’s up with that exaggeration. Line 6 is rather more compacted than usual in the original: the literal characters are “dark clear-sky many ravines different,” which seems to be about how the weather is different from place to place and moment to moment. The water in the last line seems to be a (previously unnoticed) stream.

Overtone lost in translation: 分野 (here “separated lands”) is also an astronomic term, specifically the relationship between a constellation and a region of China. This builds on the heavenly associations set up in the first line.

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

. . . and a human appears in the last line

[lnhammer]

That happens a lot in Wang Wei poems -- you're puttering about in the empty wilderness then BAM! a sudden interaction with someone, usually a woodcutter, sometimes a fisherman.