1037–1101
Su Shi
蘇軾
Read Su Shi on moonlight, Mount Lu, West Lake, a painted spring river, and late-season fruit, with original translations and notes on changing perceptions.
Su Shi (1037–1101), courtesy name Zizhan, 子瞻, is also known as Su Dongpo. He wrote poetry in both shi and ci, as well as prose, and his name also belongs to the history of calligraphy. Here we begin with one lyric: Shui Diao Ge Tou, written at mid-autumn in 1076.
The poem page prints its short preface. Su Shi says he drank until dawn and wrote with his brother Ziyou, Su Zhe, also in mind. That is a concrete starting point. His broader career matters, but an episode from another year should not be imported as this lyric’s occasion.
Read the questions before the final wish
The lyric begins by asking the sky how long the bright moon has existed. The speaker imagines returning to its palaces, then hesitates at the thought of the cold above. He dances with his shadow and considers the human world again.
This sequence is more complicated than a simple celebration of the moon. Each imagined solution produces another difficulty. Follow the changes in direction: question, desire, hesitation, return. The wish at the end becomes moving partly because the speaker has abandoned the hope of a perfectly arranged world.
The lower stanza comes closer
The moon passes a tower and a patterned window, then shines on someone unable to sleep. The language moves from heavenly architecture toward an earthly room. A complaint follows: why should the moon be full when people are apart?
The paired lines about human grief and reunion, lunar fullness and incompleteness, answer without cancelling the complaint. The closing wish allows distance to remain. The preface identifies the brother within that wish, while the wording can reach other separated readers.
The ci form guide shows how a named tune supplies line lengths and sound patterns. “Shui Diao Ge Tou” is the tune heading, not a description of the moon or the brother. The source and variant notes on the full poem page explain the Chinese reading used here.
A mountain changes with the viewpoint
Written on the Wall at West Forest Temple offers a compact shi counterpart. Looking across Mount Lu gives a ridge; looking from the side gives a peak. Far and near, high and low, the appearances change. The ending explains why being inside the mountain limits knowledge of its whole shape.
This is a seven-character jueju, not a ci lyric. Both poems reason through an experience, but their proportions differ: the mountain poem reaches its claim in four equal lines, while Shui Diao Ge Tou can question and reconsider across two stanzas. Read it beside Li Bai’s waterfall at Mount Lu to compare two uses of the same landscape.
Compare two other voices
In Li Bai’s Drinking Alone beneath the Moon, a cup also begins an exchange with the moon. Li Bai invents companions and recognizes their limits. Su Shi tests a journey and returns to the people below. Their shared moon does different work.
Then try Li Qingzhao’s Ru Meng Ling. It is another ci lyric, but a short exchange about flowers replaces the expansive address to the sky. The Song shelf holds both, making the dynasty a way to discover different voices rather than a promise that they sound alike.
A lake, a painting, and a late season
West Lake in Sunshine and Rain keeps two different appearances without choosing a single correct beauty. Huichong’s Spring River Scene takes a painting beyond what its surface can show: water has a temperature, and the season suggests fish about to move upstream. The poet’s contribution is an inference, not simply a list of painted objects.
To Liu Jingwen begins with plants losing their summer forms, then directs a friend toward the oranges and tangerines of a later season. The encouragement depends on noticing something particular that remains worth seeing. These short poems make useful companions to the longer lyric’s effort to live with incompleteness.
Updated