Du Fu spends New Year’s Eve at the home of a younger relative who is rising high in society. Unable to compete, he becomes resigned to a life of drinking.
杜位宅守歲
守歲阿戎家，
椒盤已頌花。
盍簪喧櫪馬，
列炬散林鴉。
四十明朝過，
飛騰暮景斜。
誰能更拘束，
爛醉是生涯。
Seeing In New Year At Du Wei’s Home
Seeing in New Year at my younger cousin’s home
Bowls of peppered ale hold blessed blossoms
High officials make noise among stabled horses
Lines of torches disperse crows in the woods
Tomorrow, my fortieth year will pass
Rising upward in slanted evening light
Who can go on being so tied up in knots?
Dead drunkenness to the end of my days
Translation notes
This poem contains phrases that required deep research, because my go-to medieval Chinese dictionary didn’t contain the vocabulary. In the first line, a rong 阿戎 refers to Du Wei, a younger relative of Du Fu who is referenced in the title of the poem. A rong is thought to be a phrase used at the time to refer to younger relatives.
In the next line, peppered ale is implied by jiao 椒 which means pepper, though making ale infused with pepper flowers was a New Year’s custom in Sichuan, where this poem is set.
On the third line, the phrase ‘high officials’ is nowhere to be seen in the original text. The original poem has he zan 盍簪, which translates roughly to hairpins. It took a visit to Taiwan’s National Academy of Educational Research to verify the use of he 盍 in this phrase, which dates back to the Book of Changes - first encountered in Xie Lingyun’s journey into the mountains.
Apparently, hairpins have been important ornaments throughout Chinese history, and by the time of Tang dynasty China, they functioned almost like crowns to indicate rank and seniority. Here, then, we can infer that Du Fu’s cousin is of extremely high standing in society, with high officials riding to pay tribute to him on New Year’s Eve. This idea is continued in the following line, where the torches represent the attendants of these high officials, while also conveying the majesty of the event. (Records show that Du Wei 杜位 was Du Fu’s second cousin and married into a noble family.)
The scene having been set, the final lines of the poem speak for themselves. The seventh line I have translated quite liberally. A literal translation would be something like ‘Who can more constrained tied up’. Jushu 拘束 in modern Chinese can mean to be ill at ease with one’s surroundings, and I feel this is the sense implied here. The phrase ‘tied up in knots’ provides a colloquial solution while being faithful to the classical text.
For the first time in these translations, we see a poet turn to alcohol in the final line! I originally wanted to translate lanzui 爛醉 as ‘getting absolutely hammered’, but while this is an accurate translation it doesn’t sound poetic. Drinking is a common theme in Chinese poetry, particularly among the more reclusive types, and symbolises a poet’s response to the social and political circumstances of their times or their personal sorrows.