李清照·《声声慢》英译

Autumn Love

“A Weary Song to a Slow Sad Tune”

Li Ch’ing-Chao

Search. Search. Seek. Seek.

Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear.

Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain.

Hot flashes. Sudden chills.

Stabbing pains. Slow agonies.

I can find no peace.

I drink two cups, then three bowls

Of clear wine until I can’t

Stand up against a gust of wind.

Wild geese fly overhead.

They wrench my heart.

They were our friends in the old days.

Gold chrysanthemums litter

The ground, pile up, faded, dead.

This season I could not bear

To pick them. All alone,

Motionless at my window,

I watch the gathering shadows.

Fine rain sifts through the wu-t’ung trees.

And drips, drop by drop, through the dusk.

What can I ever do now?

How can I drive off this word—

Hopelessness?

（Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung 译）

Andante

Li Ch’ing-chao

Searching, searching,

Seeking, seeking,

Alone, alone,

Solitary, solitary,

Sad, sad,

Grieved, grieved,

Mournful, mournful.

The season is now warm, now cool,

The most difficult to bear.

Two or three cups of light wine

Resist not the rapid evening wind.

The wild geese pass by

And grieve my heart,

For they are old acquaintances.

The soil is loaded with yellow chrysanthemums.

Withered and spoiled,

Who cares to pluck them?

Alone I wait by the wind.

How can the day get dark?

At dusk, the fine rain on the plane tree

Falls drop by drop, drop by drop.

To express all this,

Can the mere word “sadness” suffice?

（胡品清 译）

Sheng Sheng Man

Li Ch’ing Chao

Unending search in endless quest

So cold and still, how cold and still;

By grief and anguish, grief and anguish hard oppressed.

This season of the sudden change from warm to chill

Weighs down the heart in search of peace.

Cupfuls of light wine, two or three;

How else confront the wind that blows at dusk so urgently?

Even the flighting geese

Have stabbed me to the heart,

Friends that fly past me out of older memories.

Chrysanthemums in yellow masses everywhere:

Melancholy has marked them for its own.

For whom are they worth gathering growing there?

Watching from my window all alone

How am I to live until the darkness falls?

Fine rain is falling, too, into the wu t’ung trees;

Plodding drop by drop down into the dusk’s uncertainties.

Tell me, with this, then, with all this,

How can the one word ‘sorrow’ paint what sorrow is?

（Alan Ayling 译）