元和十年，我被贬为九江副官。第二年夏天，我看见一个朋友离开彭浦，半夜里听到邻家的船上弹起了京城的吉他。经过询问，我才知道这名女演员以前在那儿当过舞女，成年后嫁给了一个商人。我邀请她到我的船上为我们演奏。她给我讲了她的故事，从鼎盛时期到不幸。自从我离开京城以来，我没有感到悲伤;但那天晚上，在我离开她之后，我开始意识到我被放逐了。我写了这首长诗——六百一十二字。夜晚，我在浔阳河上辞别客人，秋日里，枫叶和茂盛的灯心草沙沙作响。我，主人，下了马，我的客人，上了船，我们举起酒杯，想喝——但是，唉，没有音乐。 For all we had drunk we felt no joy and were parting from each other, When the river widened mysteriously toward the full moon -- We had heard a sudden sound, a guitar across the water. Host forgot to turn back home, and guest to go his way. We followed where the melody led and asked the player's name. The sound broke off...then reluctantly she answered. We moved our boat near hers, invited her to join us, Summoned more wine and lanterns to recommence our banquet. Yet we called and urged a thousand times before she started toward us, Still hiding half her face from us behind her guitar. ...She turned the tuning-pegs and tested several strings; We could feel what she was feeling, even before she played: Each string a meditation, each note a deep thought, As if she were telling us the ache of her whole life. She knit her brows, flexed her fingers, then began her music, Little by little letting her heart share everything with ours. She brushed the strings, twisted them slow, swept them, plucked them -- First the air of The Rainbow Skirt, then The Six Little Ones. The large strings hummed like rain, The small strings whispered like a secret, Hummed, whispered-and then were intermingled Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade. We heard an oriole, liquid, hidden among flowers. We heard a brook bitterly sob along a bank of sand... By the checking of its cold touch, the very string seemed broken As though it could not pass; and the notes, dying away Into a depth of sorrow and concealment of lament, Told even more in silence than they had told in sound.... A silver vase abruptly broke with a gush of water, And out leapt armored horses and weapons that clashed and smote -- And, before she laid her pick down, she ended with one stroke, And all four strings made one sound, as of rending silk There was quiet in the east boat and quiet in the west, And we saw the white autumnal moon enter the river's heart. ...When she had slowly placed the pick back among the strings, She rose and smoothed her clothing and, formal, courteous, Told us how she had spent her girlhood at the capital, Living in her parents' house under the Mount of Toads, And had mastered the guitar at the age of thirteen, With her name recorded first in the class-roll of musicians, Her art the admiration even of experts, Her beauty the envy of all the leading dancers, How noble youths of Wuling had lavishly competed And numberless red rolls of silk been given for one song, And silver combs with shell inlay been snapped by her rhythms, And skirts the colour of blood been spoiled with stains of wine.... Season after season, joy had followed joy, Autumn moons and spring winds had passed without her heeding, Till first her brother left for the war, and then her aunt died, And evenings went and evenings came, and her beauty faded -- With ever fewer chariots and horses at her door; So that finally she gave herself as wife to a merchant Who, prizing money first, careless how he left her, Had gone, a month before, to Fuliang to buy tea. And she had been tending an empty boat at the river's mouth, No company but the bright moon and the cold water. And sometimes in the deep of night she would dream of her triumphs And be wakened from her dreams by the scalding of her tears. Her very first guitar-note had started me sighing; Now, having heard her story, I was sadder still. "We are both unhappy -- to the sky's end. We meet. We understand. What does acquaintance matter? I came, a year ago, away from the capital And am now a sick exile here in Jiujiang -- And so remote is Jiujiang that I have heard no music, Neither string nor bamboo, for a whole year. My quarters, near the River Town, are low and damp, With bitter reeds and yellowed rushes all