壹別長絕 · One Parting, Long Severed
日暮河梁上
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壹別長絕 · One Parting, Long Severed
The Book of Han files the two of them in one chapter. 卷 54 is the 李廣蘇建傳, and 李陵 sits inside it as Li Guang's grandson while 蘇武 sits inside it as Su Jian's son 1. The two men had served at court together — 初，武與李陵俱為侍中, at first Wu and Li Ling were both attendants at court — and the chapter ends by judging them in a single appraisal that faces two ways 1.
This song stands on the bridge between them, at dusk, on the day one of them went home.
攜手上河梁，遊子暮何之。
Hands joined on the river bridge — where does the traveller go at dusk? 2
What the record keeps of the nineteen years is arithmetic and one worn object. 武留匈奴凡十九歲，始以強壯出，及還，鬚髮盡白 — Wu stayed among the Xiongnu nineteen years in all; he went out in his prime, and when he came back his hair and beard were entirely white. And beside it: 杖漢節牧羊，臥起操持，節旄盡落 — he herded sheep leaning on the Han envoy's staff, holding it down and up, until the tassels had all fallen off 1.
The farewell itself is written down once, and it is not the poem:
於是李陵置酒賀武曰……陵起舞，歌曰：「徑萬里兮度沙幕，為君將兮奮匈奴。路窮絕兮矢刃摧，士眾滅兮名已隤。老母已死，雖欲報恩將安歸！」陵泣下數行，因與武決。
So Li Ling poured wine and congratulated Wu… then Li Ling rose and danced, and sang: I went ten thousand li across the sand desert, for my lord I fought the Xiongnu. The road ran out, the blades broke, the army was wiped out, the name already brought low. My old mother is dead; though I would repay what was given me, where am I to return to? Ling's tears ran down in several streams, and with that he took his leave of Wu 1.
The sentence he left in the chapter is what this song is named for: 異域之人，壹別長絕 — men of different realms: one parting, and a long severing 1. The page prints it 壹別長絶, and the song keeps the page's character.
The poem does a thing the chapter cannot. It puts both men on the bridge and calls them both by one word, 遊子, travellers: 行人難久留，各言長相思, the one who must go cannot stay long, and each says he will think of the other a long while. Then the promise: 安知非日月，弦望自有時。努力崇明德，皓首以為期 — how do you know it is not like the moon, which wanes and comes full again on its own time? Each will foster his bright virtue, and white hairs will be the day appointed 2. The page's collation note records one variant worth knowing: where it prints 悢悢不得辭, two earlier editions read 不能辭, could not speak, instead of could not take leave 2.
Su Wu's own poem is printed beside it, and its one turn is that the wish to leave together is the one thing a poem cannot do:
欲展清商曲，念子不能歸……願為雙黃鵠，送子俱遠飛。
I would play the clear-shang tune, and think of you, who cannot go home… I would be a pair of yellow swans, and see you off flying far 2.
White hairs will be the day appointed. One of them did come back white-haired; neither of them ever kept the appointment. 武以始元六年春至京師 … 鬚髮盡白 — he reached the capital in the spring of 始元六年 with his hair and beard all white. The other never came back at all: 陵在匈奴二十餘年，元平元年病死, Ling lived among the Xiongnu more than twenty years and died of illness in 元平元年 1.
The chapter's verdict on them splits down the middle:
贊曰：……然三代之將，道家所忌，自廣至陵，遂亡其宗，哀哉！孔子稱「志士仁人，有殺身以成仁，無求生以害仁」，「使於四方，不辱君命」，蘇武有之矣。
The appraisal says: …but a line of generals through three reigns is what the Daoists warned against, and from Guang down to Ling the clan was extinguished — alas. Confucius held that a man of purpose and humanity will die rather than seek life at the cost of what is right, and that one sent abroad dishonours no commission; Su Wu had this 1.
Thirty years later the emperor had eleven men painted on the Unicorn Pavilion for what they had done. The last name on the list of eleven is 典屬國蘇武 — Su Wu, minister of the dependent states 1. There is a portrait of the one, and an alas on the other, and not one word anywhere for what happened on the bridge. The appraisal has no seeing off in it; it does not even have the cup.
Why he stayed is in the same chapter, and it is not despair. Years later, when envoys came and offered him a way back, he answered: 歸易耳，恐再辱，奈何 — going back would be easy; a second humiliation, what would I do about that — and again, in four characters: 丈夫不能再辱, a man cannot be humiliated twice 1.
So the chorus sets two directions on one bridge and asks what was actually cut:
君歸漢家去 我向塞北行 同立一橋上 各在天一方 壹別遂長絕 所絕者何事
You go back to the Han, I go north of the passes; we stand on one bridge, each at the world's own edge; one parting and a long severing — so what is it that got severed? The third pass answers instead of asking: 所絕者非路，所絕者其名, not the road; the name. The song ends in five lines of three characters — 君已渡 我未還 詩有別 史無別 水東流 — you have crossed, I have not gone back, the poem has the parting, the history does not, the water runs east.
The lead instrument is the 高胡, which has not led an issue of this channel. It is the 高音二胡, also called 粵胡: a small bowed fiddle built in the 1920s by 司徒夢巖 and his student 呂文成 to take the 二弦's place in Cantonese music and opera, with a soundbox smaller than the erhu's, tuning G4 to D5, a fourth higher, and played sitting down with the thigh clamping the skin so the player can hold the tone and keep the wolf-note out. Its sound is 比二胡清澈明麗, clearer and brighter than the erhu, which is why it usually gets the cheerful tunes 3. That article has asked for sources since May 2022, so it is used only for what the instrument is and how it sounds. Nobody at this bridge had one, or any string at all; the brightness is asked here to carry a farewell without brightening it.
Sparse guqin under the verses, a low xiao answering in the bridge, a few pipa harmonics for the cold, and no drum anywhere. Put it on at dusk, or later still, with one lamp and nothing left to do. The cover is the near end of a timber bridge at blue hour, a shallow clay cup left standing on the rail post with the last of the afterglow inside it, and footprints on the wet planks that only go one way. It runs just over three minutes.
References
- 1漢書 · 卷54 · 維基文庫
zh.wikisource.org
- 2昭明文選 · 卷29 · 維基文庫
zh.wikisource.org
- 3高胡 · 維基百科
zh.wikipedia.org
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