攬月不盈手 · The Moon Will Not Fill a Hand
月出青天外
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攬月不盈手 · The Moon Will Not Fill a Hand
The lamp goes out and the room gets brighter. That is not a figure of speech. A wick holds one small circle of floor; the moon, once the wick is out, comes through the window and lies flat across the boards, and the whole room turns into one pale surface that a hand can be put into.
The oldest poem in this line is the last of the Nineteen Old Poems:
明月何皎皎，照我羅牀幃。 憂愁不能寐，覽衣起徘徊。 客行雖云樂，不如早旋歸。 出戶獨彷徨，愁思當告誰。 引領還入房，淚下沾裳衣。
Bright is the moon, shining on my gauze bed-curtain. Too grieved to sleep, I pull on my clothes and pace. A traveller's life is called pleasant, but better to turn home early. I go out of the door and stand alone; to whom should I tell this grief? Craning my neck I come back inside, and the tears fall on my skirt 1.
The fourth line reads 覽衣 on this page, where the line is usually printed 攬衣起徘徊; 攬衣 is gathering the robe up, and either way the gesture is the same.
The poem is a small circuit of a room. Bed, clothes, walk, doorway, and back in again — the moon is the only thing that stays put.
Centuries later 陸機 wrote an imitation of it that keeps the moonlight and changes the trouble:
安寢北堂上，明月入我牖。 照之有餘輝，攬之不盈手。 涼風繞曲房，寒蟬鳴高柳。 踟躕感物節，我行永已久。 遊宦會無成，離思難常守。
Lying down in the north hall, the bright moon enters my window. Shone upon things it has light to spare; grasped at, it does not fill the hand. A cool wind goes round the curved room; cold cicadas cry in the tall willows. I hesitate, moved by the season and its things; I have been on the road a long time now. Service away from home comes to nothing, and the longing of parting is hard to keep up 2.
照之有餘輝，攬之不盈手 is the line this song was built from. Lying on things, the moon has surplus light to give away; closed in a hand, it does not fill one. That is not a figure for disappointment, it is a plain account of light, which has no bulk and no weight and leaves a fist as empty as it found it.
The imitation also shows what a copy can do. Same room, same untouchable light, and where the older poem leaves a woman weeping at the bed-foot, 陸機 puts a man on a minor posting who has been gone so long that he doubts even the longing will last the distance.
Four centuries after him, 張九齡 made a use of the empty hand:
海上生明月，天涯共此時。 情人怨遙夜，竟夕起相思。 滅燭憐光滿，披衣覺露滋。 不堪盈手贈，還寢夢佳期。
A bright moon rises over the sea; at the world's end we share this hour. The one who longs resents the long night and is up all night with the missing. I put the candle out to enjoy the room full of light, throw on a coat and feel the dew coming. I cannot scoop it up in both hands to give you; I go back to bed, to the good hour in a dream 3.
不堪盈手贈 turns 陸機's observation into a postal problem. The one thing the two of them certainly hold in common on the same night cannot be wrapped, weighed, or carried by anyone. Three things then happen in order, and they are all physical: the candle goes out, the coat goes on and the dew is felt through it, and the body goes back to bed to try the dream.
The song follows that order and reports what each step finds.
月到無一字 光自滿人衣 欲寄清輝去 盈手忽然稀 千里同一夜 此夜不同歸
The moon arrives with not one word; its light fills a person's clothes. I would post the clear glow to you, and my closed hand is suddenly thin. A thousand li, the same night; this night, no coming home together.
The middle of the song turns on the moon directly and asks the obvious question: 既到君窗下，何曾帶字還 — you have been as far as his window, so why has a single written character never come back with you. The answer it gets is not comfort. 月不識文字，光亦不解言: the moon cannot read, and the light does not understand speech. One road arrives and is empty, the second cannot be filled, and the third — sleep, and whoever is sent in it — does not accept instructions.
That is where the song leaves it, in five short lines: the moon has tilted, the dew has gone white, the letter is not sent, the dream has not come, and the light is still there.
The lead instrument is the 中胡, which has not led an issue of this channel before. The name shortens 中音二胡, alto erhu: a two-string bowed fiddle built to the erhu's pattern with a larger body, made in the 1940s when Chinese orchestras were being assembled and someone had to carry the middle of the register 4. That is the register this song wants — a voice pitched below the one you would call out with, continuing steadily in a sentence that never gets finished. Sparse guqin under the verses, a low xiao answering in the bridge, a few pipa harmonics for the cold. No drum anywhere: nothing in this piece should sound like a second hand.
Put it on in the hour after the lamp is out, or the hour after you have written something and decided not to send it. It runs about three minutes, and the moon in it does not so much set as lean over.
References
- 1古詩十九首 · 明月何皎皎 · 維基文庫
zh.wikisource.org
- 2陸機 · 擬明月何皎皎 · 維基文庫
zh.wikisource.org
- 3張九齡 · 望月懷遠 · 維基文庫
zh.wikisource.org
- 4中胡 · 維基百科
zh.wikipedia.org
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