BBC纪录片《杜甫：中国最伟大的诗人》:: (三) 全英文脚本 (Script) - 1
Copyright : BBC. For personal use only.
Du Fu: China's Greatest Poet (《杜甫：中国最伟大的诗人》)
Opening
In our time, right across the planet, the past is receding from us at an ever faster rate. And that’s especially so here in China.
【在我们当下的时代，在这个星球的每个角落，过去都正在以前所未有的速率远离我们。而这在中国尤其明显。】
But the travelers searching for the meaning of China’s ancient culture can still find it in China’s present. For here, running under the surface are deep currents still shared by all Chinese people. And among them is one great stream that has sustained the Chinese across the ages – their poetry.
【然而，旅行者仍然可以在中国当下，找到他们所要探寻的中国古代文化的意蕴。因为这里的所有中国人，其内心都仍然共同流淌着股股深流。而诗歌就是其中一股巨大的支流，滋润着世世代代的中国人。
(注：【韦氏】sustain: to supply with sustenance : = NOURISH )】
China has the oldest living tradition of poetry in the world, more than 3,000 years old, older than Homers Iliad and Odyssey. And for the Chinese, poets have always been the ones who most truthfully express the feelings of the people. And to the Chinese, their greatest poet is Du Fu.
Du Fu lived in the eighth century, the age of Beowulf in Britain. It was the Tang Dynasty, a time of extraordinary cultural accomplishment that ended in horrendous warfare and the death of millions. And out of that suffering, Du Fu created his art.
>>-----------------Stephen Owen----------------
“Du Fu belongs to a very special category. We have Dante, Shakespeare and Du Fu. These poets create the very value by which poetry is judged. “
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In the West, few people have even heard of him. This is a journey in the footsteps of China’s greatest poet.
Xi’an
Du Fu was born into China’s greatest epoch, the Tang Dynasty. At the time of his birth, the Tang had ruled for a century from their capital, Chang’an, today’s Xi’an. It was the greatest city on Earth with more than a million people. Rich, powerful and open to the world, for the Chinese, that time was their golden age. The catalyst for it all was the Silk Road, along which people, goods and ideas flowed from India, Iran and Central Asia into the crowded streets of the capital. The Tang was a cosmopolitan empire of many cultures and languages. In its market, you could find a dazzling mix of foreign fashions and food, Persian pistachios and the golden peaches of Samarkand. And Du Fu’s extraordinary life story would be entwined forever with the tale of this city and the fate of the Tang China itself.
Only a year after Du Fu was born, a new emperor came to the Dragon Throne – Xuanzong, who was nicknamed the brilliant. The emperor would oversee China’s most glorious period of culture and above all its greatest age of poetry. And for the Chinese people, its poetry which give the truest history of the human heart.
>>----------------------曾详波------------------------
“中华民族是一个比较注意历史记载的民族。杜甫的诗歌是诗歌中结合历史最好的作品。同时这个记录还把他的个人生活史和个人的精神史也记录在了诗篇当中。“ （Chinese people really value the recording of history. And Du Fu is better than anyone at reflecting that history in his poetry. That’s because historical events are mirrored in Du Fu’s own life and spiritual journey.）
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Du Fu’s Birthplace – GongYi
The Du family were an old upper-middle class clan of officials and poets. In Imperial China, the two went together. You couldn’t be a Mandarin without proving your literary skills.
The family house is long gone. This is all that left. But tradition says that he was born here in the room. His mother died when he was an infant and he was brought up by his aunt, whom he adored. And that brings us to a first mysterious story. When he was a baby, this region was struck by plaque and people were dying everywhere. And one day, a sorceress, a shamaness, came to the house and looked into the bedroom and two babies were asleep in the room --- the son of the aunt and little Du Fu. And the sorcerous prophesied that only one of these children would survive and the child had to be sleeping in the south-east corner of the room. And the aunt took her child out of that corner and put Du Fu there. And for that reason, said Du Fu, my aunt’s son died and I lived. So maybe, even as a child, he felt as if he had the mark of destiny on him. More than 1,400 of his poems survive, a uniquely intimate autobiography.
Years later, as an old man, he wrote the story of his childhood and youth in a poem spoken by Ian McKellen.
>>----------------- Ian McKellen ---------------------
My Brave Adventures (壮游)
When I was still only in my seventh year, my mind was already full of heroic deeds.
My first poem was about the Phoenix, the harbinger of a reign, a new age of wisdom.
When I was in my ninth year, I had already written enough poems to fill a satchel.
At 14, I first began to read my poems in public.
The literary masters compared me to the great writers of the past.
I was temperamental and I was already over-fond of wine.
I needed it to soften an uncompromised hatred of weakness and hypocrisy.
I associated only with wise old grey heads.
Exhilarated by wine, we cast our glances over entire universe and all vulgar worldliness dwindled into oblivion.
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I found that portrait of the artist as a young man written by the older Du Fu really authentic. He obviously felt even by the age of 14 that he was different from his classmates and his contemporaries. Maybe also already looking at the world as it ought to be rather than it actually is.
And as for his early inspirations, over 50 year later, he tells a story from his childhood. How as a five-year-old boy he was taken to see a great dancer and was overwhelmed by her magic.
>>------------------ Ian McKellen ---------------------
On Sensing the Sword Dance
I remember when I was still a child aged five, I saw the famous dance Gongsun perform the sword dance.
Watching her, you felt heaven struggling against the Earth.
When she bent back, you saw nine suns falling, shot down by Yi, the god of archers.
When she leapt, you imagined gods astride flying dragons in the clouds.
When she advanced, you expected thunder and lightning from a gathering storm.
And when she stopped, you saw a soft light over a vast, calm sea.
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For Du Fu, it was an unforgettable image of creative freedom and passion in which the dancer became a metaphor for all art, whether calligraphy, painting or poetry.
In the later teens, the family were rich enough to allow him to go traveling. Chins then was at the height of glory under the brilliant emperor.
“Those days,” Du Fu wrote. “Rice was succulent, the granaries were full and not a robber on the road in all the nine provinces of China.”
No other civilization in the world was so refined or so cultured.
Traveling across the empire, Du Fu gathered stories, visiting the legendary sites of heroes and dragons, immersing himself in China’s ancient traditions. Like any tourist today, he admired the famous monuments. “The greatest Buddhas of Longmen,” he wrote, “in their giant gorge cutting through the countryside where every vista reveals gold and silver Buddha temples.”
Confucius Home Town – QuFu
But for Du Fu, there was one special place of pilgrimage – QuFu, the birthplace of the philosopher Confucius. Born over a thousand years before Du Fu’s Day, Confucius had shaped the core values of Chinese civilisation. For him, the main goal of life is social harmony and stability under a virtuous ruler. And each person has a role to play in helping the emperor achieve that common good. The teachings of Confucius were Du Fu’s guiding principles all his life – virtue, benevolence, service to the state. In a sense, you could say that like much of the Chinese political tradition from ancient times even to today, his thought was utopia.
Du Fu Travels to the Capital, 735 CE
So he went to the capital, Chang’an, today’s Xi’an, expecting to become a government official. IT was his chance to serve the brilliant emperor and help to continue the new age of wisdom.
Chang’an, the city pf peace. Along with Constantinople and Baghdad, it was a world city in the eighth century, the symbol of all that human civilization had to offer. And this place had a powerful presence in Du Fu’s imagination all his life. It was the dream of success and power and fame, which one day he hoped he would achieve. And in his early twenties, he came her to sit the imperial examinations, confident that a glittering career lay ahead of him.
>>------------------ Ian McKellen ---------------------
Verses to Minister Wei (奉赠韦左丞丈二十二韵)
In the prime of life, I was sent by home prefecture to sit the state examinations.
I feared no rival among the competing scholars, nor any difficult question that might be put to me.
I thought, of course, that I was extraordinary and should immediately climb to the top and restore the purity of culture and civilization.
But unfortunately, the board of examinations thought otherwise. They failed me.
All my hopes were shattered.
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>>-------------------------曾详波------------------------
[Wood What does he fail, do you think?
[曾详波]” Yeah, A most important question. Many scholars discussing about this. 我想关键的原因是，比较有说服力的说法是洪业提出来的。洪业认为他可能涉及到那一年的的科举考试的一个风波当中。这次风波涉及到当年考试的很多考生。杜甫当时被卷进去了。这与他考试的才能关系不是很大。这个是第一个解释。第二个是比较通常的解释。杜甫写诗的才能和他写文章的才能是不匹配的。他主要才能在写诗。“（The most convincing explanation was by the author William Hong. He thinks that Du Fu was caught up in some kind of scandal that affected many students that year. His rejection had little to do with his exam results. The other explanation is that Du Fu’s talent for poetry was greater than his ability to write for the imperial examination. He was too much of a poet. ）
---------------------------- -------------------------- <<
LuoYang
Too much of a poet and not enough of a bureaucrat -- that would be his problem. The examinations were the path to wealth and status and exam failure cut him loose from the career ladder. So for a while, he wandered, picking up jobs where he could and hating himself for living on the coat-tails of the rich.
>>-----------------------Ian McKellen-------------------------
My Brave adventures (壮游)
The next few years, I played and roamed.
In the spring, I sang on the terraces where the poets completed.
Summer, I hunted among the green hills.
In the winter, I whistled for the falcons in the purple oak forests and chased wild beasts on cloud and snow ridge.
I trailed my hems wherever sweet ale was served and drank myself sick.
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Then, when he was about 30, came the meeting that changed his life with the poet Li Bai. Li Bai was the great poet of the time. Du Fu calls him the star of the Golden Gate. Charismatic, drunkard, brawler, frequenter of the blue houses, as the Chinese call them. He’d killed men in fights. But he was a brilliant, innovative, scintillating poet. And Du Fu fell under his spell. “What wonderful verses he writes.” Said Du Fu. “I love him like a brother. Those night we travelled, we slept under the same quilt, and every day we walk together hand-in-hand. We did not think about jobs in the government. We only though of other worldly things.”
Li Bai was Du Fu’s most important creative relationship.
>>--------------------------曾祥波------------------------------
李白在杜甫心中应该是一个师长。不光有年龄上的问题，还因为李白在诗歌艺术上对杜甫有启发。这样的启发，我们今天能找到证据，非常明显的表现在对于叙事艺术细节的刻画上面。（Du Fu saw Li Bai as a teacher. He was the older, senior poet and inspired Du Fu in the art of poetry. Du Fu learned from Li Bai how to put detail into storytelling.）
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For a time, the friendship was close, at least form Du Fu’s side, but when they split up and he never saw Li Bai again, although he still dreamed of him.
>>-------------------Ian McKellen-------(背景音乐：二泉映月(二胡))------------
Dreaming of Li Bai （梦李白）
Separation by death, in the end, you get over.
Separation in life is a continuing grief.
No word from you, old friend.
But you’ve been in my dreams as if you know how much I miss you.
I feel as if you are no longer mortal, the distance between us is so great.
The waters are deep, the waves are wide.
Don’t let the river gods take you.
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It was an eerie premonition, for Li Bai would drown on a drunken boating trip. But he showed Du Fu what poetry could be.
>>--------------------------Tao Tao Liu-------------------
[伍德] It’s amazing, isn’t it, that China’s two greatest poets lived at the same time and know each other? What effect did that relationship have on Du Fu, do you think?
[刘陶陶] Li Bo or Li Bai, Li Bo was the old pronunciation, had a character that was very charismatic. A lot of people were attracted to him and Du Fu worshipped him. But his poetry is not at all like that of Li Bai’s.
[伍德] There’s almost Dionysian versus Apollonian, we would say in Greek.
[刘陶陶] Exactly. Yes.
[伍德] Tell us about the difference.
[刘陶陶] Li Bo was very keen on ability to be at one with nature. And Du Fu was much more concerned with people unto people and how you must live according to Confucianism. And, particularly, you had to be loyal to your emperor or to the leader you chose at any rate. The leadership was very important to Confucianism.
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And very important to Du Fu. Still hoping to serve the empire, he settled in the capital. He failed the exam again, but he kept writing and through a friend, he sent some of his work directly to the emperor here at the Daming Palace. And to his astonishment, the emperor read them and summoned him.
“The son of the heaven summoned me to his presence,” he says. “And the officials came in their carriages and their state robes. And I was amazed. In a single day, my reputation had become brilliant.”
So at last, he had a job at court. His meagre stipend enabled him to marry and start a family, but the job was a dead end and he soon became disillusioned. “I’ve no role at all in court discussions,” he wrote. “Just one of thousands who attended every whim of the son of heaven.
>>-----------------------------Tao Tao Liu--------------------------
[刘陶陶] Du Fu did try to get into the civil service, but he never actually quite fitted in. And you can understand why. He was too honest a character. He wouldn’t bow to whatever he had to. And however much he wanted to be a very important person who could influence the emperor, in fact, he was completely helpless.
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The brilliant emperor was in his sixties now. Once a model of enlightened rule, he’d become negligent, infatuated with his concubine Yang, rewarding her family and promoting corrupt ministers. For Du Fu, the closer he got to the throne, the clearer he saw the reality of power.
>>-------------------------Ian McKellen -------------------
My Brave Adventures (壮游)
It was a time when the powerful indulged in murder and plunder.
The military used up the tax grain in the stores.
The imperial fighting cocks has to be fed.
Many warnings could have been obtained from history about why a dynasty falls.
--------------------------- <<
Through all of Chinese history, the problem has been the same. The country is so big that its rulers lose their grip, things fall apart. And it was at this point that DU Fu had s disturbing experience, what almost sounds like a sudden seizure.
Du Fu came with three friends here to the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an. They went inside and climbed up to the top to take the view at sunset. But when he looked out, Du Fu was seized by a kind of existential panic. The mountains of the north began to dissolve, the Wei River disappeared.” And then the Imperial City itself vanished in a kind of haze. And the wild geese flew away.
The empire now went into crisis. Frontier wars had led to higher taxes, mass conscription hit the poor and with social unrest growing, the nation was paralysed by rains and floods, with half the capital under water. As food ran out of in the city, Du FU sent his family into the countryside here to the village of Fengxian. But the rains were relentless, then the harvest failed and famine followed.
Du Fu’s Confucian dream was unravelling. In winter 755, desperate to make sure his family was safe, he got leave and set off to join them in Fengxian.
>>--------------------------------Ian McKellen --------------------
500 Words on the Road to Fengxian (自京赴奉先县咏怀五百字)
I set out a lone traveler at midnight, fingers too cold to tie my broken belt.
At dawn, I passed the Imperial Palace.
Here at the thot springs, the emperor entertains his court and music echoes around the hills.
Only the rich and powerful may bathe here.
But the silk they wear was woven by poor people, women whose husbands are beaten for their taxes.
The halls are full of ladies as fair as goddesses, the scent of perfume moves with each captivating figure clothed in the warm furs of sable.
Entertained with the finest music, fed with camel hump soup and oranges ripened in the frost.
Behind the red lacquered gates, wine is left to sour, meat to rot.
Outside the gates lie bones of the frozen and the starved.
>> [Wood] But when Du Fu got to the village, his worst fears had come true.
When I reached home, I heard wailing in the house.
My infant child had dies of hunger.
I am ashamed of being a father so poor that I caused my son to die for lack of food.
And I am one of the privileged. If my life is so bitter, the how much worse if the life of the common people?
------------------------------------ <<
--------------------To be continued--------------------------------
BBC纪录片《杜甫：中国最伟大的诗人》:: (三) 全英文脚本 (Script) (中文-待补) - 2
Copyright : BBC. For personal use only.
Worse was to come.
In mid-December 755, a huge rebellion broke out, led by the renegade general An Lushan. With an army of a quarter of a million men, he marched on the capital.
>>------------------------Tao Tao Liu-----------------------------
755 is the date I always tell everybody when the whole of China collapsed. I think the rebellion floored the empire completely. The emperor resigned and his son took over and there was a lot of infighting. The country was completely let go of and there was a huge drive for recruitment of soldiers, either side. And it was very hard for ordinary people to live and to survive.
------------- ----------------------------------------------------<<
The crisis lasted eight years. The destruction and loss of life was huge. Tang government censuses suggest as many as 30 million people were displace, killed in war or died of famine. It was ad deadly as the Frist World War. And from this time, Du Fu’s poetry conjures images from later Chinese history when order breaks down and chaos rises likes storm. As the rebels closed in on the capital, Du Fu and his family took to the road, heading north to escape the fighting.
>>--------------------------Ian McKellen ------------------------
Ballad of PengYa Road (彭衙行)
I remember when we first fled the rebels, hurrying north over dangerous trails, the whole family trudging endlessly, begging without shame from the people we met.
We walked for ten days, holding hands, half in rain and thunder.
Through the mud, we pulled each other on.
Searching the horizon for a wisp of smoke that might lead us to a safe shelter.
----------- ------------------------------------------<<
The war was the turning point in Du Fu’s life and the great divide in his poetry. Now he know what it meant to be, as Shakespeare would put it, a poor unaccommodated man.
>>------------------------Yang Yu-------------------
“他不再是那个贵族子弟出身，书香门第的一个年轻的自信的豪迈的诗人。他变成了无数个苦难患难中最普通的老百姓，所以他诗歌的风味会变得等价的沉重，更加的现实。”(He was no longer the noble son, no longer the young, privileged, confident poet. He had become a common man struggling with countless hardships and tribulations. So his poetry becomes much heavier by that I mean more realistic.)
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In spring 756, the capital fell to An Lushan’s army. The new emperor and his court had fled south, but when Du Fu tried to join them, he was captured on the road by the rebels. Too lowly to warrant execution, he was taken as a captive to the capital, once more separated from his family.
Among the poems he wrote then were famous verses to his wife.
>>--------------------Ian McKellen ----------------
Moonlit Night (月夜)
The moon shine in Fuzhou tonight.
In her chamber, she watches alone.
Her cloud-like hair sweet with mist, her jade arms cold in the clear moonlight.
When shall we lean in the empty window together in brightness, our teas dried up?
------------ -------------------------------------------------<<
He spent that winter and the following spring doing forced labour as a porter under rebel rule in the ruined capital. But he was still writing poetry.
>>-----------------------Tao Tao Liu----------------------
[Tao Tao] “Well, I think you identify with him much more than before. Because you see him as a helpless pawn in the way of the great event happening around him. He couldn’t help writing. He had to write to say all the things he wanted to say. And I think it was this time that his art really grows to be more than just an ordinary person. “
[Wood] He becomes a great poet through the experience of war and suffering, would you say?
[Tao Tao] Yes, indeed. I think without An Lushan, we wouldn’t have Du Fu as we know him now.
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It was at this time that Du Fu wrote one of his most celebrated poems, still known to all Chinese people today,
>>----------------------Ian McKellen ---------------
Spring Scene (春望)
The state is destroyed, but the country remains.
In the city in spring, grass and weeds grow everywhere.
Grieving for the times, even the blossom shed tears.
Beacon fires have been burning for three months now.
A letter from home would be worth 10.000 in gold.
------------------- <<
Family Escape by Road, 759 CE
Eventually, Du Fu escaped through the rebel lines and was reunited with his family. And then in winter 759, driven by starvation, they headed out west to Qinzhou, today’s TianShui.
And in mid-winter, as the ware came closer, they turned south – a terrible journey over the forbidding mountains divide of central China, down to Sichuan and the city of Chengdu.
You can feel his relief to be down south.
“Suddenly, I’m under a new corner of the sky.” He wrote. “Among the mulberries and elms, the sun shines on my traveller’s clothes. The city is bustling, full of new people. The splendid houses, the trees. Though I miss my home, it’s a beautiful place.”
Here in Chengdu, an old friend gave him a plot of land, outside the town. It was a heavenly spot and he built himself a thatched cottage. Ever since, it’s been China’s most famous place of literary pilgrimage, as each dynasty has re-imagined Du Fu in its own way.
>>----------------------Stephen Owen---------------------
“Du Fu has evolved to be the great poet, no matter which dynasty he’s been in, for 1200 years. His poetry reflects on experience and transform it and so this becomes part of the vocabulary. An emotional vocabulary of the culture. And today, poetry lovers young and old, come here from all over China. “
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>>---------------采访一位小女孩和她的父母，成都杜甫草堂-----------------
So she likes Du Fu already?
In the garden, I met one Du Fu fan who’s started very young indeed.
[The girl’s mother] “When I was young, I was influence by ancient poets. Now that I have a daughter, I want her to be influence by our ancient culture.
[The girl] 朗诵春夜喜雨
（配英文字母如下）
Welcome Rain on a Spring Night
When spring arrives, it brings life.
ON a riverboat, a single fire bright
Dawn sees this place now red and wet
The flowers in Chengdu are heavy with rain
[Wood] So that was very good. Thank you. Thank you.
[The girl] Thank you.
[Wood] Oh, Thank you. That’s wonderful.
>>-------------
[Wood] So why do the Chinese people love Du Fu still so much?
[A young lady] “Well, I think the recent year Du Fu started to be famous again because of the internet, especially the young people. If you travel abroad and you kind of started feeling proud of being a Chinese and got kind of homesick, want to go back home.”
[A senior lady] 他的诗句很优美，他很爱国。很值得我们后人学习。（Firstly, his poems are really beautiful. But also, he loved his nation deeply. And that’s something that we can all learn from.）
>>-----------
[Wood] So you have been to his place before?
[A senior gentleman] “Oh, often. Very often. Perhaps once a month.”
[Wood] Once a month you come? Why is Du Fu so important to you?
[The senior gentleman] ”He wrote many poems to express feelings of the general [ordinary] people. Especially for the poor people.
[Wood] Especially for the poor.
>>-------------------------Ian McKellen-------------------
Choosing a Dwelling （卜居）
Here outside the city, there are worldly affairs.
Besides us, there’s a clear stream to dispel a stranger’s grief.
Clouds of dragonflies hover, rising and falling.
A pair of ducks dive and swim together.
I have chosen a place to grow old.
Far from the capital, I have become a farmer.
On a long summer day, everything has a secret beauty.
The swallows on the roof come and go as they please.
My wife makes a chessboard by painting paper.
River Village （江村）
My boys make fish-hooks by bending needles.
A man who is often sick needs medicine.
What else should an ordinary person seek?
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Du Fu has always been portrayed as a Confucian hero, but so many of his poems are about ordinary people and simple joys of life.
>>-----------------Stephen Owen----------------
The Chinese critics in the Song Dynasty said, “He never for a moment forgot the empire and the suffering of people. I beg to differ. When he was having a good meal, he forgot completely about the empire. He concentrated entirely on the meal. He wrote more poems on food than any poet before him. And there is sensuality in that, which is missing in the Confucian hero story.”
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--------------------To be continued--------------------------------