定风波·常羡人间琢玉郎 My Home Is Where My Heart Can Find Peace

定风波·常羡人间琢玉郎

（王定国歌儿曰柔奴，姓宇文氏，眉目娟丽，善应对，家世住京师。定国南迁归，余问柔：“广南风土， 应是不好？”柔对曰：“此心安处，便是吾乡。”因为缀词云。）

原作: 苏轼（字子瞻, 号东坡居士; 11世纪北宋）

英译: 闵晓红(2024.01)

常羡人间琢玉郎，

天应乞与点酥娘。

尽道清歌传皓齿，

风起，

雪飞炎海变清凉。

万里归来年愈少

微笑，

笑时犹带岭梅香。

试问岭南应不好，

却道：

此心安处是吾乡。

My Home Is Where my Heart Can Find Peace 

-to the tune of Dingfengbo

Chinese original: Su Shi

English version: Julia Min（Jan, 2024)

(My friend Wang Dingguo had a concubine named Yuwen Rounu. Once a singing girl, she was beautiful and exceptionally eloquent. When Dingguo was banished to Lingnan, the remote southern frontier, she chose to accompany him, leaving their old home in the capital. I asked her, “Life in the far south must have been very hard, wasn’t it?” She replied, “My home is where my heart can find peace.” Moved by her words, I composed this ci poem.)

I often admire my friend, Dingguo,

A man blessed with grace and more— 

A life companion, the fair lady Rounu,

Whose voice comes from Heaven’s shore,

Cool as a breeze across a snowing sea,

A soothing relief in the summer heat.

Their life down south must be just as hard,

Yet the hardship failed to make a mark—

A smile more fair with a faintly sweet scent,

The fragrance of Lingnan’s plum blossoms.

“How could it be?” I asked. She smiled at ease:

“My home’s where my heart can find peace.”

Appreciation:

This ci was composed in late 1085, after Su Shi had emerged from his Huangzhou exile and returned to the capital. His friend Wang Gong (Dingguo), implicated in Su Shi’s Wutai Poetry Case, had suffered an even more distant banishment to Lingnan. Rounu, his beloved concubine, chose to accompany him and returned with him from the remote south.

The poem opens with Su Shi’s affectionate, slightly amused admiration for his friend. Dingguo had hardly been favoured by political fortune, yet Su Shi playfully suggests that Heaven had compensated him generously with Rounu. After years of hardship, she returns seemingly untouched by adversity—still beautiful, still singing, her smile carrying “the fragrance of Lingnan’s plum blossoms.”

The plum blossom carries deeper meaning. Blooming through winter’s cold, it traditionally embodies resilience and integrity in adversity. Here, it foreshadows Rounu’s spiritual strength, emerging intact from a harsh environment. Her fragrant smile quietly prepares us for the poem’s famous final line.

Surely life in Lingnan must have been hard? Su Shi asks. Rounu replies with serene simplicity: “My home’s where my heart can find peace.” The eminent scholar poses the question; Rounu holds the final word. Her response overturns the logic of exile: while hardship may dictate our dwelling, it can never confine the soul’s true sanctuary.

Five centuries later, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 arrives at a strikingly similar insight. He begins “in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,” lamenting his “outcast state” and envying those more fortunate. Yet remembered love transforms his poverty into such inward wealth that he ends: “I scorn to change my state with kings.”

Shakespeare begins in lament and envy; Su Shi in friendly admiration. Yet both poems pivot upon the same discovery: a change within can transform the meaning of circumstances without. Shakespeare finds a kingdom in remembered love; Rounu finds a homeland in a peaceful heart.

Yet a poignant irony lay hidden ahead. Huangzhou was behind him; Huizhou and Danzhou still awaited. Rounu had already lived the philosophy that Su Shi’s later life would put to the test.

Reference:

1. 古诗文网 so.gushiwen.cn

2. picture from 《希望之声》