自题金山画像 Inscribed on My Portrait at Jinshan Temple

自题金山画像

原作: 苏轼（字子瞻, 号东坡居士; 11世纪北宋）

英译: 闵晓红(2024.02)

心似已灰之木，

身如不系之舟。

问汝平生功业，

黄州惠州儋州。

Inscribed on My Portrait at Jinshan Temple

Chinese original: Su Shi (11th AC, social name 'Dongpo')

English translation: Julia Min (Feb. 2024)

My heart is burned to ash, a tree laid low;

My body drifts from shore, a floating boat.

If you wish to know the life strokes I wrote,

Go to Huangzhou, Huizhou, and Danzhou.

Appreciation:

This short poem is an improvisational piece, written when Dongpo saw a painting of himself by the renowned artist Gonglin (李龙眠, 字公麟). On the surface, it reads like a long sigh of despair over unfulfilled ambitions—a powerful mix of sadness and self-ridicule woven into twenty-four simple words, each capable of bringing a tear to your eye if you know his story.

But here's the irony: he mentions none of the places where he achieved greatness with remarkable strokes of genius—Mizhou, Xuzhou, Hangzhou. Instead, he chooses the three places of his banishment: Huangzhou, Huizhou, and Danzhou. Places where he and his followers could contribute little as civil servants when the nation was in need. Places of failure. And yet—these are precisely where he became Dongpo.

The phrase "a floating boat fully detached" suggests a Daoist state of mind freed from worldly attachments. For Dongpo, Daoism had always been a refuge, but he could never relinquish his caring nature. He was, after all, a man of the people and for the people. The irony is that he spent his life trying to build a successful political career, yet a thousand years later, his "side projects"—poetry, prose, painting, calligraphy, even the kitchen—have overshadowed the main achievement. He was unfulfilled in his political pursuits but fulfilled in everything else.

Now, at sixty-three, with three banishments behind him and his health declining, he understood that his life's journey was drawing to a close. This poem reads like a summary of his life on his deathbed—or a farewell poem at a funeral. And, as it happened, he died just two months later.

Life is implicit, like a book with no words but full of invisible energy. It seems all his experiences were designed for his strokes of genius in art creation. The ultimate irony? He chose to inscribe his legacy in the very places meant to erase him.

Reference:

1. picture from sohu.com - 《走进苏东坡的春天》