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 “After the Storm”

Chinese original: Su Shi

English version: Julia Min (Jan. 2024)

(My friend Dingguo Wang has a concubine named Rounu Yuwen. She was once a singing girl, beautiful and exceptionally eloquent. When Dingguo was banished to Hainan Island, she chose to go with him, leaving their old home in the capital. I asked her: “Life in the southern wastelands must be very hard, isn’t it?” She replied, “ My home is where my heart can find peace.” Moved, 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 the island’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, when Su Shi returned to the capital from Huangzhou—a time of political reunion for the recalled conservative faction. Wang Gong (Dingguo) had just finished his banishment on Hainan Island. His concubine, Rounu, had endured the desolate south. She was not only skilled in dance and song but also a physician, trained by her father and his peers. south. She was not only skilled in dance and song but also a physician, trained by her father and his peers.

One notices a quiet, endearing pattern across Su Shi's lines: a faint whiff of scholarly jealousy toward his friend Dingguo. Not the bitter kind, but the amused envy of a man who suspects the universe has a favourite. In Hundred Steps Rapids, in this very poem, and elsewhere, Su Shi acknowledges that Dingguo simply possessed a freer spirit and better luck. Rounu walked out of Hainan alive; Su Shi's own beloved Zhaoyun did not walk out of Huizhou. She died there, aged thirty-four, who, as his soulmate, once playfully chided him for being "a belly full of inappropriate things." Rounu was a living mirror of what Su Shi had lost.

The poem is best known for its final line, which is not Su Shi's original creation but Rounu's own words. His brilliance lay in recognising an ordinary woman's wisdom and presenting it like a jewel set in plain silver. In that line—"My home is where my heart can find its peace"—we hear echoes of Tao Qian, who withdrew to his "garden and field" with a heart untangled, and Wang Wei, sitting alone in his bamboo grove, knowing the deepest hermitage is a state of mind. Perhaps Su Shi, listening, also heard Zhaoyun's voice—what she might have said if she had survived.

The line has become a popular saying, keeping Dingguo and Rounu alive for a thousand years. A similar theme appears in the West: "Home is where the heart is." But Rounu got there first, and without a synthesiser.

Reference:

1. 古诗文网 so.gushiwen.cn

2. picture from 《希望之声》