hannah+egg

64
In the above poem we can see that Tu Fu, while lamenting the fate that had befallen the various impoverished scholars of the empire, could still see the humorous side or poverty. In this we see most clearly Tu Fu’s indebtedness to the humorous treatment of the tragic phases of life so common in folk songs—a type of literature which he had never despised.
在上面的詩中，可以看到杜甫雖然哀悼著降臨在諸多唐朝窮困學者的命運，仍能在貧窮當中看到幽默的一面。最為清楚的是，杜甫得益於用幽默來對待生活中悲慘的時期，在他的民歌中如此常見，這是他從未鄙視過的文學形式。

In many of the titles to his poems he indicated clearly his intention of writing humorous verse. Even when he was writing long historical poems of a serious nature like “Pei Chêng,” “Northward Travels,” there are injections of lines and phrases that revealed the poet’s fondness of the humorous and jocular.
從許多杜詩的標題中就清楚顯示他創作幽默詩句的意圖。即使當他寫作本質嚴肅的長篇歷史詩，例如「北征」，也都在行句之間注入他對幽默與滑稽的喜愛。

65
This lighthearted side of Tu Fu’s poetic temperament did not preclude his frequent manifestations of seriousness in life and his deep-seated concern with and sorrow for his age. As a poet, however, he did not put on any air of dressed-up solemnity or venture to be purely didactic.
杜甫詩人個性中無憂無慮的一面，並不與他慣常的表現形式相抵觸，他慣常書寫生命的嚴肅以及根深柢固的感時傷老之情。然而，身為詩人，他並不會刻意板起臉孔或者矯揉造作。

Just as he could laugh heartily, his occasional efforts to swallow his own sorrows were all the more touching. The sadness he felt in the evening of his life is most clearly revealed in the poems in which he reminisced about incidents and feelings of his younger days.
就像他能由衷地笑，他偶而努力吞嚥自己悲傷之舉，更加令人動容。他晚年所感受的悲傷，更清晰顯示於詩作中，在這些詩裡他緬懷年少時期的所見所感。

66
Although he never succeeded in detaching himself completely from the many basic difficulties threatening the reigning dynasty and the T’ang Empire as a whole, he was, after all, living the life of a retired scholar, spending his leisure on a farm.
雖然他從未成功地將自己抽離於威脅唐朝與皇帝的基本困難，整體而言，他畢竟是退隱的文人，度暇日於田園間罷了。

His daily schedule consisted in planting vegetables and picking mushrooms. While on one hand he lamented that he would fail to sleep at night on account of his inability to stop wars and to rectify the universe, he could in the daytime find much that was poetic in the chores of daily living.
他的日常安排就在於種疏拾菇。雖然他一方面難過自己因為無法止戰事、正乾坤而夜不成眠，卻能在日常生活的工作中發現詩作的泉源。

These little discoveries of what was meaningful and pleasant he recorded in his many “little poems.” These poems, recording small episodes of farm life, small reactions and impressions, were patterned into a verse form that was known as the chüeh chü, consisting of four lines composed of seven of five syllables.
這些既有意義又有趣的小發現，杜甫記錄於他的許多「小詩」中。這些詩記錄了田園生活的小情景、小情感與印象，都成為絕句的模型，由四句五言或四句七言所組成。

This verse form was not subjected to the limitations of tonal sequence or elaborate rhetoric. Externally it had a good deal in common with the quatrains of the yüeh fu type which Li Po had written with the greatest dexterity and which were originally intended to be sung to music.
這些詩句並不受到平仄與對仗的限制。形式上有許多地方與四行的樂府詩相同，亦即李白最為拿手的體裁，也是原先用來配樂而歌的體裁。

In spirit it was an entirely different vehicle completely detached from musical accompaniment and, therefore, peculiarly adapted to language of the common people. Tu Fu was able to breathe so much new life into this convenient verse form that many major poets of the following Sung Dynasty continued to cherish this chüeh chü form.
內在上，這些絕句完全是不同的載體，與音樂伴奏徹底分開，因此特別適合一般民眾的語言。杜甫能夠於其中吟詠如此多的新生活，因此許多後繼的宋代主要詩人都繼續珍愛這種絕句形式。