《人间词话》英译（六十二）

“昔为倡家女，今为荡子妇。荡子行不归，空床难独守。”“何不策高足，先据要路津？无为久贫（当作“守穷”）贱，轗轲长苦辛。”可谓淫鄙之尤。然无视为淫词、鄙词者，以其真也。五代、北宋之大词人亦然，非无淫词，读之者但觉其亲切动人；非无鄙词，但觉其精力弥满。可知淫词与鄙词之病，非淫与鄙之病，而游词之病也。“岂不尔思，室是远而。”而子曰：“未之思也，夫何远之有？”恶其游也。<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Once she was a dancing-house girl,

Now she is a wandering man’s wife.

The wandering man went, but did not return.

It is hard alone to keep an empty bed.

and

Then let us hurry out with high steps

And be the first to reach the highways and fords.

Rather than say at home wretched and poor

For long years plunged in sordid grief.

Such lines could be termed the ultimate in the dissolute and vulgar. Yet because they are true to life no one looks on them as such. The great tz’u writers of the Five Dynasties and Northern Sung were just the same. It is not that they composed no dissolute tz’u, but the reader is stirred by the intimate, moving quality of what they are saying. It is not that they composed no vulgar tz’u either, but one is stirred by their essential strength and boundlessness. From this we can see that the problem is not one of dissolute or vulgar tz’u but rather a problem of insincerity of expression. ‘“It is not that I do not think of you, but your home is far away”. The Master said, “He had not actually thought about her. If he had, what would distance have had to do with it?”’ Such a comment expresses [Confucius’] disgust for insincerity.