第五章 | E67 乘风看山河，相携赴京都

第五章 | E67 乘风看山河，相携赴京都

课程导读

在上一章中，我们跟随着林语堂先生，身临其境般参与了苏家父子的赶考之旅。接下来，我们将正式进入本书的第五章“父与子”，我们将跟随林先生，从更细微处去感受文豪之家的父子关系。丁忧结束后，苏家父子踏上了什么样的出川之旅呢？旅程之中，苏东坡又展现了什么样的性格特点呢？

英文原文

Chapter Five

FATHER AND SONS

The father and sons and sons' wives were now ready to set out for the capital.

It was to be a different journey from the one they had taken previously.

Their literary ambitions had been vindicated, their success in official careers was almost assured.

As they were moving their home to the capital, they took the voyage down the Yangtse instead of going by land through the northwest.

It would be a journey of eleven hundred miles, about seven hundred miles by water and four hundred by land, beginning sometimes in October and ending in February of the next year.

There was no great hurry, and as the women were with them, they took their time, drinking and playing cards while on the boat and enjoying the beautiful scenery on the way.

The brothers' wives had never been outside their hometown.

They knew they were traveling with chinshin scholars for their husbands, but they could hardly be aware that they were in a family of three prose masters of the dynasty, one of them a major poet.

The brothers made verses all the way—but all scholars versified in those days, to record a scene or a sentiment, as we write letters today.

Tseyu's bride came from an old family of Szechuen, the Shihs.

Young Mrs.Su Tungpo was by position and age the senior.

She was the practical, sensible, able sort, with whom it was easy for her sister-in-law to get along.

Besides, the old father, the head of the family, was with them; nothing short of obedience and complete harmony would be considered good form.

She saw that of the three men, her husband was decidedly the excitable, irrepressible, talkative one.

Tseyu was taller, thin, and not as robust as his brother, while Tungpo, born with very prominent cheekbones and a well-proportioned jaw, was handsome and had a more muscular build.

With them was her baby boy, the first grandson of the Su family, born within the year.

That was all good and proper.

It would have been slightly embarrassing if the baby had been born a year earlier, for it would have meant that the young poet had indulged himself during the first year of mourning for his mother.

The Sung neo-Confucianists might look askance at such a regrettable lapse from austere filial piety.