王维禅诗《鹿柴》英譯研究資料（二）
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https://www.learnancientchinesepoetry.org/2016/10/22/wang-wei-deer-park/
英文網頁Irelder 一篇網文論“空山不見人”的“空”的意味
The first character kong (空) , means empty, or emptiness, and is used many times by Wang Wei throughout his body of work. So with kong shan, we are to concentrate on the emptiness, and not on the mountains. Emptiness appears to have at least four basic aspects and meanings.
On a purely physical level, empty is the emptiness of space, physical space. Like my gas tank is almost empty. The mountains are empty and vast, with a very small human presence, and Wang Wei is by himself, probably in Chan meditation.
On a deeper level, emptiness is referred to several times in Laozi’s Dao De Jing. One of the characteristics of the Dao is emptiness, the non-material aspect of wu. The first and third lines of chapter four:
Dao zhong, er yong zhi huo bu ying
Zhan xi si huo cun
“The Dao is empty like a cup, yet it cannot be filled
How profound! It appears not to exist, but it does exist.”
And from chapter eleven:
Zao hu you yi wei shi
Dang qi wu you shi zhi yong
Gu you zhi yi wei li
Wu zhi yi wei yong
“Make holes for doors and windows to create a room
Must have these empty spaces for the room to be useful.
Therefore, things with substance have advantages and benefits
While that without substance creates usefulness and purpose.”
The characters you zhi yi in line three could also be translated as having-substance, or having thisness or suchness you (有). The Chinese word for suchness is zhenru, which literally means true, real, genuine, natural state of original simplicity. In contrast, wu zhi yi of line four could be expressed as not-having-substance wu (无).
Laozi expands the meaning of emptiness in chapter forty as discussed earlier where the expressions being-within-form (you) and being-without-form (wu) are very good translations of you and wu by Wang Keping. Being-without-form seems to be closer to the meaning of wu, instead of the often used non-being. As we know from chapter four, this aspect of the Dao appears not to exist, but in actuality it does.
Laozi uses the character you (有) to express the manifest, the immanent, actual, visible, particular, nameable, that having-substance, and being-within-form. The character wu (无) is used to express the non-manifest, the transcendent, potential, invisible, universal, nameless, have-no-substance, and being-without-form. So from the Dao De Jing, wu is the stillness and silence before and after sound, the non-manifest before birth and after death, and the always full of potential Dao, before and after its expression and manifestation.
One afternoon, within the Yellow Mountains of eastern China, I took a very steep gondola ride hundreds of feet into the air to arrive near the top of the mountains. After getting off, I found a narrow ledge where a thousand feet down below, above the valley floor, there was an ocean of clouds.
I watched the white clouds appear to come from out of this ocean, rising up, vanish into the air, reappear again, swirling around the crags and summits, only to disappear again into thin air. These observations illustrate the movements between you and wu, as well as emptiness, impermanence, and the phenomena of conditionally arise. At each elevation, from the valley floor to above the mountain peaks, were the conditions of temperature, dew point, humidity, wind, air pressure, and perhaps many more change.
Like in Wang Wei‘s poem, everything, including me, were in a state of contemplation. The abrupt-rising mountains, the pine trees growing out of cracks in the rock, the songbirds in the forests, the clouds, the winds and sun, all in a state of emptiness and contemplation. This is a pervasive mood and viewpoint of Wang Wei, the Tang Dynasty, and much of Chinese art.
The emptiness of the empty mountains also reflects the pervasive Chinese artistic concept of kongbai (空白). Kongbai literally means “white space”, or “blank space“. Western artists may call it “negative space“. Most, if not all, Chinese paintings have a lot of kongbai, while most Western paintings have very little, where the canvases are covered with paint from border to border. The use of kongbai recognizes and honors the unsaid, the unpainted, the unexpressed, and yes even the inexpressible aspects of our world. It too is like the fertile wu (that gives rise to you) that surrounds the painters composition, and much like the silence that surrounds the sounds of poems and music. Kongbai in both poetry and painting is expressed commonly and pervasively, and reflects the intentional incompleteness, indirect and intuitive suggestiveness of the Chinese arts.
The fourth aspect of empty, or emptiness, comes from Buddhism. Here emptiness, or “sunyata“, in Sanskrit, is not the nothingness of above, but means the emptiness of inherent existence (svabhava). It also refers to the enlightened state of being. From the Surangama Sutra, the Buddha explains that there are three understandings of emptiness.