鱼玄机，女，晚唐诗人，长安（今陕西西安）人。初名鱼幼微，字蕙兰。咸通（唐懿宗年号，860—874）中为补阙李亿妾，以李妻不能容，进长安咸宜观出家为女道士。与文学家温庭筠为忘年交，唱和甚多。后被京兆尹温璋以打死婢女之罪名处死。鱼玄机性聪慧，有才思，好读书，尤工诗。与李冶、薛涛、刘采春并称唐代四大女诗人。其诗作现存五十首，收于《全唐诗》。有《鱼玄机集》一卷。其事迹见《唐才子传》等书。
Yu Xuanji, female, was a poet of the late Tang Dynasty, born in Chang’an (now Xi’an, Shaanxi). The original name is Yu Youwei, with the courtesy name Huilan. In Xiantong (Tang Yizong era name, 860-874), Li Yifei was appointed as a concubine to fill the vacancy. As Li’s wife could not tolerate her, she entered Xianyi Temple in Chang’an and became a female Taoist priest. As a lifelong friend of the literary figure Wen Tingyun, he sang many songs together. Later, he was executed by the Jingzhao Yin Wen Zhang on charges of killing a maid. Yu Xuanji is intelligent, talented, good at reading, and particularly skilled in poetry. She is known as one of the four great female poets of the Tang Dynasty, along with Li Ye, Xue Tao, and Liu Caichun. Fifty of his poems still exist and are included in the ‘Complete Tang Poems’. There is a volume called ‘Fish Mysteries Collection’. His deeds can be found in books such as “Biography of Tang Talented Scholars”.
Yu Xuanji’s “Farewell Two Poems” is a deeply emotional and sentimental poem that conveys the poet’s profound feelings about parting through the depiction of natural scenery.
鱼玄机·《送别二首》
一
秦楼几夜惬心期，不料仙郎有别离。
睡觉莫言云去处，残灯一盏野蛾飞。
二
水柔逐器知难定，云出无心肯再归。
惆怅春风楚江暮，鸳鸯一只失群飞。
Two Verses on Parting
Yu Xuanji
1.
These nights in our chamber of
love fulfilled your expectations;
hardly did I count
on you, my lover, parting.
Dozing off, I cannot tell
where the clouds have gone;
the moths of the wilds are flitting
‘round the guttering lamp.
2.
Water adapts unresisting
to the shape of the vessel it’s in;
obviously a definite form
cannot be fixed for good.
Once the clouds have gone,
they have no mind to return.
Wistful in the springtime breeze
over the river of an eve,
a mandarin duck without its flock
flies away alone.
（Bannie Chow, Thomas Cleary 译）
