Gazing by Lamplight

惜牡丹花

惆怅阶前红牡丹

晚来唯有两枝残

明朝风起应吹尽

夜惜衰红把火看

Cherishing Vermilion Stallion Flowers

by Bai Juyi

I am melancholic over the vermilion stallions, so red before the steps.

When evening arrived, only two stalks remained.

When the bright morning wind blows, their strength will be exhausted.

In the night, cherishing, I grasp the lantern and gaze at their fading red.

* * *

(Translator’s note: vermilion stallions is a literal, poetic translation of the Chinese word for peonies.)

One thing that humans have learned from our dialogue with Nature through scientific methods is that Heraclitus was basically correct: everything is in flux. Some things appear ephemeral, others appear permanent, but this is just a matter of scale. All physical states, arrangements of matter and energy, are temporary: individuals die, family lines terminate or are diluted, genes mutate or are lost, the human species will go extinct, Earth will be burned by the sun and then frozen by the vacuum, the sun will fade, and no one will remain to remember any of it had ever existed. Bai Juyi laments this fact in the poem above. There is nothing he can do but admire the beauty while it still exists.

Bai does not engage in mere pointless emotional outburst; he takes action. His action does not affect the environment—at least not in the long run—but as a conscious, rational being, it affects him. He uses a torch, an instrument conceived and constructed by humans, to view the flowers. Because of this instrument, he can see them in the night, and he is able to take the time to admire them. He does not say “Oh well, they’ll be gone in the morning, so what’s the point?”

Found in the final line of the poem, I take gazing by lamplight to be a metaphor of this condition. As humans, we construct tools to interrogate Nature and test theories. The lamplight asks a question. The red of the flower is the response. We contemplate the response. We can try to understand. We can appreciate the natural form while it exists—while we still exist.