Anyone who looked at my translation of 恨不鍾情在當年 would have noticed that I translated 流光 as time, though really it should have been something like “passed time” since literally it means “flowing light” which suggests movement. But how did 流光 come to mean time? My classical Chinese dictionary (古代漢語詞典) gives Li Bai’s (李白) poem “Old-style Poems: Number 11” (古風之十一) as the locus classicus for this use. The poem, however, is chock-full of Daoist and Wu Xing (五行; translated as Five Elements or Five Phases) thought that is hard for me to understand. Unfortunately, I lost part of my annotated edition of Li Bai (or just can’t find it) and that’s the part with the table of contents, so I’m translating blind. Any case, here it goes:
黃河走東溟。 The Yellow River runs into the Eastern Ocean,
白日落西海。 The white sun falls into the Western Sea.
逝川與流光。 The passing river and flowing light
飄忽不相待。 Move swiftly, waiting for no one.
春容捨我去。 Spring’s youthful appearance abandons me and leaves,
秋髮已衰改。 Autumnal grey hairs-already I’ve become weak.
人生非寒鬆。 A human’s life is not a winter pine,
年貌豈長在。 A youthful appearance, how long can it last?
吾當乘雲螭。 I must mount a cloud dragon,
吸景駐光彩。 Breathe in the scenery and reside in splendour.
In Wu Xing thought, east and spring and west and autumn are associated together. As far as I can tell, the colors yellow and white are not (yellow is associated with the center but that doesn’t fit with the poem). So the poem begins with an obvious reference, and has several more, e.g. a pine is a symbol of longevity because it remains green in the winter. Also, Daoist Immortals rode dragons and while they didn’t breathe in the scenery (as far as I can tell), they did “breathe in the winds and drink the dew” (吸風飲露-Zhuang Zi I.5). But I didn’t write this to track down references, especially because the meaning is fairly clear: Li Bai is lamenting growing old, and the last two lines are an attempt (though perhaps he recognizes it as a futile attempt) to escape his fate. I wrote this post to explain how “flowing light” became time.
The obvious answer is because the sun is associated with the west and old age while the river is associated with the east and youth. However, that’s unsatisfactory because it implies that any images could work just so long as they were linked to the east and west. Moreover, it would be wrong. Both the river and light represent passing time. The river metaphor is obvious–think of Heraclitus or, perhaps more to the point, Analects 9.17: The Master stood by the river and said, “What passes is just like this! It doesn’t stop day or night.” (子在川上,曰:逝者如斯夫!不舍晝夜。; though what it is that passes is not evident). And obviously it is the Analects that Li Bai is referencing. But as far as I know 流光 has no such reference. However, it was used previously to represent faint, gentle moonlight as in Cao Zhi’s (曹植) poem “Seven Sorrows” (七哀; 七体 are a type of Han-dynasty poem, with 七 followed by another character, I don’t know why). That poem is about wife whose husband has been away on business for ten years. So because 流光 is associated with moonlight, or at least the evening, and perhaps also with poems of time passing, it too has come to mean time passing.
Sidenote: Most versions I found online had 秋發 instead of 秋髮; both sound the same. But the latter makes more sense, especially with the parallelism with 春容.
Special bonus: Cao Zhi’s poem
明月照高樓,The bright moon shines upon the tall tower,
流光正徘徊。 In the flowing moonlight she paces back and forth.
上有愁思婦, Above there is a grieving woman,
悲嘆有餘哀。 Whose melancholy sighs have a surplus of sorrow.
借問嘆者誰? May I ask who sighs?
言是宕子妾。 She replies, “I am a traveling merchant’s wife,
君行逾十年, My lord has been traveling for more than ten years,
孤妾常獨接。 I always dwell alone.
君若清路塵, My lord is like the dust of the clear road,
妾若濁水泥。 I am like the mud of the turbid stream.
浮沈各異勢, Floating and sinking–each has different propensities
會合何時諧? When will they meet?
願為西南風, I wish for the southwest wind,
長逝入君懷。 To travel afar and enter the breast of my lord.
君懷良不開, My lord’s breast is not open,
賤妾當何依。 On what can this poor woman rely?”
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