A Record of the Tongjae Studio (通齋)通齋記
衆允通人楊生應才者。卜築于城北。善接養花木。其園林之勝。頗有聞於京都。予遂往觀焉。環堵蕭然而已。初若無奇觀勝致。殊不類所聞者。及主人贊至其園。然後環視周矚。求勝之所從有而得有聞者。則園方可四十步許。有珍木名菓。植植爭立。昵不相侵。離不至迂。是皆生之均疏數而序植者也。別爲塢以居衆花。花各數十種。皆世所罕見。或方開或已落。映林繡地。交錯糾紛。日萼紅。張麗華之嬌醉也。露葩濕。楊貴妃之始浴也。風枝擧。趙飛燕之體輕也。落者如愼夫人之却座。覆者如李夫人之掩被。以花之諭乎目如此。愛之不能移去。藉草良久而後起。自花塢而少北。有石臺平如局。又潔淨可不席而坐。蒲桃之緣樹下垂者。如纓珞然可愛。下有石井。味極淸甘。洩而爲小泓。有稚葦戢戢始生。予曰。更少高其廉。益以渟滀。則可池而放鳧鴨也。還至石臺酒數巡。主人目予曰。僕之有是齋。莫有標榜。若將有待於先生者。請一溷可乎。予於是遂名之曰通齋。夫由道以冥觀。齊泯萬體。則夫所謂通與塞。了不可得見者也。然以天道論之。日月星宿山川丘陵。爲物之巨者也。然未免盈虛消息否泰通塞之變者。由未嘗離陰陽之數故也。況其餘哉。然則境欲爲通境。而爲人所礙。則煙愁月慘。終不爲通境矣。人已爲通人。而爲境所塞。則高人才子北首而莫有至者。孰知有通人哉。今是齋也。境已通而通人居之。盍以通貺名耶。雖欲讓而不受。又焉逃是名哉。且天地無私。豈獨私楊生以泉石。私楊生以花柳歟。直由心匠之妙耳。若爾則濃花芳草。非受於天也。受於楊生之手也。碧井淸泉。非產於地也。產於楊生之心也。噫。吾不知是齋昔爲人有。則地頑園俗。草荒木老。萬景韜晦而不出。及遇楊生。然後爲神仙別洞耶。假使楊生棄而不居。又屬於人。則又焉知不爲豕槽馬廏之地哉。生又乞爲記。故因目之所寓而志之耳。楊生頗尙俠。喜趨人之急。不可不與遊者。
There is one whom the multitude acknowledge to be a man of open reach (通人), the student Yang Eungjae (楊生應才), who settled north of the city wall and built a house there, and who was good at grafting and rearing flowers and trees. The excellence of his garden and grove was heard of as far as the capital. I went at last to see it.
The wall that ran about it was bare and nothing more, so that at first there seemed to be no strange sight and no excellent savor in it, and it seemed not much like what I had heard. But when the master led me and we came to his garden, then I looked about and surveyed it all, and sought out the reason it had come to have its excellence, and found what it was that had got it the fame it had.
The garden is some forty paces each way, and rare trees and famous fruits stand thick and vying with one another, yet near as they are they do not encroach upon one another, and apart as they are they are not far off. All this Yang planted in order, evening out the sparse and the dense.
He had made a bank apart and set all manner of flowers upon it, each flower of some tens of kinds and all of them seldom seen in the world. Some were just opening and some had already fallen, and they shone into the grove and embroidered the ground and mingled together in confusion. Those whose calyxes were red in the sun were Zhang Lihua (張麗華) prettily drunk; those whose petals were wet with dew were the Lady Yang fresh from her bath; those whose branches were lifted by the wind were the body of Zhao Feiyan (趙飛燕) being light. The ones that fell were like the Lady Shen (愼夫人) withdrawing from her seat, and the ones that lay overturned were like the Lady Li (李夫人) drawing the quilt over her. Such were the likenesses the flowers bore before the eye, and they were so lovable that I could not move away from them. I spread grass and sat a long while and then rose.
Going a little northward from the flower bank, there is a terrace of stone, level as a chessboard and clean besides, so that one may sit on it without spreading a mat. Grapes that climb a tree and hang down below are like a tasseled necklace (纓珞) and are lovable. Below there is a well of stone whose taste is exceedingly clear and sweet. It seeps out and has become a little pool, where young reeds have just come up thick and close. I said: 「If you were to raise its edge a little higher and let more water gather, you could make a pond of it and put wild ducks and tame ducks upon it.」
When we had come back to the stone terrace and the wine had gone round a few times, the master looked at me and said: 「I have this house, but there is nothing by which it is named. It is as though it were waiting for you, sir; I beg you to soil it with a name — what do you say?」 And so I named it at last 「Tongjae (通齋)」, the Studio of the Unobstructed.
Now if one follows the Way and looks into the hidden and levels and does away with all bodies, then what are called getting through and being blocked are not to be seen at all. Yet if one discusses it by the Way of Heaven, the sun and the moon and the stars, the mountains and the streams and the hills are the great among things. And that even these do not escape the changes of waxing and waning, of fading and growing, of being shut and being opened, of getting through and being blocked, is because they have never departed from the principle of yin and yang. How much the more all the rest.
If it be so, then though a place would be a place that is open, if it is blocked by the men in it the mist is sorrowful and the moon desolate, and in the end it does not become an open place. And though a man has already become a man of open reach, if he is blocked by his place, then the lofty and the gifted turn their heads northward and none of them comes, and who is to know that there is a man of open reach there?
Now in this house the place is already open, and it is where a man of open reach dwells. How should one not give it the name 「Tong (通)」? Though he should decline it and refuse to take it, how again should he escape this name?
And Heaven and Earth have no partiality: why should they give spring and stone to Yang alone as a private gift, and flowers and willows to Yang alone as a private gift? It comes only of the deftness of a mind that is subtle. If so, then the thick flowers and the fragrant grasses were not received from Heaven but received from Yang's hands, and the green well and the clear spring were not born of the earth but born of Yang's mind.
Ah, I do not know: when this house was formerly another man's, was the ground dull and the garden common, the grass coarse and the trees old, and did all its views hide their brightness and not come forth, so that it became a separate world of the immortals only after it met with Yang? And if Yang were to abandon it and not live here, and it passed to another man again, how should one know but that it would become ground for a pig's trough and a horse's stable?
Since Yang asked besides that I make a record of it, I merely write down what my eyes have lodged upon. Yang honors the chivalrous spirit not a little and is glad to run to another man's need; he is one with whom one cannot but keep company.