“晓寒”还是“晚归” “Morning Chill” or “Returning at Dusk”?

 

新加坡国家美术馆正在展出“何香凝：画就丹青凭寄意”展，主视觉是一头描绘细腻的狮子。以前我看过的何香凝（1878-1972）画作主要是花鸟和山水，知道她曾经到过新加坡开画展，心想也许会有一些和新加坡有关的故事。

果然，看到她1929年在丘菽园收藏的《林则徐墨宝》上题字“努力”，那虫洞斑驳的纸面，真令人心疼。同样在 1929 年，何香凝访问新加坡之前的二月间，陈树人（1884-1948）在上海画的一幅《牡丹双蝶图》吸引了我和学生的目光。

花枝斜出，两只蝴蝶翩然，笔致清秀，设色淡雅，典型的陈树人艺术风格。画面右上方大片留白，正有题诗一首。整幅画匀称，通透，给人轻盈之感，一眼看去，只觉得是一个美丽的春天。

然而仔细读展签上录的题诗，发现有些不对劲："春残露华重，晚归香满枝。可怜刘碧玉，娇小嫁人时。"再对照画上陈树人的行书，首二句写的分明是"春残露初重，晓寒香满枝"，不是"晚归"。落款那天是花朝节，百花生日，清晨露重香满。"晓寒"，是花朝清晨那一刻薄寒未退、满枝盈香的气息；改成"晚归"，时分从拂晓移到黄昏，花朝的意涵散了，诗的情境也变了。

说来有趣，我在画上辨认那个"初"字时，颇费了些工夫。陈树人把这个字写成上下结构，上“衣”下“刀”（看起来像“力”字）。不似常见的左右结构，我盯着看了许久，第二天才恍然——原来是"初"啊。一个字，让人悬想了整整一天。

题诗的来历，要从居廉说起。居廉（1828-1904）是陈树人与高剑父共同的老师，岭南画派的重要奠基者。1886年，居廉在《杂花册》中题写了同样的诗，并在末尾注明"匏谷句"——匏谷可能是晚明万历进士，广东海阳诗人吴殿邦，他的诗集即名《匏谷诗集》。

后来高剑父在1913年《芍药图》题款里沿用了"可怜刘碧玉，娇小嫁人时"；师弟陈树人1929年又将全诗题于《牡丹双蝶图》，师徒三人，同一首诗，辗转题在不同的春花画作上。这不是巧合，而是因袭，一种在岭南画派内部流通的程式，一套关于春花、关于美人、关于花朝时节的固定表达，从明代流向民国画家，像一个不成文的惯例，绵延传递。

诗里的"刘碧玉"出自乐府《碧玉歌》，本无姓氏，只是汝南王的小家爱妾，以"碧玉"为名，形容她的温润可人。至北周庾信，才写下"定知刘碧玉，偷嫁汝南王"——因她从属刘姓王侯，遂冠以"刘"姓，又以"偷"字点出小家女悄然归属的命运。牡丹在花朝节清晨无声绽放，露重香满，与小家碧玉娇小嫁人时的盛美与脆弱，是同一种美丽的瞬间。诗人以花喻人，以人喻花，两者合而为一。

然而回头看这幅画，画面上有两只蝴蝶，诗里却没有蝴蝶的影子。图像与文字并不对应，各自讲述自己的事。这正是文图学（Text and Image Studies）感兴趣的地方：在中国书画传统里，诗书画合一的模式早在宋代已经成熟，画家在构图时便为题诗预留空间，文字是画面整体的一部分，而非事后填补。但这并不意味着诗与画必须在内容上彼此呼应。题诗带来的是另一个意义维度，让观者在蝶与花之外，忽然读到一个小家女出嫁的清晨，似乎两个世界并置，不解释，也不需要解释。

只是，当诗的文字出了错，这个并置便悄悄走了形。"晓寒"变成"晚归"，清晨变成黄昏，一首在岭南画派流传的诗，在一张展签里，静静地讹传下去。而看画的人，大约只记得那两只翩飞的蝴蝶，以及满纸春光。

 

2026年5月23日，新加坡《联合早报》“上善若水”专栏

 

“Morning Chill” or “Returning at Dusk”?

I Lo-fen

The National Gallery Singapore is currently presenting He Xiangning: Painting with Resolve, whose key visual features a meticulously rendered lion. The works by He Xiangning (1878–1972) that I had previously seen were mostly flower-and-bird paintings and landscapes. Knowing that she had once held an exhibition in Singapore, I wondered whether the show might contain stories connected with the city.

Sure enough, I came across the word “Strive,” inscribed by He in 1929 on a piece of Lin Zexu’s calligraphy from the collection of Khoo Seok Wan. The paper, mottled and riddled with wormholes, was truly painful to behold. Also in 1929, in February, shortly before He Xiangning visited Singapore, Chen Shuren (1884–1948) painted a work in Shanghai titled Peonies and Two Butterflies. It immediately caught the attention of both my students and me.

A flowering branch extends diagonally across the composition as two butterflies flutter beside it. The refined brushwork and restrained, elegant colours are typical of Chen Shuren’s artistic style. A large expanse of blank space occupies the upper-right corner, where a poem has been inscribed. The composition is balanced, open and airy, conveying an overall impression of lightness. At first glance, it seems simply to depict a beautiful spring day.

Yet when I read the poem transcribed on the exhibition label, something seemed amiss:

As spring wanes, the dew lies heavy;
returning at dusk, fragrance fills the branches.
How endearing is Liu Biyu,
petite and lovely at the time of marriage.

When I compared this transcription with Chen Shuren’s running-script inscription on the painting itself, however, the first two lines clearly read:

As spring wanes, the first dew lies heavy;
in the morning chill, fragrance fills the branches.

They do not say “returning at dusk.” The painting was dated to the Flower Festival, traditionally regarded as the birthday of all flowers—a morning of heavy dew and branches laden with fragrance. “Morning chill” evokes precisely that moment at dawn when the lingering cold has not yet dispersed and the branches are filled with scent. Replacing it with “returning at dusk” shifts the scene from daybreak to evening, dissolving the significance of the Flower Festival and transforming the poem’s entire atmosphere.

Interestingly, I had considerable difficulty identifying the character chu—“first”—in the inscription. Chen Shuren wrote it in an unusual vertically stacked form, with “clothing” above and “knife” below, the latter resembling the character for “strength.” Unlike the familiar left-right structure, this form held my gaze for a long time. It was only the following day that I suddenly realised: it was chu. A single character left me pondering for an entire day.

The origins of the poem lead us back to Ju Lian (1828–1904), the shared teacher of Chen Shuren and Gao Jianfu and an important founding figure of the Lingnan School of painting. In 1886, Ju inscribed the same poem in his Album of Miscellaneous Flowers, adding at the end that the lines were by “Paogu.” Paogu may have been Wu Dianbang, a poet from Haiyang, Guangdong, who passed the metropolitan civil-service examination during the Wanli reign of the late Ming dynasty. His collected poems were titled The Paogu Poetry Collection.

Later, Gao Jianfu quoted the lines “How endearing is Liu Biyu, petite and lovely at the time of marriage” in the inscription on his 1913 Peony. In 1929, his junior fellow-student Chen Shuren inscribed the entire poem on Peonies and Two Butterflies. The same poem thus passed among three members of successive generations, appearing on different paintings of spring flowers. This was no coincidence, but a form of artistic inheritance—a convention circulating within the Lingnan School, a fixed vocabulary for spring blossoms, beautiful women and the Flower Festival. Flowing from the Ming dynasty into the Republican period, it was transmitted like an unwritten custom.

The “Liu Biyu” mentioned in the poem derives from the Music Bureau ballad Song of Biyu. Originally, the woman had no surname. She was merely a beloved concubine of the Prince of Runan from a modest family, and “Biyu,” or “green jade,” was used to suggest her gentle and pleasing beauty. It was not until the Northern Zhou poet Yu Xin wrote, “Surely Liu Biyu secretly married the Prince of Runan,” that she acquired the surname Liu. Because she belonged to a prince of the Liu clan, she was assigned his surname, while the word “secretly” hinted at the quiet destiny of a young woman of humble birth entering another household.

The peony blooms silently on the morning of the Flower Festival, heavy with dew and filling the branches with fragrance. Its beauty is as radiant and fragile as that of the petite Biyu at the moment of marriage. The poet uses the flower to evoke the woman and the woman to evoke the flower, until the two become one.

Yet when we return to the painting, we see two butterflies, although the poem contains no trace of them. Image and text do not correspond directly; each tells its own story. This is precisely what interests Text and Image Studies. In the Chinese painting-and-calligraphy tradition, the integration of poetry, calligraphy and painting had already matured by the Song dynasty. Painters often reserved space for inscriptions while planning the composition, making words an integral part of the image rather than a later addition.

This does not mean, however, that poem and painting must correspond in subject matter. The inscription introduces another dimension of meaning. Beyond the butterflies and flowers, the viewer suddenly encounters the dawn on which a young woman of humble birth is married. Two worlds seem to stand side by side, without explanation and without any need to be explained.

But when the words of the poem are misread, that juxtaposition is subtly distorted. “Morning chill” becomes “returning at dusk”; dawn becomes evening. A poem passed down within the Lingnan School thus quietly continues its altered transmission on a museum label. Most viewers, perhaps, will remember only the two fluttering butterflies and a page filled with the radiance of spring.

Originally published in the “Shang Shan Ruo Shui” column of Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao, 23 May 2026.