Du fu's quatrains

Two orioles sing green willows,

A line of egrets rose into the sky.

The window contains autumn snow in Xiling,

Mambo Wu Dong Wan Li Ship.

Don du fu

Since its birth, this Tang poem has been highly praised by scholars in past dynasties and has gradually become one of the teaching materials for educating children to learn Tang poetry in various dynasties. China's primary school textbooks are still the same.

Many scholars, poets, sociologists and historians have analyzed and studied Du Fu's easy-to-understand quatrains and made incisive comments. Out of love for it, I was attracted by its exquisite description when I first recited it when I was a child. Here, I would like to add my appreciation of this Tang poem. The meaning of pondering is self-evident.

On the whole, the whole poem is made up of two pairs (a form of couplets). The content contained in the 28 words of the whole poem far exceeds these 28 meanings. Let's enjoy this famous quatrain together.

The opening sentence of this poem is "two orioles singing green willows", which is very simple and clear. The poet described a beautiful picture in the close-up he saw standing at the window:

This is a photo of Zhang Zaochun. On the newly sprouted willow tree in front of the window, there are two orioles singing happily. In the first word of the first sentence in the poem, the poet uses the number "two" and the word "one" to indicate a slight movement of the head and neck and a slight gaze.

Here, the poet uses "a" rather than "only" to describe the state of the oriole bird, but uses a sense of language to express that the oriole bird seen by the poet is a kind of dynamic. The key word here is "ge". The word "ge" is a conjunction, and the tone expressed by double tones has the meaning of surprise. The poet used "ge" to tell the reader that it was the chirping of the oriole that attracted his attention. One, two, oh, here's a bird. And if you use "only" here, the state of the bird is different. The two orioles in the poem go up and down on the branch instead of standing side by side on a branch, because the word "song" of a singing willow behind them indicates the state of birds singing and chasing each other on the branch. One bird is on the beach and the other is on the beach. They are all playing with the fluttering willows.

Why is the bird holding the wicker sideways? This can be known in the sixth word "Cui" in the first sentence.

Willow is the first northern tree species to germinate in spring. When it germinates, it first turns green on the branches, which is called spinning, and then the tender leaves spit out sharp green. At this time, the willow is in its most beautiful state. Scholars and painters often compare the willow tree to a girl in Seeds of Love. Even the willow, the outside of the willow is like a layer of green fog rolling in the crown. Because the thin wicker is light brown with a hint of green, the wicker begins to fade away from the stiff state in winter and become soft.

At present, wicker is mainly used for poetry and painting. Cao Xueqin described it like this in the funeral of Daiyu in A Dream of Red Mansions: "Wicker elm pods come from wheatgrass, whether peach floats or Li Fei; More like Ge's chorus poem "There is no wind in the pavilion, and the apricot flowers and flutes are hoarse", "Plum blossoms leak spring news, wicker is long, and grass buds are green. I don't feel the frost of the stars and the moon, I miss the time. " (Yan Shu's words) "Lou Yuyue Ming looks like a memory. Willow is elegant and weak in spring "(article). Du Fu's "The willow next door is weak and curled, just like the waist of fifteen women" describes the soft and windless state of the willow. The poet accurately grasped the state of wicker in spring. At this moment, two orioles caught the wicker flying back and forth with their claws and chirped in the spring breeze. Perhaps the poet was attracted to the window by the chirp of spring.

The last sentence of Shang Kan, "A line of egrets goes up to the sky", corresponds to the first sentence. The poet was attracted to the window by the chirping of an oriole. When he looked away from an oriole under the wicker and was awakened by the chirping of the oriole above, he saw the blue sky in the distance from the treetops.

If the poet wrote a dynamic picture of an oriole jumping and singing in a cheerful style, then the word "a line" in this sentence gives the reader the feeling that his eyes are shining. Compared with orioles, egrets are huge migratory birds and weak birds. This is a moral contrast, which I will explain below. Groups of egrets winter from the south and return to the north in the spring season. The urgency of homesickness was vividly expressed by the poet with the word "Shang". The lines of the egret bird are in sharp contrast to the state that the oriole bird is divided into two parts. The poet also turned his eyes from a willow tree in front of him to the endless blue sky through the state of two birds.

There are many descriptions of the sky in ancient poems, but the poet uses the word "green" to express the clear sky in early spring and early morning. As the most representative realistic poet in Tang Dynasty, Du Fu's definition of describing the sky in early spring also influenced this period and China. In the first sentence of the famous Japanese performance song "Spring in the Northland", the Japanese character is "blue sky".

Here, "green" contains two meanings.

First, green, color, blue and green. There is neither blue dullness nor green tranquility, but it is a very bright feeling. In western oil painting colorilogy, there is a method of adding light to mix, such as mixing the three primary colors of vermilion, emerald green and blue with the primary colors, and mixing the three indirect colors of yellow, cyan and magenta. In the hue icon, only cyan is not included in the basic hue of the seven colors of natural light, because the transparency of cyan cannot completely cover other "positive" colors when projecting.

Second, green, state, primary germination, clean and simple. This significance is particularly important for the vitality of early spring, which has passed and is coming soon. It is this feeling that the poet grasped and expressed his heroic feelings in his later years with a "youth".

The poet's feeling of "color" is still elegant here.

Running through these two sentences are two numbers "two" and "one", two quantifiers "ge" and "xing", two birds "oriole" and "egret", two movements "Song" and "Shang", two colors "green" and two distances. Fourteen words on the surface express fourteen things. But in the first two sentences, the poet hides the pride of progress and uses a word "green" to connect the preceding with the following. Through this bright blue, the reader can see that it is difficult for the poet to express his feelings in the next sentence.

If the poet only describes the scenery in the first half of the poem, then in the second half of the poem, the poet will express his feelings with scenery and things.

The first sentence of the quatrain, "The window contains thousands of autumn snows in Xiling", first establishes a picture frame-"window" for readers' sight. In China's classical architecture, craftsmen attach great importance to the design of "windows". In the Tang Dynasty, there were only four buildings in China, all in Shanxi. At that time, Liang Sicheng and Lin discovered Bukoji, a Tang Dynasty building, and visited ancient buildings many times, which enabled Liang Sicheng to solve the mystery of the structure of ancient buildings in China and complete the interpretation of the book Architectural French. In this book, there are as many as one volume of patterns about "windows", and many of these patterns are "missing wood carvings". This can be seen in Chengdu Du Fu Caotang. The poet first set such a scene for us-since the reader's eyes have been attracted to the "blue sky", then we should not see a complete perspective. The poet used the word "containing" here, implying a lot of visually superfluous scenery, just like giving us a viewfinder of a camera, in which we can see the distant mountains and "missing wood carvings".

"Xiling" refers to "Xiling Snow Mountain" in the southwest corner of Chengdu. Why did the poet not write about Nanling or Beiling or Dongling, but mentioned the geographical location of Xiling? Just by accident?

No, in the Tang Dynasty, Buddhist culture began to prevail in China. Buddhism was introduced into China and reached its peak when Du Fu was a teenager. At that time, people's ideology, in addition to the influence of traditional Confucianism in the East, had begun to accept the influence of western Buddhist culture. According to the concept of China traditional culture, the West represents death and the East represents vitality. Buddhism calls human death nirvana, which means entering the western paradise. Confucianism is the concept of persuading people to be polite and to talk about all vitality. When Du Fu wrote this quatrain, he had resigned and was on his way back to Huanhuaxi. At that time, Du Fu had vaguely seen the end-result of a hundred years behind him, and also felt the end of his life that he was frustrated and hard to pay for his ambition. Therefore, the poet uses "Qian Qiu" to express the white state of "snow" that he hopes to achieve in a hundred years.

At this moment, the reader can imagine the line of sight blocked by this "window". The "Xiling" mountain range is properly surrounded by the poet's four frames of "windows", so that our eyes stay on the upper edge of the "blue sky", the continuous "Xiling" snow line and the nearby "Liu Cui" with the poet's brush. At this time, the poet's line of sight recovered and fell on another landscape by the river outside Chai Men.

The last sentence of the poem, "Boating in Dongwu Wan Li", suddenly attracted the reader's attention from a long-term perspective to a medium-term perspective.

If the poet in the last sentence describes the scenery outside the window, then the beginning of the last sentence points out the angle of "door", and the scenery in sight has turned into an emotional hope. There is a scene in the window. In this scene, there are courtyards and Chai Men, and now there are ships moored on the river outside the door through Chai Men, which has clearly demonstrated the poet's incisive assertion that the road of life is compared to Wan Li's boating. This is the artistic feature of Chinese painting, borrowing scenery from scenery, and painting in painting. In traditional Chinese painting, landscapes are often painted in the position of "eyes", but such a finishing touch is different from splash-ink rendering. It is often more subtle in nuances, and most of the themes of this painting come from this. The moral of China people and the style of poets and painters expressing their personal feelings reflect that these ways are interlinked from the artistic point of view.

If the scenery outside the "door" is regarded as a picture-in-picture of the "window" scene, it is a progressive scenery. Then the word "Bo" has a different meaning from the word "Han" in three sentences. "Berth" means parking or berthing. It is the ship that sails forever, and the beginning of sailing is always anchored. Therefore, the word "Bo" gives readers a moving expectation. The word "contain" has the meaning of containing and covering. This is a static state. The static snow for thousands of years is the innocence and loneliness of the poet's life. The poet used "snow" to express his summary of his later life, and also used "boating" to express his homesickness and patriotism.

"Wu Dong", as the general name of a region, gives people a sense of time and space as opposed to the mountain term "Xiling" in the previous sentence. This poem was written by Du Fu at the age of 54. On the third day of the first month of this year, the poet resigned from the post of shogunate and returned to his hometown in Chengdu. At this time, Du Fu's last official post in his life also resigned, but the poet's depressed mood could not help but begin to sprout feelings when he saw the beautiful scenery in spring. From the "Ship of Soochow" to Wan Li Road, and then to the "Snow of Xiling", it is an unfulfilled wish for thousands of years. The poet makes full use of the scenery to show the readers two realistic States of motion and static and two situations of his own life.

In Xia Kun's two poems, the poet described two scenic doors and windows, two inclusive and moored states, two geographical locations of Xiling and Dongwu, two materials of snow and boats. But these fourteen scenes show the inner world more clearly than the simple description of the scenery. As a realist in the history of China literature, Du Fu, a poet saint in the Tang Dynasty, is over fifty years old. As a work in his later years, this poem is one of Du Fu's best works, with concise words, precise words, simple ideas and sincere feelings.

Du Fu's life, from the beginning of his birth, Wu Zetian died, the Tang Dynasty entered the last period of the war, to the poet's "An Shi Rebellion" in his later years. After many years of hardships in life, Du Fu saw all the human sufferings and the world of mortals was sad. At this time, in the history of literature, Tang poetry entered its heyday because of the existence of Li Bai and Du Fu.

The sages of this period used a lot of poems to record the humanities, politics, society and other epics in the prosperous Tang Dynasty from three aspects. First, express the ideal ambition of saving things and saving the world; Second, criticize the darkness of reality; Third, praise the natural landscape. Li Bai's poems inherited the romantic tradition since Qu Yuan. Rich imagination, fresh and natural language, elegant and unrestrained style. Du Fu's poems inherit the realistic tradition since The Book of Songs, face real life, and profoundly and truly reflect the historical changes of Tang society from prosperity to decline before and after the An Shi Rebellion.