Snow at Night
Bai Juyi's "Snow at Night"
I was surprised by the coldness of my pillow,
I saw the light from the window again.
I know the snow is heavy late at night,
I hear the sound of breaking bamboo.
Explanation
This poem "Wu Jue" was written in the eleventh year of Yuanhe (816). Bai Juyi was forty-five years old and served as Sima of Jiangzhou.
Snow is a wonderful creation of God, a beautiful spirit of nature, and a favorite object of poetry for poets. The ancients sang about snow, and there are many excellent works throughout the ages. Such as "In the past, I went, and the willows clung to me. Now I come to think about it, and the rain and snow are falling"; "The north wind is cool, and the rain and snow are coming"; "The bright moon shines on the snow, and the new wind is strong and sad"; "The wind blows the new snow, thousands of miles away. Dulong Mountain. Gathering under the stage of Junyao, in front of the two flying couplets. This morning is beautiful, should be avoided in the sunny year, the peach and plum festival, the brightness is not beautiful." "Mountain snow, without flowers, only cold"; "Yanshan snowflakes are as big as mats, and they blow down Xuanyuan Terrace"; "Suddenly a spring breeze comes overnight, and thousands of pear trees bloom" and so on. However, there are not many paintings with the theme of "Night Snow". Therefore, this little poem by Bai Juyi can be said to be a unique little flower.
Explanation of the sentence
I was surprised that the quilt pillow was cold, but I saw the light from the window again
The weather was cold, and I woke up from the cold in my sleep. I was surprised to find that the quilt was on my body. The quilt is already a little cold. In doubt, he looked up and saw that the window was brightly reflected. The article begins with touch (cold) and then moves to vision (bright). The word "cold" appears in the dark spot and the snow has fallen for a long time. Generally speaking, when the snow first falls, all the cold air in the air is absorbed by the water vapor and condenses into snowflakes, so the temperature does not drop suddenly. The cold will only increase when the snow becomes heavy. The word "surprise" also refers to snow. The reason why people are completely unaware at first and then suddenly wake up when the cold hits is because the snow falls silently. This is another characteristic of snow in addition to "cold", just as Tao Yuanming's famous sentence about snow says, "There is no sound in my ears, but my eyes are clear" ("Writing in the Mid-Twelve Months of Guimao" ).
These two sentences describe what people feel and see. Although they are all written in profile, they are closely related to the topic. Feeling "the quilt pillow is cold" means that someone has come to sleep in the quilt at night, which indicates that it is "night snow". "Seeing the light in the window again" further writes about Ye Xue from a visual perspective. Seeing bright windows late at night just means that the snow is falling heavily and deep. It is the strong reflection of the snow that brings light to the dark night.
I knew the snow was heavy late at night, and I heard the sound of breaking bamboos from time to time
Then I realized that there was a heavy snowfall at night, the snow was so heavy, and from time to time I heard the bamboos in the courtyard being weighed down by the snow. The sound of folding. These two sentences change the perspective and are written from the auditory (sounding) perspective. It uses an inversion method, the upper sentence is the effect, and the lower sentence is the cause. It is cleverly constructed and has twists and turns. The poet chose the detail of "folding bamboo" to highlight the word "heavy". From the sound of the accumulated snow crushing the bamboo branches, we can tell that the snow is heavy and the intensity of the snow is increasing. The poet's feeling is indeed very detailed. The "sound of breaking bamboo" can be heard "late at night" and "all the time", showing the tranquility of the snowy night.
This conclusion uses sound to complement the silence, making the whole poem quiet and moving, fresh and elegant, truly presenting a peaceful world where everything is silent and wrapped in silver. It can be compared with Wang Wei's poem "The moonrise scares the mountains and birds sing in the spring stream".
Comment
This little poem fully embodies the poet's easy-to-understand and clear language characteristics. It is simple and natural, but full of charm; the poetry is simple and plain, without any trace of carving or arrangement. This is the unique style of Bai Ti. The whole poem is just twenty words long, and not a single word directly talks about how to snow, but every sentence closely follows the title of the poem, and sets off the scene of snowing at night from different aspects, which can be said to be a wonderful thing.
There is neither color depiction nor gesture description in the poem, which makes it unremarkable at first glance. But if you taste it carefully, you will find that it is not only solemn and simple, fresh and elegant, but also novel and unique, with good intentions. Just imagine, snow is soundless and tasteless, and can only be distinguished by color, shape, and posture. In the dark night, the image of snow is naturally difficult to capture. However, Bai Juyi, who is willing to innovate, started from this special situation and wrote from the four levels of touch (cold), vision (bright), feeling (knowing), and hearing (smell), with many twists and turns, and the story is full of twists and turns. Its power, its emotion and its state.