These two poems were written by Wang Changling, a poet in the Tang Dynasty. The original poem is as follows:
There is a dark snow-capped mountain in Qinghai, with long white clouds and a lonely city looking at Yumenguan.
Yellow sand wears golden armor in hundreds of battles, but the loulan is not returned.
What do you mean? Translated into vernacular as follows:
Qinghai Lake is covered with dark clouds and continuous snow-capped mountains. Yumen, the ancient city of frontier fortress, is a grand pass, thousands of miles away, facing each other from afar.
The soldiers on the border have been through many battles, their armor is worn out and their ambitions are immortal. They will never return to their hometown before defeating the invading enemy.
There are some words that I think it is necessary to explain separately in order to better understand the meaning of this poem:
Qinghai: Qinghai Lake, in today's Qinghai Province. Ge Hanshu, a general of the Tang Dynasty, built a city here and sent Shenwei troops to guard it.
Changyun: Thick clouds.
Snow Mountain: Qilian Mountain, the top of which is covered with snow all year round, so it is cloudy.
Isolated city: the ancient city of frontier fortress.
Yumenguan: The name of the border pass was set in the Han Dynasty, in the west of Dunhuang City, Gansu Province. One is "Yanmenguan".
Break: a "chop".
Loulan: The name of the Western Regions in Han Dynasty, namely Shanshan Kingdom, is located in the southeast of Shanshan County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. King Loulan of the Western Han Dynasty communicated with Xiongnu and killed the envoys of the Han Dynasty who communicated with the Western Regions many times. Here, it generally refers to the minority regimes that often invaded the border areas in the northwest of the Tang Dynasty.
Never Return: A work of "never return".
What is the background of the author's writing this poem?
This poem is the fourth in a series of "Seven Poems of Joining the Army". In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the national strength was strong, the monarch was determined to forge ahead, and people were eager to make a difference in this era. The military commander made contributions in the battlefield, and the poet was infected by the great spirit of the times and wrote a series of magnificent poems with tragic and lofty sentiments.
Now that we know the creation background and the meaning of the whole poem, let's enjoy it together:
Readers of frontier poems in Tang Dynasty are often confused by the confusion and spatial separation of ancient and modern place names in poems. Some people doubt that the author is not familiar with geography, so they don't seek a good solution, and others write for it. This is the case with this fourth poem.
The first two sentences mentioned three place names. Snow Mountain is Qilian Mountain in the south of Hexi Corridor. Qinghai and Yumenguan are thousands of miles apart, but they appear on the same picture, so these two sentences have various interpretations. Some people say that the first sentence is looking forward, and the next sentence is looking back at home. This is very strange. Qinghai and Snow Mountain are in front, and Yumenguan is behind, so the hometown that the lyric hero looks back at should be the Western Regions west of Yumenguan, not the Han soldiers, but Hu Bing. On the other hand, the second sentence is an inverted sentence of "Looking at Yumenguan, an isolated city", and the object of looking at it is "the dark snow mountain in Qinghai". There are two misunderstandings here: one is to interpret "looking from afar" as "looking from afar", and the other is to misunderstand the general description of the northwest border region as what the lyric hero sees. The former misunderstanding is due to the latter misunderstanding.
There are dark snow-capped mountains in Qinghai, and the lonely city looks at Yumenguan. At the beginning, the poet painted a magnificent and desolate frontier fortress scenery, which summarized the face of the northwest frontier fortress. The sky on Lake Qinghai is covered by long clouds, and the snow-capped mountains in Hubei are faintly visible. Over the snow-capped mountains, it is an isolated city in the desert of Hexi Corridor, and further west, you can see Yumen Pass. In the Tang Dynasty, there were Tubo in the west and Turkic in the north. At that time, Qinghai was the place where Tang Jun and Tubo fought many times, and outside Yumenguan was the sphere of influence of the Turks, so these two cities were important frontier cities in the Tang Dynasty. Looking at Qinghai and Yumenguan reminds the soldiers of the fighting scenes that happened in these two places, and they can't help but have a boiling passion. It can be seen that these two sentences contain rich feelings, such as the attention of the soldiers on the frontier, the pride of being able to shoulder the heavy responsibility of defending the country, the loneliness of the harsh environment in the frontier, and the longing for the hard life of the generals on the frontier. All kinds of feelings are integrated into this desolate and vast, confused and dim scene.
"Yellow sand wears golden armor in hundreds of battles, and it will not be returned without breaking Loulan." These two sentences have changed from the description of the environment with mixed scenes to direct lyricism. "Yellow sand wears golden armor in hundreds of battles" is a poem with strong generalization. The length of the border defense, the frequency of wars, the hardship of fighting, the toughness of the enemy and the desolation of the border are all summed up in these seven words. "Hundreds of battles" is more abstract, and the word "yellow sand" highlights the characteristics of the northwest battlefield. From "winning every battle" to "wearing golden armor", we can imagine the arduousness and fierceness of the battle, and we can also imagine a series of heroic sacrifices in this long time. However, although the shining golden armor has worn out, the soldiers' ambition to serve the country has not been tempered, but has become more determined in the tempering of desert sand. "Never break the Loulan, never return it" is the heroic oath of the battle-hardened soldiers. The more the last sentence emphasizes the hardships of fighting and the frequent wars, the more powerful and shocking it becomes.
The outstanding frontier poems in the prosperous Tang Dynasty have an important ideological feature, that is, they express the lofty sentiments and ambitions of the soldiers guarding the frontier, but they do not shy away from the hardships of the war. This article is an obvious example. It can be said that three or four sentences are not empty and superficial lyricism, precisely because one or two sentences are described with rich environment. The high unity of typical environment and characters' feelings is a prominent advantage of Wang Changling's quatrains, which is also clearly reflected in this paper.
Finally, I think it is necessary to introduce the author of this article:
Wang Changling (698-756) was born in Jinyang, Hedong (now Taiyuan, Shanxi). A famous frontier poet in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, later generations praised him as the "Seven Wonders". In his early years, he was poor and trapped in farming, but he began to learn in his thirties. The first secretary of the provincial school, Lang, also learned from the macro words, and awarded Si Shuiwei, who was relegated to Lingnan because of things. There are Li Bai, Gao Shi, Wang Wei, Wang Zhihuan and Cen Can. At the end of Kaiyuan, he returned to Chang 'an and awarded Jiangning Cheng. The slandered dragon captain. An Shi rebelled and was killed by Lu Qiuxiao, the secretariat. His poems are famous for their four wonders, especially those written in the northwest frontier before he won the first place, and have the reputation of "Poet Wang Jiangning" (also known as "Poet Wang Jiangning").