Li Yuan
After gently disappearing, there is no more kite, and the red gauze on the jade wrist reaches Wu Qing.
All the guests at the banquet were silent, and there were thirteen mourning geese in one line.
Li Yuan became a Jinshi in the fifth year of Emperor Wenzong's reign (831). He served as governor of several prefectures and finally became censor Zhongcheng. His most famous poem is "The mountains never tire of three (one for "thousand") glasses of wine, and only one game of chess can be consumed during the day." "Giving the Zheng to the Prostitute Wu Qing" is one of his better extant poems. .
"Zheng prostitute" refers to a prostitute who plays the zither. Zheng is a musical instrument of ancient Qin and has always been regarded as the "sound of Qin". This is a plucked string instrument with a round top, a flat bottom, and a hollow string. Before the Sui Dynasty, it had five strings and twelve strings. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, the zither used in the teachings all had thirteen strings, plucked with antlers or silver armor. It is said that it was named "Zheng" because it makes a "Zheng" sound when plucked. In the Tang Dynasty, there were various prostitutes in the government and noble families, and they often used singing and dancing to entertain them at banquets. Liu Yuxi watched prostitutes at Li Sikong's banquet, and Wan Chu watched prostitutes at a friend's house during the Dragon Boat Festival, both of which left good poems. Judging from the third sentence of Li Yuan's poem, he wrote it after listening to Wu Qing play the zheng at the banquet.
The "Qing Qing" and "Wu Qing" mentioned in the first two sentences are both masters of playing the zither who are not found in Zai. The poet said that after Qing Qing died, there was no one to succeed him. This situation did not change until Wu Qing appeared. In fact, if you look up the relevant information, you will know that before the Sui Dynasty, there were Hao Shan, King Huan Ye, Xie Renzu, Xin Xuanzhong and others who were good at zheng. In the Tang Dynasty, before Li Yuan there were Li Qingqing and Long Zuo, and at the same time as Li Yuan there were Chang Shuben, Shi Cong and Li Congzhou. Li Congzhou is the grandson of Li Qingqing. It can be seen that the zither has not stopped playing. However, the poet pushed aside many famous people, and only singled out Qing Qing and Wu Qing, and set his sights on Wu Qing. It can be said that he admired Wu Qing to the extreme. "Jade wrist red gauze" means smooth and clean skin, wearing gauze shirt, which only refers to a part of Wu Qing's figure. But the rendering of this part (the "wrist" of "jade", the "gauze shirt" of "red") leads the reader to associate the whole. Through these four words, what is shown to the reader is a graceful and charming person. , the image of a graceful and beautiful woman playing the kite. These two sentences run from top to bottom. From these four words, it can be inferred that Qing Qing is also a woman. By analogy, Qing Qing may also be a prostitute. The name "Qing Qing" can also easily remind people of the identity of a prostitute - many prostitutes in the Tang Dynasty had names with overlapping characters, such as "Juju", "Susu", "Lianlian", "Zhuzhu", etc. .
One or two sentences talk about people, and three or four sentences turn to talk about zheng. There are no more than two ways to write beautiful music. One type is mainly frontal copying, such as Bai Juyi's depiction of a businesswoman playing the pipa, and Han Yu's depiction of a young master playing the harp. The other type is mainly written from the effect, such as Qian Qizhi's writing about Xiangling drum and harp, and the last two sentences of Li Yuan's writing about playing the zither. The sentence "the guests are all at the banquet but not saying a word" reminds people of the scene at the banquet before Tingzheng, where they drank wine, chatted and laughed happily. And after tying the claws to tune the strings, the zither sounded, with a sad tune, "a line of mourning geese thirteen times", a line of mourning geese seemed to fly out on the thirteen strings, and the noise in the crowd suddenly disappeared. The word "man" and the word "du" encompassed all the guests who were holding their breath. The moving part of Thirteen Strings lies in the word "sorrow". The musical image is "goose" rather than anything else, which is probably related to the music played. Zhang Hu's "Listening to the Zheng": "The ten fingers are slender and jade is red, and the flying geese are gently restrained in the green strings." Wu Rong's "Li Zhou Plays the Zheng Song": "The wild geese are walking diagonally close to the imperial banquet, and the golden feathers are flying in the falling smoke." Judging from these two poems by Li Yuan, it is likely that there were widely circulated Zheng music such as "Gui Yan Cao" at that time. In these two sentences, when describing the sound of the zheng, they only wrote a simple musical image ("a line of mourning geese"); when praising the moving sound of the zheng, they only wrote that the whole house was silent. However, this simple pen and ink, this silent compliment, and wordless evaluation are worth a eloquent praise.
When discussing the implicit art of quatrains, the predecessors had the method of "do not write the original side but write the opposite side or the side" (Liu Xizai's "Yi Gai·Poetry"). "A Gift to Wu Qing, a Prostitute" does not describe the person's face or eyes, but only reveals the "red gauze on the jade wrist" that is most eye-catching when playing the zither. The description of playing the zither does not only describe the zither itself, but also the details of the zither itself. The audience wrote in detail, using the writing method of seeing through one layer from the opposite side or from the side. The ability to write an "Ode to Wu Qing" so well in only twenty-eight words must be attributed to this expressive method with long-term vitality.