Appreciation;
This is the third poem in the group of poems "Five Ode to Ancient Monuments". The poet expresses his feelings by praising Zhaojun Village and remembering Wang Zhaojun. The poet felt deeply about Wang Zhaojun's experience. It expresses his deep sympathy, expresses Zhaojun's longing and resentment for his motherland, and praises Zhaojun's spirit of returning even after his death, which expresses the poet's own life experience and patriotism.
The whole poem has a clear narrative, prominent images and profound meaning. "Thousands of mountains and valleys go to Jingmen, and there is a village of Mingfei." The first two sentences of the poem first point out the location of Zhaojun Village. According to "Yi Tong Zhi": "Zhaojun Village is forty miles northeast of Guizhou, Jingzhou Prefecture." Its address is in Xiangxi, Zigui County, Hubei Province today. When Du Fu wrote this poem, he was living in Baidi City, Kuizhou. This is the west end of the Three Gorges, with higher terrain.
He stood on the heights of Baidi City and looked eastward at Jingmen Mountain outside the east entrance of the Three Gorges and the nearby Zhaojun Village. Hundreds of miles away, it was originally impossible to see, but he used his imagination to move from near to far, and imagined a majestic and majestic picture of mountains and valleys rushing to Jingmen Mountain along with the dangerous river current. He used this picture as the first sentence of this poem, and the momentum was very extraordinary.
Du Fu wrote the aphorism about the Three Gorges river flow, "Many waters will flow into thousands of rivers, and Qutang will fight for one" ("Two Poems on the Yangtze River"). The use of the word "fight" highlights the thrill of the Three Gorges water potential. Here, the word "go" is used to highlight the majesty and vividness of the Three Gorges mountains. This is an interesting contrast. However, the next line of the poem falls on a small Zhaojun Village, which is quite surprising.
"As soon as I go to Zitai Lianshuo Desert, I will leave only the green tomb facing the dusk." The first two sentences describe Zhaojun Village, and only these two sentences describe Zhaojun himself. The poet only used these two short and powerful poems to describe the tragedy of Zhaojun's life. Readers only look at Zitai and Shuomo in the previous sentence, and they will naturally think of the life that Zhaojun, who left the Han Palace and married the Huns, lived thousands of miles away in a foreign and customary environment.
In the next sentence, when Zhaojun died and was buried outside the Great Wall, the poet used the two simplest and ready-made words "green tomb" and "twilight", which shows his artistic ingenuity. In everyday language, the word dusk refers to time, but here, it seems to mainly refer to space. It refers to the dusk sky that is connected with the boundless desert and covers the surrounding areas.
It is so big that it seems to be able to swallow everything and digest everything. However, there is only one green tomb with evergreen tomb grass, which it cannot swallow or digest. This poem gives people an incomparably vast and heavy feeling that the world is merciless and the green graves contain hatred.
"Draw a picture to understand the spring breeze, and wear a ring to return to the moonlit night soul." This is a direct follow-up to the previous two sentences, further describing Zhaojun's life experience, family and country. The sentence about drawing pictures inherits from the third sentence before, and the sentence about wearing rings inherits from the fourth sentence before. The sentence about painting pictures means that due to the stupidity of Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty, he only looked at the pictures and not the people in the concubines and palaces, leaving their fate completely to the mercy of the painters. To know something briefly means to know something briefly.
It is said that Emperor Yuan knew Zhaojun slightly from the pictures, but in fact he did not know Zhaojun at all, which caused the tragedy of Zhaojun being buried outside the Great Wall. The sentence on the ring is about her longing for her motherland, which will never change. Although her bones remain in the green grave, her soul will return to the country where her parents grew up on a moonlit night. Jiang Kui, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, further enriched and improved the image of Du Fu's poem in his famous work "Sparse Shadows" about plum blossoms:
"Zhaojun is not used to Hu Shayuan, but he secretly recalls the south of the Yangtze River and the north of the Yangtze River. I want to return home on a moonlit night and turn into this lonely flower." It is written here that Zhaojun misses the south and north of the Yangtze River, not the Han Palace in Chang'an, which is particularly touching. The ghost of Zhaojun who returns on a moonlit night is refined and transformed into a fragrant and plain plum blossom, which makes the imagination even more beautiful.
“Thousands of years of pipa music has been played in Hu language, and the resentment is clearly stated in the music.” This is the end of the poem. The melody of the pipa that has been played in thousands of years of Hu language points out the theme of Zhaojun’s “resentment” in the whole poem. . As has been repeatedly stated before, although Zhaojun's "resentment" also includes the "resentment" of "hate that the emperor has never met", but more importantly, it is the resentment and worry of a woman who married in a foreign land and misses her hometown forever.
It is the deepest and most common feeling for the hometown and the motherland that has been accumulated and consolidated from generation to generation over thousands of years. As mentioned earlier, in the first two sentences of this poem, Hu Zhenheng said that "all the mountains and valleys go to Jingmen" can only be used in places where "heroes grow", and it is inappropriate to use it in small villages where "mingfei grows". It's because he only understands Zhaojun through narrow emotions such as lamenting the fate of a beauty.
I didn’t understand the weight of Zhaojun’s resentment. Wu Zhantai realized that Du Fu wanted to write Zhaojun as "earth-shaking", and Yang Lun realized Du Fu's "solemn" attitude in writing, but he did not fully explain why Zhaojun could be "earth-shaking" and worthy of "solemnity". Although Zhaojun is a woman, she has traveled thousands of miles and left her graves for eternity. Her heart is with her motherland and her name will last forever with her poetry and music.
The poet wants to write about her solemnly with such magnificent verses as "Going to Jingmen from all the mountains and valleys". The title of Du Fu's poem is "Yong Huai Ancient Relics". When he wrote about Zhaojun's resentment, he placed his feelings about his family and country. Du Fu was "wandering in the southwest world" at that time, far away from his hometown, and his situation was similar to that of Zhaojun.
Although he was in Kuizhou, not as far away from his hometown of Luoyang and Yanshi as Zhaojun was when he went out to the fortress, but "the plains are vast in letters and deep in wars", Luoyang was still out of reach for him. That is the place. He lives in Zhaojun's hometown, and he just uses the image of Zhaojun missing his hometown and the night moon returning to his soul to express his own feelings of missing his hometown.
Extended information:
"Five Poems on Ancient Relics·Part 3"
Tang Dynasty: Du Fu
Go to Jingmen through mountains and valleys , Concubine Ming still has a village to grow up.
Once we go to Zitai and Lian Shuo Desert, we only leave the green tomb facing the dusk.
Draw a picture to understand the spring breeze, and wear a ring in the sky to return to the soul of the night moon.
For thousands of years, the pipa has been playing nonsense, and there is clear resentment in the music.
Translation:
Thousands of mountains and valleys continue to rush to Jingmen, and the mountain village where Wang Zhaojun grew up still remains to this day. The palace left for the desert outside the Great Wall, leaving only a solitary grave on the outskirts facing the dusk. The confused king only relied on drawings to identify Zhaojun's face. Wearing a jingle on a moonlit night was the ghost of Zhaojun. Her Huyin Pipa music has been passed down for thousands of years, and the music expressed in the music is clearly full of sorrow and indignation.
Creative background:
In 766 AD (the first year of the Dali calendar of Emperor Daizong of the Tang Dynasty), the author left the Three Gorges from Kuizhou to Jiangling, and visited Song Yuzhai, Yu Xin's Ancient Residence, and Zhaojun. He deeply admired the ancient talents, national beauty, heroes, names and other ancient monuments such as the Village, Yong'an Palace, Xianzhu Temple, and Wuhou Temple, and wrote "Five Ode to Ancient Monuments" to express his feelings. This poem is the third in the series.