"A glass of wine with peach and plum blossoms in the spring breeze, a lamp in the rivers and lakes at night for ten years" refers to the time when I watched the peach and plum blossoms in the spring breeze and drank fine wine. I was in a state of desolation. It has been ten years since we were separated. I often looked at the lonely lamp and listened to the autumn rain and missed me. With you.
1. Source:
Send to Huang Jifu
Song Dynasty: Huang Tingjian
I live in the North Sea and the South Sea, and I send a letter of thanks to the wild geese. cannot.
Peaches and plums in the spring breeze, a glass of wine, and ten years of rain in the rivers and lakes.
There are only four walls to run a household, but there are only three walls to cure diseases.
Imagine that my head has turned white when I read, and the ape across the stream is crying because of the miasma of vines in the stream.
2. Translation:
I live on the northern coast, and you live on the southern coast. If you want to ask the swan geese to deliver messages, they can't fly to Hengyang.
Back then, I watched the peach and plum blossoms and drank fine wine under the spring breeze. I was in a state of decline. It has been ten years since we parted ways. I often looked at the lonely lamp, listened to the autumn rain, and missed you.
You only have four empty walls to support your livelihood. This is how difficult it is. The ancients became good doctors after breaking their arms three times, but I hope you don't do this.
I want you to be poor, self-sufficient, and study hard, but now your hair has turned white. Across the mountain stream full of miasma, the apes are wailing and climbing on the ivy in the deep forest.
3. Appreciation:
In addition to the scenes they express respectively, the two poems also show many things through mutual comparison. First, what is written in the second sentence clearly refers to the scene ten years after the separation, including the scene in front of me; then, what is written in the previous sentence is naturally the scene ten years ago. Therefore, there is no need to say "we met back then" in the previous sentence, and this meaning is already reflected in the comparison with the following sentence. Second, in addition to the meaning mentioned above, "jianghu" also has a meaning relative to the capital. The so-called "being in the rivers and lakes, thinking about Wei Que" is an obvious example.
4. Huang Tingjian’s introduction:
The courtesy name is Luzhi, his nickname is Valley Taoist, and his later nickname is Fu Weng. He was a native of Fenning, Hongzhou (now Xiushui County, Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province), and a famous literary figure in the Northern Song Dynasty. He is a calligrapher and the founder of the ever-popular Jiangxi Poetry School. Together with Du Fu, Chen Shidao and Chen Yuyi, he is known as the "one ancestor and three sects" (Huang Tingjian is one of them). Together with Zhang Lei, Chao Buzhi, and Qin Guan, they all studied under Su Shi's sect, and they were collectively known as the "Four Scholars of the Su School". During his lifetime, he was as famous as Su Shi and was known as "Su Huang" in the world. He is the author of "Valley Ci", and Huang Tingjian's calligraphy is also unique, and he is one of the "Four Calligraphers of the Song Dynasty".