Qingming
(Song Dynasty) Huang Tingjian
On the Qingming Festival, the peaches and plums smile, and the wild fields and graves only produce sorrow.
Thunder shook the sky and earth, dragons and snakes stung, and rain fell on the grass and trees in the countryside.
People beg and sacrifice their arrogant concubines, and scholars burn to death unjust marquises.
The wise and foolish know who they are for thousands of years, and their eyes are full of basil and grass.
Translation
During the Qingming Festival, peaches and plums bloom with smiles, but the barren graves in Noda are a desolate and sad scene. The spring thunder shakes the earth and wakes up the dormant dragons and snakes. There is sufficient rain in spring, and the grass and trees in the suburban fields grow very soft. In the past, a man from Qi State begged for sacrifices to satisfy his hunger in front of the tomb, but when he returned home, he showed off to his wives and concubines, saying that the rich man invited him to drink. On the contrary, Jie Zitui, a patriot of Jin State, did not covet the wealth of the princes, and would rather be burned to death than go down the mountain to do anything. official. Over the course of thousands of years, there has been a mixture of wise and foolish people, who is right and who is wrong? In the end, they were buried in barren graves covered with weeds.
Appreciation
This is a work by the poet that touches the scene and expresses the emotion of life. He uses contrasting techniques throughout to express his lament about the impermanence of life.
The first couplet contrasts the laughter of peaches and plums during the Qingming Festival with the sorrow of the deserted graves, revealing a ruthless sigh towards the world.
The second couplet shows a sudden resurgence of all things in nature, which is in sharp contrast with the barren hills full of basil in the next two couplets. From sweeping tombs during the Qingming Festival to thinking about people begging for food, from eating cold food and banning smoking to thinking about Jie Zitui being burned to death, no matter whether he is wise or foolish, he will end up with a cup of loess.
The poet sees the vitality of nature, but what he thinks of is the inescapable fate of death in the world. He expresses a kind of negative and nihilistic thought, and the sad mood is entangled in the lines of the poem. This is inseparable from the political ups and downs of the poet's life and the strong influence he received from Zen Buddhism. However, the work reflects the author's life value orientation and lashes out the ugliness of life. It seems negative, but in fact it is angry
Extended information:
Huang Tingjian (August 9, 1045 - May 1105) August 24), courtesy name Lu Zhi, nicknamed Valley Taoist and Fu Weng, a native of Fenning, Hongzhou (Xiushui County, Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province), a famous writer and calligrapher in the Northern Song Dynasty, and the founder of the Jiangxi Poetry School. Li Zhimin, a professor at Peking University and the pioneer of introducing monuments to grass, commented: "Huang Tingjian's discussion of calligraphy, painting appreciation, and poetry evaluation all put rhyme characters first. He introduced crane inscriptions into grass, which is powerful and unrestrained, and has a new realm."
His works include "Gu Ci", which together with Du Fu, Chen Shidao and Chen Yuyi, is known as "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.
His calligraphy is unique and he is one of the "Four Calligraphers of the Song Dynasty".