From Du Fu's Collection of Flowers Alone by the Riverside in the Tang Dynasty (Episode 6)
Four yellow maiden flowers thrive on the road covered, and thousands of flowers bow and the branches are low.
The butterflies in the flowers are dancing, and the soft yinger in freedom is just singing happily.
translate
The path around Huang Si's maiden is full of flowers, and thousands of flowers bend down from the ground, low.
The frolicking butterflies are hovering and dancing among the flowers, and the free little oriole is sweet and moving.
To annotate ...
Huang Siniang: Du Fu's neighbor when he lived in Chengdu Caotang.
Path(xρ): the path.
Lingering: nostalgia, reluctant to leave.
Jiao: Cute look.
Cha-cha: Onomatopoeia, which describes the harmony and sweetness of birds' songs. When we say "Chen Wenjing" is a Tang dialect, that's what it means.
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This is an interesting poem about scenery. The path is full of flowers, and the branches full of flowers are pressed down. Above the petals are lingering butterflies dancing around the flowers. From here, we smell the rich flowers. On the path beside the flowers, there are orioles chirping crisply. Their lively and comfortable behavior gives people a relaxed and happy feeling. Poets use the rhythmic words "always" and "cha-cha" to make the whole bright and complicated picture full of movement and make poetry have a brighter and smoother rhythm. The whole poetic language is full of spoken language. It is very kind to read, and the poet's heartfelt happiness in spring is vividly on the paper.
People in the prosperous Tang Dynasty paid great attention to the harmony of poetic tone. Their quatrains can often be strung together, so they are very harmonious. Du Fu's quatrains are not written for singing, but purely poetry, so there are often awkward sentences. According to the law, the sentence "flowers are pressing branches" in this poem should be flat. But this "contradiction" is by no means an arbitrary destruction of the melody, and the overlap of "letting a hundred flowers blossom" has a taste of beauty. Although the word "duo" of "Qianhua" and the word "four" in the same position in the previous sentence belong to the same tone, the rising tone and falling tone are different from each other, and the tone still changes. It's not that poets don't pay attention to the musical beauty of poetry. This is manifested in the use of disyllabic words, onomatopoeic words and reduplicated words in three or four sentences. "Liulian" and "Freedom" are disyllabic words, such as the connection between beads and melody. "Chen Wenjing" is an onomatopoeic word, which describes a baby's voice and gives people an immersive auditory image. "Yes" and "Chen Wenjing" are overlapping words. Even if the upper and lower sentences form antithesis, the meaning is stronger and more vivid, which can better express the poet's sudden joy when he is infatuated with Hua Hudie and suddenly awakened by the sound of warblers. Except for the words "dance" and "warbler", these two sentences are all tongue-toothed.
The use of this series of tongue-and-teeth sounds creates a sense of language, which vividly shows the feeling that flower lovers are intoxicated and surprised by the beautiful scenery. The utility of sound is very helpful to the expression of emotions.
Syntactically, many poems in the prosperous Tang Dynasty are natural, and Du Fu is different from them. For example, "antithesis" (later couplets) is the style of quatrains in the early Tang Dynasty, and there are few quatrains in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, because it is difficult to achieve a perfect ending. Du Fu, however, is hard to see, and such a poem couplet is both steady and memorable, which makes people feel that it is used properly: when it is pleasing to the eye, isn't it more fascinating to listen to Ying Ge's "Cha Cha"? Besides, according to customary grammar, these two sentences should be written like this: butterflies dance when they play, and yinger crows freely. Put "lingering" and "freedom" at the beginning of the sentence.