It is a satire that the rulers of the Southern Song Dynasty did not care about the life and death of the people, but only cared about their own lives; they abandoned the mountains and rivers of the Central Plains and lived an ignoble existence.
"Summer Quatrain" is a five-character quatrain created by the Song Dynasty poet Li Qingzhao. This poem has a high-pitched tone and clearly puts forward the value orientation of life: when a person is alive, he must be a hero among men and make contributions to the country; when he is dead, he must sacrifice his life for the country and become a hero among ghosts. The patriotic passion was beyond words and had an inspiring effect at the time. ?
The original text is as follows:
You will be a hero in life, and you will be a hero in death.
I still miss Xiang Yu and refuse to cross Jiangdong.
The translation is as follows:
You should be a hero among men when you are alive, and you should be a hero among ghosts after death.
To this day, people still miss Xiang Yu because he refused to live an ignoble existence and returned to Jiangdong.
The annotation of the poem is as follows:
Renjie: A hero among men. Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty once praised the founding heroes Zhang Liang, Xiao He and Han Xin as "outstanding people".
Ghost hero: The hero among ghosts. Qu Yuan's "National Memorial": "When the body is dead, the spirit is the spirit, and the son's soul is the ghost hero."
Xiang Yu: At the end of the Qin Dynasty, he established himself as the overlord of the Western Chu, and competed with Liu Bang for the world. In the battle of Gaixia, He committed suicide after defeat.
Jiangdong: The place where Xiang Yu first started his army with his uncle Xiang Liang.
Extended information:
In the second year of Jingkang (1127), the Jin soldiers invaded the Central Plains, smashed the Qionglou Jade Garden of the Song Dynasty, and kidnapped the two emperors of Hui and Qin. Forced to flee south. Later, Li Qingzhao's husband Zhao Mingcheng became the prefect of Jiankang.
One night, a rebellion broke out in the city. Zhao Mingcheng did not want to quell the rebellion, but escaped from the battle. Li Qingzhao felt shameful for his country and his husband. When passing by the Wujiang River, he felt the tragedy of Xiang Yu and wrote this poem. At the same time, it also meant to satirize the Southern Song Dynasty and his husband.
"If you live as a hero, you will die as a ghost." The first two sentences of the poem rise from the sky with great momentum, preemptively showing the readers the courage to be worthy of being a hero in life and death. In front of you, people are in awe. These two lines of poetry are a condensation of the essence, a carrier of courage, and a fearless attitude towards life. Because of their lofty realm and extraordinary momentum, they have become famous lines that have been passed down through the ages.
The last two lines of the poem "I still miss Xiang Yu and refuse to cross Jiangdong" point out the reason. Xiang Yu's most heroic act was undoubtedly his suicide because he "had no face to see Jiangdong's elders" and gave up the spirit of temporarily avoiding Jiangdong to regain his strength. In the opinion of the author Li Qingzhao, this extraordinary heroic spirit displayed in defeat was especially valuable when the Song Dynasty was crossing south.
The poet praised the spirit of "refusing to cross the Yangtze River" because he was deeply moved by current events and used historical facts to express his patriotic enthusiasm. The word "today" cleverly connects the past and the present, history and reality in terms of time and space, revealing the profound intention of using nostalgia for the past to satirize the present.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Summer Quatrains