Su Shi
Slight breeze blowing cattail ①, open the door to watch the rainy moon fill the lake ②.
The boatman and the waterfowl have two dreams, and the big fish is like a fox.
Late at night, people don't care about each other, and I am alone, entertaining myself.
Cold insects hang in the dark tide, and willows hang in the falling moon to see spiders.
In this life, when you are suddenly worried, you can clear your mind in an instant.
When the cock crows, the birds are scattered, and the bow and drum are still ringing.
In the second year of Yuanfeng in Song Shenzong (1079), Su Shi made it on his way to Huzhou.
① Reed: Zizania latifolia and Acorus calamus, both shallow water plants.
2 "Open the door" sentence: The first time the poet heard the sound of the wind blowing on the pu, he mistakenly thought it was raining. When he opened the door, he saw the moonlight on the lake.
3 "boatman" sentence: it means that the night is deep, and the boatman and the waterfowl have fallen asleep.
Zhu, stand by the water. Hang up, it's a pity. Cold earthworm, namely earthworm. "。 The tide from the edge of Zhouzhu rises in the dark, and its sound is weak, like the sound of cold insects crawling;
⑤ "Moon setting" sentence: refers to willow trees like cobwebs and the moon setting like spiders.
It will be done in a minute: so soon. Yes, so.
The cock crows and the bell rings: it means dawn.
Appreciate:
This is a beautiful night scene.
"The breeze blows gently, and the lake is full of rain and moon." On the boat, the poet heard the sound of the breeze blowing the grass outside, thinking that it was raining in Mao Mao on the lake, so he pushed open the boat door to enjoy the rain scene. However, what he saw was the moonlight on the lake. This is what the poet described for us in the first two sentences. It not only skillfully points out the topic of "getting up at night in a boat", but also writes the poet's dreamland. A Qing Dynasty Ji Xiaolan commented on the boundary of these two sentences: "When I first heard the wind, I suspected it was rain; When you open the door, you can see that the lake is full of moons, which can be said to be a deep experience. This technique has been used before. For example, the Tang people explained Autumn Sent from brother island, saying, "Listening to the rain and cold is even worse, and opening the door leaves deep", but Su Shi's two sentences seem to be more successful than those of the Tang people.
The poet described the beautiful picture he saw on the boat in the second half of the night from "people and birds boating" to "falling moon and weeping willows", which showed his mood in twists and turns. These six sentences can be divided into three layers, two sentences are folded in half, and three artistic conceptions are written: "quietness", "independence" and "coldness"
In the sentence "the boatman and the waterfowl", the poet focuses on describing the quietness of the night scene by means of dynamic and static contrast: at this time, both the boatman and the waterfowl have fallen asleep, only the sound of water waves aroused by the big fish's fright. The sound of fish is so loud in the silent night that the poet mistook it for a fox running away in the grass. Mistaking the "big fish" for "running foxes", in which the moonlight over the lake is mistaken for the grass under the moonlight, is another illusion since "opening the door to see the rainy moon over the lake", which is hidden and difficult to be detected. This realm is dreamlike, extremely far and near, extremely strange and beautiful, and the word "static" is its soul, as Cha commented: "Extremely strange and fantastic, extremely far and near, all written in static" (Chu Bai 'an's Poetry Review). Why do poets love this silent night scene so much? This requires a little understanding of Su Shi's mood at that time. In his early years, Su Shi "aspired to the world", but his experience as an official for more than 20 years made him feel disgusted. The intrigue in officialdom is incompatible with the poet's nature of "being open-minded and moving with his nature", and the enterprising spirit of actively joining the WTO is always in sharp contradiction with the poet's own "wildness". The poet once said that he was: "The dust is like a colt, and the wild is like a fish" (The Missionary of Lushan Mountain), which is a vivid portrayal of this contradiction.
Su Dongpo can't really live in seclusion, abandon his original ambition of being a gentleman, and can't stand the dirty official life, which makes him often seek comfort in the embrace of nature. The deep meaning of "people don't stay at home at night, I entertain people alone" is also here. During the day, "raising one's hand and shaking one's feet" is a "wild" prison and a shackle of human nature. Now, on this quiet night, only you face the moonlight of the lake and the frightened fish, and only you and your own shadow play with each other. This is the liberation of "wildness", the release of horses and the hands of poets. The word "independence" for the purpose not only describes the independence at this moment, but also subconsciously tells the loneliness and danger of Su Shi's life. "Being out of date" is also a kind of loneliness of life and a pioneer of the times. The word "independence" inherits and deepens the "quiet" world.
The poet's transition from "quietness" to "independence" is, on the whole, a state of reveling in nature, the unity of things and me, and a pleasant aesthetic state. But the poet can't forget the world completely, and his profound thoughts on life and social problems will suddenly flash in his mind. As a result, the poet's mood turned to the word "cold", and the wonderful night scene in front of the poet turned into a cold wind: "Cold insects hang on the dark tide, and willow hangs on the moon to see spiders." The tide from the edge of Zhouzhu rises in the dark, and its sound is weak, like the sound of cold insects crawling; The falling moon hangs under the wicker, like a spider hanging on the silk end. The poet used dark and cold images such as "dark tide", "cold worm", "falling moon" and "hanging spider", which not only added a few strokes to the night view of the boat lake, but also symbolized and implied the poet's inner anguish, paving the way for the following discussion.
In the last part, the poet ends with comments and lyricism. The poet thought that its wonderful moment was fleeting, and after dawn, it was necessary to start that painful official life again. Listen: In the ensemble of the cock crow and the morning bell, all the birds who spent the wonderful evening with me dispersed, and only the drums at the bow echoed with them. Su Shi used the phrase "when an ape barks, the bell rings". The sentence "Waiting for Dawn" in Han Yu's "Mount Hengshan Temple Station" I wrote this poem on the gatehouse to express his nostalgia for the quiet night and imply his dislike of the "carefree" life during the day. Ji Xiaolan commented that "something happened one day, which supported the whole night's singing", which is exactly what he meant.
Fang once commented on this poem in "Zhao Wei Zhan Yan": "It is empty and wonderful, and it is also immortal". In fact, this is only one aspect of Su Shi's poems. If you can't see Su Dongpo's profound sense of crisis at that time, you can't fully understand this poem. In fact, shortly after the poet finished writing this poem (in July of the same year), the Wutai Poetry Case that almost killed Su Shi happened, and the poet's hunch was not unreasonable.