The poetry of night mooring in Maple Bridge
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Maple Bridge Night Mooring
Zhang Ji of the Tang Dynasty
The moon is setting and the sky is covered with crows and frost, and the river maples and fishing fires are facing melancholy.
At Hanshan Temple outside Gusu City, the midnight bell rang for the passenger ship.
Translation:
The bright moon is setting in the west, the sky is covered with autumn frost, and a few crows are heard in front of the mountain;
The fishing fires on the river reflect the red maple trees, and my sadness makes me unable to sleep.
Oh, the famous Hanshan Temple outside Suzhou;
The midnight bells floated slowly to the side of my boat.
Poetic:
One autumn night, the poet was boating on the Maple Bridge outside Suzhou. The beautiful scenery of the autumn night in the Jiangnan water town attracted this guest with travel worries, allowing him to appreciate a kind of poetic beauty with lasting appeal, and he wrote this short poem with a clear and far-reaching artistic conception. Titled "Night Mooring", it actually only writes about the scenes and feelings at "midnight". The first sentence of the poem describes three closely related scenes at midnight: moonset, cries of crows, and a sky full of frost. The first quarter moon rose early and had set in the middle of the night, leaving only a gray shadow in the sky. The crows on the trees were probably awakened by the change in light before and after moonset and let out a few crows. The moon sets deep in the night, and the frost condenses darkly. In a dark and quiet environment, people's sense of the cool night becomes particularly keen. The description of "the sky is full of frost" does not conform to the reality of the natural landscape (the frost is on the ground but not in the sky), but it is completely consistent with the poet's feelings: the chill that penetrates the flesh and bone in the middle of the night surrounds the poet's boat at night from all directions. It made him feel that the vast night air outside was filled with frost. In the whole sentence, the moon setting describes what I saw, the crows describe what I heard, and the frost covered the sky describes what I felt. They clearly reflect a sequential process of time and feeling. And all of this is harmoniously unified in the quiet and cold atmosphere of the autumn night in the water town and the lonely feeling of the travelers. From here we can see the detail of the poet's thinking.
The second sentence of the poem goes on to describe the characteristic scene of "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" and the traveler's feelings. In the hazy night, only a vague outline of the trees on the riverside can be seen. The reason why it is called "Jiangfeng" may be an inference caused by the place name Maple Bridge, or the image of "Jiangfeng" is chosen to give readers a sense of Autumn colors and hints of detached thoughts. "There are maples on the water of the Zhanzhan River, and the eyes are thousands of miles away and the heart of spring is sad", "There is no sorrow on the green maples", these ancient poems can illustrate the emotional content deposited in the word "Jiang Maple" and the associations it gives to people. Through the foggy river surface, you can see a few scattered "fishing fires". Due to the dim and misty surrounding background, they are particularly eye-catching and moving. "River Maple" and "Fishing Fire", one is still and one is moving, one is dark and one is bright, one is by the river, the other is on the river. The combination of scenery is quite thoughtful. When I write this, I point out the travelers at Bozhoufeng Bridge. "Sorrowful sleep" refers to the travelers lying on the boat with the sorrow of traveling. The word "dui" in "Dui Chou Mian" contains the connotation of "companion", but it is not as explicit as the word "companion". There is indeed the lingering sadness of a lonely traveler facing the river maples and fishing fires on a frosty night, but at the same time, it also contains a fresh feeling of the beautiful scenery of the journey. From the seemingly objective word "right", we seem to be able to feel a silent blend and fit between the travelers in the boat and the scenery outside the boat.
The scenery in the first part of the poem is very dense, with fourteen characters describing six scenes, but the second part is particularly sparse. The two lines of the poem only describe one thing: the night bell of Wowenshan Temple. This is because the most vivid, profound and poetic impression that the poet got while staying at Maple Bridge at night was the midnight bell of Hanshan Temple. Scenes such as the setting moon, the crow of the blackbird, the frosty sky and the cold night, the river maple fishing and the fire, the lone boat and the passengers, etc., have shown the characteristics of Maple Bridge Night Mooring in all aspects, but they are not enough to fully convey its charm. In the dark night, human hearing rises to the top of the list of perceptions of external things and scenes. And the sound of bells in the quiet night leaves a particularly strong impression on people. In this way, the "midnight bell" not only brings out the tranquility of the night, but also reveals the depth and loneliness of the night, and the poet's various indescribable feelings while lying listening to the sparse bells are all self-explanatory.
It seems that "Hanshan Temple outside Gusu City" cannot be ignored here. Hanshan Temple is located one mile west of Fengqiao. It was first built in the Liang Dynasty. Hanshan, the poet monk in the early Tang Dynasty, lived here, hence its name. The poetic beauty of Maple Bridge, with this ancient temple, has taken on the color of history and culture, making it even richer and more moving. Therefore, the "midnight bell" of Hanshan Temple seems to echo the echo of history, permeated with religious sentiments, and gives people a sense of quaintness and solemnity. It seems that the reason why the poet uses a poem to point out the origin of the bell is not without reason. With the stroke of the midnight bell of Hanshan Temple, the charm of "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" is most perfectly expressed. This poem no longer remains at the level of a simple autumn night scene painting of Maple Bridge, but creates It creates a typical artistic conception of scene blending. Although the custom of midnight has been recorded as early as "Southern History", it was Zhang Ji's creation to write it into the poem and become the key point of the poem's artistic conception.
Although there were many poets who described midnight at the same time as Zhang Ji or later, they never reached the level of Zhang Ji, let alone created a complete artistic conception.