Wang Changling's two quatrains on palace grievances
In classical poetry, all works that describe the life in the inner court of the palace are collectively referred to as palace poems. As far as its content is concerned, it can be divided into two categories: one is to talk about the amusement in the palace or to talk about it secretly, which is generally not desirable; A kind of women who sympathize with the claustrophobic in the deep palace express their unfortunate experience and depressed mood, thus reflecting a sinful side of the feudal system. This latter kind of poetry can't be called palace resentment poetry. There were many poets who were good at writing palace grievances in the Tang Dynasty, among which Wang Changling was the most respected.
Shen Deqian praised Wang Changling's quatrains in A Collection of Tang Poems: "Deep feelings and bitterness, vague meaning, unpredictable and endless play, which is called" Sao "in the Tang Dynasty." This mainly refers to his palace resentment poems. In Tang Yin Gui Qian, Hu Zhenheng also said that his four-line palace ci was "a multi-polar work". The following is one of his "Five Poems about Long Letter and Autumn":
The phoenix tree in Jinjing is yellow with autumn leaves, and the bead curtain does not roll the frost at night.
The jade pillow in the smoking cage has no color, and it is long to lie down and listen to the Nangong.
This poem about palace grievances, with profound and subtle brushstrokes, uses scenery to express feelings, and writes about a girl who is deprived of her youth, freedom and happiness, and is alone in the desolate and lonely palace, listening to the scene of palace leakage. This is a human tragedy under the feudal system. Just because the emperor who enjoys unlimited privileges wants to satisfy his personal desire for sensuality, he shut thousands of young girls in the palace, making them live a life separated from their flesh and blood and isolated from the world. It's not hard to imagine how many sleepless nights there will be in their lives, with endless suffering and endless days. This poem is just a fragment cut from countless tragic pictures of life.
On such a sleepless night, the poet is full of worries and worries, and her resentment should be inexhaustible. There are only four sentences in this poem, with a total of * * * 28 words. Supposedly, even if every word is written with grievances, I'm afraid I can't write her grievances in case. However, when the author wrote a poem, he did not hesitate to spend the first three sentences on the scenery, leaving only the last sentence to write about the characters, and even in this last sentence, there was no clear description of grievances. Writing in this way, at first glance, seems to leave the theme of this poem, but it shows the theme more powerfully and profoundly in artistic effect. This is because: as far as the first three poems are concerned, although they are about scenery, they are not about scenery, but about the appearance of the last character; As far as a poem is concerned, although the first three sentences and the last one are divided into scenery and people, the four poems are integrated into one whole, all of which are aimed at expressing grievances.
This poem is entitled Autumn Poems. Its first sentence, "The phoenix tree in the golden well is yellow in autumn leaves", punctuates the poem with the phoenix tree beside the well and the yellow leaves in late autumn, and at the same time plays a role in rendering colors and setting off the atmosphere. From the beginning, it introduces readers into a bleak and cold environment. The second sentence, "The bead curtain does not roll the frost at night", shows that it is late at night by the fact that the bead curtain does not roll and the frost is thick at night, thus depicting this environment more desolate. The third sentence, "Smoked jade pillow has no color", is to turn the pen indoors. There should be a lot of scenery that can be written in the room, but the author only chose two appliances: smoking cage and jade pillow. He wrote about smoking cages in order to further dye the environmental atmosphere of the deep palace on a cold night; Writing jade pillows is reminiscent of the loneliness of people who don't sleep in bed. The author also used the word "colorless" to describe smoking cages and jade pillows. This is both real writing and imaginary writing. Actually, first, it shows that this is a cold palace, and the indoor appliances are old and dim; Second, it shows that it is late at night, the fire and candlelight are weak, and the surrounding items are eclipsed. Virtual writing is not necessarily the "colorless" of the object itself, but the subjective feeling of the person who wrote the object, which is a reflection of her sad mood. Moreover, the "colorless" of smoking cages and jade pillows, as well as their symbolic significance, are written as human incarnations. At this point, the person in the poem has been vividly portrayed. Finally, with the phrase "Lie down and listen to the Nangong to clear the leak", the reader finally saw a girl who was sleepless and listening to the palace leak on the side of the smoking cage and the jade pillow. At this time, looking back at the first three poems, I realized that the author was far away from writing and gradually shrinking. The poem goes from the outdoor well to the bead curtain between the doors, and then to the indoor smoking cage and the jade pillow on the bed. From far to near, it changes the scenery step by step, and every sentence moves, which finally leads the reader's attention to one point and focuses on the heroine. In this way, the appearance of the characters is both natural and effective.
After painting the background and environment with thick ink, the author only writes in an objective narrative tone that the heroine is lying listening to uterine leakage in the last sentence. Its expression technique is to have a case without judgment, to contain it without spitting, and not to tell the truth about the grievances. In this sentence, the focus of the lonely sleepless is the sound leakage, which attracts the reader's attention, and it is on the sound leakage that the author reveals his grievances and expresses the theme with a dark pen. He used a word "Qing" before the leak and a word "Long" after the leak. This is a hint: because the people in the poem are in a sad mood, they will feel that the sound is leaking and sad; Because the people in the poem can't sleep because of their sorrow and hatred, they will feel that the interval between leaking sounds is particularly long. Bai Juyi's sentence "Leaning in the Smoked Cage and Sitting in the Ming Dynasty" in Gong Ci is an objective portrayal of the poet. In Li Yi's poem "Official Complaints", it is the subjective feeling of the poet that "it is like adding seawater to the palace leak, and * * * drops of Nagato are one night long". At the same time, Wang Changling also deliberately pointed out in this poem that the leaking sound heard by the poet came from the Nangong, the emperor's residence. The word "Nangong" is the finishing touch in the whole poem. It points out the grievances of the people in the poem. The clever use of these hidden pens and the way in which the grievances are hidden between the lines make the poem deeper, leaving endless meanings and overtones at the end.
This poem "Autumn Poems" is about autumn grievances, but the imperial secretary has been complaining for many years. Although there are autumn grievances in autumn, there will also be spring grievances in spring. Let's look at another poem "West Palace's Spring Complaint" written by Wang Changling:
The night in the West Palace is quiet and fragrant, and I want to roll a bead curtain and hate it in spring.
holding the clouds obliquely and seeing the moon deeply, the hazy trees are hidden in the sun.
here, based on a beautiful night with flowers and moons, as Wang Anshi said in the poem "Night Straight", a series of actions and attitudes of a person with the same fate as the protagonist in "Autumn Poems" are described, with profound thoughts and nuanced descriptions, which make readers feel as if they are in the scene, and get a glimpse of her tortuous and complicated inner activities.
The first sentence of the poem, "The West Palace is quiet and fragrant at night", points out the season and the time, and brings the reader into a spring night full of flowers. This sentence, in terms of technique, is to reflect the lonely and desolate situation of the girl in this poem; As far as the content is concerned, it is closely connected with the following, which leads to the contradictory mood and infinite hatred of the people in the poem. The author's ideas and words are extremely elaborate. In the sentence, don't write the color of flowers, only the fragrance of flowers, because generally speaking, under the cover of night, it is not the color but the fragrance that intoxicates people. What's more, from the following poem, the poet is in the room where the bead curtain is not rolled, and it is only possible to trigger her spring resentment with the wind.
It is supposed that, as a girl who is active and loves beauty on such a charming night, since she has not gone to bed, she should have gone to the courtyard to watch it, but why has she kept herself indoors? This may be because she didn't know that the outdoor scenery was so beautiful, and it was more likely that she deliberately avoided it. For fear that the annoying spring scenery would remind her of her worries, she might as well be out of sight, out of mind. However, it happened that the fragrance of flowers came through the curtain, which made her have to watch it. The second sentence of the poem, "I want to roll the bead curtain and hate the long spring", is exactly what I wrote about her inner activities after she moved her mind. At this time, she didn't want to go out, just wanted to roll up the bead curtain and watch it from a distance. On the occasion of "wanting to roll up", it seems that even if the curtain is rolled up, there is no mood to watch. The spring scenery outside the curtain only adds to the sadness of people.
However, sitting indoors on such a fine night with beautiful scenery, you will feel that time is hard and you can't get rid of it. The third sentence of the poem, "holding the clouds sideways and seeing the moon deeply", is the behavior and modality of the people in the poem when they are bored. At this time, she picked up the musical instrument and wanted to pass the time and dispel her sorrow and hate with music; However, if you want to play it, you don't really play it, just hold it on your chest and stare at the night sky alone. This description of "holding the clouds obliquely", as Tan Yuanchun said in "Tang Poetry Return", "the state is the most flattering, and the emotion is the most bitter". Cui Guofu's "Ancient Meaning", "I can't bear to see the autumn moon when I play with the curtain", Li Bai's "Jade Clan", "behind her closed casement, why is she still waiting, watching through its crystal pane the glow of the autumn moon?" and Bai Juyi's "The White-haired Man in Shangyang" only look at the bright moon in the deep palace, and the things are four or five hundred times round. Although these poems are written in different ways, they all express the extremely subtle and painful feelings of the dissatisfied women who are imprisoned in the deep palace.
under the moon, what did she stare at and what did she see? The last sentence of the poem, "The hazy trees are hidden and the sun shines", is the scenery she saw. This sentence is not only a scene to knot feelings, but also a scene to see feelings. What is particularly worth pondering in the sentence is to point out the Zhaoyang Palace where the emperor is lucky. This is the same as the meaning of pointing out the Nangong in the sentence "Lying and listening to the Nangong to clear the leak" at the end of one of the previous Poems of Long Letter and Autumn. It implies that the people in the poem are staring at the place where the emperor is, and this is where she produces and places her grievances. However, there are many doors between the West Palace, where a large number of imperial secretaries are confined, and the Zhaoyang Hall, what's more, in the darkness, all people in the poem can see is a hazy shadow of trees. This is written through one layer and one step further. In writing poems, people want to pour their grievances into Zhaoyang Palace, but this Zhaoyang Palace can't be seen at all, which doubly illustrates the sadness of her situation.
Wang Fuzhi praised Wang Changling's "West Palace Spring Complaint" as "the wind track of self-conceit in gracefu" in the Introduction to the Night Hall and the Day of Eternity. Hu Yinglin said in The Internal Compilation of Poems: "Jiangning's Chang Xin Ci and Xigong Qu ... are both excellent, soft and beautiful, with endless meaning, with a strong character and a subtle mans outside." Wang Shizhen thought in "Yi Yuan Yi Yan": "Seven-character quatrains, little Bo and Taibai win by a hair's breadth, all of which are gods." Of course, Wang Changling's palace resentment poems are also written in general, that is, his "Five Poems of Long Letter and Autumn" is not a good capital; As for all his poems, it can't be said that "they are all works of God". However, one of his "West Palace Spring Complaint" and "Five Poems of Long Letter and Autumn Poems" should be regarded as the best choice among a large number of palace complaint poems written by the Tang people in quatrains. It is well-deserved to call it a "miracle".