I knew from a distance that it wasn't snow, because there was a smell coming.
-Wang Anshi
According to Hui Hong's "Cold Zhai Night Talk", the writing reason of Wang Anshi's poem said: "Gong Jing wants to visit your nobles, but he has never met them." How reliable this statement is, it is difficult to break; Wang Anshi's poems have no chronology. Except for the facts in the works, most of them can't determine the specific age, so it's impossible to research what he did, the people he interacted with and the poems he wrote from the writing age, so he can only comment on the poems.
The second sentence of the poem, "cold ling opens alone", expresses great appreciation for plum blossoms. In the severe winter, bloom is in full bloom, and the unique plum blossom is cold, which reports the news of the coming spring. This is the kind of heroism that poets admire. This can not only be seen literally, but also "take poetry as evidence" The poet also has a masterpiece "Red Plum". The first two sentences say: "bloom can make a fortune with only half a flower in spring, and it should not be cold." The words "Nai" and "Nai" are already commonplace. "No Nai" means "intolerance" and means unbearable. In short, the poet is afraid of the cold and sent it late, which is not a compliment. In contrast, this poem's "Cold Ling Alone" has its own dumping meaning. Therefore, the word "cold ling" should be the backbone of Yongmei's poem.
Due to the whiteness of plum blossoms and the cold season when flowers are in full bloom, Yongmei's poems since ancient times are all related to snow. For example, Liang Jianwen's "Looking for Plum Blossoms in the Snow": "Never be surprised that plum blossoms come late, let's get a glimpse of them in the snow"; He Xun's "Morning Mei Fu": "Frost is on the road, snow is cold"; Yin Keng's "Singing in the Snow": "Although the spring cold is near, the snow is still floating in Shu Mei" ... After the Tang and Song Dynasties, there are countless more. However, this poem does not reflect plums with snow in the picture, nor does it imitate plums with snow in the image. Although flowers are like snow, poets "come for fragrance" and "know from a distance that it is not snow". Snow is proposed to make plum blossoms fragrant. It means that snow is noble and clean, but plum blossom not only has the noble and clean snow, but also has an aromatic character that snow does not have. This plum blossom is not only brilliant in the cold, but also emits a faint fragrance in the cold. Cold can neither crush the color of plum nor its fragrance, which shows its "cold ling" pride. The word "Dimfragrance" obviously comes from Lin Bu's famous Yongmei sentence "Dimfragrance floats at dusk".
Li Mi, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, commented on this poem in Notes on Wang Jingwen's Poems: "Gulefu" is a plum tree in front of the courtyard, but it is too cold to wake up. I just said that flowers are like snow, and I didn't realize that there was fragrance. "Gong Jing changed his ears slightly, even the same." Together "is not necessarily true. Li Bi may think that saying" together "can exempt Wang Anshi from his attack, but in fact Wang Anshi used the meaning of his predecessors, which is his genius. This "Ancient Yuefu" is just a plum blossom in Yongmei, and its image and artistic conception are not reflected in the plum blossom itself; Wang Anshi, on the other hand, expressed the poet's feelings for plum blossom with a "cold ling", so he placed some hopes on it. In this way, the poet himself entered the poem, singing "my realm", and this poem is no longer a cold and purely objective description.
Wang Anshi is good at translating the poems of his predecessors. For example, the last two sentences in Hong Mei quoted above: "Northerners are ignorant at the beginning, but they regard it as apricot flowers", which is also a free translation of Yan Shu's poem "It opens late in March or February, and northerners regard it as apricot flowers", but the latter is used, while the former is only used in reverse. The quality of poetry does not lie in whether it has been taught by predecessors, but in its ability to find a new way, innovate and cast its own unique artistic conception. Can do this, even if it is not unintentional "carelessness", but intentional plagiarism, what is wrong?