"Green Grass by the River" is a literati five-character poem produced in the Han Dynasty. This poem uses the third person writing method to describe the ordinary life of a young woman who longs for love, longs for her husband and wife to cuddle together, and even raises eyebrows together.
Original text of "Green Grass by the River"
Green grass by the river and lush willows in the garden.
The girl upstairs is Yingying, standing in front of the bright window.
E'e'e wears red makeup and has slender hands.
She used to be a housewife, but now she is a slut.
A prodigal will never return, and it is difficult to stay alone in an empty bed.
Translation of "Green Grass by the River"
The grass by the river is green and the willow trees in the garden are lush.
The graceful woman upstairs stood in front of the window, her white skin comparable to the bright moon.
The woman was beautifully dressed and stretched out her slender fingers.
She used to be a brothel girl, but now she is the wife of a knight-errant who likes to wander outside.
My husband has not come back from wandering around. It is really hard to bear the loneliness alone in this empty house!
Comments on "Green River Grass"
Yuyu: lush appearance.
Yingying: Beautiful posture.
Jiaojiao: bright and white. 牖(yǒu): the window between the room and the hall in an ancient building. The order of the ancient courtyard from the outside to the inside is door, courtyard, hall, and chamber. After entering the door, there is the courtyard, behind the courtyard is the hall, and behind the hall is the chamber. The door of the room is called "hu", the window between the room and the hall is called "疖", and there is another window on the north side of the room called "xiang". In ancient times, "window" specifically referred to the skylight on the roof, and the window opened on the wall was called "window", which later generally referred to the window.
E'e: "Dialect": "Between the Qin and Jin Dynasties, beauty was called E."
The daughter of the advocating family: "Shuowen": "Advocating means music, which means singing. Dancing prostitute."
Prodigal: that is, "wandering", "Lieh Zi" said: "There are people who wander around in the country and never return, the world calls them wild people." This can be proved.
Appreciation of "Green Grass by the River"
This poem narrates a fragment of life, roughly described as follows: The heroine in the poem is independent on the roof of the building, with a plump figure, as if she is facing the wind and relying on nothingness; She was leaning against the window, her face shining brightly like the bright moon in the light clouds; she was dressed in red makeup and dressed with great care; her slender hands like ivory carvings were holding on to the window lattice, and she was looking far into the distance for a long time: she saw On the bank of the Yuanjiu River, the grass is green, stretching into the distance. "The grass beside the river is green, and I think about the long journey; what I want to do on the far journey, I have dreamed about it in the past" ("Ancient Poems"), it turns out that her eyes are following the color of the grass. , tracing the footsteps of travelers from far away; she saw the lush weeping willow in the garden. She once broke branches from this tree and gave them to each other, hoping that Liu Si'er could "keep" the hearts of travelers from far away. It turned out that the annual spring scenery once again ignited her hope of reunion, and also stirred up her youthful emotions. Hope once again turned into disappointment in anticipation, and emotions turned into sadness and resentment in waiting. She couldn't help but recall the twists and turns of life. She, a housewife, finally broke free from the shackles of joy and tears, found a comfortable husband, and hoped to live a normal life. However, why was fate so confusing? , she couldn't help shouting in her heart: "Why haven't you returned, the prodigal son who has traveled far away? How can I stay alone in this cold empty bed!"
This poem is about such a story that has been repeated countless times. The ordinary fragments of life are only expressed in ordinary compositions that express emotions on the spot, and the ordinary language of "a scholar speaks homely" (Xie Zhen's language); however, the charm is extraordinary. It is this poem that can see the extraordinary realm in the ordinary, and it is also exquisite that later generations of "Nineteen Ancient Poems" cannot achieve by deliberately carving it.
This poem is a lyric, a verse that can be sung, and it is also the only third-person narrative form in "Nineteen Ancient Poems".
The structure of the poem seems straight, but there is elegance in the straightness. It is extremely natural and has the wonderful contrast of reality and reality, positive and negative. The center of the poem is of course the beauty on the top of the building, with the grass and willow smoke, what she sees in her eyes, but the poet - he may be an outsider who accidentally sees the beauty, or he may be the prodigal son traveling far away - represents She imagined that it would naturally go from far to near, from the color of grass outside the garden to the smoke of willows in the garden, and even to one point, the tall building in the center of the garden. The youth of nature serves as a foil for the young woman's youth; the green grass and green willows complement the bright red makeup, making her extremely beautiful. But it is so beautiful that the sudden sadness at the end of the poem is particularly touching. It is only by reading the poem that we can further realize that the grass and trees full of vitality at the beginning have already been smeared with the young woman's dreamy mood. of sorrow. This is what the predecessors often said was the external flavor of "Nineteen Poems". For example, the poetic methods of later generations of poets are analyzed to form a contrasting and corresponding structure from beginning to end. However, the simple and lush charm in the poem makes people feel that the poet did not necessarily create such a clever construction. He just imagined it for her, using the ups and downs of her emotions as clues to write them one by one. The natural twists and turns of her emotions, It forms the natural twists and turns of the poem's structure.
The language of the poem is not unusual, it just uses refrains commonly used in folk songs, and six of them are used in a row, but it is appropriate and vivid.
Qingqing and Yuyu both describe the vitality of plants, but Qingqing emphasizes the color tone, while Yuyu emphasizes the mood, and the two are not interchangeable. Only when the willows are piled up with smoke can there be a feeling of depression. The color of the grass on the riverside stretches out, which is difficult to achieve a feeling of depression. And just using the willows as green is not enough to express the mood. Yingying and bright are both describing the grace of a beautiful woman, and Yingying is mainly about the body, and bright is about style. From Yingying to bright, it can have the feeling of going from vague to not fresh like the bright moon stepping out of the clouds. Try to interact with each other one after another. If you try too hard, you will definitely feel that the weight is inappropriate. E'e and Xianxian both describe their appearance, while E'e is a general compliment, while Xianxian is a description of the details, and they cannot be exchanged. The six overlapping words are all incisive, from the periphery to the center, from the overall to the local, from hazy to clear, which highlight the perfect image of the girl upstairs. Of course, there are certain refinement choices here, but they are all based on the poet's vision. The process of hope or suspense is revealed one after another. Perhaps it is precisely because of the natural unfolding of the levels of imagination that it helped the five-character poets who were still primitive at the time to use the vocabulary so appropriately without any trace of carving. If the positional rhetoric was constructed out of thin air, the effect may not be so good. This is the so-called "scholars talk about common things".
The tones of the six repeated characters are also full of natural beauty and beautiful changes. Qingqing is a flat sound, Yuyu is a flat sound, Yingying is a flat sound and a voiced sound, Jiaojiao is a flat sound and a voiceless sound; E'e, Xianxian is both a flat sound, but one is turbid and the other is clear. The contrast between flat and clear and turbid sounds is intricate, forming a palace merchant. Harmonious and beautiful. Rhythm had not yet been discovered at that time, and the poet just produced the natural sound based on his intuition. No wonder Zhong Rong's "Poems" said that "the waist of a bee and the knees of a crane are already there". This natural tone gives the syllables of the whole poem a simple charm despite its smooth ups and downs. If you look closely, you can clearly see the difference from later rhythms.
The combination of sound, form and two aspects of the six repeated words gives a rich and scattered change to the monotony of the repeated words. This change in the monotony conveys the heroine's lonely and dazzling image, and her lonely and troubled heart.
Needless to say, this poet did not understand aesthetic principles such as personalization and typification, but his affectionate long-term vision or suspense and love made him write the heroine's story exactly. Personality and typical meaning. This is a female advocate. Her long-term career in singing and laughing, and her sensitivity to music make her particularly susceptible to the temptation and excitement of the colors and sounds in the beautiful scenery of spring. She is not the innocent aristocratic girl who knows no worries in Wang Changling's poem "Brother's Grudge". She put on makeup and went upstairs. At the beginning, she was afraid of losing her belated happiness again, so she looked forward to the passers-by. She put on makeup not to compete with the beauty of spring, but just for her lover, thinking about him when he came back. You can see her most beautiful appearance. Therefore, as soon as she appeared, she was enveloped in a sad atmosphere of desolate grass and gloomy weeping willows. She suffered too much, her hopes were too high, and her disappointment was too heavy. The heavy pressure on her soul made her burst out with a silent but naked passionate cry of "it's hard to stay alone in an empty bed." This is not an exquisite euphemism like "repenting from teaching a husband and looking for a candidate", but just, and can only be, the confession of a housewife. It is only because of his almost silent cry of loneliness that he forms a strong contrast with his bright beauty, and has the power to shock people's hearts. In his natural and candid description, the poet shows the personality of a good-natured family girl, and through her, readers can see the tragic fate of a generation of middle- and lower-class women in the late Han Dynasty when officialdom was common and hope was slim. Although this kind of individualization The typicality of the poet would never have occurred to him when he was writing.