Xiang Yu's experience can be said to be a very typical "good hand, bad fight." He had an excellent opportunity to kill Liu Bang and unify the world, but he missed it because of hesitation. Later, although Liu Bang turned against him, as long as he listened carefully to Fan Zeng's advice, it was still unknown who would win the battle. However, Xiang Yu became suspicious of his "son father" and drove him away directly, leading to his defeat.
Because Xiang Yu's life was tragic and dramatic, Du Mu, Wang Anshi, Li Qingzhao and other famous literati in later generations all wrote commemorative poems for him. So, which one is the most advanced?
First of all, let's take a look at the Pavilion on the Wujiang River written by Du Mu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty. His poem wrote: "Surprise, winning or losing is a military plan." There are many talented children in Jiangdong. Whether they will make a comeback is still unknown. "In Du Mu's view, winning or losing is a common occurrence for military strategists, and even the most outstanding generals will inevitably fail. If he can endure humiliation and flee to Jiangdong to fight again, Xiang Yu may be able to make a comeback with Jiangdong's young talents and become the last person to laugh.
Du Mu's poems not only put forward his own views, but also criticized Xiang Yu's good face and small tolerance, and also regretted his choice. In fact, this is not Du Mu's only work of "Imagining History". In the poem "Red Cliff", he once imagined: "If the east wind doesn't match, the bronze sparrow terrace locks Er Qiao", that is, if Zhou Yu didn't use the east wind to repel Cao Cao's army, maybe he and his friend Sun Ce's wife would be in Cao Cao's hands.
Du Mu's interest in Tiaoxi Fishing in Conghua in the Southern Song Dynasty is evaluated as "singing differently from others" and "being different from reason", that is, deliberately pursuing a different angle from others, even at the expense of violating common sense. After giving such a conclusion in the book, it shows that Xiang Yu has lost the hearts of the people at that time, and even if he fled back to Jiangdong, he would not get much help. This is a very likely situation.
In a word, Du Mu's Nostalgia can only be said to be mediocre, and there is no bright spot in either rhetoric or thought.
Next, let's take a look at Wang Anshi's Diewu Jiangge. As can be seen from the title of the poem, this poem is actually Wang Anshi's own opinion on Du Mu's works after he came to Wujiang Pavilion where Du Mu wrote poems. The poem reads: "The brave who have been exhausted after many battles mourn, and the Central Plains is defeated and cannot be recovered." Now that the children of Jiangdong are here, are they willing to make a comeback with the king? "The content of this poem is actually very similar to the above-mentioned viewpoint in Tiaoxi Fishing Hidden in Conghua. They all think that after Xiang Yu's defeat, the world situation has generally settled, and the soldiers are in chaos, so even if some children of Jiangdong are still there, not many people are willing to fight with Xiang Yu again.
If Du Mu, as a poet, has a beautiful imagination of history and fantasizes about Xiang Yu's comeback in his mind and changes the happy ending of history, then Wang Anshi pointed out the real situation at that time from the perspective of an outstanding politician, proving that Xiang Yu's comeback is almost impossible.
As a reformer, this work of Wang Anshi embodies his innovative spirit of refuting predecessors and the innovation of writing poems with argumentative style. Therefore, this song "Diewu Jiangge" can be said to be a combination of Wang Anshi's political wisdom and profound thinking.
Finally, let's take a look at the most famous poem about Xiang Yu, which is "Summer quatrains" written by Li Qingzhao, which reads: "Life is a hero, and death is a hero." I still miss Xiang Yu and refuse to cross Jiangdong. Different from Du Mu and Wang Anshi, Li Qingzhao made a straightforward evaluation of Xiang Yu, thinking that he was a hero among people before his death and a hero in ghosts after his death, and said that people still miss him because he didn't choose to flee to Jiangdong.
Obviously, Li Qingzhao has a positive attitude towards Xiang Yu's behavior, thinking that he would rather commit suicide than return to Jiangdong, which is a very virtuous behavior. When Li Qingzhao wrote this poem, the Northern Song Dynasty had just perished, and people fled to the south one after another. Even her husband Zhao Mingcheng, as a magistrate, chose to flee in the face of the mutiny in the city. It is not difficult to guess that this poem actually meant something. In Li Qingzhao's mind, it is obviously hoped that the court and her husband can learn from Xiang Yu, always maintain integrity and dignity, and don't escape and drag out an ignoble existence.
Of course, in addition to the above three people, many scholars in history have written poems about Xiang Yu. For example, Yu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a sentence, "It's a shame for people to cross the river and sing empty songs".
My personal favorite is Li Qingzhao's Poems in Summer, which expresses the author's strong patriotic enthusiasm, praises heroism and criticizes the social situation at that time with only a few crosses. Combined with that era, it can be said to be an inspiring and awe-inspiring masterpiece.