It rains heavily during the Qingming Festival, and pedestrians feel like dying. What is the festival? Answer: Qingming Festival.
"Qingming" is a poem written by Du Mu, a litterateur in the Tang Dynasty.
This poem describes what was seen in the spring rain during the Qingming Dynasty. The color is light and the mood is desolate. It has always been widely recited. The first sentence explains the situation, environment, and atmosphere; the second sentence describes the character, showing the character's confused and confused state of mind; the third sentence proposes a way to get rid of this state of mind; the fourth sentence contains answers and actions, which is the whole The highlight of this article. The whole poem uses the technique of starting from low to high, gradually rising, and the climax is placed at the end. The aftertaste is eerie and thought-provoking.
Original text
Qingming
[Tang Dynasty] Du Mu
It rains heavily during the Qingming Festival, and pedestrians on the road want to die.
May I ask where the restaurant is? The shepherd boy points to Xinghua Village in the distance.
Translation
It rains heavily on the Qingming Festival, and people traveling on the road feel confused and desolate as if their souls have been cut off.
Ask the shepherd boy where there is a restaurant, and he pointed to Xinghua Village in the distance.
Notes
⑴ Qingming: one of the twenty-four solar terms, around April 5th in the Gregorian calendar. According to old customs, there are activities such as tomb sweeping, outing, and willow planting on that day. The palace regards that day as the Swing Festival. Swings are installed in Kunning Palace and various harems, and the concubines perform swing performances.
⑵One after another: There are many descriptions.
⑶The soul is about to be broken off: It describes the deep sadness, as if the soul is about to be separated from the body. Broken soul: looking miserable and depressed. These two sentences mean that during the Qingming Festival, it rains continuously and continuously; with such weather and such a festival, pedestrians on the road are depressed and confused.
⑷Excuse me: Excuse me.
⑸Xinghua Village: A village deep in the apricot flowers. Today I am outside the gate of Xiushan, Guichi, Anhui Province. Affected by this, later generations often used "Xinghua Village" as the name of the hotel.
Creative background
This poem was first seen in the "Splendid Valley of Ten Thousand Flowers" in the early Southern Song Dynasty and was noted as a Tang poem. He is famous for Xie Fangde's "Poems of a Thousand Families" and "Royal Selection of Tang Poems" by Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. "Jiangnan Tongzhi" records: When Du Mu was the governor of Chizhou, he went to Xinghua Village to drink. Xinghua Village refers to this in the poem. There are scenic spots such as Duhu Lake and Southeast Lake nearby[3].
Literary Appreciation
This day is the Qingming Festival. The poet Du Mu happened to encounter rain while walking. Although Qingming is a time of bright spring flowers and bright spring flowers, it is also a time when the climate is prone to changes, often causing "bad weather". As far back as the Liang Dynasty, someone recorded that during the Cold Food Festival two days before Qingming, there were often "strong winds and even rain". If it rains on the Qingming Festival, it is also called "Fire Rain". It was such a day that the poet Du Mu encountered.
The poet used the word "one after another" to describe the "fire and rain" that day, which is really good. "One after another", if it describes snow, it should be heavy snow. The so-called "one after another, there is a heavy snowfall". But when it comes to rain, the situation is exactly the opposite. The kind of "flooding" that makes people feel is not heavy rain, but drizzle. This drizzle is exactly the characteristic of spring rain. The drizzle is the kind of rain that "light rain in the sky is as moist as crisp". It is different from the torrential rain in summer, and it is definitely not the same as the pattering autumn rain. This "rainfall" captures the spirit of "throwing fire and rain" during the Qingming Festival, and conveys the melancholy and beautiful realm of "being cold and bullying the flowers, trapping the smoke in the willows".
This "profusion" here is undoubtedly describing the artistic conception of the spring rain; but it is more than that, it also has a special function, that is, it actually describes The mood of the walker in the rain.
The following sentence: "Pedestrians on the road want to die." "Pedestrians" are people who travel away from home. "Pedestrians" do not mean "tourists", not those who go out for spring outings. "Soul" is not the soul of "Three Souls and Seven Souls". In poetry, "soul" mostly refers to spiritual and emotional matters. "Broken soul" is a way to describe a very strong but deep emotion that is not clearly expressed on the outside, such as love and longing, melancholy and frustration, secret sorrow and deep hatred, etc. When poets have such emotions, they often like to use the word "broken soul" to express his state of mind.
The ancients felt that the Qingming festival was not exactly the same as today’s concept. At that time, Qingming Festival was a big festival with rich colors and sentiments. It was supposed to be a time for family reunions, sightseeing, or visiting graves. It was the main etiquette and custom. Except for those princes, princes, and grandsons who are fond of women and wine, there are some intelligent people, especially poets with rich emotions, who have quite complicated feelings in their hearts. If he was traveling alone again and was saddened by the scene, it would be more likely to arouse his thoughts. It happened to catch up with the drizzle again, and the spring clothes were soaked, which added another layer of melancholy to the pedestrians. Only by understanding it in this way can we understand why the poet wrote the word "soul-dead" at this moment; otherwise, a little rain would be worth "soul-dead", which would be totally meaningless.
Back to the word "one after another". Originally, people walking during the festival already have a lot of things on their minds. In addition, walking in the rain and wind, and walking in the rain, makes the mood even more miserable and confusing. Therefore, one after another describes spring rain, but it also describes emotions; it might even be said that describing spring rain is to describe emotions.
This is a unique art in Chinese classical poetry that combines emotions with scenery and blends scenes, a kind of scenic spot.
The first two sentences describe the situation and the problem occurred. A solution must be found. Pedestrians at this moment couldn't help but think: Where can I find a small hotel? The thing is very clear: find a small hotel, first to rest and take shelter from the rain; secondly, to have three drinks to relieve the spring cold in the cold weather and to warm the clothes soaked by the rain; and most importantly, to take this opportunity to It can also dissipate the sadness in your heart. So, I asked people for directions.
The poet did not say who he was asking for directions in the third sentence. The most wonderful thing is the fourth sentence: "The shepherd boy points to Xinghua Village in the distance." Grammatically speaking, "shepherd boy" is the subject of this sentence, but it is actually the predicate of "borrowing question" in the previous sentence - it completes both the question and answer of the previous sentence. It is unclear whether the shepherd boy answered, but the answer with "action" was more vivid and powerful than the answer. For example, in the play "Little Cowherd", when someone asked the shepherd boy for directions, he pointed his hand and said, "Look at my hand!" It was a combination of words and actions - that is, "music" "With "picture", both allow the viewer to enjoy beauty at the same time; now the poet's technique is simpler and more advanced: he only gives the "picture" to the readers, and omits the "music".
"Yao" literally means far. But we must not stick to the literal meaning and think that Xinghua Village must be very far away from here. With this finger, the reader seems to see a wine curtain emerging from the faint red apricot tips - "Jiuwangzi". If the distance is really far away, it will be difficult to have an artistic connection; if it is really right in front of you, the implicit and endless interest will be lost: the beauty lies in the balance between not far and not close. In "A Dream of Red Mansions", there is a scene in the Grand View Garden titled "Apricot curtain is in sight". The "looking in" look is derived from the experience here, which is a footnote to Du Lang's sentence. The shepherd boy in "Little Cowherd" also said, "I point here with my hand... there are several families on the high slope in front, and there is a big sign hanging on the willow tree." Then he called the female guest " If you want to have good wine, go to Xinghua Village”, which also evolved from here. "Xinghua Village" is not necessarily the name of the real village, nor does it necessarily refer to the restaurant. It is enough to point to this beautiful village deep in the apricot blossoms. It goes without saying that there is a small hotel there waiting to receive guests traveling in the rain.
Not only that. In real life, asking for directions is just a means. The goal is to actually go to the hotel and get drunk. This is not necessarily the case in the poem. It just stops at "pointing to Xinghua Village in the distance" without spending another sentence. For the rest, the passers-by were happy to hear the news, how they hurried forward with more energy, how they found the hotel excitedly, and how happily they obtained the satisfaction and joy of sheltering from the rain and relieving their sorrows... …These poets can just “don’t care”. He leaves these things out of the text and leaves them to the reader's imagination, allowing the reader to seek and understand them themselves. He only introduces readers to a poetic realm, and is not responsible for guiding the panorama; on the other hand, he opens up a much broader room for imagination for readers than the words and sentences of the poem indicate. This is the "more than enough" of art.
This is the ultimate mutual enjoyment of poets and readers. This is art. This is what Chinese classical poetry is particularly good at. The ancients once said that a good poem can "describe a scene that is difficult to describe, as it is now; the inexhaustible meaning lies beyond the words." Take this "Qingming" quatrain as an example. In a certain sense, it is well-deserved.
This little poem contains not a single difficult word, nor a single allusion. The entire poem is written in very popular language, and is written with great ease, without any trace of artificiality. The syllables are very harmonious and perfect, the scene is very fresh and vivid, and the realm is beautiful and interesting. It is also natural for poems to be written in a sequential manner. The first sentence describes the situation, environment, and atmosphere, which is "qi"; the second sentence is "carrying", describing the character, showing the character's confused and confused state of mind; the third sentence is "turning", but it also puts forward the idea How to get rid of this state of mind; and this directly forced the fourth sentence, which became the highlight of the whole article-"he". In art, this is a technique of starting from low to high, gradually rising, and putting the climax at the end. The so-called climax is not a sweeping view and a dull feeling, but a vague and thought-provoking aftertaste. These are the poet's brilliance, which are worthy of learning and inheritance by future generations.