First of all, in the face of an ancient poem, you should be able to read the basic meaning. In understanding the meaning of words, we can start from the following aspects:
1, pay attention to verbs. The words in poetry are the most expressive. For example, the word "leftover" in "Lonely Sunset Leaves a Willow" has the meaning of "residual" and "residual", which lasts for a long time and gives people a sense of helplessness that words such as "staying" and "seeing" cannot express. Another example is the "resentment" in "Why should a strong brother complain about Liu".
2. Pay attention to adjectives. The word "loneliness" in "The Yellow River is far above the white clouds, an isolated city and Wan Ren Mountain" describes the loneliness of the environment.
3. Pay attention to overlapping words and onomatopoeic words. The most typical example is "looking for it, being cold and clear, feeling sad and miserable", whose function is to enhance the sense of rhythm of language or play an emphasis role, making poetry more vivid and vivid.
4. Pay attention to the word order. In order to rhyme or emphasize, ancient poems often invert sentences.
5. Language features. Mainly: fresh, that is, the language is novel and unconventional; Plain, that is, unadorned, plain and easy to understand; Gorgeous, that is, rich words and literary talent; Bright, that is, decisive and broken; Implicit, that is, not directly narrative, but tortuous speech, saying this, meaning saying that; Concise, that is, clean and concise.
Secondly, we should be able to make clear the images expressed in poetry. The so-called image is the unity of internal ideological and emotional connotation and external objective image. Generally speaking, a poem has many images, but generally there is only one artistic conception. Image is not a simple arrangement and combination of scenery. In reality, "vines", "trees" and "crows" belong to plants and animals, and they have no emotional color. However, in Ma Zhiyuan's Tian Jing Sha, the words "withered", "old" and "faint" were added respectively. Taken together, they are not objective things in essence, but images with strong subjective feelings. It can be seen that we should start with the characteristics of the scenery and feel the poet's feelings as a whole according to the combination of the scenery. At the same time, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of some special images, such as plum, bamboo, chrysanthemum, willow, tree crown, bird, moon, rain and running water.
The second step is to understand the emotion and analyze the theme.
The main melody tendency of ancient poetry should be clarified;
Patriotism, love for the people, make contributions and serve the country, such as most of the works of frontier poets in the Tang Dynasty, Yue Fei's "Man Jiang Hong" and Xin Qiji's "What happened in the world before the king became famous". Some people care about the country and the people, others care about the sufferings of people's livelihood, such as Qu Yuan's "Long gas reservoir tears, mourning the sufferings of people's livelihood", Du Fu's "Zhu Men's wine stinks, the road has frozen bones" and Lu You's "Jia Gu is so worried that he will forget his life". Some reflect that the war has brought disaster and pain to the people, such as "three officials and three points";
Life experience Ancient poets always have the ambition of "ruling the country and leveling the world", but lofty and conceited poets often make poets run into a wall and be excluded, and lofty ideals can never be realized. Therefore, poems expressing unpaid ambitions account for a considerable proportion in ancient poetry. Its characteristics are mostly melancholy and indignation. Li Bai is the most typical. When I was young, I went out with a smile, and my generation was not Artemisia. He is full of confidence and optimism. After living in Chang 'an for ten years, he couldn't help feeling helpless that "the sober people and saints in the old days have been forgotten, and only great drinkers can be immortalized", and finally he had to "but let me raise a white deer on my green slope and ride to you, the great mountain, when I need you". Others such as Bai Juyi's We Are All Unhappy-and heaven remains our neighbourhood. We understand. What is the relationship between acquaintances? ”。 In addition, homesickness and relegation also belong to this category.
Love includes praising the beauty of love, such as the Book of Songs, and expressing the suffering of lovesickness, such as Su Shi's Ten Years of Life and Death in Jiangchengzi. Some people object to the oppression of young men and women by feudal ethics, such as Peacock Flying Southeast. There are also a lot of poems in this kind of works, such as Li Bai's Midnight Wu Ge.
Tao Yuanming's works belong to the category of leisure, and most of them are the leisure of seclusion, except for the feelings of hating the secular and despising the powerful. The pastoral poets in the Tang Dynasty, such as Wang Wei's Autumn Night in the Mountain, all expressed their feelings for the mountains and rivers. This kind of poetry often contrasts the darkness of officialdom and social corruption with the beauty of mountains and rivers.
Friends Du Fu's "Guests Arrive" expresses the joy of friends visiting themselves, while "Farewell to the Second Ambassador Anxi" and "Biedongda" express their concern and wishes for friends, which are farewell poems. Spring Memories of Li Bai expresses the friendship between poets.
Some lament that time flies (teenagers leave home and old people return), and feel that things are transformed (Wang Xietang died before Yan in the old days), and some are philosophical (from the hillside, there is no rain or shine).
When understanding the theme of poetry, we should also make clear the era of the poet's life and his life experience.
The third step is to look at the style and distinguish the techniques.
1. Style schools show their own unique styles, styles and interests in their creations due to their different life experiences, emotional temperament and artistic accomplishment, thus forming different styles of works. For example, Li Bai is elegant and free, Du Fu is depressed and frustrated, Su Shi is broad-minded and heroic, and Liu Yong is gentle and graceful.
2. Common expressions and expressions in ancient poetry.
Lyricism by borrowing scenery: In ancient poetry, "scenery and words are both love stories", which can be said that scenery contains the poet's feelings and is a euphemism for the poet's feelings. The color of the scenery is particularly noteworthy. Generally, warm colors indicate enthusiasm, liveliness, enthusiasm and enthusiasm. Cool colors represent indifference, depression, loneliness and desolation. The "green" in the "green guest house" gives people a sense of dignity brought by parting; "All colors are always spring", but it is full of spring. The corresponding terms include emotion and scene blending, scene blending and so on.
Expressing one's will by supporting things: poets are always unwilling or unable to directly express some feelings, so they pin these feelings on external things. Symbolism also belongs to this category. For example, Yu Qian's Lime Poetry in the Ming Dynasty expressed his feelings of "keeping innocence in the world" by praising lime.
Borrowing from the past to satirize the present: this is the most common in chanting history and cherishing ancient poems. Xin Qiji's "Looking Back at the Gubei Pavilion in Jingkou" satirizes current events and expresses emotions by evaluating people and events in history. This is especially true of Du Mu's epic.
Set-off: there is a set-off, which can also be said to be a set-off, such as "when the river mysteriously widens towards the full moon" to set off the sadness when leaving; There is a contrast, such as "Tonamiyama is more secluded", which uses birdsong to contrast the quietness of the mountain.
Reality and reality set each other off: the real image focuses on reproducing objective things, and the virtual image is an aesthetic imagination space induced and developed by the real image, which is embodied in the use of hints, symbols or rhetoric in poetry.
Initiation: Say something else first, which leads to chanting words, such as "Mulberry leaves flourish first and then fall", "I don't know why my Jinse has fifty strings, each of which is like a flower, and the interval is like youth".
In addition, it is necessary to clarify the role of rhetorical devices such as metaphor, exaggeration and personification in poetry.