Linshu Yizhong Chen
China's literature has always emphasized winning by implication, avoiding the direct description of things, and is used to highlighting from the side to capture the subtlety of implication. The most prominent is a description of Guan Yu's wine chop Hua Xiong in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms:
(Guan Yu) paid the bill, raised his knife and flew on the horse. The vassals heard the drums outside the Commissioner deafening, shouting deafening, such as the sky were to fall, and all the people were surprised. He was about to listen when the Luan bell rang and the horse arrived in Zhong Jun. Yun Chang lifted Hua Xiong's head and threw it on the ground. The wine was still warm.
The author doesn't need a lot of pen and ink to write how Yunshang fought against Hua Xiong and how dangerous it was. On the contrary, the author didn't mention anything about it, and instead wrote the feelings of the governors in the account. It is precisely because of this that Guan Yu's bravery can be rendered incisively and vividly. I'm afraid it's hard to get such an effect compared with how much pen and ink is used to write the scene of the fight.
This is the profile description in the novel, which is similar to the profile description in the poem. The most famous is the description of Qin Luofu in Shang Mo Sang:
When Monkey saw Luo Fu, he straightened his shoulders and smoothed his moustache. When the teenager saw Luo Fu, he took off his hat and put on his sheath. The tiller forgot to plow and the hoe forgot to hoe, so they blamed each other and sat watching Luo Fu.
When writing about the beauty of Luo Fu, you must not write directly, but write about the demeanor of the viewer. As for the beauty of Luo Fu, readers should be allowed to imagine and think. If the author spared no expense to describe Luo Fu in detail from beginning to end, I'm afraid it's hard to get such an effect.
So how is the outline description used in poetry?
First of all, you can compare things or people written from the side by describing the environment. For example, Chen Yu's Join the Army:
The wind by the sea cracked the frozen mud, and the leaves of the phoenix tree fell off the branches and broke.
The sound of the flute in the snow-capped mountains is not seen, but it is only in the background of Tianshan snow that a red flag is heading for the peak.
The soldiers in the army are faced with an extremely harsh environment: the cold wind blows at the foot of Tianshan Mountain, the frozen mud around the lake cracks one after another, the leaves on the buttonwood tree have been scraped off, and the branches have been blown off by the strong wind. The last two sentences are intended to write about people, but they are not written directly, let alone come clean, but only two things related to people-the flute and the red flag. Let's not talk about how people March and fight in a harsh environment, but try their best to render the harsh environment. But after reading the whole poem, the high fighting spirit and indomitable spirit of the soldiers in the poem are already in sight. At the same time, it also leaves a very broad imagination space for readers.
And Li Yi's "Listening to Jiao Xiao":
Last night, the elm trees were frosted and sounded the horn when the city was lonely.
Infinite, autumn wind rolls Xiao Khan.
This poem also uses the method of profile description to describe people's homesickness. The recruiter was not allowed to appear and did not directly express his grief. Instead, the horn and rainbow in a specific frontier fortress atmosphere were chosen to reflect the situation and mood of the expedition. In the first two sentences, the frost, the sound of the horn and the lonely moon render a desolate and lonely atmosphere; The last two sentences describe Hongyan flying from Saibei to the south. She was moved when she heard Xiao Chanyu playing in the corner of the painting. She wandered about the border. In this way, it is conceivable that geese attract people and recruit people.
Re-look at Yao He s "Poor Frontier Words" in Tang Dynasty;
General is a town in Guzhou, with greasy water and soft Spring Festival.
The air at night and the songs and dances of the city have just gone away, and passers-by don't believe this is the end of the town.
This poem is praising the general's defensive achievements, but if it is praised positively, it will easily fall into the stereotype and have no poetry at all. Therefore, the poet deliberately renders the scenery from the side by writing about it. The poet wrote scenes, deliberately selected mountains, water, solar terms and silk pipes on a clear spring night, and used these beautiful and prosperous spring scenes to set off the scenes of singing and dancing, thus showing the general's defensive achievements. Finally, with the feelings of pedestrians, it is self-evident to praise the great changes in the border town and the general's defensive work from the side again.
Sometimes, the object to be described should not be described in a positive way. When describing positively, you can't write it down, or it will become empty or stereotyped. At this time, you can also set off the object to be described by writing about people or things related to it. As Mei said, the best poem should be "a scene that is difficult to write, such as the eyes, and there are countless opinions". Take the poem "The Book of Songs, Beautiful Women and Quiet Women" as an example;
This quiet girl is so cute that she will come to the corner of my town. Deliberately hiding for me to find, scratching my head.
The quiet girl looks good. Give me a tong tube. Red has a bright red color. Love it is really a bright color.
This country exploits me, Meili Yi and is rare. It is not as beautiful as weeds, and beauty gives people deep affection.
The "quiet girl" in the poem is a beautiful image, but the author only uses the words "mourning" and "bo" as a positive description, and they are still very general words. But why does it leave such a deep impression on readers? I'm afraid this is due to the wonderful introduction description.
If you really just write "a quiet girl and her sister" and "a quiet girl and her beauty", readers will naturally not be impressed, but the author wrote "a quiet girl and her beauty, as long as I am in the corner of the city" in the first section. Love without seeing, scratching your head. "I didn't write about women, but turned my pen to a young man. That's different. What should a girl who can make a young man anxious like this look like? This is what the author intends to worry the readers. Don't write about the girl directly, but about the guy waiting for her, in fact, it is about the beauty of the girl. This writing is profile description.
In the next two sections, even the young man is not written, and the two things "Tong Guan" and "Fat Man" are rewritten. Tongguan is just a musical instrument. What is there to write about? But in the hands and eyes of young people, it is different. Its color is beautiful and its luster is beautiful. Here, Tongguan is not only a musical instrument but also a symbol of love. And "fat" is no longer a simple weed, ah, "the beauty of a bandit girl is a gift from a beautiful woman", how can it not be beautiful? Love me, love my dog. It turns out that beauty is not these things, but the beauty of their owners!
The poem ends here, there is nothing more, but the reader is waiting. What is the beauty in the poem? Readers also scratch their heads. But the author, stop here and stop writing. Can you continue to write? Not so good. Here, poetry arouses the reader's emotions, and the following can completely let the reader imagine.
Another example is Bai Juyi's Snow at Night:
This night, the pillow was ice, which surprised me. I saw the light snow outside the window.
It's late at night until it snows heavily, because you can hear the sound of bamboo branches breaking from time to time.
The poet writes about the night snow first from the feeling. He feels cold, which means it has been snowing for a long time. Then visually write that it snows heavily and accumulates deeply; Finally, from the hearing, snow is strong. But the author didn't mention anything about the snow scene. The snow at night is as heavy as you can imagine. This writing not only avoids the trouble that the night snow is difficult to describe because of darkness, but also conforms to the actual situation at that time, and can also find another way to set off a broad imagination space from the side.
It can be seen that the beauty of profile description is that it can turn virtual into real and write virtual with real. "The scenery that is difficult to write is like now, and there are endless opinions." It is not only implicit, but also leaves a very broad imagination space, which greatly enriches the content and artistic conception of poetry and is worth tasting again and again.