It rains heavily during the Qingming Festival, and pedestrians on the road feel like dying.
From "Qingming" by Du Mu of the Tang Dynasty
It rains heavily during the Qingming Festival, and pedestrians on the road feel like they are dying.
Ask where the restaurant is, the shepherd boy points to Xinghua Village.
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 Duhu Lake, Southeast Lake and other scenic spots nearby.
Translation
Drizzle falls one after another during the Qingming Festival in the south of the Yangtze River, and all the travelers on the road are in despair.
May I ask the locals where to buy wine to drown their sorrows? The shepherd boy smiled and pointed to Xinghua Mountain Village in the distance.
Appreciation
The poet used the word "many" to describe the "fire and rain" that day, which is really good. How can you see that? "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 ancients felt that the Qingming Festival was not exactly the same as our concept of it today. 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-breaking" at this moment; otherwise, if it rained a little, it would be worthy of "soul-breaking". Isn't that quite unreasonable?
In this way, we can return to the word "one after another". Originally, people traveling during the festival already have a lot 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. What to do? 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.
Who are you asking for directions? The poet did not tell us in the third sentence, but it is more wonderful than 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. Did the shepherd boy answer? We don't know, but the answer with "action" is more vivid and powerful than the answer. Let's watch the play "Little Cowherd". When someone asks the shepherd boy for directions, he points his hand and says, "Look at my hand!" It's a combination of words and actions - that is, a combination of " "Music" brings "picture", both of which 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". No, it is better to say that it includes "music". The reader appreciates the beautiful "picture" pointing the way, and at the same time he also faintly hears the "music" of the answer.
"Yao" literally means far. But those of us who read poetry must not stick to the literal meaning and think that Xinghua Village must be very far away from here. With this finger, we seem 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, walked forward with more energy, found the hotel with excitement, and were pleased to obtain the satisfaction and pleasure of sheltering from the rain and relieving their sorrows... ..., these poets can "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 panoramic view; 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 between poets and us readers, this is art, and this is what our country’s 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 told from chapter to chapter, and they are written sequentially. 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 our learning and inheritance!