Foreign night
Du Fu
The breeze rippled on the grassy coast, through the night, and blew to my still mast.
The endless plains are dotted with drooping stars. The moon runs with the river.
I hope my art can bring me fame and liberate my sick old age from the office! .
Flying around, flying around, what am I like, just a sandpiper in the vast world! .
translate
The breeze blows the fine grass on the river bank,
At night, the high-mast ship anchored alone.
The stars are hanging in the sky, and Ye Ping looks very broad;
The moonlight is surging with the waves, and the river is rolling eastward.
Is my article famous?
You should be dismissed even if you are old and sick.
What's it like to wander around alone?
Like a lonely Sha Ou between heaven and earth.
Make an appreciative comment
The first half of the poem describes the scene of "night tour": the breeze blows the fine grass on the river bank, and the high-mast boat is moored alone on the moonlit night. At that time, Du Fu was forced to leave Chengdu. In October this year, he resigned as our staff officer, and in April, his good friend Yanwu, who lived in Chengdu, passed away. In this remote place, I decided to leave East Sichuan. Therefore, this is not a vague description of the scenery, but a feeling of the scenery. Through the description of the scenery, his situation and feelings are expressed: small as grass on the river bank and lonely as a boat in the river. The third and fourth sentences write a vision: the stars are low and Ye Ping is vast; The moon surges with the waves, and the river flows eastward. These two sentences are magnificent, profound and have always been praised. Some people think it is the feeling of writing "happiness" (see "Poems of Tang and Song Dynasties, Du Fu's Five Laws" for example.
The second half of the poem is "Shu Huai". The fifth and sixth sentences say that I am a little famous. Where is it because my article is good? An official should retire because he is old and ill. This is irony, and this idea is implicit. The poet is famous for his great political ambition, but he has been suppressed for a long time and cannot display it, so his fame is actually due to his articles, which is really not what he wants. Du Fu was really old and sick at this time, but his retirement was mainly due to being excluded, not being old and sick. This shows the injustice in the poet's mind and reveals that political frustration is the fundamental reason for his wandering loneliness. The last two sentences say, what does it look like to float all over? It's like Europe in the wide world. Considering the situation at that time, the poet expressed his sadness. The water and sky are vast, and Sha Ou falls; People, like Sha Ou, move in the rivers and lakes.
Wang Fuzhi's "Jiang Zhai Shi Hua" said: "Although the scenery is divided into things, the scenery gives birth to feelings, and the feelings give birth to the scenery, each hides its own home." Scenery, Tibet and mutual residence, that is, feelings in the scene, feelings in the scene. The former writes scenes suitable for expressing the poet's feelings, so that the feelings are hidden in the scenery; The latter does not write in abstraction, but hides the scenery in writing. Du Fu's poem "A Night Outside" is an example in classical poetry where scenes live next to each other and houses block each other.
In the first month of the first year of Yongtai in Tang Daizong (765), Du Fu resigned as a staff officer and returned to live in Chengdu Caotang. (765) In April, Yanwu died of illness, and Du Fu lost his dependence in Chengdu, so he took a boat from Chengdu to the east, passing through Jiazhou (now Leshan, Sichuan) and Yuzhou (now Chongqing) to Zhongzhou (now Zhongxian, Sichuan). This poem was written on the road.