The patriotic poet Xin Qiji wrote a heroic poem for Chen Tongfu in Po Zhenzi, expressing the author's ideal of killing the enemy to serve the country and regaining lost territory, and expressed the sadness and indignation of the unrequited ambition and the twilight of the hero.
1. Original text:
Po Zhenzi · Compose a poem for Chen Tongfu as a message
Xin Qiji of the Song Dynasty
Watching the sword while drunk , Dreaming about the trumpet company camp. Eight hundred miles away, the people under his command are burning, and the sound of fifty strings turning over the Great Wall. Autumn brings troops to the battlefield.
The horse is flying fast, and the bow is like a thunderbolt. Finish the affairs of the king and the world, and win the reputation during and after death. Misfortune happens in vain!
2. Translation:
In a drunken dream, I turned on the oil lamp and looked at the sword. In my dream, I returned to the various fortresses of the past, and the horns sounded one after another. Roast beef was distributed among the men, and the band played Northern Xinjiang songs. This is autumn military parade on the battlefield. The war horses ran as fast as Luma, and the bows and arrows were like thunder, deafening. (I) wholeheartedly want to complete the great mission of regaining the lost land of the country for the monarch, and gain a good reputation that will be passed down from generation to generation. Poor man with gray hair!
4. Appreciation:
The layout of this poem is also noteworthy. The sentence "Watching a sword while drunk and burning a lamp" suddenly started, followed by dreams, company and camp divisions, troops on the battlefield, defeating the enemy, like an eagle rising straight up in the sky. And when it was soaring in the sky, it suddenly fell, sighing that "poor things happened in vain", making readers have to shed tears of regret and pity for the author's unfulfilled ambition. This writing method of sudden drop and sudden stop, if used well, is often unexpected and exciting, producing a strong artistic effect.
The dream is written heartily and vividly, pushing the patriotism, loyalty to the emperor and one's own ambition to the top. The conclusion suddenly falls. In the strong contrast between the dream and reality, it expresses the difficulty of venting one's ambition. He was filled with sadness and anger.
Although it does not suffer from the pain of battlefield battles of its predecessors, it still has the intensity of battlefield battles. The concluding sentence expresses the sadness and indignation of the unrequited ambition, reflecting the author's resentment and resentment in his heart.
The whole poem expresses the author's thoughts and feelings of wanting to kill the enemy and serve the country, but has made great achievements but has not yet fulfilled his ambition due to his old age.
5. Author:
Xin Qiji (May 28, 1140 - October 3, 1207), whose original name was Tanfu, was later changed to You'an, and his nickname was Jiaxuan. Shandong East Road, Jinan Prefecture, Licheng County (now Sifengzha Village, Yaoqiang Town, Licheng District, Jinan City). A poet and general of the Bold and Unconstrained School in the Southern Song Dynasty, he is known as the "Dragon of Ci". Together with Su Shi, he is called "Su Xin", and together with Li Qingzhao, he is called "Jinan Er'an".
Xin Qiji was born in the Kingdom of Jin. He resisted the Jin Dynasty and returned to the Song Dynasty as a young man. He served as the pacification envoy to Jiangxi and the pacification envoy to Fujian. He wrote "Ten Treatises on Meiqin" and "Nine Discussions", which lay out strategies for war and defense. Due to political disagreements with the ruling peace faction, he was later impeached and dismissed from office, and retired to the mountains. Before and after the Kaixi Northern Expedition, he was successively appointed as the prefect of Shaoxing, the prefect of Zhenjiang, and the Privy Council. In the third year of Kaixi (1207), Xin Qi died of illness at the age of sixty-eight. Later, he was given the posthumous title "Zhongmin" as a young master.
Xin Qiji’s life-long ambition was to recover and he was proud of his achievements. However, he had a bad fate and was ostracized, and his ambition was difficult to realize. However, his patriotic belief in restoring the Central Plains never wavered. Instead, he placed all his passion and concerns and worries about the rise and fall of the country and the destiny of the nation in his poems. The artistic styles of his poems are diverse, with the main ones being bold and unrestrained. His style is both majestic and heroic yet delicate and charming. The themes of his poems are broad and he is good at using allusions to express his patriotic enthusiasm for trying to restore the country's unity, his grief and indignation about the unfulfilled ambition, and his condemnation of the humiliation of the then rulers. There are also many works that praise the country's rivers and mountains. There are more than 600 ci poems in existence, and a collection of ci poems such as Jiaxuan Long and Short Sentences has been handed down.