Two Farewell Songs on the Autumn River
Wang Bo? [Tang Dynasty]
It is early autumn in a foreign country, and the bright moon in the river pavilion carries the river flow.
I feel sad about the passing of the river, and look back at the Jin tree to leave the boat.
Returning to the boat and riding back is like a journey, with the south and north of the Yangtze River looking at each other.
Who said that the waves are just one river, but the mountains and rivers are two villages.
Translation and Notes
Translation
I have been a guest in a foreign land for a long time, and I don’t know how long I will wander. It is early autumn and July, by the river. I bid farewell to my friends by the small pavilion and watched the hazy moonlight flowing with the sparkling river water.
Facing the rolling river, I felt that time was passing by. I was already sad for the frequent partings in my life, but now I saw your departing ship parked under the shade of the trees at the ferry.
The boats returning home on the river come and go as if in a queue, the carriages and horses returning home on the river are bustling like a row, and the missing people on the north and south sides of the river are looking at each other from a distance.
At the moment of reluctant parting, who can say that this turbulent river is just a stream of water? Because it is cut off by the river, it has long been felt that the mountains and rivers on both sides belong to different people's hometowns.
Notes
Already: Already. Early autumn: the first month of autumn, formerly known as Mengqiu, which is the seventh month of the lunar calendar.
The bright moon leads the river: refers to the moonlight flowing with the river. With, with, with.
Shichuan: This refers to the passing river water.
Jin: Ferry.
Yan: It seems.
Bolang: Waves.
Creative background
In the third year of Emperor Gaozong’s reign in the Tang Dynasty (AD 668), Wang Bo was expelled from Chang’an for writing “The Chicken Essay on the King of England”, and then went south to Shu. According to the word "Qiujiang" in the title of the poem and the word "foreign land" in the second poem, this poem may have been written during the period when Wang Bo lived in Shu.
Appreciation
Both poems use repeated words interestingly to express a kind of repetitive beauty: the first and sixth characters of the first two sentences of the first poem are the same , the first and third characters of the first two sentences of the second poem are the same. Wang Bo's opposition of land and water is one of his most universal and enduring parallels.
The first poem describes the poet's inner sadness when seeing off guests, and expresses the poet's feelings about friendship. The poet is already sentimental about the river and its literal and symbolic significance in parting, but what he finds particularly unbearable are the trees on land, which block his view and make it difficult for him to see his departing friend. The first and second sentences overlap the words "Zhao" and "Jiang", which gives a sense of reciprocation and a tight rhythm. When compared with the following two sentences, the change of rhythm is revealed, and the rhythm changes from tense to tense. It becomes soothing, which is consistent with the melancholy of farewell and the melancholy after separation. The third and fourth sentences say that seeing the passing river water adds to the sadness of separation, not to mention seeing the woods at the ferry hiding the friend's boat. In "Homesickness" written by Li Wei of the Song Dynasty, the two sentences "I already hate that the green mountains are blocking each other, and the green mountains are still covered by dusk clouds" also use this further writing method. The sentence "Zihan said on the Sichuan River: The deceased is like this, and he does not give up day and night" from "The Analects of Confucius·Zihan" is used here, which shows that Wang Bo is good at using the poetry of his predecessors.
The second poem is also written very affectionately. In the poem, the poet uses a very common court metonymy to make a clever argument: "Who says A is true (in fact A is true), because B (clever conception) contradicts A." Because. After parting, the river is no longer a small area, but has become the dividing line between two different worlds. In the last two sentences, the poet further describes his deep love for friendship, and at the same time, it also makes people feel the sincerity of the poet's heart.
This is a set of seven-character quatrains. There are very few seven-character quatrains among the poems handed down by the "Four Heroes of the Early Tang Dynasty". Judging from this group of poems, the author's mastery of the seven-character quatrain creation technique is obviously not proficient enough.
About the author
Wang Bo (649 or 650-676 or 675), a poet of the Tang Dynasty. Han nationality, named Zi'an. A native of Longmen, Jiangzhou (now Hejin, Shanxi). Wang Bo is as famous as Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaolin, and King Luo Bin, and is known as the "Four Heroes of the Early Tang Dynasty". Wang Bo is the first of the "Four Heroes of the Early Tang Dynasty". In August of the third year of Shangyuan (676), Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, when he was returning from Jiaozhi to visit his father, he unfortunately crossed the sea and drowned, and died of panic. Wang Bo is good at the five rhymes and five unique poems in poetry genres. His representative works include "Sending Du Shaofu to Shuzhou"; his main literary achievement is parallel prose, which is the best in terms of quantity and quality. His representative works include "Preface to Prince Teng's Pavilion" wait.