The Yellow Crane Tower is a seven-character poem written by Cui Hao, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, and was selected as one of the 300 Tang poems. This poem describes the beautiful scenery overlooking the Yellow Crane Tower and is a masterpiece of nostalgia. The first four sentences are about visiting the past, and the last four sentences are about standing on the Yellow Crane Tower. Poetry is not harmonious, but the syllables are clear and not awkward. Become the envy of all previous dynasties. This poem was very famous at that time. It is said that Li Bai boarded the Yellow Crane Tower and was asked to write a poem. He said: "I have a scene in front of me, and Cui Hao wrote a poem on it." Yan Yu's evaluation of Canglang's poems: "Cui Hao's Yellow Crane Tower should be the first of seven-character poems in Tang Dynasty."
Yellow Crane Tower
Cui Hao
The fairy of the past has flown away by the yellow crane, leaving only an empty Yellow Crane Tower.
The yellow crane never revisited earth, there have been no long white clouds for thousands of years.
Every tree in Hanyang has become clear due to sunlight, and Nautilus Island is covered with sweet grass.
But I looked home, and the twilight was getting thicker. The river is shrouded in mist, which brings people deep melancholy.
Word annotation
1, Yellow Crane Tower: Three Kingdoms Wu was built in the second year. This is an ancient and famous building. Its former site is on the Yellow Crane Rock in Wuchang, Hubei, overlooking the river and facing Guishan across the river.
2, leisurely: floating.
3. Qing Chuan: a mysterious river in the sun. Sichuan, plain.
4, vividly: clear and countable.
5. Hey: Describe lush vegetation.
6. Nautilus Island: It is located in the southwest of Wuchang County, Hubei Province. According to the records of the later Han Dynasty, when the ancestor was the satrap of Jiangxia, some people offered parrots here, so it was called Nautilus Island.
7. Xiangguan: hometown.
8. Smoke wave: gloomy river.
Vernacular translation
The immortal of the past has flown by the Yellow Crane, leaving only the empty Yellow Crane Tower here.
The yellow crane never came back here. For thousands of years, only white clouds have been fluttering.
The trees in Qingchuan Pavilion in Hanyang are clearly visible, as is Parrot Island with lush vegetation.
I don't know where my hometown is at dusk Seeing the foggy waves on the river is even more worrying!
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In the Yuan Dynasty, the new biography of talented people in Tang Dynasty recorded that Li Bai once wrote poems on the Yellow Crane Tower. When he saw Cui Hao's works, he closed his hand and said, "The scenery in front of him can't be seen. Cui Hao wrote a poem on it." Legend or attachment of later generations may not be true. But Li Bai did write poems twice to imitate this poetic style. The first four sentences of his poem Nautilus Island say: "The parrot crossed the Wujiang River eastward, and its name spread to the upper reaches of the river. The parrot flies to Longshan in the west, and the tree of Zhou Fang is He Qingqing. " Just like Cui Shi. There is also a poem "On the Phoenix Terrace in Nanjing", which is obviously copied. Because of this, many poets have a reputation of oral communication. For example, Yan Yu's Canglang Poetry says, "Cui Hao's Yellow Crane Tower should be the first of seven-character poems in the Tang Dynasty." Gal, Cui Hao's "Yellow Crane Tower" is even more famous.
The reason why the Yellow Crane Tower can become a masterpiece through the ages lies mainly in the aesthetic implication of the poem itself.
First, the artistic beauty of combining image with reality. The Yellow Crane Tower is named after its Yellow Crane Mountain (also known as Snake Mountain) in Wuchang. Legend has it that in ancient times there was a fairy who crossed here by yellow crane (see Zhi); It is also said that Fei went to the immortal to drive a crane (see "Taiping Universe", quoted from "Tu Jing"). Poetry is to think about the origin of the name of a building, from legend to writing, and then grow out. What is the fairy crossing the crane? What is it now? If it is said to be "gone forever", there will be regrets that the years are gone and the ancients are gone; The fairy went to the empty building, leaving only the white clouds in the sky, which lasted for thousands of years and could show the boundless generosity of the world. The poet's strokes describe the feelings that people who boarded the Yellow Crane Tower at that time often felt, with boundless spirit and sincere feelings.
Second, the magnificent weather and colorful painting beauty. Painting in poetry has always been regarded as an artistic standard of landscape poetry, and the Yellow Crane Tower has reached this wonderful realm. In the legend of crane, the first couplet depicts the close-up of the Yellow Crane Tower, suggesting that the building is located in the mountains and faces the river. In the lyric poem lamenting that "Yellow Crane will never come to earth again", Zhuan Xu described the prospect of Yellow Crane Tower, showing the spectacular sight of towering buildings and white clouds. The beautiful scenery of the neckline directly outlines the bright sunshine on the river outside the Yellow Crane Tower. The tail couplet echoes around the beam, whispering tactfully, indirectly showing the hazy evening scene on the lower reaches of the Yellow Crane Tower. On the whole picture shown in the poem, the close view, distant view, sun view and night view of the Yellow Crane Tower appear alternately, with wonderful changes and magnificent weather. Against each other are the immortal yellow crane, the famous building resort, the blue sky and white clouds, the Qingchuan sandbar, the green trees and grass, and the sunset river, which are vivid and colorful. The whole poem is full of artistic meaning and aesthetic feeling.
There used to be a saying that "writing is based on qi". The first four sentences of this poem seem to be spoken casually, spinning in one breath and going down the trend without hindrance. The word "Yellow Crane" appears repeatedly, but because of its momentum, readers "wave five strings to see Hong Fei" and read on in a hurry, which is a taboo in metrical poems. The poet seems to have forgotten that he wrote the seven laws of "floating before cutting", and every word has a fixed tone. Try it: the five or six words in the first couplet are the same as "Yellow Crane"; The third sentence is almost all snoring; The fourth sentence ends with a three-level tone such as "empty leisurely"; No matter any confrontation, it is based on the syntax of ancient poetry. Is this because the seven laws were not finalized at that time? No, there are already seven standardized laws, which were written by Cui Hao himself. Is it the poet who deliberately writes disharmonious laws? Not necessarily. He is different from Du Fu's later metrical poems in that he deliberately created his own tunes. It seems that I still ignored it. As Lin Daiyu said when she taught people to write poems in A Dream of Red Mansions, "If there are strange sentences, even the truth is wrong." Here, Cui Hao practiced according to the principle of "not hurting the meaning with words", which is why he wrote such a rare poem in the Seven Laws. In addition, the repeated use of disyllabic words, rhymes, reduplicated words or sentences, such as "Yellow Crane" and "Return", disyllabic phrases, reduplicated words such as "Here" and "On the River", and reduplicated words such as "Youyou", "Lili" and "Lush" all contribute to the sound of this poem.
The first half of this poem, put in order, and the second half, is about what I saw and felt in the building, and the homesickness caused by the grass and trees overlooking Hanyang City and Nautilus Island from upstairs. This is put first and then collected. If you just let nature take its course, don't accept it, don't stick to the rules, and don't return to the meter, then it's not seven tones, but seven ancient ones. This poem seems to be divided into two parts, but in fact, the text is always focused from beginning to end, with only one breath in the middle. This seemingly continuous connection is also the most organized from the perspective of the beginning, inheritance, transformation and combination of rhythmic poetry. When discussing that the second couplet of legal poems should be attached to the first couplet, Yuan Yang wrote several poets and legalists: "This couplet should be broken (the first couplet), like a dragon ball, and should be firmly adhered to." This is the case in the first four sentences of this poem, which tells the legend of a fairy riding a crane. Couplets and puzzles embrace each other and are integrated. Yang Zai also said that the "turn" of the neck couplet: "Avoid the meaning of the former couplet, and change it, such as thunder breaking the mountain, the viewer is amazed." The metaphor of thunder is intended to show that there should be a sudden change in the first five or six sentences, which is unexpected. At the turning point of this poem, the style turns from right to right, and the realm is completely different from that of the former couplet, which just meets this requirement of the law. The sudden death of a native Syrian yellow crane gives people a feeling of unknowability. Suddenly it became a grass tree in Qingchuan, and I can vividly see the scene in front of Manchuria. This contrast can not only dye away the sadness of those who climb the building and overlook, but also make the literature change. "The Songs of Chu Recruit Hermits" says: "Wang Sun swims without returning, and spring grass grows luxuriantly." The poem also uses the language of "fragrant grass" to sort out the meaning of where the end point is, which makes it difficult to stop thinking. At the end of the couplet, homesickness at sunset along the Yanbo River is written, which makes the poem return to the invisible state at the beginning, and can respond to the previous "combination", such as the tail of a leopard, which also conforms to the law of poetry.
It is precisely because of its superb art and great success that this poem is regarded as the swan song of the Yellow Crane Tower, which is understandable.
Brief introduction of the author
Cui Hao, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, was born in Bianzhou (now Kaifeng City, Henan Province). In 723 AD (the 11th year of Kaiyuan), he was a scholar, and he was the official to the foreign minister. His early poems were mostly about boudoir, superficial and frivolous. After the frontier fortress, the poetic style was greatly improved, and it became normal and awe-inspiring, especially the frontier fortress poems were generous and bold. There are 42 Cui and Complete Tang Poems compiled by Ming people.