Meng Haoran's "Su Jiandejiang"
Meng Haoran (689-740) was a poet in the prosperous Tang Dynasty who was good at writing five-character poems. His poetic style was similar to that of Wang Wei, and he was also called "Wang Meng" . The following are the five unique features of his poem "Staying on the Jiande River":
Moving the boat to Yanzhu, the guest is worried about the new arrival at dusk.
The sky is wide and the trees are low, the river is clear and the moon is close to people.
This poem was written when dusk fell and the guest's sorrow deepened. The whole poem consists of four sentences and twenty words. Each sentence is connected with the other, and each word is closely connected. It is secretly connected and connected by various causal relationships, and the stitches are extremely dense.
Let’s look at the four lines of the poem respectively: in the first line, “moor at Yanzhu” closely follows “move boat”, which means “move” for “moor”; in the second line, “the guest is worried about the new” It closely follows "sunset" because "twilight" adds "sadness"; in the third sentence, "the tree is low in the sky" closely follows "wild wilderness" because the "broadness" of the wilderness makes the sky "low"; in the last sentence In the poem, "the person near the moon" closely follows "the clearness of the river" because the "clearness" of the river water makes him feel the "nearness" of the moon's shadow. Looking at the whole poem as a whole, it is centered on the sentence "At dusk, guests worry about the new things", which refers to the upper and lower parts and connects the whole poem. Regarding the story of moving the boat to the shore and the scene of the smoke in Zhouzhu written in the previous sentence, the word "rimu" is used to carry on the story, and the word "ke worry about the new" is used to carry on the story, one is combined and the other is opened. On the one hand, the incident and the scene ended with the sunset; on the other hand, the incident and the scene aroused new worries from the guests. As for the next two sentences about the vast wilderness, the sky is low, the river is clear and the moon is close, they both start from and originate from this sentence. It is because of the "sunset" that the scenery is like this, and it is because of the "guest sorrow" that it is like this. feelings.
However, such an analysis of this poem does not mean that the poet has painstakingly tried to figure out the causes and consequences of things when he interacted with things, blended emotions with scenery, and then used his thoughts and words to create words. Carefully arrange the words to respond to each other. He just has the ability to "observe me" and "observe things" as stated in Wang Guowei's "Preface to the Second Draft of Renjian Ci". With his sensitive poetic heart and keen poetic pen, he truthfully wrote about the events at that time and the events at that time. The scenery at that time and the feelings at that time, and the events, scenery and feelings have their own internal connections. Moreover, it must be pointed out that the poet's "truthful writing" does not necessarily mean an objectively faithful description of the external scenery. Taking the last two sentences of this poem as a warning, they are not "truthfulness" in the general sense, but "truthfulness" required by the specific literary form of poetry.
The "sky is low and the trees are low" in the sentence "The sky is low and the trees are low in the wilderness" seems to be contrary to reason and deviates from reality. Because the sky is boundless and green, with no visible form. It is impossible to compare with the visible form. It is neither higher than the tree nor lower than the tree. As for the usual saying, heaven is supreme and is higher than all things. In the poet's exaggerated writing, he can at most say "the sky is two thousand feet tall" (Du Fu's "The Journey of Ancient Cypresses"), and "the sky is not full of feet even if the peaks are removed" (Li Bai's "The Road to Shu is Difficult"), but this poem actually says The sky is lower than the trees. Isn't it unreasonable and untrue? But it gives people a more realistic feeling in terms of artistic effect. This shows that when poets write about scenery, they often not only require them to make rational observations and engage in objective expressions, but also require them to write about their own feelings, absorb their intuition at the time, and even allow for momentary illusions. In a specific environment, at a specific time, and in a specific mood, poetry can deviate from the objective reality and write about the subjective reality; transcending the reality of life, it can be elevated to the reality of art. This description of "trees low in the sky"
objectively and rationally does not conform to the reality in the minds of ordinary people, and contains visual errors. But for the poet, this is the peaceful scenery and wild scenery he saw when he was looking far into the distance behind the boat in Yanzhu. The sky was lower than the trees, which was his real feeling and intuition at the time. When written as a poem, only the word "low" could convey his feeling to the readers and achieve artistic fidelity. This feeling is similar to what Dai Shulun said in the poem "Rading Boat", "The night is quiet at the beginning of the month, the river sky is lower and the sky is lower", and Su Shi's poem "Chengmaiyi Tongchao Pavilion" "The sky is low and the falcons are nowhere to be seen", both are in The impression created by looking into a vast space all the way to the horizon. There is its own subjective reality and artistic reality here. According to the requirements of poetry, it may be said that sometimes if you only make an objective and rational description, it will not be a poem, or it may not be a good poem. If Meng Haoran's poem does not say that the sky is lower than the trees but that the sky is higher than the trees, it will not capture the poet's feelings at that time, and it will have no artistic appeal. Xie Zhen said in "Siming Poetry Talk": "Guanxiu said, 'The flowers in the garden are misty and the water is cool, and the children are crying on the trees.' The scene is realistic but boring. Taibai said, 'The snowflakes on Yanshan Mountain are as big as mats, and they blow off the Xuanyuan Terrace.' , the scenery is virtual but interesting." It should be said that "snowflakes are as big as a mat" is the feeling that may occur when the sky is covered with heavy snow. In addition to artistic exaggeration, there is also reality in the virtual.
The "moon near the person" in the sentence "Jiang Qing is near the moon" does not seem to be a rational and realistic description. Because the moon moving in the sky is certainly far away from the human world, but the shadow of the moon reflected in the water is not physical, and there is no such thing as a person far away or a person nearby. This "nearness" is of course not an objective "nearness", but a subjective "nearness". It is the independent bow of the poet's boat. In the dim surroundings, he moves his sight from the distance back to the near, from the horizon to the water. The sense of distance created when facing the scenery with the moon rising and reflected in the river that night was obviously an illusion. But Du Fu also said in "Man Cheng Yi Jue" that "the moon on the river is only a few feet away"; this is because, as far as the poet saw it at that time, the moon shadow in front of him was clearly very close.
As mentioned earlier, Dai Shulun, Su Shi and Meng Haoran had the same feeling of "the sky is low" in the vast space; here we can also see the feeling of "the moon is near" when mooring on the water at night, Du Fu Same with Meng Haoran. It is enough to show that this description of "low" and "near" has both its uniqueness and its homogeneity. Although it has no objective truth, it is what everyone has in mind. Therefore, the scene he writes can arouse people's feelings. The reader's sense of excitement makes the reader not only not feel that it is unreal, but also feel that it is more real.