Meng Haoran (689-740) was a poet who was good at writing five-character poems in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. His poetic style is similar to that of Wang Wei, also known as "Wang Meng". The following is one of his poems entitled "Sleeping at night in Jiande":
Stop the boat in a foggy small state, when new worries come to the guest's heart.
The vastness of the wilderness is deeper than trees, and the moon is very close to the moon.
This poem was written at dusk, when the guests' minds deepened. The whole poem is four sentences and twenty crosses, each sentence is a line, and the lines are interlocking. They are secretly linked and accepted by various causal relationships, and the needle and thread are extremely dense.
As far as the four poems are concerned, the first sentence "parking the smoke building" is closely related to "moving the boat", and "moving" means parking; The second sentence "visitors worry about the new" follows "sunset" because "dusk" adds "worry"; The third sentence "low trees in the sky" follows "wild" because vilen's "wild" makes him feel "low" in the sky; The last sentence "the moon is close to people" followed by "Qingjiang" because the river is clear and the moon shadow is close. As far as the whole poem is concerned, it takes the sentence "and the sun is fading, the old days are recalled" as the center, taking care of the whole poem and connecting the whole article. As for the moving boat to the shore and the smoky scenery in the boat, this sentence uses the word "sunset", which is carried forward and integrated with the word "guests are worried about the new". On the one hand, its events and its scenery have become sunset; On the other hand, this incident and this scene have caused new worries. As for the next two sentences, the sky is high and the river is clear and the moon is near, not only because of this sentence, but also because of this sentence. It is because of the "sunset" that such scenery is created, and it is because of the "guest sorrow" that such feelings are created.
However, this analysis of this poem does not mean that the poet took pains to deduce the ins and outs of things, carefully arranged the words, and then made words with words when I was in harmony with things, feelings and scenery. He just has the ability of "observing me" and "observing things" mentioned by Wang Guowei in the preface to the second draft of Ci Hua on Earth. With a sentimental poetic heart and keen poetic pen, he wrote the events, scenes and feelings at that time truthfully, and their events, scenes and feelings have their own internal relations. Moreover, it must be pointed out that the poet's "truthful writing" is not necessarily an objective and faithful description of the external scenery. As far as the last two sentences of this poem are concerned, they are not "truth" in the general sense, but "truth" required by this special literary form of poetry.
At first glance, the word "the sky is low and the trees are low" in the sentence "How wide the world used to be and how close the trees are to heaven" seems to be contrary to reason and reality. Because the sky is green, there is no tangible body, and it can't be compared with tangible body, neither higher nor lower than the tree. As for according to the usual saying, the sky is supreme, higher than all things in Vientiane. Among the poet's exaggerated brushstrokes, the most talked about are "The tip of a green fish-the sky is greener than two thousands of feet" (Du Fu's Gu Baixing) and "The highest cliff is barely less than a foot in the sky" (Li Bai's "Difficult Road to Shu"), but this poem actually says that the sky is lower than the tree. Is it unreasonable and unreal? But it gives people a more realistic sense of artistic effect. This shows that the poet's description of landscapes often requires him not only to make rational observation and objective expression, but also to write his own feelings, absorb the intuition at that time, and even allow him to include temporary hallucinations. In a specific environment, a specific time and a specific mood, the pen can deviate from the objective truth and write its subjective truth; Beyond the truth of life, promoted to the truth of art, this "dwarf tree in the sky"
Objectively and rationally speaking, the description does not conform to the truth in the minds of ordinary people, including visual errors. But as far as the poet is concerned, this is the ochre and wild interest he saw when he looked from the back of the ship. The sky is lower than the tree, which is his real feeling and intuition at that time; As a poem, only a word "low" can convey the feelings at that time to readers and be faithful in art. This feeling is similar to the feeling that "the sky is lower on the river in the quiet night at the beginning of the moon" in Dai Shulun's poem "Sailing" and "the sky is low and there is no place to watch the horizon" in Su Shi's poem "Chengmaiyi Tongchao Pavilion". There is its own subjective truth and artistic truth. According to the requirements of poetry, it may be said that sometimes if you only describe it objectively and rationally, it is not a poem, or it is not a good poem. Meng Haoran's poem "If the sky is not lower than the tree but higher than the tree" failed to capture the poet's feelings at that time and had no artistic appeal. Xie Zhen said in "Poems in Four Words": "Guan Xiu's statement that' flowers are flowing in the courtyard and children are singing songs in the trees' is realistic and boring. Taibai said that' Yanshan snowflakes are as big as seats, and pieces of them blow down Xuanyuantai', which is ethereal and has a taste. " It should be said that "snowflakes are as big as seats" is a feeling that may appear when heavy snow is falling and the sky is overwhelming. In addition to artistic exaggeration, there is also truth in the virtual.
"Close to the moon" and "How close the moon is in the water!" Does not seem to be a rational and realistic description. Because, of course, the moon running in the sky is far away from the world, and the moon shadow reflected in the water is not true. It doesn't matter whether it is far or near. This "near" is of course not an objective "near", but a subjective "near". It is a sense of distance formed by the poet's independent bow, returning his sight from far and near, moving from the horizon to the water surface, and reflecting into the river against the jathyapple scenery at the starting point. There is obviously an illusion among them. However, Du Fu also said that "how many feet go to Jiangyue" in "A Unique City"; This is because: as far as the poet saw at that time, the moon shadow in front of him was obviously close at hand. As mentioned above, Dai Shulun, Su Shi and Meng Haoran have the same "low altitude" feeling in the vast space; Once again, when Du Fu and Meng Haoran stayed on the water at night, they both felt "near the moon". It is enough to show that this description of "low" and "near" has both its uniqueness and its homosexuality. Although it is objective, it is in everyone's mind, so the scenery it writes can arouse readers' sense of * *, which makes readers feel not only unreal, but doubly real.
Of course, the reason why these two poems particularly infect readers and become famous sentences from ancient times to the present is not only because of their vivid scenery, but also because of their feelings in the scenery, which makes people far from God. Shen Deqian said in his Collection of Tang Poems that the poem "depicts the scenery in the second half, but the guests are worried about themselves". Huang Shucan also said in Notes on Tang Poetry: "People only appreciate the beauty of its scenery, but don't know that it is poetic in travel." If we ponder carefully, it is not difficult to realize that these two poems not only present the objective images at that time, but also inject the poet's "guest worries" that deepen with the sunset, which is a kind of artistic conception with a sense of color.
As mentioned earlier, "sunset" is the cause of "new troubles" and is based on life experience. In life, when the twilight is getting deeper, it is always a sad time. At this time, the poet's new worries were caused by dusk, and only at dusk did he have new worries. For example, Bao Zhao's poem "Sunset from Wangjiang to Sung Hoon" says that "travelers are unhappy, and their thoughts increase at dusk", and Liu Changqing's poem "Guazhou Road Farewell Li Duangong, and then send him to Yangzhou Road" says that "there is sorrow in the south of the Yangtze River, and the green hills wither" and Xin Qiji's poem. However, from the creative experience, the poet should feel and write because of sadness, and the dusk that readers see from the poem is because of sadness, but only when there is new sadness in their hearts does the sunset appear, and the causal relationship is reversed. Therefore, to appreciate this poem, we should not only look at the poet's melancholy from the perspective of boating at sunset, but also look at the poet's melancholy from the perspective of low altitude and dusk near the clear moon. From the sentence "Wild", we can associate it with Cen Can's poem "Wandering in the Yellow Sand Dune, Looking Up to the Sky" and the nameless poem "Dragon's head is loose", "Walking around in all directions, thinking about my service, floating in the wilderness" and so on. It expresses a kind of lost and lonely travel situation; However, both poems clearly express the feeling of "being fascinated by tourists" and "floating in the air", while Meng's poems hide this sadness in the seemingly pure scenery description, which is even more fascinating outside the poem. From the sentence "Qingjiang River", we can also think of some similar poems, such as Zhu Chao's poem "Looking at the Moon in the Boat", which says that "the river is thousands of miles wide, and there are no neighbors in a boat alone, only the bright moon is left, and people follow you in the distance. "Their feelings of loneliness may be the same; However, Zhu's poems are full of feelings in the sentences, while Meng's sentences only vaguely reveal feelings with a word "near", leaving more room for thinking outside the poems.