"Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" is a travel poem written by the poet Zhang Ji when he passed by Hanshan Temple after the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty. The following is the ancient poem "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night", I hope it can help you!
The ancient poem "Night Mooring on the Maple Bridge"
The moon is setting, the crows are crying, the sky is full of frost, the river maples, the fishing fires are facing melancholy.
At Hanshan Temple outside Gusu City, the midnight bell rang for the passenger ship.
Notes on "Night Mooring at Fengqiao"
Fengqiao: outside Changmen in today's Suzhou City.
Night mooring: docking the boat on the shore at night.
Wutiao: One is said to be the crow's cry, and another is said to be Wutiao Town.
The sky is covered with frost: The sky cannot be covered with frost. The word "frost" should be understood as severe cold; the sky is covered with frost, which is an image metaphor for extremely cold air.
Jiang Feng: Generally interpreted as "maple tree by the river", Jiang refers to Wusong River, which originates from Taihu Lake, flows through Shanghai, and merges into the Yangtze River, commonly known as Suzhou River. Others think it refers to "Jiangcun Bridge" and "Maple Bridge". "Maple Bridge" is located in the western suburbs outside the South Gate (Chang Hemen) of Wuxian County. Its original name was "Fengqiao", but it was changed to "Maple Bridge" because of Zhang Ji's poem.
Fishing fire: Usually explained, "fishing fire" refers to the lights on fishing boats; there is also a saying that "fishing fire" is actually fishing partners.
To Chou Mian: With the meaning of Chou Mian, this sentence personifies the words Jiang Feng and Yu Huo. There are people in later generations who do not understand poetry and doubt how Jiang Feng and Yuhuo can deal with Chou Mian, so they come up with a theory that Chou Mian is the name of the mountain opposite Hanshan Temple.
Gusu: Another name for Suzhou, named after Gusu Mountain in the southwest of the city.
Hanshan Temple: Located near Fengqiao, it was built in the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasty. According to legend, it was named after monks Han Shan and Shi De who lived here during the Tang Dynasty. In today's Xifengqiao Town, Suzhou City. The real name is "Miaoli Puming Pagoda Courtyard", also known as Fengqiao Temple; another way of saying it is that "Hanshan" refers to a mountain that shuns cold weather, not the name of a temple. The temple has been rebuilt several times, and the current temple was built after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The temple bell was taken away by the Japanese during World War II and its whereabouts are unknown.
Midnight bells: Today, Buddhist temples ring bells at midnight (Spring Festival), but at that time there was a habit of ringing bells at midnight, which was also called "Impermanent Bell" or "Midnight Bell". Ouyang Xiu, a great writer in the Song Dynasty, once raised a question: "Poets are greedy for good sentences, so that the truth does not make sense. This is a problem in writing. For example, Zhang Ji's poem "The bell rings at midnight". Although the sentence is good, it is not as good as midnight. What’s the reason for ringing the bell?” However, after many on-site visits, we learned that Buddhist temples in Suzhou and nearby areas have the custom of ringing the midnight bell.
The meaning of "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge"
The moon has set and the crows are crows, and the sky is filled with cold air. I sleep sadly in front of the maple trees and fishing fires by the river. In the lonely and quiet Hanshan Ancient Temple outside Gusu City, the sound of ringing bells reached the passenger ship in the middle of the night
The writing background of "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge"
According to the records in Volume 3 of "The Biography of Talented Scholars of the Tang Dynasty" , Zhang succeeded "Yang Jun, the minister of the Ministry of Rites, and passed the imperial examination in the twelfth year of Tianbao (753)", which means he passed the Jinshi examination. And in January of the fourteenth year of Tianbao, the Anshi Rebellion broke out. In June of the fifteenth year of Tianbao, Xuanzong rushed to Shu in a hurry. Because the political situation in Jiangnan was relatively stable at that time, many scribes fled to the present-day Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas to escape the chaos, including Zhang Ji. One autumn night, the poet was boating on the Maple Bridge outside Suzhou. The beautiful scenery of the autumn night in the Jiangnan water town attracted this guest with travel worries, making him appreciate the poetic beauty of a timeless sentiment, and wrote this short poem with a clear and far-reaching artistic conception.
Appreciation of "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge"
The seven unique features of this poem are unified by the word "sorrow". The first two sentences are densely packed with images: the falling moon, crows, the sky full of frost, river maples, fishing fires, and sleepless people, creating an aesthetic situation with rich meaning. The images in the last two sentences are sparse: cities, temples, boats, and bells, which are an ethereal and distant artistic conception. The riverside is lit with fishing fires on an autumn night, and travelers lie down listening to the sound of bells in the quiet night. All the scenes are selected with unique discernment: one is still, one is moving, one is bright, one is dark, and on the river bank, the combination of the scenery and the mood of the characters have reached a high degree of tacit understanding and blending, and together they have formed this art that has become a model for later generations. realm. The first sentence of the poem describes three closely related scenes at midnight: moonset, cries of crows, and a sky full of frost. The first quarter moon rose early and had set in the middle of the night, leaving only a gray shadow in the sky.
The crows on the trees were probably awakened by the changes in light and darkness before and after moonset, and then crowed several times. The moon sets late at night, and the frost is thick and dark. In a dark and quiet environment, people become particularly sensitive to the coolness of the night. The description of "the sky is full of frost" does not conform to the reality of the natural landscape (the frost is on the ground but not in the sky), but it is completely consistent with the poet's feelings: the chill that penetrates the flesh and bone in the middle of the night surrounds the poet's boat at night from all directions. It made him feel that the vast night air outside was filled with frost. The whole sentence describes what I saw when the moon fell, what I heard when the crows cried, and what I felt when the sky was full of frost. It clearly reflects a sequential process of time and feeling. And all of this is harmoniously unified in the quiet and cold atmosphere of the autumn night in the water town and the lonely feeling of the travelers.
From here we can see the detail of the poet's thinking. In addition, some people think that the first line of the poem describes the scene in the early morning: the blackbird is singing, the moon is setting, the sky is dawning, and there is white frost everywhere.
The last three sentences use a flashback method to write that the poet was in a state of insomnia throughout the night. The second sentence of the poem goes on to describe the characteristic scene of "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" and the traveler's feelings. In the hazy night, only a vague outline of the trees on the riverside can be seen. The reason why it is called "Jiang Maple" may be an inference caused by the place name Maple Bridge, or the image of "Jiang Maple" is chosen to give readers a sense of Autumn colors and hints of detached thoughts. "There are maples on the water of the Zhanzhan River, and the eyes are thousands of miles away and the heart of spring is sad", "There is no sorrow on the green maples", these ancient poems can illustrate the emotional content deposited in the word "Jiang Maple" and the associations it gives to people. Through the foggy river surface, you can see a few scattered "fishing fires". Due to the dim and misty surrounding background, they are particularly eye-catching and moving.
"River Maple" and "Fishing Fire", one quiet and one moving, one dark and one bright, one on the riverside and one on the river, the combination of scenery is quite thoughtful. When I write this, I point out the travelers at Bozhoufeng Bridge. "Sorrowful sleep" refers to the travelers lying on the boat with the sorrow of traveling. The word "dui" in "Dui Chou Mian" contains the connotation of "companion", but it is not as explicit as the word "companion". There is indeed the lingering sadness of a lonely traveler facing the river maples and fishing fires on a frosty night, but at the same time, it also contains a fresh feeling of the beautiful scenery of the journey. The scenery in the first part of the poem is very dense, with fourteen characters describing six scenes, but the second part is particularly sparse. The two lines of the poem only describe one thing: the night bell of Wowenshan Temple. This is because the most vivid, profound and poetic impression that the poet got while staying at Maple Bridge at night was the midnight bell of Hanshan Temple.
Scenes such as the setting moon, the crows of the crows in the frosty sky, the fishing fires in the river maples, and the lone boats and passengers have shown the characteristics of Maple Bridge Night Mooring from all aspects, but they are not enough to fully convey its charm. In the dark night, human hearing rises to the top of the list of perceptions of external things and scenes. And the sound of bells in the quiet night leaves a particularly strong impression on people. In this way, the "midnight bell" not only brings out the tranquility of the night, but also reveals the depth and loneliness of the night, and the poet's various indescribable feelings while lying listening to the sparse bells are all self-explanatory. It seems that "Hanshan Temple outside Gusu City" cannot be ignored here. Hanshan Temple is located one mile west of Fengqiao. It was first built in the Liang Dynasty. Hanshan, the poet monk in the early Tang Dynasty, lived here, hence its name. The poetic beauty of Maple Bridge, with this ancient temple, has taken on the color of history and culture, making it even richer and more moving.
Therefore, the "midnight bell" of Hanshan Temple seems to echo the echo of history, permeated with religious sentiments, and gives people a sense of quaintness and solemnity. It seems that the reason why the poet uses a poem to point out the origin of the bell is not without reason. With the stroke of the midnight bell of Hanshan Temple, the charm of "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" is most perfectly expressed. This poem no longer remains at the level of a simple autumn night scene painting of Maple Bridge, but creates It creates a typical artistic conception of scene blending. Although the custom of midnight has been recorded as early as "Southern History", it was Zhang Ji's creation to write it into the poem and become the key point of the poem's artistic conception. Although there were many poets who described midnight at the same time as Zhang Ji or later, they never reached the level of Zhang Ji, let alone created a complete artistic conception.