"Song of the Great Wind" is a poem composed by Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty. It was when he returned from Pingtai County and visited Peixian County to invite his old friends to drink. Liu Bang sang this song while he was building a building while he was drunk.
The first two sentences of this poem express one's heart directly and boldly. The whole poem is full of a domineering atmosphere, but the last sentence also expresses the author's deep worry and melancholy about the country's instability.
"xi" is a word that expresses mood, similar to the current "ah".
Song of the Gale (Liu Bang, Western Han Dynasty)
The wind is blowing and the clouds are flying,
Weijia is returning to his hometown in the sea,
Ande Warriors are guarding all sides.
Notes
① Liu Bangping Yingbu (Yingbu,? - 196 BC, a famous general at the end of Qin and early Han Dynasty. A native of Liuxian (now Liu'an, Anhui), he was influenced by the Qin Dynasty When the law was tattooed (also known as tattooed cloth), he passed through Peixian County and invited his old friends to drink. When Liu Bang was drunk, he was building a building and sang this song at the same time. People in the Han Dynasty called this poem "Zhang of the Three Marquises", and later generations titled it "Song of the Great Wind" (beginning with "Yiwen Leiju").
②Wei: power; mighty. Add: override.
③ "Hai Nei", within the four seas, means "the world". Ancient Chinese people believed that the world is a continent, surrounded by seas, and that the outside world is deserted and unknowable.
④ "xi" is a word that expresses mood, similar to the current "ah".
⑤Ande: How to get it.
⑥Da Feng Song: This is when Liu Bang (256 BC - 195 BC), the great ancestor of the Han Dynasty, returned to Chang'an after defeating the Yingbu army and passed by his hometown (Pei County). He invited his fellow villagers to drink. After drinking heavily, Liu Bang played a percussion instrument and sang "The Great Wind Song". It expressed his heroic ambition to safeguard the unity of the world.
Translation
The wind is blowing,
The clouds are rolling and rushing with the wind!
I conquered the world with great power and returned to my hometown with great honor.
How to get warriors to guard the country’s borders!
Poetry Appreciation
Liu Bang was able to defeat Xiang Yu by relying on the coordinated operations of many armies. Some of these armies were his allies and had no subordinate relationship; some were originally his subordinates, but due to their rapid increase in strength during the war, they had become insurmountable. After Xiang Yu's defeat, if these armies united against him, he would not be able to cope. Therefore, when he ascended the throne of God, he had to make the leaders of several major armies kings and let them each rule a considerable area; and then use various defeating strategies to eliminate them one after another. In the process, it is inevitable to encounter stubborn resistance. In 196 BC, Wang Ying of Huainan launched an army to fight against the Han Dynasty. Due to his bravery and proficiency in fighting, the military strength was so strong that Liu Bang had to go out in person. He quickly defeated Yingbu and finally killed Yingbu by his subordinates. On the way back to the army after victory, Liu Bang returned to his hometown - Peixian County (now part of Jiangsu Province). He summoned all his former friends, elders, and juniors to have fun and drink together for more than ten days. One day while drinking heavily, Liu Bang sang this improvised "Song of the Wind" while building the building; he also danced generously and cried sadly (see "Book of Han·Gaodi Ji").
If Xiang Yu's "Gaixia Song" expresses the sadness of the loser, then "Song of the Gale" shows the sadness of the winner. As the link between these two sorrows, it is the sentimentality of human insignificance. For the first sentence, "The strong wind rises and the clouds fly," Li Shan of the Tang Dynasty once explained: "The wind rises and the clouds fly, which is a metaphor for the competition between heroes. The world is in chaos." (See Volume 28 of "Selected Works" annotated by Li Shan in Jiguge Edition.) This is right. "The heroes compete and the world is in chaos" obviously refers to the situation in the late Qin Dynasty when heroes competed for the world. The word "hero" in "competition among heroes" is called "male" in some books of "Selected Works". If the original text is like this, it should refer to the rebellion of Yingbu and others in the early Han Dynasty. But on the one hand, these rebellions were launched one after another, not at the same time, and should not be said to be "competition between fierce groups"; on the other hand, they were all rebellions in local areas, and did not spread to the whole country, so they should not be said to be "chaos in the world." Therefore, it should be regarded as "heroic". The next sentence, "Weijiahai returned to his hometown" means that he won the throne under such circumstances and was able to return in glory. Therefore, in these two sentences, Liu Bang frankly admitted that his ability to "power the country" first relied on the situation of "strong winds and flying clouds". However, just as the situation cannot be controlled by human power, this situation was not caused by Liu Bang. He was just lucky enough to encounter this situation. From this point of view, it was an accident that he ascended to the throne of God. Although his contemporaries were as lucky as him in this regard, and his final success was due to his hard work and talent; but for a person like Liu Bang who came from a humble background, if he hadn't encountered such a In this era, how useful are his efforts and talents? Therefore, no matter how you say it, he became the emperor firstly by luck, and secondly by his own efforts and talents. He compared the objective conditions that pushed him to the throne of emperor with the changes in nature, which the current man had no control over. At least it unconsciously showed some of his psychological activities!
Whether Liu Bang regards his luck as an arrangement from God or a pure chance, it is not something he can decide.
In other words, maximize your talents; but how effective all this will be depends on luck. As an emperor, in order to protect the world, he must have warriors guarding him in all directions, but are there such warriors in the world? If so, can he find them and make them work for him? It's not entirely up to him. Therefore, the third sentence, "The strong warriors are here to guard the four directions" is both a hope and a question. He hopes to do this, but can he really do it? He himself had no answer. It can be said that he was not only unsure about whether he could find warriors to defend the four sides, that is, whether his world could be defended, but he was also deeply worried and uneasy. It is precisely because of this that although the first two lines of this song appear to be ambitious, the third line suddenly reveals the anxiety and fear of an uncertain future. If, as a loser, Xiang Yu once lamented that man would never be able to defeat heaven, then a similar sad sound resounded in the song of the winner Liu Bang. It is no wonder that when he danced to the song, It is time to "be generous and sad, and weep for several lines" ("Book of Han·Gaodi Ji").