Qingming Festival
Du Mu [Tang Dynasty]
It rains heavily during the Qingming Festival, and pedestrians on the road want to die.
May I ask where the restaurant is? The shepherd boy points to Xinghua Village in the distance.
Translation
Drizzle falls one after another during the Qingming Festival in the south of the Yangtze River, and all the travelers on the road are in despair.
Ask the locals where to buy a drink to drown your sorrows? The shepherd boy smiled without answering and pointed to the village deep in the apricot blossoms.
Appreciation
This day was the Qingming Festival. The poet Du Mu was walking on the road and encountered rain. Although Qingming is a time of bright spring flowers and bright spring flowers, it is also a time when the climate is prone to changes, often causing "bad weather". As far back as the Liang Dynasty, someone recorded that during the Cold Food Festival two days before Qingming, there were often "strong winds and even rain". If it rains on the Qingming Festival, it is also called "Fire Rain". It was such a day that the poet encountered.
The poet used the word "one after another" to describe the "fire and rain" that day, which is really good. "One after another", if it describes snow, it should be heavy snow. But when used to write about rain, it is exactly the opposite. The kind that makes people feel "turbulent" is not heavy rain, but drizzle. This kind of drizzle is exactly the characteristic of spring rain. The drizzle is falling one after another, the kind of rain that feels like "light rain in the sky is as moist as a crisp". It is different from the torrential rain in summer, and it is definitely not the same as the pattering autumn rain. This "rainfall" captures the spirit of "throwing fire and rain" during the Qingming Festival, and conveys the melancholy and beautiful realm of "being cold and bullying the flowers, trapping the smoke in the willows".
This "profusion" here is of course describing the artistic conception of the spring rain; but it is more than that, it also has a special function, that is, it actually describes It reflects the mood of the traveler in the rain.
Look at the following sentence: "Pedestrians on the road want to die." "Pedestrians" are people who travel away from home, not those who go out for sightseeing. So what is "broken soul"? In poetry, "soul" mostly refers to spiritual and emotional matters. "Broken soul" is a way to describe a very strong but deep emotion that is not clearly expressed on the outside, such as love and longing, melancholy and frustration, secret sorrow and deep hatred, etc. When poets have such emotions, they often like to use the word "broken soul" to express his state of mind.
The ancients felt that the Qingming Festival was not exactly the same as our concept of it today. At that time, Qingming Festival was a big festival with rich colors and sentiments. It was supposed to be a time for family reunions, sightseeing, or visiting graves. It was the main etiquette and custom. Except for those princes and grandsons who are fond of flowers and wine, there are some smart people, especially poets with rich emotions, who have quite complicated feelings in their hearts. If he was traveling alone again and was saddened by the scene, it would be more likely to arouse his thoughts. It happened to catch up with the drizzle again, and the spring clothes were soaked, which added another layer of melancholy to the pedestrians. Only by understanding it in this way can we understand why the poet wrote the word "soul-breaking" at this moment; otherwise, if it rained a little, it would be worthy of "soul-breaking". Isn't that quite unreasonable?
In this way, we can return to the word "one after another". Originally, people walking during the festival already have a lot of things on their minds. In addition, walking in the rain and wind, and walking in the rain, makes the mood even more miserable and confusing. So, one after another describes spring rain, but it also describes emotions; it might even be said that describing spring rain is to describe emotions. This is a unique art in Chinese classical poetry that combines emotions with scenery and blends scenes, a kind of scenic spot.
The first two sentences describe the situation and the problem occurred. What to do? A solution must be found. Pedestrians couldn't help but think at this moment: Where can I find a small hotel? The thing is very clear: find a small hotel, first to rest and take shelter from the rain; secondly, to have three drinks to relieve the spring cold in the cold weather and to warm the clothes soaked by the rain; and most importantly, to take this opportunity to It can also dispel the sadness in your heart. So, I asked people for directions.
Who are you asking for the way? The poet did not tell us in the third sentence, but it is more wonderful than the fourth sentence: "The shepherd boy points to Xinghua Village in the distance." Grammatically speaking, "shepherd boy" is the subject of this sentence, but it is actually the predicate of "borrowing question" in the previous sentence - it completes both the question and answer of the previous sentence. Did the shepherd boy answer? We don't know, but the answer with "action" is more vivid and powerful than the answer.
"Yao" literally means far. But those of us who read poetry must not stick to the literal meaning and think that Xinghua Village must be very far away from here. This finger has already made us see it. If the distance is really far away, it will be difficult to have an artistic connection. If it is really right in front of you, the implicit and endless interest will be lost: the beauty lies in the balance between not far and not close. "Xinghua Village" is not necessarily the name of the real village, nor does it necessarily refer to the restaurant. It is enough to point to this beautiful village deep in the apricot blossoms. It goes without saying that there is a small hotel there waiting to receive guests traveling in the rain.
The poem just says "pointing to Xinghua Village in the distance" and then ends abruptly without spending another sentence. For the rest, the passers-by were happy to hear the news, walked forward with more energy, found the restaurant with excitement, and were relieved to obtain the satisfaction and joy of sheltering from the rain and relieving their sorrows... ..., these poets just "don't care". He leaves these things out of the text and leaves them to the reader's imagination for them to seek and understand on their own.
He only introduces readers to a poetic realm, and is not responsible for guiding the panoramic view; on the other hand, he opens up a much broader room for imagination for readers than the poem shows. This is the "more than enough" of art.
This is the ultimate mutual enjoyment between poets and us readers. This is art. This is what our country’s classical poetry is particularly good at. The ancients once said that a good poem can "describe a scene that is difficult to describe, as it is now; the inexhaustible meaning lies beyond the words." Take this "Qingming" quatrain as an example. In a certain sense, it is well-deserved.
This little poem contains not a single difficult word, nor a single allusion. The whole poem is written in very popular language, and is written with great ease, without any trace of artificiality. The syllables are very harmonious and perfect, the scene is very fresh and vivid, and the realm is beautiful and interesting. It is also natural for poems to be told from chapter to chapter, and they are written sequentially. The first sentence describes the situation, environment, and atmosphere, which is "qi"; the second sentence is "carrying", describing the character, showing the character's confused and confused state of mind; the third sentence is "turning", but it also puts forward the idea How to get rid of this state of mind; and this directly forced the fourth sentence, which became the highlight of the whole article - "he". In art, this is a technique of starting from low to high, gradually rising, and putting the climax at the end. The so-called climax is not a sweeping view and a dull feeling, but a vague and thought-provoking aftertaste.
These are the poet's brilliance, and they are also worthy of our learning and inheritance!