Seven Quatrains of Looking for Flowers Alone by the River
Author: Du Fu (Tang Dynasty)
I am annoyed by the flowers on the river, and there is nowhere to tell me but I am crazy.
Walking around to find a drinking companion from my neighbor in the south, I spend ten days drinking alone in an empty bed.
The dense flowers and stamens are afraid of the riverside, and walking in danger is really afraid of spring.
Poetry and wine are still enough to drive, there is no need to cook the white-headed man.
The river is deep and the bamboos are quiet for two or three houses, and the busy red flowers reflect the white flowers.
To repay the spring sunshine, you should send good wine to your life.
Looking east, Shaocheng is full of flowers, and the tall buildings with hundreds of flowers are even more pitiful.
Who can open the golden cup with wine and summon the beautiful women to dance and embroider the banquet?
In front of Huangshi Pagoda, the river is east, and the spring scenery is lazy and leaning on the breeze.
A cluster of peach blossoms blooms without an owner, the lovely deep red loves the light red.
Huang Si’s parents’ house is full of flowers, with thousands of flowers hanging down the branches.
The butterflies dance all the time, and the orioles sing at ease.
It’s not that you’re willing to die because you love flowers, but you’re just afraid that the flowers will run out and you’ll get old.
Many branches tend to fall off one after another, while young leaves bloom slowly.
The butterflies dance all the time, and the orioles sing at ease.
From "Looking for Flowers Alone by the River, Part 6" written by Du Fu in the Tang Dynasty
Huang Si's natal family is full of flowers, with thousands of flowers hanging low on the branches.
The butterflies dance all the time, and the orioles sing at ease.
Appreciation
This is a unique and interesting poem describing a scene. The path is full of flowers, and the branches covered with flowers are hung down. Above the petals are lingering colorful butterflies, which dance around the flower branches. From here, we smell the strong fragrance of flowers. On the path beside the flowers, there are orioles singing crisply. Their lively and comfortable demeanor gives people a relaxed and happy feeling. The poet uses extremely rhythmic words such as "Shishi" and "Chacha" to make the whole bright and complicated picture full of movement, and also makes the poem have a brighter and more fluent rhythm. The whole poem is full of colloquial language. It feels very intimate to read, and the heartfelt joy the poet feels in spring comes to mind on the page.
The first sentence "Huang Si's maiden's house is full of flowers" points out that the place to find flowers is on the path of "Huang Si's maiden's house". "芊" means a small road. "The path is full of flowers" means that the path is covered with flowers and connected into a patchwork. This sentence uses a person's name in the poem, which has a strong interest in life and has the flavor of a folk song. The second sentence is "Thousands of flowers weigh down the branches." "Thousands of flowers" describes a large number. The words "press" and "low" in "press branches low" are used very appropriately and vividly, vividly depicting the dense layers of spring flowers, which are so big and numerous that they bend the branches heavily. The third sentence "The butterfly dances all the time." "Linger" describes the way butterflies fly around and are reluctant to leave. Colorful butterflies are fluttering on the flower branches, lingering in love with the flowers, implying the fragrance and brightness of the flowers. The flowers are cute, and the dancing postures of the butterflies are also cute, which inevitably makes people who stroll around "lover". This sentence describes the bright fragrance of spring flowers from the side. In fact, the poet was also attracted by the colorful spring flowers and never left. But he may not have stopped, but continued to move forward, because the scenery is infinite and there are many beautiful scenery. The fourth sentence is "The oriole is just singing." "Jiao" describes Yingge's softness and mellowness. "Cha Cha Ciao" means that when the poet was admiring the flowers, a string of oriole's beautiful songs happened to wake up the poet who was intoxicated in the flowers. Just because the poet was happy in his heart, he took it for granted that Huang Ying was singing specifically for himself. This is the same as the previous sentence saying that colorful butterflies linger on spring flowers. They are all methods of empathizing with objects. Because the poet successfully used this technique, the objects and I blended together, and the scenes were intertwined. This kind of theme is common in quatrains of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. However, it is rare to see a poem with such detailed descriptions and unusually bright colors as this one. Du Fu added "thousands of flowers" after "the path is full of flowers", and added the dancing butterflies and the singing of orioles, and the scenery became beautiful. This way of writing is unprecedented.
People in the prosperous Tang Dynasty paid great attention to the harmony of tones in poems. Their quatrains can often be orchestrated, so they are very consonant. Du Fu's quatrains were not written for singing, but purely for reciting poetry, so there are often awkward sentences. In the poem "Thousands of flowers weigh down the branches", the second character of the poem should be flat and slanted. But this kind of "拗" is by no means an arbitrary destruction of the rhythm. The overlapping of "thousands of flowers" has a kind of oral beauty. The "Duo" in "Qianduo" is in the same position as the character "四" in the previous sentence. Although they both belong to the oblique tone, they have the upper and lower tones of each other, and there are still changes in tone. It is not that the poet does not pay attention to the musical beauty of poetry. This is reflected in the use of bivocal words, onomatopoeia and overlapping words in the third and fourth sentences. "Liu Lian" and "Zizai" are both two-tone words, connected like beads, with a warble tone. "Qia Qia" is an onomatopoeia, describing the cry of the oriole, giving people an immersive auditory image. "Shishi" and "Qiaqia" are overlapping words. Even if the upper and lower sentences form a contrast, it makes the meaning stronger and more vivid, and can better express the poet's instant pleasure when he is obsessed with flowers and butterflies, and is suddenly awakened by the song of a warbler. . Except for the words "wu" and "ying", these two sentences are all made of alveolar sounds.
The use of this series of alveolar sounds creates a sense of self-talk, which vividly reflects the artificiality of looking at flowers. A feeling of intoxication and surprise due to the beautiful scenery. The effectiveness of sound is extremely helpful in expressing mood.
In terms of syntax, most of the poems in the prosperous Tang Dynasty are completely natural, but Du Fu is different from them. For example, "pairing knots" (parallel couplets in the back) are the style of quatrains in the early Tang Dynasty. Quatrains in the prosperous Tang Dynasty are now rare because it is difficult to achieve a complete ending with this kind of ending.
Du Fu, on the other hand, rarely sees a coincidence, so the following couplet of the poem is both stable and full of aftertaste, which makes people feel that it is just right: when it is pleasing to the eye, hearing the song "Cha Cha" makes people more fascinated, isn't it? In addition, these two sentences should be written according to the customary grammar: the dancing butterfly lingers and dances from time to time, and the delicate oriole crows at ease. Put "stay" and "free" at the beginning of the sentence.