Putao wine luminous cup
If you want to drink pipa, hurry up
Liangzhou Ci
Wang Han
The luminous cup of sweet apple wine reminds me immediately if I want to drink Pipa.
Don’t laugh when you are lying drunk on the battlefield. How many people have fought in ancient times.
Liangzhou Ci
Wang Zhihuan
Far above the Yellow River, among the white clouds, there is an isolated city called Wanren Mountain.
Why should the Qiang flute blame the willows? The spring breeze does not pass through Yumen Pass.
Going out of the fortress
Wang Changling
The bright moon of the Qin Dynasty and the Pass of the Han Dynasty, people from the long march of thousands of miles came to return.
But the flying generals of Dragon City are here, and Huma is not taught to cross the Yin Mountains.
Meeting an envoy to Beijing
Cen Shen
Looking eastward from my hometown, the road is long and my sleeves are full of tears.
We will meet soon without pen and paper, and I will rely on you to send messages of peace.
During the early and prosperous Tang Dynasty, there were frequent wars along the defense lines in the northeast, northwest, and southwest, and the Tang government had to send large armies to guard the borders. The military governors who commanded these national defense forces were all famous generals, and they needed to bring a group of literati to take charge of clerical affairs. When a literati entered the Jiedushi shogunate, he could hope to obtain an official position due to the recommendation of the chief. During the Kaiyuan and Tianbao years of Xuanzong, many famous poets were recruited under the banner of the border guards. These poets were familiar with the scenery of the frontier and the lives and emotions of the soldiers, and used various forms of poetry to sing and express them. As a result, a large number of new themes of this type appeared in Tang poetry. We call this type of poetry frontier poetry. We have already talked about three frontier fortress poems in the form of seven-character song lines by Gao Shi and Cen Shen, and now we will talk about four more frontier fortress poems in the form of seven-character quatrains.
The first and second capitals were inscribed "Liangzhou Ci". "Liangzhou" was a newly popular tune at that time. It is said that there was a king of Kucha who loved music. He listened to the sound of wind and water in the mountains, and composed many songs with his musicians, which became popular in the Western Regions. Guo Zhiyun, the governor of Longyou in the Tang Dynasty, collected these scores and presented them to Xuanzong, who then gave them to Jiaofang to translate them into Chinese scores and add new Chinese lyrics. The tunes are named after the place where the song was produced, including "Yizhou", "Ganzhou", "Liangzhou" and more than ten tunes. Poets warmly welcomed these new songs and wrote lyrics for them. Therefore, many people's poetry collections have poems with the titles of "Liangzhou Ci", "Yizhou Ci" or "Ganzhou Ci". They were new songs in the Tang Dynasty. The name of the Yuefu song is not the title of the poem.
Wang Han's "Liangzhou Ci" writes about a general who is about to go to the battlefield. Before the battle, his staff send him off for the battle. Wine is a famous product of Liangzhou, and the luminous cup is the best white jade wine glass, which is also a famous product of Liangzhou. Use this sentence to sum up the sumptuousness of the feast. The general wanted to drink a few more drinks, but the sergeants were already on their horses and could not urge him verbally. They just played the pipa. When the general heard this, he knew that his companions were urging him. But the general was already drunk at this time. Is he a drunkard? No. Is he greedy for life and afraid of death? No. He said: I was drunk on the battlefield, so don’t laugh at me. You see, since ancient times, how many people who went into battle came back alive? This shows the heroic spirit of a general who is determined to die, drinks enough old wine, and mounts his horse to kill the enemy. Shi Hongbao commented on these two sentences: "If you make a sad statement, it will be easy to read. If you make a joke, it will be wonderful. Learners will understand." His experience is not wrong. We should regard these two sentences as humorous words.
The second song "Liangzhou Ci" written by Wang Zhihuan uses another kind of frontier fortress scenery to compose the lyrics. He first wrote about blocking the border city and exposing a city wall between the mountains. The Yellow River at the foot of the mountain seems to flow out of white clouds. He outlined the geographical situation of this important defense town. So I heard someone playing the flute here, and the tune he played was "Folding Willows". This is a horizontal blowing song from the northwest. Since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, people have had a custom of breaking willow branches to say goodbye, so the tune "Folding Willow" has become a parting music. Now I hear someone playing this tune again, and I realize that the flute player must be feeling nostalgic and resentful of farewell. Therefore, the poet said: Outside Yumen Pass, there is only yellow sand and white grass, and the spring breeze cannot blow it. There are willows to break. You flute player, don’t blame Yang Liu. Combined with the previous two sentences, we can feel that the theme of this poem is that it is so desolate and cold outside Yumen Pass, and living there, the feeling of nostalgia and hatred for farewell is extremely profound. "Why complain" is not really to persuade him not to complain, but to say that complaining is useless. This is a more profound irony. The Qiang flute is a flute made by the Western Qiang people. The people who play the flute are Tang soldiers guarding the border fortress. It cannot be understood that the Qiang people are playing the flute. Li Bai has a poem "Listening to the Flute on a Spring Night in Luoyang". The second sentence of the poem goes: "I heard the broken willows in this nocturne, who can't help but feel the love of my hometown." This can be a reference for interpreting Wang Zhihuan's poem. Someone recently annotated this poem and found out that "Breaking Willows" is the name of the song, but did not indicate the meaning of the song, so the theme of the poem is unknown.
This poem was first seen in "Guo Guo" "Xiu Ji". The first and second sentences say: "A lonely city in Wanren Mountain, the Yellow River rises straight up among the white clouds. "The order is different from the current version. The second one is quoted from "Ji Yi Ji", and the first sentence is "The yellow sand is far up between the white clouds". Later, in many books of the Song Dynasty, it is written as "The yellow sand is straight up between the white clouds" ①. "Yellow River" With "yellow sand", "far up" and "straight up", which one is right and which is wrong has aroused the scrutiny of later generations.
Many people advocate that "yellow sand" should be regarded as right and "Yellow River" as the right one. Wrong. The reason is that there is no Yellow River outside Liangzhou City. I think "river" and "sha" are errors in writing. Today, it is impossible to determine the original meaning, so "Yellow River is far up" should be better. .
Li Bai's poem "The water of the Yellow River comes up from the sky" has the same artistic conception. This was the poet's impression of the upper reaches of the Yellow River at that time. As for saying that Liangzhou is not on the edge of the Yellow River, so it is definitely "yellow sand", this is also problematic. Because "Liangzhou Ci" is the lyrics of "Liangzhou Song", its content is not limited to describing Liangzhou City. Wang Zhihuan's poem only writes about a garrison city on the frontier fortress. The word "lone city" is used in general and does not refer specifically to Liangzhou. Besides, Liangzhou is not in Wanren Mountain. If you think this poem describes Liangzhou, then even this second sentence has to be denied.
Wang Changling wrote a poem titled "Crossing the Barrier", which means leaving the border. In Tang poetry, it is generally used to mean going on an expedition, while "entering the fortress" means returning home in triumph. The first sentence "the moon is bright during the Qin Dynasty and the pass is during the Han Dynasty", let's start with the literal arrangement: look at the bright moon in the sky, it is still the bright moon during the Qin Dynasty; look at the majestic Guancheng, it is also the national defense building during the Han Dynasty. The second sentence goes on to say: In this pass where the scenery has remained unchanged from ancient times to the present, none of the people who traveled thousands of miles to participate in the expedition have not come back. Therefore, the poet cannot help but feel a little disgusted with this kind of war. He thought, why do we have to go far out of the country to conquer the Hu people? If there is a flying general like Li Guang who can guard the border and prevent the Hu people's cavalry from crossing the Yinshan Mountains to invade China, wouldn't it be possible to save many soldiers? Is it death? Obviously, this is a poem against the war of aggression. It is written very implicitly, using the words "but to make" and "not to teach", allowing readers to understand it for themselves.