The foot of my bed is shining with such bright light. Is it frosty already? ;
I looked up at the moon and looked down, feeling nostalgic.
Li Bai, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote this poem "Thinking about a Quiet Night", which has been widely recited for thousands of years and is well known to all women and children! According to a recent poll, about 95% of children receive the first poem of childhood for the first time, which is this poem; Today's children are really smart, and some of their questions have actually stumped many parents and teachers: Li Bai, who looked up and found it was moonlight, stood or sat? Is it indoor or outdoor? Why do you say "the foot of my bed is so bright" instead of "moonlight in front of the window" or "moonlight in front of the door" -it's not, even you are dumbfounded? !
In fact, the most puzzling thing about this poem is: how can there be two identical "bright moons" in this short 20-word poem? Although catchy, it seems to be a bit procrastinating and repetitive. You know, the poem written by the ancients is a golden word! Silent Night Thinking is basically a five-character quatrain. Although it is not as strict as formal poetry in paying attention to plain stickers, the basic things such as rhyming and antithesis should be considered. "Repetition", that is, the repeated use of the same word in a poem, is generally rare in five-character quatrains, and it is problematic for two identical words to appear in succession like this. Although Li Bai's poetic style has always been sparse, it is not so ugly.
I happen to have a set of All Tang Poems by Zhonghua Book Company on my desk. I might as well take a closer look-I don't know. I was shocked when I checked. The original poem should be like this:
Look at the moonlight in front of the bed, will it have frost? ;
Looking up at the mountains and the moon, and sinking again, I suddenly remembered home.
Look, "the bright line at the foot of my bed" is "looking at the moonlight in front of my bed", and "looking up, I found it was moonlight" has also been changed to "looking at the mountains and the moon". Is this a mistake? ! I immediately consulted the Collected Works of Li Taibai published in the Song Dynasty, Yuefu Poems edited by Guo Maoqian and 10,000 Tang Poems edited by Hong Mai. The first sentence is "Look at the moonlight before going to bed", and the third sentence is "Look up at the bright moon". The same is true of Xiao Shibin's Li Taibai Collection in Yuan Dynasty and Gao Mubing's Tang Poetry Collection in Ming Dynasty.
The changes and differences of this poem mainly appeared in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. In the Wanli Edition of Ming Dynasty, Zhao Guang and others first revised it:
Look at the moonlight in front of the bed, will it have frost? ;
I looked up at the moon and looked down, feeling nostalgic.
The third sentence here is changed to "lift yourself up and look, and find it is moonlight", but the first sentence is still "look at moonlight before going to bed"; In the Qing Dynasty, Wang Shizhen's Selected Poems of Tang Dynasty and Shen Deqian's Poems of Tang Dynasty changed again:
The foot of my bed is shining with such bright light. Is it frosty already? ;
Looking up at the mountains and the moon, and sinking again, I suddenly remembered home.
Here, the first sentence "watching moonlight before going to bed" is changed to "the foot of my bed is so bright", and the third sentence remains unchanged. It was not until the Qianlong period that the changes of the first sentence and the third sentence were completely pieced together in the Three Hundred Tang Poems compiled by Tang Pushi. After its "development", it has finally become a well-known "quiet night thinking" today.
As we all know, the Song people have always admired Tang poetry, and their collection and editing are very large. In addition, close to the Tang Dynasty, there were relatively few misinformation errors. Therefore, the quiet night thoughts collected in Song Dynasty and even Yuan Dynasty should be reliable and accurate. In the authoritative version of The Whole Tang Poetry, which was personally examined and approved by Michelle Ye, the Qing emperor, it was not influenced by different versions of the previous generation, and no changes were made to this poem. Therefore, there is no doubt about the authenticity of the two sentences "Looking at the moonlight before going to bed" and "Looking up at the mountains and the moon" in Silent Night Thinking! But why did the Ming and Qing literati "take the world by storm" to constantly revise it? Does this poem really have obvious flaws? Indeed, it is in this ordinary poem that we can easily find two descriptions that are inconsistent with daily life habits:
First of all, it seems difficult to prove that "if you look at the moonlight before going to bed, will it have frost?" . Because the moonlight in front of the bedroom bed usually shines on the ground through the window. At that time, the "window" in the Tang Dynasty was called "urn window", which was almost as big as the screen of the 29-inch color TV now, and the moonlight shining through it could only be a small square or a narrow piece; The concept of "frost" is different, and the scene it presents on the ground must be "a large piece". I don't think Li Bai can mistake a small piece of white cake-like moonlight for "suspected frost". I'm afraid he is as drunk as a fiddler! Unless the roof leaks completely, the whole room will be shrouded in moonlight;
Secondly, there seems to be a contradiction in the sentence "Looking at the mountains and the moon". As we all know, the moon generally rises in the northeast and sets in the southwest, while the windows of ancient bedrooms, like now, are basically north-south oriented; "Mountain Moon" means that the moon has just risen. Therefore, from the visual point of view, when the poet "looks up" in the indoor window, it is difficult to see the "mountains and moons". Even if he leans against the wall, he can observe it. Anyway, the moonlight can't turn around in the air and shine on the bed. !
From this point of view, the revision of Silent Night Thinking by later generations is quite reasonable: "Bright Moon" seems to have a larger scope than "Moon Watching", and "Moon Watching" is easier to understand and accept than "Mountain Moon Watching". But they still haven't fully explained the above contradictions! The most important point is that Mr. Li Bai's original work is like this. Will his old man make such a low-level mistake? I won't believe it anyway!
If you ask me, Li Bai couldn't see the bright moon in front of his bed at that time. Why? In the Tang Dynasty, although there was no modern glass, curtains were usually drawn on the windows. Of course, people should close the curtains before going to bed, but when they are upset and insomnia, they will open the curtains and sigh at the full moon. In Sauvignon Blanc, Li Bai has a beautiful poem "The lights are flashing; My thoughts are getting deeper and deeper, and I look at the moon and sigh. "On the night of the autumn moon, there is a poem" Looking at the moon and rejuvenating ".In" Jade Family ",there are two sentences:" Behind her closed window sash, why is she still waiting, looking at the brilliance of the autumn moon through its crystal glass? " These all reflect this situation well. It seems that this curtain was quite elegant at that time. Li Bai's situation was similar to that of laid-off workers now. It seems that this kind of crystal curtain can't be enjoyed naturally, but it is still possible to hang a coarse cloth curtain on the window to keep out the cold. Imagine that Li Bai is still in bed and the coarse curtains have not been opened. How can the moonlight shine indoors?