Author: Yang Jiong
The bonfire shines in Xijing 2, and my heart is uneven 3.
Tooth Zhang Cifeng Que 4, iron riding around Longcheng 5.
The snow draws a flag 6, and the wind beats drums.
Better be a centurion than a scholar.
1. Joining the army: an old topic in Yuefu, which belongs to "Harmony Songs", is mostly about military wars.
2. Bee fire: the signal of ancient frontier defense alarm. From the border to the inland, beacon towers are erected along the way, and if there is enemy situation, they are lit on the stage to show warning. Gradually increase the number of torches according to the priorities of the enemy. According to Xijing: The beacon indicating the alarm has arrived in Xijing (Chang 'an), indicating that the enemy situation is serious.
3. Uneven: It is difficult to calm down.
4. Tooth piece: a symbol of changing soldiers. When the two pieces are combined, the imperial court and the viceroy each hold half, and there are teeth embedded in them, hence the name. This refers to the general who was ordered to go to war. Phoenix Que: There is a bronze phoenix in Zhang Jian Palace, which was built by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, so it is called Phoenix Que. Later, it was often referred to as the imperial palace.
5. Fighter: elite cavalry, referring to Tang Jun's left and right: left and right. Longcheng: the place where the Xiongnu Congress in Han Dynasty sacrificed to heaven, so it is located on the east side of Erhun River in Mongolia today. This refers to the enemy fortress in the general sense.
6. "Snow is black" sentence: The heavy snow filled the flag, making the pattern on the flag dim and pale. Fading: The original meaning is that plants wither and wither, which means that bright colors are lost.
7. Centurion: generally refers to subordinate military attache. This refers to the Ganjiang River.
Five-character rhyme is the main body of Tang poetry, and its form and meter were completed in the early Tang Dynasty. All the laws and creative methods of the Five Laws can be extended to other poetic styles. To this end, let's talk about the other five laws here to supplement some basic knowledge about metrical poetry.
Yang Jiong is from Huayin County (now Huayin, Shaanxi Province). In the sixth year of Emperor Gaozong's reign (AD 66 1 year), he was promoted to a child prodigy, sent to the imperial court, and awarded the school bookkeeper, who was only eleven years old. In the second year of Yonglong (AD 68 1 year), he was a bachelor of Chongwen Pavilion and moved to James and Sizhi. Rainbow Bo, he thinks he is both talented and arrogant. When Wu Zetian was in power, he was demoted to Zizhou Judicial Army. After three years in office, he served as the magistrate of Yingchuan County (now Junlian County, Sichuan Province) and died in office. Later generations called him Yang Yingchuan, and his poems and songs have been preserved to this day, which is called "Yang Yingchuan Collection".
The first thing to say about this poem is the title. "Joining the army" is not a poem, but a term in Yuefu tune. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty loved music songs and built a Central Conservatory of Music called Yuefu. He gathered famous musicians and poets, collected folk songs from all over the country, formulated many new songs and promulgated public and private performances. This kind of song is called "Yuefu Song". The lyrics of such songs are called "Yuefu songs" or "Yuefu poems". The middle and late Tang Dynasty was also called "Song Poetry". Formally speaking, they have five words, seven words and a mixture of three words, five words and seven words. Generally, they are songs, and metrical poems are rarely used. Functionally, they are for performers and geisha. The difference between poetry and Yuefu poetry lies not in the form, but in whether you can sing or compose music.
It must be added here that before the Han Dynasty, the so-called "poem" refers to the lyrics that can be sung. A book of songs, 305 poems, can be sung. In the Qin and Han dynasties, ancient poetry lost its music score, and the word "poem" gradually became a noun in literary form. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, composers and singers were called "Yuefu Qu", and four-character poems in the form of The Book of Songs were called "poems". At that time, the new popular five-seven-character rhyme was called "five-character" or "seven-character". It is conceivable that "poetry" is a traditional noun of four-character poems, while five-character seven-character poems are not poems. As I said just now, what can be sung is called "Yuefu songs" or "Yuefu poems", and what can't be sung is called "poetry", which is a literary concept after Wei and Jin Dynasties.
Joining the army is a Yuefu song handed down from the Han and Wei Dynasties. Han and Wei poets wrote Join the Army, which is a Yuefu poem. However, in the Tang Dynasty, the ancient song Join the Army no longer existed. Yang Jiong wrote this article "Joining the Army" only with the title of the ancient Yuefu tune, and this five-character poem can't actually be sung with music. In this case, the title of this poem is "Ancient Poems of Yuefu". Not the tune of the poem, but the content of the poem. Because every ancient Yuefu song has its own content. For example, The Journey of Orphans describes the life of orphans, while the military reflects the hardships of joining the army. Yang Jiong wrote this five-character poem with an ancient Yuefu theme. But the content of the poem is different from "joining the army" in the Han and Wei Dynasties. It can be seen that the poets in the early Tang Dynasty used the ancient Yuefu poems as their poems, and most of them have lost their ancient meaning. This kind of poetry is difficult to classify, and can be classified as "Yuefu Poetry" or "Five-character Poetry".
The writing of this poem is also average. As long as you read the first couplet and the fourth couplet first, the content of the whole poem will be clear. The first couplet "bonfire shines in Xijing, my heart is uneven." It means that there is an enemy attack on the border, and the alarm has reached Chang' an, which makes my heart ups and downs. Why do you feel ups and downs? Because I am just a scholar, I have no ability to defend my country against the enemy. So the fourth connection went on to say, "I would rather be a young officer than a scholar." Zhou Wuwang's military system, with hundreds of people as a team, the captain is called "centurion". Later generations used it to represent junior officers.
The second league said: after receiving the bugle call, they bid farewell to the capital and led brave cavalry to besiege the barbarian capital. The tooth card is the tooth card, which is the symbol used by the emperor to dispatch troops. Phoenix Que refers to the capital, not an ordinary city. Unlike Chengque, during the Han Dynasty, General Wei Qing made an expedition to Xiongnu and took Longcheng. This dragon city is where the Xiongnu leader is and the main force is. Xiongnu is a nomadic people, Longcheng is not fixed in one place. Dragon city is often used in Tang poetry, which only refers to the enemy's lair.
The third is to describe the scene of the western regions fighting the enemy. After besieging the enemy, a war of annihilation was launched. At that time, the colorful paintings on the flag were withered by heavy snow, and the wind roared in all directions with the drums. This is the time when the centurion will serve his country. Can a scholar compare with him?
The second and third parts of this poem are only decorative parts and do not add color to the poem. This is the style formed in the early period of regular poetry, and the artistic technique has not yet developed to a high level.
There are two views on the theme of this poem: in the interpretation of Tang poetry, Tang Ruxun thought that the author felt wronged when he saw that the imperial court valued martial arts over literature, and only military officers were in favor, so he pretended to write poetry to vent his grievances. Wu Changqi thinks that the author saw the enemy approaching Xijing, encouraged him to be unjust, and went to the border to touch the snow and break the wind, in order to destroy the enemy and make contributions, not as useless as a scholar. The former thinks it is a satire poem, while the latter thinks it is a patriotic narrative poem. In this way, from the second couplet, the experience of the two people is different. I think Wu Changqi's understanding is more desirable, because the first couplet has already explained that the author's grievance is to "light a bonfire in Xijing." If he is unhappy for the reputation of a soldier, this sentence should not be followed by the sentence "bonfire"
Five, seven words and eight sentences, one rhyme, the second, fourth, sixth and eighth sentences. For example, in the poem Wang Ye, Yi, Hui, Gui and Wei are all rhymes. The word "one" is the first rhyme, which is called "rhyme" Must start with rhyme, so use rhyming words in the future. However, in the first sentence of "Du Shaofu", "the edge of the three walls of Qin Dynasty" is rhyming. This poem has five rhymes: Qin, Jin, Man, Neighbourhood and towel. Now the word "Jing" in the first sentence of "Joining the Army" is also a rhyme, and this poem also has five rhymes. Here, we notice two rhyming methods of rhythmic poetry.
Rhyme is generally flat and even. This means that the end of the second sentence, the fourth sentence, the sixth sentence and the eighth sentence of each metrical poem must be flat. Therefore, the first sentence, the third sentence, the fifth sentence and the seventh sentence must end with the word "slur" accordingly. Wang Ye's first sentence is "Looking at the dusk", and the word "Wang" is a light word without rhyme, so the rhyme of this poem is the word "Yi" in the second sentence. But at the end of the first sentence of an ordinary poem, you can also use a flat voice, such as Du Shaofu and joining the army. The end of this first flat sentence must rhyme with the beginning of the second sentence. So this poem has five rhymes. However, the correct form of metrical poetry is to use four rhymes. The rhyme at the end of the first sentence is called quotation rhyme, not formal rhyme.
There are two rhymes about the meter of the first sentence of the meter poem: "level tone" and "level tone". The beginning refers to the second word of the first sentence, and the receiving refers to the fifth word of the first sentence (the seven-character quatrain refers to the seventh word). In Looking at the Dusk, "Gao" is a flat voice, "Wang" is a squint voice, and this is a flat level. "bonfire shines on Xijing", "fire" is muffled, "Beijing" is flat, and this is flat. The tones of these two syntax are different, which affects the tones of the next seven sentences. The tone of regular poetry is high and majestic, while the tone of regular poetry is low and gentle. In the Tang Dynasty, the orthodox poems were mainly composed of flat and flat collections, which were a variant.
To learn or appreciate Tang poetry, we should pay attention to its duality, harmony and rhyme on the basis of four tones. These are three artistic techniques of Tang poetry language. Duality expresses the beauty of words, while harmony and rhyme express the beauty of music. We have discussed duality and rhyme. Now harmony is also called tuning in the Tang Dynasty.
Liu Xie said in "Wen Xin Diao Long Melody": "Different sounds belong to harmony, and homophones correspond to rhyme." The first sentence is the definition of harmony, and the second sentence is the definition of rhyme. Different sounds go hand in hand, that is to say, flat and flat. The word "Pingsheng" should be matched with the word "Xusheng". Whether it's a sentence or a couplet, the level tone must be properly matched. From Sui Chen to the early Tang Dynasty, poets have been exploring the law of peace. Now it is easy to understand the relationship between the flat tones and the beauty of the tone color of the poem by marking the flat tones of the whole poem militarily.
The bonfire shines in Xijing, even and flat.
My heart is uneven, even.
Zhang Ci's Fengque is flat and flat.
The fighters around Longcheng are Ma Pingchuan.
The flag is flat in the dark snow.
The wind is noisy and the drums are flat.
It is better to be a centurion's flat.
Learning is not as good as learning.
The language or characters of Han people in China usually use two words to form a word and become a Chinese syllable. In every five-character poem, the second word and the fourth word should pay the most attention to the harmony structure (seven-character poems should also pay attention to the harmony of the sixth word). Except the seventh sentence, the grammatical structure of each sentence in this poem is two words (nouns) plus a verb or adverb. For example:
Lighthouse-Photos-Xijing
Longcheng tieqi
And the seventh sentence is:
Preferably a centurion.
But when chanting, these three sentences will be read as follows:
Looking at the west of the lighthouse-Beijing
Iron Rider-Around Dragon-City
It is best to be-one hundred husbands-long.
Here we can see the importance of the second word and the fourth word, and the grammatical structure and syllable structure are contradictory. Many people recite ancient poems and read them only according to the grammatical structure. So I can't read the beautiful syllables of this poem. After reading the flat table in Military Service, we can find that if the second word is flat in the first sentence, then the fourth word must be flat. In couplets, if the second word of the previous sentence is a flat voice, the second word of the next sentence must also be a flat voice. The fourth word is the same. This is called "different sounds follow". The second couplet, that is, the second sentence of the whole poem, should still be different from the first sentence, but the tone is the same as the second sentence. Next, the upper sentence of the third joint should be consistent with the lower sentence of the second joint, but it is different from the upper sentence of the second joint. The same is true of the fourth sentence. The tone of the upper sentence and the lower sentence of the third sentence is the same, but it is different from the upper sentence. The method of imitating different sounds was called "sticking" in the Tang Dynasty. Use a flat voice where it should be used, and use a flat voice where it should be used, which makes you "sticky".
If you have more experience in reading five-character poems, you will find that the syntax of five-character poems always has two words with three words, that is, the so-called "upper two and lower three" is one syllable, and the next three words are half syllables. It can be a combination of one and two, such as "Xijing", or a combination of two and one, such as "It's late in the day" or a three-character noun, such as "Vimalakīrti". This combination of three nouns must not be used before a sentence, resulting in a sentence pattern of three times and two times, so that you can't recite ②.
The above is the harmony principle of five-character rhyme. This principle also applies to seven-character poems, but seven-character poems should also pay attention to the harmony of the sixth word of each sentence. According to legend, there are two rhyming words that can help you remember:
"One, three, five, three, four, six."
That is to say, the first, third and fifth words in every sentence of metrical poetry can be used freely, but the second, fourth and sixth words must be flat or flat according to the law of harmony. Here refers to the seven laws, and for the five laws, it should be said: "One and three are not arbitrary, and two and four are distinct." One, three and five are informal, but there are differences in word level and tone. Those who are familiar with the tone of metrical poems should also choose a word with a nice voice in these places.
1978 1 month 12 days
① This word "Ci" existed as "Ci" after Wei and Jin Dynasties. But after the Tang and Song Dynasties, the word "Ci" had more meanings. When writing a literary paper, it is best to keep the ancient writing style to show the difference. This book will still use the word "word" when necessary.
(2) After the prosperous Tang Dynasty, there appeared awkward sentences, which broke through this rule and appeared three times and two times of five-character sentences.