Two poems about Cold Food and Rain
Song Dynasty: Su Shi
I have been through three Cold Foods since I came to Huangzhou.
I want to cherish spring every year, but I don’t want to regret it when it is gone.
This year it rained bitterly again, and the two months of autumn were bleak.
I lie down and smell the begonia flowers, the muddy swallows are covered with snow.
Stolen in secret, it’s so powerful in the middle of the night.
He Shu was a sick boy, and his illness had already turned white.
The spring river is about to enter the house, but the rain keeps coming.
The hut is like a fishing boat in the misty water and clouds.
The empty kitchen is used to cook cold vegetables, and the stove is broken to burn wet reeds.
I didn’t know it was cold food, but I saw a black paper holding it.
The king’s gate is nine levels deep, and his tomb is thousands of miles away.
I also want to cry that I have no way out and cannot afford to die.
Translation
Since I came to Huangzhou, I have spent three cold food periods.
I cherish the spring every year and want to keep it. The spring will take care of itself and go away, and no one should regret it.
This year we suffered from continuous rain, and the weather was as bleak as autumn for two months.
Lying alone in bed, listening to the rain beating on the begonias, the rouge-like petals fall like snowflakes to the mud.
The Creator secretly carried the gorgeous begonia away, and the rain in the middle of the night was really magical.
Begonia in the rain looks like a sick young man. When he recovered from the illness, his temples were gray and already old.
The spring river surged as if it was about to rush into the door, and the rain seemed to come with no end.
My hut is like a fishing boat, shrouded in misty water clouds.
Some cold dishes were being cooked in the empty kitchen, and damp reeds were burning on the bottom of the broken stove.
Who knew that this day would be a cold food day, but I saw crows carrying the remaining banknotes to burn.
The emperor’s palace gate has nine levels and is so far-reaching that it is difficult to return. The tombs of our ancestors are thousands of miles away and cannot be visited.
I just want to imitate Ruan Ji and cry bitterly when the road is over, but my heart seems to be dead and I don’t want to rekindle it.
Comments
⑴ Cold Food: The day before the Qingming Festival in the old calendar is the Cold Food Festival.
⑵ "Two months" sentence: In the past two months, it has been rainy and cold in spring, and it has been as desolate as autumn.
⑶ Rouge Snow: refers to begonia petals.
⑷ Two sentences about "secretly": "Zhuangzi·The Great Master": "Hiding a boat in a ravine, hiding a mountain in a marsh, is said to be solid. However, in the middle of the night, a strong person carries it and walks away, and the ignorant does not know it. . "Here it is used to describe the decline of begonia flowers, as if a strong person carries them away secretly in the middle of the night.
⑸He Shu: He is different.
⑹ 无了: One is "not finished".
⑺Mengmeng (méng): Yu looks confused.
⑻Pao (páo): kitchen. Cold vegetables: Originally specifically refers to winter vegetables, but this term refers to them in general.
⑼ Two sentences of "Na Zhi": It means that you only know that today is the Cold Food Festival when you see the black paper in the paper. Seeing is called "feeling".
⑽ "Jun's Gate" sentence: Song Yu's "Nine Bian": "Don't you feel depressed and miss you? Your gate is nine-layered." Annotation: "Jun's gate is deep and cannot be reached. "Nine levels refer to palace confinement, which is extremely profound.
⑾The "grave" sentence: It means that the poet's ancestral grave is in Meishan, Sichuan, thousands of miles away from Huangzhou, and he can't hang it.
⑿ "Yeyi" sentence: Jin Ruan Ji burst into tears every time he reached the end of a road. The implication here is to imitate Ruan Ji’s cry when he was impoverished.
⒀Dead ashes: refers to the ashes of paper money with "black title paper" on it, implicitly using the words of Han Anguo of Han Dynasty, "Historical Records·Han Changru Biography": "Anguo took the law to pay for his crime, and the jailer Tian Jia humiliated Anguo. Anguo said: 'Dead ashes' Will it not burn again? 'Tian Jia said: 'If it burns, it will drown' It shows his feeling of cherishing his youth and cherishing his years like water. The poet has a special liking for crabapples and has used it to describe himself in his poems many times. In his poem "I live in Dinghuiyuan, east of the mountain full of miscellaneous flowers, there is a crabapple plant. The natives don't know how valuable it is": "Where is the poor country?" "Isn't it a good thing to get this flower and move it to the west?" He sighed deeply at the fact that he and the flower "can be remembered even if they wandered to the end of the world". The lamentation about the withering of crabapple flowers in the latter part of this poem is also a reflection of the poet's own fate. He used the wonderful metaphor of "What a sick young man, the disease has already begun to turn white" for the withered crabapples that were damaged by the heavy rain. This is a metaphor for his fate of being subjected to political oppression and suffering great physical and mental harm.
If the first poem expresses the sadness of being relegated, the second poem is a long song to cry, which vents the infinite depression in the poet's heart. The poem first describes the fierce rain and the surge of the Yangtze River, which seems to be rushing into the poet's residence. In the midst of the storm, the poet's cabin is like a fishing boat, floating among the water and clouds. The two sentences "cooking cold vegetables in the empty kitchen, burning wet reeds in the broken stove" describe the extreme lack and difficulty of material life and express the poet's life in Huang. The state often suffers from hunger and cold. The poet used to enjoy many pleasures during the cold food festival in the capital, Hangzhou and other places, but now his eyes are full of depression and desolation. He couldn't help but feel extremely sad and asked, "Do you know it is cold food?" Cold Food and Tomb Sweeping Day are also days for ancestor worship and tomb sweeping. Seeing the "black paper", the poet suddenly realized that it was indeed the Cold Food Festival. This pretentious and convoluted pen and ink highlighted the poet's painful experience.
The poet uses a direct expression of his heart to express his wish to return home, and to sacrifice his loved ones' graves thousands of miles away. Therefore, at the end of the poem, he says that he wants to imitate Ruan Ji's cry at the end of his journey, and instead uses Han An's Guodian to express his indifference and worry about politics. A feeling of fear and ridicule.
In terms of artistic features, "Two Poems on Cold Food and Rain" use human rhyme and upper rhyme respectively to convey the poet's depressed mood. The whole article closely follows the theme of Cold Food Festival. The chapter structure is tight, with virtual reality alternated. The images of empty and cold objects such as "empty kitchen", "cold vegetables", "broken stove" and "wet reed" are used to highlight the distressed material life; images of death such as "paper", "grave" and "dead ashes" are used to exaggerate the sadness. The sad tone and melancholy style show a calm and tragic personality. However, even in the difficult environment of "Spring River is about to enter the house", the author still retains his innocent childlike innocence. The water almost flooded the door. He is still imagining the fun of "the cabin is like a fishing boat, floating in the water and clouds". This is the unique and lovely place of Dongpo. He rarely groans in sorrow, let alone without illness. He also shows a bit of humor from time to time, such as "cooking cold vegetables in the empty kitchen, burning wet reeds in the broken stove", "the cabin is like a fishing boat, and the water is gurgling in the clouds". He has almost grown out of it. Enduring suffering has been sublimated into an attitude of humorous appreciation.
He Sang's "Zijiu Garden Poetry" said that the poet "Huangzhou's poems are particularly unruly" and considered this poem to be "the most painful" written by Su Shi during the Huangzhou period. He wrote many poems by Kuang Yuan and Qing Chao, but this poem actually expresses his most real and painful inner feelings. The original handwriting of these two poems by the poet still exists, which shows that he attached great importance to these two poems.