In ancient poetry, the scenes in many verses are far from being as simple as we think.
Casually to give you an example, friends who love Zen poetry should know that there was a Zhinan monk in the Song Dynasty who wrote such a famous sentence for eternity: Wet apricot blossom rain, blowing noodles is not cold willow wind. The verses are beautiful, but what do these "apricot blossom rain" and "willow wind" mean? A lot of people don't understand.
In fact, the apricot blossom rain refers to the rain that fell during the Qingming Period, when the apricot blossoms bloomed, so the rain of this season is often called the apricot blossom rain in ancient poems. Similarly, the willow wind also refers specifically to the wind in early spring. Therefore, in this ancient famous sentence, although there are flowers and willow trees on the literal surface, the Zhinan monk did not necessarily have them in front of his eyes at that time, these are just two fixed images.
What I want to talk to you about in this issue is also an ancient poetic image that everyone often confuses, and it is: the sea. The Poetry Conference once examined such a question, as follows:
"The sea is born in the dead night, and the river spring enters the old year" describes where the scene is? A. At Sea B. On the River C. On the Mountain
The ancient chinese sentence in the title should be more familiar to everyone, it comes from the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wan's "Under the Sub-Northern Gushan". Because of this ancient famous sentence, Wang Wan's fame has greatly increased, and this poem has also been selected into textbooks for many years. This question seems to be selected A, the small players on the field at that time also chose this way, and many masters of the hundred-person group also answered it in this way.
But in fact, the answer given by the poetry conference program group is option B, which is that it describes the scenery on the river. This makes many viewers a little confused, to know that the language textbook explains this sentence: when the night is about to end, the rising sun on the sea rises in the east. Is the program wrong, or is the textbook wrong? This is no small question.
To understand this problem, we must first understand where beigu mountain is. Beigushan is one of the local scenic spots in zhenjiang, jiangsu province today. This mountain is famous for the Three Kingdoms, it is north of the Yangtze River, standing on the current Beigu Mountain can not see the sea, which is why the guests of the poetry conference Kang Zhen and Mengman believe that this poem is not written on the sea.
In order to prove his point, Mr. Mengman also mentioned another famous sentence throughout the ages: the sea is born of the bright moon, and the end of the world is at this time. Monman said: Many people misunderstand this famous sentence. This famous sentence comes from Zhang Jiuling's life-honored work "Looking at the Moon and Huaiyuan", which is a phrase that many people often hang on their lips during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
But in fact, at that time, Zhang Jiuling was relegated to Jingzhou, how could an inland city see the sea? Therefore, Teacher Mengman believes that the "bright moon born on the sea" is actually written in the river view, and she also pointed out that Zhang Ruoxuan's "Spring River tide is even with the sea level, and the sea bright moon is born together" In the sea bright moon is also very likely to be a river view, he did not see the sea at all. There is some truth to Teacher Mengman's statement, and the image of the sea in Tang poetry is relatively broad, and many times it refers to the Yangtze River. Therefore, she said that "the moon is born on the sea" without the sea, which is a certain reason.
But this can prove that the seascape written in Wang Wan's "Under the Sub-Northern Gushan Mountain" is not a sea? Not necessarily. why?
Because The Zhenjiang River where Beigu Mountain is located is different from Jingzhou, it itself is a coastal city near the river, although the sea view cannot be seen from Beigu Mountain today, but it is not necessarily invisible a thousand years ago, after all, the water pattern has always changed with the sedimentation of sand. Many years ago, Zhenjiang was the mouth of the river. At that time, the Han Dynasty cifu family Mei Cheng once wrote a poem called "Seven Hairs", which mentioned the situation of seeing the sea in Zhenjiang, and used adjectives such as "like a galloping horse" and "sound like a thunder drum", which shows that in the Han Dynasty, Zhenjiang had no problem seeing the sea.
Of course, there were so many years between the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty, so under the Beigu Mountain, whether Wang Wan saw the sun rising on the sea at that time was really not a clear matter for everyone to say. Because this matter is not very clear, today's textbooks still understand "the sea day and the dead night" as the rising sun on the sea.
For this matter, the author personally feels that the topic of the poetry conference itself is not very interesting, after all, everyone can't say it clearly. Moreover, as far as these poems about the bright moon on the sea are concerned, if they are understood literally, it is obviously more poetic than this more realistic understanding. What do you think? I believe that everyone will have different views, welcome to discuss.