Cui Hao's "Yellow Crane Tower": the ideal elegy and ode

Because the word "Xiangguan" is clearly in the ending of "Where is the Nippori Township Pass, and the Smoke Wave River Makes People Sad", many Language teachers also say in class that this is a homesick poem.

The image of "Xiangguan" is the only one in the whole poem, and at the end, it is not like the writing method of "Qu Final Mingzhi", so when you see "Xiangguan", it is said to be "homesick poetry", which is a very lazy reading method, and more severely, it is not understanding poetry.

The people of the past have gone by the Yellow Crane, and the Yellow Crane Tower is empty here.

The yellow crane is gone, and the white clouds are long in the air.

Harukawa calendar Hanyang tree, yerba buena parrot island.

Where is Nippori Pass? The Smoke Wave River is sad.

The first four sentences of this poem are atmospheric and melancholy, repeatedly "go", "empty", "go", "empty": I have not met, and I will never meet.

What is it that has not been met and will never be encountered? The gods who rode the Yellow Crane on the Yellow Crane Tower.

Meeting with divine birds and immortals is a grand event in life, but if you don't meet them, they are all adults, and it is too naïve to be true. Unless this "event" refers to something else, it is a "metaphor."

From the combination of "here" and "township pass", it is known that the poet should be a foreigner who has come from afar. In the repetition of "going", "emptiness", "going", and "emptiness", there is a strong and irrepressible complex emotion: there is loss, there is epiphany, and there is also relief!

Maybe the years of luxury, the white colt of half a life, maybe the long journey, all the way hard, did not give up the "metaphor", but at this moment of climbing the Yellow Crane Tower, the poet suddenly understood that it had vanished. That is the "grand event" that the poet hides deep in his heart and is painstakingly seeking, and has already gone like a god riding a crane, how to pursue?!

We don't know what this "event", this "metaphor", is, but we may have all had this feeling.

The thing that is collectively called "pursuit" or "ideal", and the one that is the ultimate in life, we have all hoped so much, as grand and dreamy as "immortals riding cranes"; and when lost, they are so powerless, like the earth, the clouds, the gods and men, as distant and blocked.

The exclamation of "going", "empty", "going", and "empty" is a long song of "grand events" that have failed, and it is also an elegy for the disillusionment of "ideals".

When ideals are shattered and pursuits are frustrated, where will the poet go? The last four sentences speak of this annoyance.

The "Qingchuan Calendar" and "Yerba Buena" are naturally bright and gentle, and the "Hanyang Tree" and "Parrot Island" are near the Yellow Crane Tower, which are all within the reach of poets.

The poet saw these beauties and understood that these were usually good "footholds", but his gaze still crossed the "gentle township" nearby, and searched for the Yangtze River in the dark twilight and the vast smoke.

Township Pass! This is a kind of looking back, but also another kind of longing, even if I don't know "where", even if I am looking for my own troubles.

No matter how gentle he is, he is not as gentle as his hometown.

Xiangguan was so affectionate to Ru, how could he have abandoned it in the first place?

Because of that "event", the "metaphor" behind the "crane ride of the past", that ideal.

I don't love xiangguan, even if I am gentle in other townships, I can't give up my thoughts about xiangguan.

It is not that I do not love the countryside, but the ideal is what I want in my heart, so I abandon the countryside pass.

Ideals, townships, gentle townships, this is the ranking of values in the poet's heart - this elegy of the original shattered ideal is precisely the eternal ode to the ideal!