Author: Deng Fang (Distinguished Associate Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan)
In the late spring of March, jiangnan grass grows. Miscellaneous peanut trees, flocks of warblers flying wildly. Spring is one of the most sung themes in classical Chinese literature. People look forward to spring and love spring, but also cherish spring, colorful spring with people's feelings, in the writer's pen to present unlimited scenery. However, there are also some spring scenes that seem less conspicuous and less typical, and have also become unique landscapes in poetry for thousands of years. This article selects two "inconspicuous" spring scenes to talk about.
One
Good rain knows the season, when spring is happening. Dive into the night with the wind, and the moisturizer is silent.
The wild trails are dark and the river boats are alone. Xiao looked at the red wet place, and the flowers were heavy in the official city.
Du Fu's "Happy Rain on Spring Nights" is well known for its selection into chinese textbooks. But I don't know if everyone has the same feeling as the author when they read this poem: "The wild paths are dark, and the river boats are unique" is really beautiful? Qiu Zhao'ao's "Detailed Notes on Du Shi" says: "Three or four belong to hear, five or six belong to see", that is to say, the third and fourth sentences are to listen to the rain, and the fifth and sixth sentences are to see the rain. The famous sentence "Sneak into the night with the wind, moisturize and make things silent" is a famous sentence, which can be described as "the god of spring rain" (Shen Deqian's "Tang Poems"); but the "see" of the fifth and sixth sentences seems to be too ordinary: the country lanes and clouds are black, and only a little fishing fire on the distant river is bright alone. What Du Fu saw was such an ordinary scenery of the rainy night in the countryside, except for the fishing fire in the distance, it was vast and dark, and he really couldn't see anything, and there was really nothing to see. Far less than what Du Fu saw during the day, "the mountains and mountains are beautiful in the late days, and the spring wind and flowers are fragrant." The mud melts the swallows, the sand warms the sleeping mandarin ducks" or the "river blue birds are white, and the mountains and blue flowers are burning". Some commentators say that these two sentences "sketch for us a beautiful picture of the night rain in the rivers and lakes." ...... According to life experience, the air humidity on rainy nights is large, and the light is not dispersed, so it feels bright. It shows that the poet observes life in detail. (Fang Lin, "How a Happy Word", "Literature and History Knowledge", March 2014) Of course, it is also very reasonable, but the author still has doubts: can a little fishing fire in such a dark night really be called a "beautiful night rain map of the rivers and lakes"? On this ordinary night, why did Du Fu deliberately go to see it and deliberately write poetry?
"Happy Rain on Spring Nights" is written about the rain in the night. Night rain is not the same as daytime rain, it can't be seen. Especially in the ancient countryside, where there was no lighting and it was pitch black at night, it was even more difficult to see the "silent" misty drizzle. Therefore, in ancient China, night rain was generally not seen, and generally no one used vision to describe night rain. There are many poems about night rain, but almost all of them write about the sound of rain by hearing. "Xiaolou listens to the spring rain one night", "listens to the wind and rain at night", "the teenager listens to the rain song upstairs", "the rain outside the curtain is babbling, and the spring is beautiful", etc., all of which are the night rain that is heard. Meng Haoran's "Spring Dawn" also writes about the night rain, the whole article is only auditory, the poet woke up in the morning in the "smell of birds everywhere", from the awakening of hearing to the auditory memory of "the sound of wind and rain at night", further thought of the falling flowers in the night rain. The leisure and comfort of the spring morning, and the faint melancholy that seems to be absent when waking up after sleeping enough, all jump on the paper, and become a famous article for thousands of years.
But Du Fu's poem is different from the famous verses we are familiar with about night rain. He was not as relaxed as Meng Haoran, who could sleep well all night and wake up in the spring; Du Fu was a poet who would be excited by the rain and never sleep all night. For the almost elusive spring night rain, he not only listened attentively, but also deliberately went out to see. When this "knowing the season" of good rain "sneaks into the night with the wind", the auditory "moisturizing and silent" does not seem to be enough for the poet to confirm whether the rain is really falling, and the poet rejoices on the one hand, but is afraid that the rain is not real enough, so he can't help but go out to look, and even walked on the country road to see the rain. Life experience tells us that the drizzle at night is difficult to see in the dark, but it is easier to see clearly when looking at the street lamp, because the rain filament will appear in the halo of the lamp. Du Fu's environment, the night sky is dark, the clouds are black, the wild trails are also black, can not let him see the rain. What to do? He kept searching in the dark place, and finally saw a little light on the river, and through that light, Du Fu saw the rain he had always wanted to see and confirm! Therefore, although the five or six sentences are written about the scenery seen, the main body of this scenery is not a wild path, not a cloud, not a river boat, not a fishing fire, but "rain" - all the scenery is born for "watching the rain". It was a little light in the darkness that let Du Fu know exactly that the rain was falling, and how pleasing it was for the poet. Combined with the last two sentences, "Xiao looks at the red wet place, the flowers are heavy and the official city", Du Fu seemed to have watched the rain all night, until Tianming saw that the heavy flowers full of rain were particularly red, and he reconfirmed that it was "rain".
According to Mr. Xiao Difei's research, Tang Su Zongbao should be in the first year (762) Chengdu spring drought, the poem "Spring Night Happy Rain" is written in the context of spring rain in the drought. Du Fu wrote many poems about rain, and often "liked rain", because rain was related to the people's livelihood of the world. He wrote in the poem "Heavy Rain" that "dare to resign from the reeds and leaks, and already like the beans are high", as long as the rain can make all things grow and bring good years, what is the leakage of rain in his own hut - this is du Fu's greatness. Therefore, in the fifth and sixth sentences of the poem "Happy Rain on Spring Nights", such an ordinary scenery also enters the poem because of Du Fu's "happy rain", and when we understand that this scenery exists to see "rain", we can further understand Du Fu's mind.
Yang Lun's "Du Shi Jing Quan" quotes Shao Changyu as saying that these five or six sentences "Yong Ye Rain Enters the Mind", as if he realized the subtlety of these two sentences that are actually "Night Rain". Cha Shenxing's "Commentary on the Poetry of Chubai'an" said that this poem "has not a single word that is not happy rain, and none of it is not a spring night that is happy rain." The poet, with the joy of not being able to press, is not enough after listening to the rain, but also to see the night rain, to see in the dark path, to see in the black clouds without moonlight, to see in the faint lights of the distant river. Visually writing about the drizzle of spring nights has never been seen before; looking at and "rejoicing" the rain of spring nights with the mind of "poor years and worrying about Li Yuan" can also be said to be unprecedented in the history of Chinese poetry.
Two
Han Yu's "Early Spring Presenting Water Department Zhang Eighteen Members Outside" is also a famous passage that has entered the language textbook:
The light rain on the sky street is as moist as crisp, and the grass color is close but not there.
The most is the benefit of spring of the year, which is better than the smoke and willow full of imperial capital.
Tang poems have become more and more difficult to write by the time of Han Yu. Everything is "extremely difficult to continue", and Sheng Tang poetry has reached its peak in terms of form, genre, and structure, as well as in the creation of images, wind bones, and sound rhythms, or in the creation of images and the development of content. However, there are always some missing objects in the Sheng Tang poets that have not been included in the poem, and if the Poets of the Middle and Tang Dynasties are willing to search for small relics, they can also find some fresh "original poems" that have not been written by the Sheng Tang people, such as the grass color in the early spring rain of Han Yu.
The "spring grass" of spring is a common scene and easy to enter poetry, and the poets of the Sheng Tang Dynasty have certainly written a large number of famous articles. "Qingchuan calendar Hanyang tree, Yerba Buena parrot island" "Spring grass next year green, Wang Sun will not return" "In the rain the grass is green, the peach blossoms on the water are red and burning", "I want to find the grass to go, but I regret to violate the old people", "There are ancient trees with no flowers on it, and there are sad spring grasses under it" "The country is broken in the mountains and rivers, and the spring grass and trees in the city are deep"... However, the Poets of the Sheng Tang Dynasty all wrote about the grass of "Green", "Green", and "Deep", and this kind of grass of early spring that will be green before green, and the Poets of the Sheng Tang Dynasty do not seem to have discovered their beauty, or think that they are not beautiful enough to be in poetry.
But Han Yu found it. The light rain in early spring is "as moist as crisp", and everything grows in the rain, but the season is still early, and it is not yet the season when "the grass in the rain is green and dyed" written in Wang Wei's poem. So after an early spring rain, new shoots appeared in the withered yellow grass, revealing a little new green. But this green is still shallow and still small, so it is green from a distance, and it is still yellow when you look close. The discovery of "grass color is close but nothing" is indeed very novel, but it does not seem to be beautiful. However, Han Yu was very high-profile about his discovery, saying that "the most beneficial spring of the year is the best, and it is better than the smoked willow full of imperial capital", thinking that this green spring grass is the best place in spring, better than the spring color of the smoky willows in the city.
This raises another question, "spring benefits of the year" should be many, warbler flying grass long, plum willow crossing the river, early warbler new swallow, spring river plumbing, are. Why did Han Yu take "grass color is close but nothing" as the best, and why must it be compared with "Smoke Willow Full Imperial Capital"?
The author believes that this kind of early spring green of "looking at it from a distance and seeing nothing from close up" has been discovered by poets before the Middle And Tang Dynasties and frequently written into poetry, which is actually "smoke willow". As the folk proverb goes, "Five-nine-six-nine, look at the willows along the river," and people seem to have become accustomed to getting the news of spring first from the willows in the distance. When the willow tree looks at it in the distance, it is like a green smoke, and when it looks close, the willow branches are still young buds, and the green leaves have not yet grown, which is a typical picture of the common early spring, and it is also the "willow color" that has been repeatedly chanted in the poems from the Six Dynasties of the Han and Wei Dynasties to the early Tang Dynasty. "Suddenly see the strange head of the willow color, the penitent husband and wife looking for the marquis", "Weicheng toward the rain and light dust, the guest house green willow color new", "Chi Nan willow color semi-green", "with snow plum first warm, with smoke willow shangqing", the spring of the Tang Dynasty poets is indispensable to the willow color. And Han Yue was unwilling to follow in the footsteps of the Tang Dynasty, silently competing with the ready-made imagery describing early spring in poetry, that is, the "willow color like smoke" commonly used by predecessors, and finally, he found another kind of image that could compete with the smoke willow "from a distance, but near but nothing": "grass color". This is a fresh aesthetic experience, with a sharp new, with a little pride of the early people to discover the spring step by step, but also with the poet's victory over the secret joy of the Sheng Tang people: the most beautiful spring is this grass color, absolutely better than the smoke willow that the predecessors often entered into poetry.
Although from the perspective of poetic art, the last two sentences of the poem seem to have a sense of snake foot, and it seems that they are overconfident in their own feelings, but as a Middle Tang poet in the shadow of the peak of the Tang Dynasty, it is not easy to find a new poetic image, which can be understood.
Guangming Daily ( 2022-05-02 06 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily