Shi'er
(Southern Song Dynasty) Lu You
After death, I know that everything is in vain, but I am not as sad as Jiuzhou.
Wang Shibei fixed the day of the Central Plains, and he never forgot to tell Nai Weng about the family sacrifices.
Poetic
I originally knew that when I died, everything in this world would have nothing to do with me. But the only thing that saddens me is that I was not able to see the reunification of the motherland with my own eyes. On the day when the Song Dynasty's army regains the lost territory in the Central Plains, you hold a family ceremony, and don't forget to tell your father the good news.
Brief analysis
Lu You was a patriotic poet in the Southern Song Dynasty. He devoted his life to the just cause of resisting the Jin Dynasty and regaining the lost land. Although they have been repeatedly squeezed and attacked by capitulationists, their patriotic enthusiasm has never diminished. The poem "Showing Children" is a last will and testament written by the poet to his son before his death. It expresses the poet's deep and strong patriotic passion that he would never forget to "Northern the Central Plains" and unify the motherland until his death.
The first sentence is "Death means that all things are in vain." "Yuanzhi" means knowing from the beginning; "everything is empty" means that after death, everything will be free of worries. But then the meaning of the second sentence changed: "But it is sad that all nine states are the same." There is only one thing that I can't let go of, that is, the lost country has not yet been recovered, and the reunification of the motherland has not been witnessed with my own eyes. The third line of the poem, "Wang Shibei sets the Central Plains Day", shows that although the poet is sad, he is not desperate. He firmly believed that one day the Song Dynasty's army would be able to pacify the Central Plains and regain the lost territory. With this sentence, the mood of the poem changes from sadness to excitement. The ending sentence "There is no hope of suing Naiweng for family sacrifices", the mood changed again, but I had no choice but to see the day when the motherland was reunified while I was alive, so I had to place my hope on future generations. So I told my son affectionately not to forget to tell him the good news of "Beiding Central Plains" during family sacrifices.
This poem is Lu You's last work. When he was dying, he still could not forget the territory and people of the Central Plains occupied by the Jurchen nobles, and eagerly looked forward to the reunification of the motherland. Therefore, he specially wrote this poem as a will to earnestly warn his son. From here we can understand how persistent, deep, warm and sincere the poet's patriotic passion is! No wonder that since the Southern Song Dynasty, everyone who has read this poem has been moved by it. Especially when foreign enemies invaded or the motherland was divided, it aroused countless people's screams.
This poem uses twists and turns to express the poet's complex thoughts and emotions when he was dying, including the endless resentment for the unfinished cause of fighting against Jin Dynasty, and the firm belief that the sacred cause will be successful. The whole poem has elements of sadness, but the tone is passionate. The language of the poem is natural, without the slightest refinement. It is all a natural expression of true feelings, but it is more beautiful and touching than a poem that is deliberately crafted.
Introduction to Lu You
Lu You (1125-1210), with the courtesy name Wu Guan and the nickname Fang Weng, was born in Shanyin, Yuezhou (now Shaoxing, Zhejiang). He was an outstanding patriotic poet in my country. He always insisted on resisting the Jin Dynasty, and was constantly ostracized and attacked by the establishment in his official career. In his middle age, he entered Sichuan to fight against the Jin Dynasty. His military life enriched his literary content, and his works revealed great brilliance and he became an outstanding poet. The volume of lyrics is not as huge as that of poems, but it also embodies the spirit of patriotism and "swallows the remaining captives with anger".
Throughout his life and his more than 9,000 poems, a strong spirit of patriotism was always permeated and permeated, thus forming the most significant feature of his poetry creation and establishing his place in the poetry circle of his motherland. lofty status. Many of his poems are patriotic poems.
During the era when Lu You lived, the Jin Kingdom, a minority regime in the north, frequently launched wars against the Song Dynasty. The poor and weak Song Dynasty lost a large amount of its territory and was forced to continue to migrate southward. The people lived in wars and turmoil. middle. As a boy, Lu You had to flee with his family and suffered the pain of being displaced. At the beginning of the 12th century, the Jurchen tribe in northeastern my country established the Jin Kingdom. In the second year after Lu You was born, the Jin State occupied Bianjing, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty (today's Kaifeng City, Henan Province); in the third year, the two emperors Hui and Qin were captured, and the Northern Song Dynasty perished. When Qinzong's brother Zhao Gou fled to the south and established power in Lin'an (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang), instead of trying hard to regain the lost territory, he appointed the notorious traitor Qin Hui as prime minister, bent on bending his knees to the Jin people and suing for peace. . In the twelfth year of Shaoxing (1142), the peace treaty was concluded. Zhao Goujing was so shameless that he claimed to be a minister to the emperor of Jin, and promised to donate 250,000 taels of silver and 250,000 pieces of silk every year, and to draw the Huaihe River as a boundary with the Jin. From then on, the great rivers and mountains in the north became the territory of the Jin people, and the vast number of people in the north were enslaved by the Jin people. The small court of the Southern Song Dynasty only lived in a corner, lingering for years under the threat of the enemy. Later, the "Longxing Peace Agreement" signed by Song Xiaozong, Zhao Shen and Jin Dynasty and the "Kaixi Peace Agreement" signed by Ningzong Zhao Kuo and Jin Dynasty still humiliated and sued for peace. This situation is, of course, intolerable to the majority of the Han people who have always opposed national oppression. Therefore, in this historical era, countless outstanding sons and daughters of the Chinese nation stepped forward and launched an indomitable struggle, and Lu You was their outstanding representative on the literary front.
The poem "Shi'er" is Lu You's last work. When he was dying, he still could not forget the territory and people of the Central Plains occupied by the Jurchen nobles, and eagerly looked forward to the reunification of the motherland. Therefore, he specially wrote this poem as a will to earnestly warn his son.
From here we can understand how persistent, deep, warm and sincere the poet's patriotic passion is! No wonder that since the Southern Song Dynasty, everyone who has read this poem has been moved by it. Especially when foreign enemies invaded or the motherland was divided, it aroused countless people's screams. This poem is also Lu You's last will and testament to his son. The poem expresses that a dying old man will never forget his motherland, which was shattered by foreign invasions until his death. He hopes that his children can tell him the news of victory on the day when the motherland is restored. From this poem, people can feel the strong patriotism of an old poet at the end of his life. Poor parents in the world! Of course, the so-called "fifty-six out of ten" and "three-four out of ten" here are just rough statistics, and they are only based on quantity and surface. However, it can be seen that Lu You's "quality" is consistent and natural. From young to old, everlasting. This poem "Shi'er" is the patriotic spark that burst out at the end of his life. It can also be seen as a summary of his patriotic thoughts and poems throughout his life.
Literati of all ages who have read the poem "Shi'er" are all moved by it. As early as the Southern Song Dynasty, Liu Kezhuang had a quatrain that said:
It would be better to see the captives die than to let the old man Yi Hui be angry. Knowing that Xiao Lu was embarrassed, he decided to tell Master Wang to enter Luoyang!
As far as I can see, there are no fewer than thirty other commentators on Lu's poems who specifically mention the poem "Shi'er" (please refer to the "Compilation of Research Materials on Lu You" compiled by Comrade Kong Fanli and I) , or it may be said that it has the meaning of "Three Calls to Cross the River" in Zong's translation, or it may be said that it is the same as Du Fu's loyalty and patriotism of "never forgetting a meal". Some people sighed and cried after reading it, and some wrote poems to express their sympathy. This shows that this poem is sincere and touching!
"Shi'er" is a precious cultural heritage of the Chinese nation. Today, although seven or eight hundred years have passed since Lu You wrote his "Shi'er", the patriotic fervor expressed in the poem is still tear-jerking and thought-provoking. "When a bird is about to die, its song is also sad; when a man is about to die, his words are also kind." The mournful sound of "But the sadness is not the same as that of all nine states" in this poem is still a powerful call for the reunification of the motherland and the return of identity. !
Lu You experienced the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty and the first half of the Southern Song Dynasty. Due to his hasty escape from the enemy invasion at a young age and the inspiration and education from the patriotic speeches of his family and relatives, Lu You had an extremely deep feeling for the serious national disaster at that time. Therefore, as early as his adolescence, he buried the desire for patriotic revenge deep in his heart. seed. From then on, whether he served as an official in the court or local areas, served in the army on the front lines of Sichuan and Shaanxi, or lived idle in his hometown in Shaoxing in his later years, this seed took root, sprouted, dried up, and blossomed. Although it was constantly ravaged by wind and rain, it continued to grow and strengthen. And it finally bears abundant fruits. There is a passage in the Qing Dynasty poet Zhao Yi's "Oubei Poetry", which is very summary. He said:
When Fang Weng was more than ten years old, he had already been accustomed to hearing the preface of Xianzheng, and he was as unchangeable as ice and fire. And in terms of the great meaning of "Spring and Autumn", there is nothing better than this, so I will keep it unchanged throughout my life. After entering Shu, under the curtain of Wang Yan, the Xuanfu envoy, he passed by Nanzheng and looked at Hu and Du. He was very ambitious and vigorous, and he really had the intention of throwing Yan and Yun at his fingertips. Five or six of his poems were restored. After leaving Shu, there were still three or four out of ten. After seventy years,... there is no ambition to regain fame. However, his "Reflections on Old Things in the Central Plains" says: "Begging for water in the East China Sea to wash away the sand", and "Lao Ma Xing" says: "The drought locusts in the Central Plains are in decline. When Wang Shi went to the Northern Expedition to pass on the imperial edict, he was very excited when he heard the war drums, "I hope I can bring peace to Yan and Zhao for the country." This is what I will never forget. Before his death, there is still a sentence: "Wang Shibei set the Central Plains Day, and the family sacrifices did not forget to tell the old man," which shows the original intention of letting the old man go.
After the Jin Dynasty was destroyed by the Mongols in 1234, the Southern Song government dispatched troops from Huaixi to Kaifeng City, and after retaking Luoyang from Kaifeng, Liu was excited and thought that Lu You's descendants would definitely obey. In his will, he told "Nai Weng" the good news. But the good times did not last long. The small court of the Southern Song Dynasty, which sang and danced in the mountains and had treacherous ministers in power, could not even resist the Jin soldiers who had become old and angry, let alone the Mongolian army of the "Fang Zhang Zhikou"? Thanks to the patriotic army and civilians who rose up to resist, this precarious regime continued for more than 40 years. At this time, Lin Jingxi, a survivor of the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote a poem "After Reading Lu Fangweng's Poems". The meaning of the poem is extremely sad. The last four sentences of the poem go like this:
"When the green hills are filled with sorrow, wars are all over the south and east. But sad How can we complain to Naiwen when we don't see Jiuzhou Tong?"
This means that when Lu You died, he regretted not seeing "Jiuzhou Tong". Now his grandsons see this situation, but they have unified China. It was not the Song Dynasty, but the emerging Yuan Empire. How should he tell the old man such news during the family ceremony? The two poems cited above, the former one is filled with the passion of "the book is full of joy and joy", and the latter one expresses the sorrow of "the sound of the country's subjugation is sad to think about", one is happy and the other is sad, both come from "Shi'er" Caused by poetry. Their patriotic enthusiasm is closely connected with Lu You. They are all examples of patriotic poets in our country, and they are still unforgettable by future generations.
However, most of the above people were infected by this poem and caused a stir, but they had no time to comment on it. Its content is analyzed in detail. One article worthy of reference and recommendation to readers is "Patriotic Poems" by contemporary Mr. Zhu Ziqing. In this article, he divided the patriotic poems in Chinese classical poetry into three items: first, loyalty to one dynasty, that is, loyalty to one surname; second, praising the soldiers who bravely killed the enemy; third, sympathies with foreigners. hatred. He also pointed out that the third item takes the nation as its standpoint and has a wider scope.
He believed that Lu You "Although he was an official, his patriotic fervor was not only for the Zhao family. He served in the army in the northwest, which strengthened his hatred. For the sake of the nation and the country, he always had the ambition to restore the Central Plains." Therefore. Among the patriotic poems of the past dynasties, he particularly praised the poem "Showing Children" and made a detailed analysis of it:
As an outstanding poet, Lu You wrote more than 9,300 poems in his life. Most of these poems are about fighting against invaders. Or they describe the fiery life in the military, "lying on the pillow without clothes, covered with frost when sleeping", or they express their deep worries about the future and fate of the motherland and their melancholy mood of empty enthusiasm for serving the country.
1. After death, you will know that everything is in vain, but the sadness will not be the same as in all nine states. (Translation: I already know that there is nothing after death. I just feel sad that I did not see the reunification of China with my own eyes.)
2. Wang Shibei designated the Central Plains Day, and he did not forget to pay tribute to his family Nai Weng. (Translation: On the day when the imperial army regains the northern territory, when you worship your ancestors at home, don’t forget to tell your father about it.)
Lu You, the greatest patriotic poet in ancient China< /p>
Translated into modern Chinese:
I originally knew that when I died, everything in the world would have nothing to do with me; but the only thing that saddened me was that I could not see it with my own eyes. See the reunification of the motherland.
Therefore, when the day comes when the Song Dynasty army regains the lost land in the Central Plains, you hold family sacrifices and don’t forget to tell your fathers the good news!