Two Nights by Huichong River is a poem written by Su Shi in Song Dynasty. What does "inscribing poems" mean? To put it simply, it is a painting poem.
These two poems were written by Su Shi in Yuanfeng, Song Shenzong in the eighth year (1085) and painted by Su Shi in Hui Chong.
Hui Chong was a famous painter at that time. Su Shi's poetry and prose are excellent, and he has a high appreciation of painting, so when he saw Hui Chong's Night Scene on the Riverside, he wrote these two poems while enjoying them.
Su Shi's description of natural scenery in Hui Chong's paintings is very vivid and interesting.
These two poems are as follows:
First of all:
Two or three peach blossoms outside the bamboo forest and ducks in the water first noticed the warm spring.
The beach is covered with wormwood, asparagus is beginning to sprout, and puffer fish are preparing to swim upstream from the sea back to the river.
Second:
The geese fly north, like people who want to return to the north, but because of attachment, poor team.
Before flying to the north, I knew that it was snowy in the desert in the north, or the south that spent most of the Spring Festival in the south.
It is a pity that these two paintings of Hui Chong have not been handed down because of the difficulty in preservation and the age, but Su Shi's poems on paintings have been handed down and become famous sentences that have been passed down for thousands of years.
It can be seen from Su Shi's two poems "Night Scene of the Spring River in Hui Chong" that Hui Chong's "Night Scene of the Spring River" consists of two pictures: one is a picture of ducks playing in the spring river, and the other is a picture of geese flying in the spring river.
In particular, the first poem entitled "Duck Opera on the Spring River", Su Shi successfully wrote the scenery of the Spring River in early spring, and he captured the scenery characteristics of the four seasons with meticulous and keen feelings. The whole poem is full of the breath and vitality of spring, giving people a fresh and comfortable feeling.
Painting conveys feelings with poetry, and reading poetry is like watching pictures. Especially the first poem in Su Shi's painting poem "Riverside Scenery in Hui Chong" is a household name.
The first sentence of the poem "There are three or two peach blossoms outside the bamboo" is Su Shi's description of the distant scenery in Hui Chong's paintings. Su Shi, a poet, looked across the bamboo, and several peach blossoms swayed. Peach blossoms and bamboo are in contrast, red and green, and spring is particularly charming. Although this is just a simple sentence, it reveals a lot of information:
First of all, the bamboo forest is sparse. If it's sunny, you won't see peach blossoms. Secondly, show the season and point out the word "early". Just after the cold spring, it is not the time for peach blossoms to bloom, but the infinite vitality and potential of spring have been revealed.
The second sentence, "The Prophet of Warm Duck in the Spring River", is the poet's rendering of the dynamic scene nearby: a group of lively ducks are floating freely and dancing on the surface of the Spring River.
Bamboo and peach ducks, one static and one dynamic, set each other off into interest; Beyond the bamboo on the shore and the green water in the river, there is a clear hierarchy and a sense of depth in the picture.
The phrase "Duck Prophet in Spring River Plumbing" is the most harmonious between poetry and painting. Su Shi wrote people's feelings with the feelings of ducks through the association generated when enjoying paintings. There are ducks swimming in the river, which makes people feel warm in spring.
The next sentence, "withered reed buds are short all over the ground", is a continuation of the description in the painting and a recent scene. Withering water, that is, white water, a kind of wild grass, can be used as medicine, also known as wormwood. There is a folk saying that "wormwood in March, Artemisia in April".
Reed bud, tender bud of reed, is also called asparagus. In the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, tender hemp fiber and reed buds are fresh vegetables in spring and food for puffer fish. To make puffer fish soup, you should use the tender buds of newborn reeds as ingredients. This laid the groundwork for the later "puffer fish wanting to go up".
The above three sentences are the poet's concrete and true description of the "Spring River Night Scene", which directly reproduces the image of the picture.
It is the time when the puffer fish wants to rise. "Puffer fish" is a kind of marine fish with delicious meat, but the liver, gonads and blood contain toxins, which can only be used as ingredients after being treated by professionals.
Ye Mengde, a famous poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote in Shi Lin Shi Hua: "Zhejiang people ate puffer fish before Shangyuan, and it first came from Changzhou River period. I took a thousand dollars when I came out, but I didn't take much. After February, more and more, only one hundred yuan per tail. When catkins are catkins, people have stopped eating. "
Although Hui Chong's paintings do not depict the movement of puffer fish, the poet Su Shi knows that "puffer fish is eager to go up" from the wild growth of Artemisia selengensis and the germination of reeds, thus painting the image of dolphins going up the river when the spring river blooms. It can also be said that puffer fish is imagined by Su Shi, but it is not shown in Hui Chong's paintings.
It is through this kind of pen and ink that Su Shi transformed the silent and still picture into a lively poetic scene. In Su Shi's eyes, this painting is no longer a plane static picture on paper in the frame, but gives people a profound experience and subtle observation of ecology.
Su Shi used "three or two branches", "short reed buds" and "puffer fish want to go up" to subtly imply that this is the breath of spring, so it can arouse people's beautiful reverie. The poet's artistic association broadens the world beyond the field of vision expressed by painting, and makes poetry and painting combine perfectly.
In Su Shi's poems, the poet integrated poetic sentiment with artistic conception, reaching a perfect state. In the poem, the center of the "Late Scenery of the Spring River" is tightly buckled, and with the most picturesque scenery and the unique natural scenery of peach blossoms, water heating, withering and reed buds, it vividly shows that winter is over and warm spring has arrived.
Although we haven't seen Hui Chong's "The Night Scene of the Spring River", reading Su Shi's poems, we seem to have a vivid picture: spring water, green bamboo, peach blossoms, ducks splashing in the water, and a vibrant spring scenery. Poetry and painting are so vivid and colorful that they complement each other.