Su Shi's Night View of Wanghailou (Part One) describes the tidal poems of Qiantang River.

The waves come first, and the front of the building refers to a pile of snow. From this tide, you must go to see Twelve Chapters of Yinshan.

To annotate ...

① Wanghai Building: also known as Chaozhou Building, namely Donghetang East Building. On the Phoenix Mountain in Hangzhou, you can see the Qiantang River Tide, which is one of the scenic spots in Hangzhou. There are five poems in all. Choose the first one here.

2 pointing: between pointing and looking, the description time is very short. This is a moment.

③ Twelve times: one is "twenty times".

Comment and analysis

The Qiantang River spring tide is a world-famous tidal wonder. Especially on the 18th day of the eighth lunar month (sometimes 17th) every year, seawater flows into the trumpet-shaped estuary of Qiantang River from Hangzhou Bay, and it is excited with the river, forming a tidal head as high as 3-5 meters, just like Ma Benteng, surging and making an earth-shattering roar. The tide head hit the bank of Qiantang River, splashing waves tens of meters high, and the scene was extremely magnificent. This is the famous tide of Qiantang River. Throughout the ages, Qiantang Opera has attracted countless poets and writers and brought them many wonderful artistic inspirations, thus writing many famous works praising Qiantang Opera. Su Shi's Night View of Wanghailou (I) is one of the famous works.

There are five quatrains in the poem "Night View of Wanghailou", which was written by Su Shi when he visited Wanghailou in Xining in August (1072). In the book Answer to Meng Fan, he said: "I was sent to the national invigilator for ten days, so I had to sit around in Wanghai Building in Zhonghetang for more than twenty days and gradually felt comfortable. I sent a few poems to make jokes. " That's it. The first song chosen here describes the tides in Qiantang River.

The first sentence of this poem: "The first wave is coming". The author stands on the watchtower and watches the rising tide on the horizon. Zhou Mi, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, once recorded in "Watching the Tide in Wulin": "The Tide in Zhejiang is also a magnificent world view." ... only when it is far away from Haimen, it is like a silver line; As soon as we approached, the snow-capped mountains in Yucheng came from the international sky ... "In the article Baiyangdian Tide in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Zhang Dai also said that" standing on the pond, seeing the front line of the tide, coming from Haining ",it can be seen that the author used the" front line "here to describe the tide on the horizon, which is very true and accurate.

But then, the author did not describe the specific process of the tide "falling from the sky". The author didn't write its momentum of "shocking the sky" (carefully), nor did he write its color of "silver in the sea is the silhouette, jade in the river is the waist" (Yang Wanli), and even less did he write its "suspicion is that the sea and the air are all around" (). Instead, avoid all these, and use the phrase "there is a pile of snow in front of the building" to directly write the scene that the tide rushes to the river bank, arousing foam waves and splashing pearls and jade, just like a snow drift. In other words, the first sentence is written in the trend, and the second sentence is written in the trend.

Why does the author write like this? Is it because the sight of the tide coming from the horizon is not worth writing about? Of course not; Can't the author write it? Of course not. We analyze that there are two reasons why the author may write this way: first, because there are many words describing the trend in the past, even if the author tries his best to describe it deliberately, I am afraid it is difficult to jump out of the box and surpass the precedent; Secondly, because what the author wrote is only a seven-character quatrain after all, in such a short space, even if every sentence has written the scene of tidal bore, I am afraid it is difficult to say it in detail. Therefore, the author simply cut off the narrative of this process, causing a big jump in the structure and bringing the front of the horizon to the readers at once.

The word "look after" seems to mean that the tide has jumped from the horizon to the foot at the moment when the author points out the direction and looks around, which is naturally an exaggeration. Because although the speed of the tide can reach 10 meter per second, there is also a process from the "first line of waves" on the horizon to the snow wave pile in front of the building, which will never happen in an instant. The author's use of the word "refers to gu" is obviously the general trend; His purpose is only to create a strong impression, not to describe it in detail, which leaves us a broad imagination space: we seem to see the surging and roaring tide when the tide comes in, the towering tidal heads of "waves pouring down from the mountains like snow" (Li Bai) and "head touching the mountains" (Liu Yuxi), and feel the avalanche in nature. In this free and creative imagination, we have greatly enriched the pictures provided by the author and gained a stronger artistic feeling-it should be said that it is the greatest achievement of this poem that enables readers to do this!

The last two sentences of the poem, "From now on, you must go to the monarch, but see the Yinshan Mountain for twelve times", are no longer a positive description of the Qiantang River tide, but a virtual writing and comparison from real writing. He suggested that people who came with him cherish every opportunity to watch the tide. Whenever the tide rises, they have to climb the Wanghai Tower to see this picturesque spectacle. Don't miss it until "See the Silver Mountain Twelve More Times"! Between the lines reveals the incomparable love and heartfelt admiration for the beauty of the tide, which can be described as affectionate. This way of writing in vain not only did not weaken the image of the whole poem, but also expanded the emotional capacity of the poem, further rendering the tidal beauty of Qiantang, making the poem beautiful, emotional and artistic. This is also one of the important reasons why this poem has become a famous landscape masterpiece.

The last word of this poem is "12 verses", and some books are called "20 verses". In the past, the explanation of which writing method should be used seemed inadequate. For example, some books say that "twenty times" is "many words", but isn't it more common to use it thirty or forty times? Why do you prefer "twenty times"? There are also some books that say: "Twelve times is the best", but where is the "best", which is not convincing.

We think that the "twelve" in the poem should be a real number, that is, it refers to the twelve months of the year, while the "twelve times in the mountains" refers to the tide observation once a month. Because of the tidal force formed by the sun, the moon and the earth in a straight line, the Qiantang River has two or three big tides every month, but it is not as spectacular and world-famous as the autumn tide on August 18. In fact, "seeing the Yinshan Mountain 12 times" means that the tidal scenery can't be let go every month, especially on August 18 next year, and seeing the magnificent tides again will be satisfied. This fully shows the author's anxiety and eagerness. We think this understanding may be more practical than other explanations.