Sui Palace

The Purple Spring Palace locks the smoke and wants to take Wucheng as the emperor's home.

The jade seal is not destined to return to the corner of the sun, and the brocade sail should go to the end of the world;

In today's rotten grass there is no fire, and there are crows in the weeping poplars of the past,

If there is a queen Chen in the underground, should he ask the queen and the garden flowers again?

【Competitive Luxury】

Originally, I was going to interpret Li Shangyin's untitled poem first, but as soon as I saw this "Sui Palace", I really couldn't help the desire to write, so I had to raise my head from the large pile of hopeless love poems and seriously examine this equally hopeless allegorical poem.

For this, I deliberately crawled back into the stacks of books to read the history of the Sui and Tang dynasties, so I once again sighed at the ironic historical cycle of China and China. Politicians talk about the world and say that it is "divided for a long time, and it must be divided for a long time", but China is very strange, it is "a long time to be united, and soon to be chaotic, and after chaos, it will rise up." After the split of the Zhou Dynasty, after 256 years of Spring and Autumn Warring States, in 221 BC, King Yingzheng of Qin finally realized his ideal ambition of "Imperial Universe, Controlling Liuhe" and unifying China and China. This is a good thing, but after hundreds of years of turmoil, it should be peaceful for once. However, after the unification, the Qin Dynasty conscripted the people of the world, built the Great Wall, built water conservancy, burned books, and imprisoned thoughts; The southern expedition and the northern war, the beacon fire will not be extinguished...... All of this paved the way for Qin's downfall. The masses of the people are miserable, and the uprising against Qin seems to have become a historical inevitability. Therefore, when Chen Sheng and Wu Guang peasants revolted, and Liu Bang and Xiang Yu fought for Chu and Han, many people breathed a sigh of relief: Finally, King Qin, Han Xing.

Eight hundred years after the fall of the Qin Dynasty, in 581 AD, Yang Jian, a foreign relative, seized power in the Northern Zhou Dynasty and established the Sui Dynasty, with the capital of Chang'an, proclaiming himself Emperor Wen. In 589 AD, the Sui army marched south, destroyed the last dynasty of the Southern Dynasty, Chen, and unified the north and south. Since the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, more than 400 years of turmoil have subsided. Unlike the short-lived 15-year-old Qin Dynasty, Emperor Wen reformed the system, developed production, and paid attention to the rule of officials, and the people had a stable life for 13 years. However, in 601 AD, Yang Guang succeeded to the throne, his life was extravagant, debauched, and in 605 AD he built the Grand Canal, from Chang'an through Luoyang to Yangzhou, just to enjoy the legendary Qionghua. Such a statement is just a legend, not necessarily how credible, but it is enough to show how unbearable Emperor Yang of Sui is in the hearts of the people. As a result, there was the mighty Li Yuan uprising in the Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. It was also short-lived only after the fall of the Sui Dynasty in 39 years, and the Li Tang Dynasty opened an unprecedented prosperous era in China and China, which lasted for nearly 300 years before being flattened by the iron hooves of the Khitan in 907 AD.

I am writing this article to interpret poetry, not to discuss historical politics. History has always been the most important thing for me when I took exams. Now that I have finished the arts and sciences class, I have chosen science, and I have completely forgotten history. If I hadn't been studying poetry, I might have forgotten what the Sui and Tang dynasties were. But to understand "Sui Palace", we have to talk about history, and talk about the historical tragedies of ancient China.

I have always wondered if it were not for the praise of so many literati and writers in the past dynasties, whether Suzhou, Hangzhou and Yangzhou would be as prestigious as it is today. Not to mention anything else, the most impressive of the enlightenment poems I was four or five years old was Bai Juyi's "Remembering Jiangnan" three poems:

The south of the Yangtze River is good, and the scenery is old and familiar: the sunrise river flowers are red and the river is as green as blue in spring. Can you not remember Jiangnan?

Jiangnan recalls, the most memorable is Hangzhou: the mountain temple is looking for Guizi in the middle of the month, and the county pavilion pillow looks at the tide. When will you come back again?

Jiangnan recalls, followed by Wu Palace: Wu wine a glass of spring bamboo leaves, Wu Wa double dance drunk hibiscus. Sooner or later, we will meet again.

This group of poems "Remembering Jiangnan" and "Song of Long Hatred", which is also Bai Juyi, is probably my original love for ancient Chinese poetry. At the age of five, although I could not fully understand the feelings contained in the words, I was still moved by the teacher's affectionate narration: the flowers in the sky by the river were bright red in the reflection of the morning sun; As soon as spring dawns, tender green vines grow in the river, which look like jewels of blue from afar. The poet was intoxicated by the landscape and humanities in the early spring of Jiangnan, and even after returning to Chang'an, he couldn't help but sigh emotionally: Can you remember Jiangnan!

It was a shocking glimpse of the ignorant little girl who first met the world to Jiangnan. Since then, the beauty of the southern country has been planted in my heart, and I can no longer wave it away or erase it.

When I was a little older, when I was seven or eight years old, I read Li Bai's "Sending Meng Haoran to Guangling":

The old man left the Yellow Crane Tower in the west, and the fireworks went down to Yangzhou in March.

The lonely sail is far away and the blue sky is endless, and only the Yangtze River skyline can be seen.

"Fireworks" and "March" are all extremely beautiful images, and they are added together just to lead to the next sentence "Xiayangzhou". How rich and prosperous should Yangzhou be, so that the arrogant and boundless Li Bai can be so praised? Coupled with the last two sentences of the poem, the majestic momentum of the transcendent and indifferent approach to the immortal shocked me at once.

Later, when I was in junior high school, I read Du Mu's "The green mountains are hidden in the water, and the grass in the south of the Yangtze River has not withered at the end of autumn." On the moonlit night of the twenty-four bridges, where does the jade teach? In high school, Jiang Kui's "Yangzhou Slow" lyrics "The twenty-four bridges are still there, the waves are swinging, and the cold moon is silent." Reading the red medicine by the bridge, who is born every year? "It's so beautiful that every sentence is breathtaking, and it's sad to sigh.

Therefore, it is not difficult for us to understand that in the face of Yangzhou's Qionghua, why even Emperor Yang of Sui, who was arrogant and extravagant all his life, was moved, and even regardless of the prosperous eastern capital Luoyang and the western capital Chang'an, he did not hesitate to spend the people's fat and ointment, but also built the Grand Canal and built the Dragon Boat Palace. At the beginning of "Sui Palace", it is said that "Ziquan Palace locks the smoke and wants to take Wucheng as the emperor's home", this Ziquan Palace is Chang'an City, the capital of the Sui Dynasty. "Purple" has always been a very good word in ancient China, it has the meaning of "immortals, immortals" (for example, the Forbidden City in the Qing Dynasty, the original meaning is "the place where immortals come and go", and it has the effect of beautifying the identity of the emperor). And this Wucheng is naturally not a barren city, it is just another name for Yangzhou.

Legend has it that Li Yuan has a sun horn on his head, which is the king's spirit (in fact, Li Yuan's cheekbones are higher than ordinary people). The so-called "Jade Seal Returns to the Sun Corner" refers to the establishment of the Tang Dynasty on behalf of Li Yuan.

And the climax of this epic song is in the neck couplet. In ancient Chinese and Chinese superstitions, when people saw fireflies flying out of the grass, they said that it was from the rotten grass. When Yang Guang was playing at night, he saw that fireflies could glow in the night, and he felt very curious and fond, so he ordered someone to catch them and wrap them in cloth for him to enjoy. For a while, fireflies were almost no longer visible at night in Luoyang. And he liked poplars very much, and on the way to Yangzhou, for the convenience of ornamentation, he ordered the people to plant poplars by the canal. The neck couplet of the poem uses the words "there is now" and "there is no ancient time" in particular, indicating that there were fireflies in the past, but they were almost caught after Emperor Yang of Sui; There was no weeping poplar, but in order to cater to the hobby of Emperor Yang of Sui, he forcibly used the waterway from Luoyang to Yangzhou to become Yang Dike, and a few decades later, only the crow was accompanied by it. The satire is spicy, the idea is exquisite, and the bleak scene is really a first-class epigram.

The last sentence is also a quote from a legend. It is recorded in the "Sui Testament": Emperor Yang was in Jiangdu, faint and deep, tasted the chicken platform of Wu Palace, met with Empress Chen in a trance, and still called the emperor as His Royal Highness. There are dozens of main dancers, one of whom is very beautiful, and the emperor has repeatedly seen it. After the main cloud, that is, Zhang Lihua also. It is to persuade the emperor to drink the new brew of red beams with green texts, and the emperor drinks very happily, because Lihua is invited to dance "Yushu □□ Flowers", Lihua Xu starts and ends a song...... The queen asked the emperor: "How happy is the dragon boat trip?" If it is said that His Royal Highness is governed by Yao Shun, how can he see the depth of sin when he travels here today? "The emperor suddenly realized, and suddenly disappeared.

That is to say, Emperor Yang of Sui had dreamed of Chen Shubao, the queen of Chen, feasting with him in the Dragon Boat Palace, and his concubine Zhang Lihua danced the famous song "Yushu □□ Flower" by Emperor Yang of Sui, and Chen Shubao asked him how he was doing in Yangzhou? He also said that his Yang Guang's ability to govern the world was higher than Yao Shun's, but now he is running here to wander, what a great sin! When Emperor Yang of Sui heard this, he angrily scolded Chen Shubao, and woke up with a scolding.

And Emperor Yang of Sui was on the way south to Yangzhou, and was assassinated by Yu Wenhua in the Dragon Boat Palace. Li Shangyin also has a song "Sui Palace":

Chengxing South Tour is not martial law, who is the provincial letter of the nine-fold?

The spring breeze cuts the palace brocade in the country, half doing mud barriers and half sailing.

This poem was written when Emperor Yang of Sui traveled south to Yangzhou without the slightest necessary precautions, and even killed the writer of the admonition. The brocade cloth in the palace is all used as brocade mats and sails under the horses. The first two sentences write that he is frivolous and brutal, and the last two sentences write that he has traveled south many times and exhausted the people's fat and people's cream. It was also a decisive reason for his eventual death. It was his "journey to the south without martial law" that gave Yu Wenhua and the opportunity to assassinate.

The dragon boat and canal that he ordered to be built have become his burial place. If Emperor Yang had known today, would he have been so enthusiastic to build a tomb for himself? This is not only the sorrow of him alone, but also the common sorrow of the emperors of our country. After all the hard work, in the end it is still a handful of loess! Recently, I re-watched "Notes on Tomb Robbery", Wu Xie and Zhang Qiling poured so many imperial tombs, which one is not magnificent, but those emperors once hoped for it, and they also enjoyed prosperity after death, which one has come true? What kind of Genting Heavenly Palace was built for himself during his lifetime, and what did he ask for immortality, but in the end, the bones were rotten and the mausoleum was stolen by future generations?

Returning to the topic, at the end of the poem, Li Shangyin said in a rhetorical tone, "Shouldn't you ask questions about the queen and the garden flowers?" Mingli wrote that Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty was absurd and unreasonable, but in fact it was a metaphor for the political chaos in the late Tang Dynasty at that time, when the emperor did not want to make progress and could not appoint virtuous ministers. Because of this, he was unable to display his ambitions, and he had nowhere to serve the country.

We can almost conclude that this is the most classic work of Li Shang's metaphorical poems. The poem is exquisitely conceived and uniquely used in allusions, changing the lingering and graceful image of the untitled poem, showing Li Shangyin's concern and powerlessness about politics. It can be said that if Li Shangyin seen in untitled poems and love poems is an amorous and talented man, then he is an image of a politician who worries about the country and the people but is depressed all his life. He could only write all his aspirations into poems, using words to remind the feudal rulers: Wake up! Do you really have to wait until the country is destroyed, like Emperor Yang of Sui, to go underground to enjoy yourself?

Changle Wa flew away with the water, and Jingyang Zhong fell into the sky. Extravagant and lewd pleasures, in the blink of an eye, the tile flies and the bell falls; How is the way of heaven, there are many haters. Don't regret the arrogance of the year until you lose this country.