Swallows under the eaves of Wang Dao and Xie An have now flown into the homes of ordinary people.
Liu Yuxi (772-842) was born in Zhongshan (now Dingzhou, Hebei Province). In the ninth year of Zhenyuan (793), he was a scholar and was supervised by officials. Together with Liu Zongyuan, he participated in the innovation activities of Wang Group. After the failure, he was demoted to Sima Langzhou, and was appointed as the secretariat of Lianzhou, Kuizhou and Hezhou. After Pei Du's recommendation, he was appointed as a guest of honor of the Prince and added to the history of the proofreading department. His poems are calm, steady, measured, fresh in style and mellow in charm, and are praised as "poets" by Bai Juyi. And Liu Binji.
In fact, Liu Yuxi has never been to Nanjing, but he has five poems about Nanjing, which is the most praised one. Nanjing, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties and the prosperous land of Jiangdong, has long been abandoned as an "empty city" in the author's time. Different from other nostalgic poems, the scene in the poem is only the poet's imagination, not what he saw with his own eyes. If he tries to find out the facts of places such as "Suzaku Bridge", "Wuyi Lane" and "Wangxietang", I'm afraid he will only be disappointed. Because the poet actually read five poems about Nanjing: Five Topics of Jinling, and he felt it and wrote it.
The poet wrote: the wild flowers are in full bloom by the Suzaku Bridge, and the sunset is oblique at the entrance of Wuyi Lane. Swallows that used to nest in Wang's and Xie's homes now fly to the homes of ordinary people to nest.
"Suzaku Bridge" and "Wuyi Lane" were rich settlements in the Six Dynasties, represented by Wang Dao and Xie An. At that time, it was supposed to be a prosperous place, but now there are only scenes full of desolation and decline such as "wild flowers" and "sunset". The real scene in front of us implies the poet's feelings about the ups and downs of history. These two sentences are "dark ratio", so readers should pay attention to them. But the last two sentences seem easy to understand, but they are not so easy to understand: how did the swallows of the Six Dynasties live to the Tang Dynasty? Swallows have the habit of returning to their old nests. How can they fly to other places? Poets of past dynasties have been arguing over these issues, saying that Liu Shi's "strengths lie in deep songs, while his weaknesses also lie in deep songs". I think Mr. Shi Zhecun's explanation is very reasonable. He said that the focus of the problem should not be "Wang Xietang" and "others", but "old times". "Lao Wang Xie Yan" is an empty sentence and a poet's imagination; "Flying into the homes of ordinary people" is a true sentence, and it is the poet who wrote today's reality; During the Six Dynasties, swallows in Nanjing often flew into the halls of Wang and Xie to nest. Now, Wang and Xie have long since declined, and their halls have become the homes of ordinary people. The swallows in Nanjing can only "fly into the homes of ordinary people".
No matter how to explain it, the whole poem expresses a feeling of "ups and downs in the past and present", and the vicissitudes of history are contained in these short 28 words, which should be beyond doubt.