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Appreciation of the Original Text of Chen Yuyi’s Poem “Scaring Spring”

“Injury to Spring” is a poem of grief and indignation lamenting state affairs by Chen Yuyi, a poet of the Song Dynasty. Written in the Jianyan period of the Northern Song Dynasty, when the poet fled to Shaoyang, Hunan.

Original text of “Scared Spring”:

The temple has no plan to pacify the Rong, and sits so that the sweet spring will shine in the evening.

Everyone has heard of war horses at first, but they don’t know that they see flying dragons in the poor sea!

Guchen’s frost hair is three thousand feet long, and the fireworks are ten thousand heavy every year.

I am a little happy with Xiangyan Pavilion in Changsha, and the tired soldiers dare to attack Quanyangfeng.

Appreciation

This seven-character regulated poem was written in February of the fourth year of Jianyan (1130) of Emperor Gaozong of Song Dynasty. At that time, Song Gaozong fled to Wenzhou to avoid the Jin invaders, the Jin army and the Song army were in a stalemate in Hunan, and the poet was exiled in Hunan and Jiangxi due to the disaster of war.

At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jin regime established by the Jurchens was very powerful and invaded the south many times. The fragile Song army retreated steadily. In November of the first year of Jingkang (1126), the last emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jin army captured Tokyo (now Kaifeng, Henan, also known as Bianjing), the capital of the Song Dynasty.

In April of the following year, the Jin army ransacked Tokyo and captured Song Taishang Emperor Huizong Zhao Ji, Song Qinzong Zhao Huan, empress dowager, empress, concubines, palace personnel and male and female citizens, and the Northern Song Dynasty perished.

In May, Song Huizong’s son Kang Wang Zhaogou was proclaimed emperor in Nanjing (now Shangqiu City, Henan Province) (that is, Song Gaozong), re-established the Song Dynasty (known as “Southern Song Dynasty” in history), and changed the year name to the first year of Jianyan. The Jin army continued to invade south.

In October of this year, Song Gaozong moved to Yangzhou (now Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province). On the 30th day of the first lunar month in the third year of Jianyan (1129), the Jin army broke through Sizhou (the old city is beside Hongze Lake in Anhui today, and sank at the bottom of the lake in the late seventeenth century).

On the first day of February, Song Gaozong made preparations to escape south along the canal. On the third day of the lunar new year, the Jin army broke through Tianchang (now Tianchang City, Anhui, not far northwest of Yangzhou). Song Gaozong fled to Jingkou (now Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province), and the Jin army looted and burned Yangzhou. Song Gaozong fled to Hangzhou (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang) and Yuezhou (now Shaoxing, Zhejiang) successively.

Soon, the Jin army on the West Road captured Hongzhou (Nanchang City), Fuzhou (Linchuan City) and Yuanzhou (Yichun City) in Jiangxi, and the Jin Army on the East Road captured Jiankang (now Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province). Song Gaozong fled to Ming Dynasty. State (now Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province).

In December, the Jin army captured Hangzhou, and Song Gaozong fled to Changguowei (now Dinghai City, Zhejiang). In the fourth year of Jianyan (1130), the Jin army captured Mingzhou, and Song Gaozong fled to Wenzhou by sea. In February, the Jin army moved from Jiangxi to Hunan and besieged Tanzhou (now Changsha City, Hunan Province). After eight days of attack and defense, the Jin soldiers went up to the city and set fire to it. Xiang Ziqi led the officials to escape from the city. Tanzhou fell, and the Jin army slaughtered and looted Tanzhou for six days before leaving.

This poem “Sorrowing Spring” expresses infinite sorrow for the rapid disintegration of the Southern Song court.

There are eight sentences in the whole poem. The first six sentences write “Shang Chun”, and the last two sentences write about Xiang Zichen’s heroic deeds, which means that there is a little comfort in “Scar”. When writing “injury”, it mainly hurts state affairs (the first four sentences) and also hurts oneself (the fifth and sixth sentences).

In the four sentences that hurt the country, the first and second sentences describe that the top military and political decision makers of the Song court had no way to stop the Jin army’s aggression, so that the Jin army went deeper and deeper. The third sentence writes that in 1127 A.D., the Jin invading army occupied Bianjing, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the fourth sentence wrote that the current Emperor Song Gaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty was coerced by the Jin invading army and fled to Wenzhou, the land of “poor sea”.

In the third and fourth sentences, “chuwei” and “unexpectedly” echo each other, which shows the rapid disintegration of the Southern Song Dynasty. In the fourth sentence, “Flying Dragon” refers to Song Gaozong. In addition to using the line “Flying Dragon in the Sky” in the “Book of Changes Qian Ninth Five-Year” to compare the flying dragon to the emperor’s story, it also uses the events at that time: this year (AD 1130) On the second day of February, Song Gaozong’s boat was moored at Jiangxin Temple in Wenzhou. Song Gaozong stayed in the temple temporarily and changed the name of the temple to “Longxiang Temple”; “Longxiang” means “Flying Dragon”.

The fifth and sixth sentences describe the poet’s sorrow for himself: Year after year passes, and it is the spring season full of fireworks; the poet’s gray hair grows, and he feels decadent and old (according to the epitaph of Chen Yuyi written by Chen Yuyi’s nephew Zhang Yi) : Chen Yuyi died around 1198 AD at the age of forty-nine. When writing this poem, Chen Yuyi was only over forty years old.

Because of the sadness, the “shuangfa” was born early, and it has already “three thousand feet”, which means that the early and fast aging is more and more sad. Here is the title of the poem “Injury to Spring”.

The last two sentences say: The only consolation is that there are generals like Xiang Ziqi in the Song army who dared to resist a strong enemy (maybe Changsha had not fallen when the poem was written, or it had fallen and Chen Yuyi had no news).

This is gratifying, but after the intense pain of “first strangeness” and “unexpectedly”, this “joy” is weak, so it is called “slightly happy”, which alludes to the title of the poem. Therefore, the title of the poem has a pun, and all family, country and individuals are included, with rich meaning.