春望 Towards Spring
国破山河在，城春草木深。
guó pò shān hé zài ， chéng chūn cǎo mù shēn 。
感时花溅泪，恨别鸟惊心。
gǎn shí huā jiàn lèi ， hènbié niǎo jīng xīn 。
烽火连三月，家书抵万金。
fēng huǒ lián sān yuè ， jiāshū dǐ wàn jīn 。
白头搔更短，浑欲不胜簪。
bái tóu sāo gēng duǎn ， húnyù bù shèng zān 。
Background
This poem was written in the third month of Emperor Su Zhong (肃宗) (757 AD).
In June of the previous year, the An Lushan Rebellion's army stormed Chang'an and "ransacked it for three days, looting all the wealth of the people." They also set fire to the city, reducing it to ruins. In August of the same year, Du Fu left his wife in a Qiang village near Fuzhou (鄜州羌村) and was apprehended on his way north to Lingwu (灵武), where he was transported to the fallen Chang'an.
Over a half-year has since passed. During the late spring, he was deeply moved by the scene before him and wrote this five-character-per-line poem.
Overview
This poem is a masterful combination of imagery and emotion, with profound and nuanced sentiments portrayed with brevity and concision. It perfectly represents the creative style of "profound melancholy." The poem's form is short, centered on the word 望 or "gaze," with the first four lines expressing thoughts through imagery. The poet moves us from a broad perspective to a narrow focus, from far to near, and from weak to strong emotions.
His sadness and sorrow are conveyed gently through this intersection of emotions and environment. The poem begins with a description of the capital's desolation and goes to tears shed at the sight of spring blossoms and wrath felt upon hearing bird singing.
Du Fu then describes the extended fighting that left him without news from home, before reflecting on his own loss and aging. Each thought builds on the previous one, resulting in a domain that can elicit resonance and deep reflection.
This poem reflects the people who desired for peace and loved their nation, and it portrays the typical thoughts formed in these situations. An expression of a universal inner voice highlights the poet's lofty emotion of concern for the country and its people, as well as grief.
Line Breakdown
The poet leads us on a trip that starts with a gloomy image of a destroyed city. This builds into an outpouring of sadness and despair over the state of the nation and the fate of his loved ones through a series of subtle alterations in viewpoint and emotion.
The poem's carefully crafted style, which incorporates parallelism and rhyme, heightens the words' emotional impact by giving them a musical character that deepens and reverberates the message.
Memories of past beauty and prosperity stand in stark contrast to the opening lines' bleak picture of the city's abandoned ruins. Although the country has been destroyed, the mountains and rivers still exist; While the later lines, with their allusions to tears and bird cries, heighten the emotional intensity of the poem making it a timeless expression of human experience.
国破山河在，城春草木深。
The country is in ruins, the mountains and rivers remain, The city's spring flora and fauna grow lush again.
The two images of a broken country "国破" and spring city "城春" coexist in stark contrast, creating a poignant dichotomy. Spring City or "城春" evokes the vibrant season of spring when nature flourishes with flowers, plants, and trees, and the scenery is resplendent.
However, the ravages of "国破" - the downfall of the country and the capital - have stripped the city of its former glory, leaving behind only broken walls and ruins. The phrase "草木深" conveys a profound sense of desolation, as it denotes the overgrowth of grass and trees, symbolizing the once-tidy and orderly city of Chang'an now being abandoned and desolate, devoid of human presence.
The poet's heart-wrenching lamentation and disconnection from the scene are palpable, as he bears witness to the stark transformation of the once-majestic city into a desolate wasteland.
感时花溅泪，恨别鸟惊心。
Moved by the moment, tears flow from my eyes, Anguished by separation, birds startle and rise.
The flowers shed tears as if they were sentient, despite being lovely and fragrant. The birds startle the heart since they appear to harbor tremendous hatred despite being innocent and happy.
This flower and bird motif is a representation of feelings in people. Birds sang cheerfully and flowers bloom gloriously in the spring, but Du Fu was unable to take in these views. Instead, his anguish and sorrow for the defeated nation overcame him.
Du Fu's words "feeling the moment" and "hating the separation" express his hopelessness and misery. When he was defeated, the sight of flowers blooming brought him to tears, and when he was in danger, the sound of birds singing frightened his heart.
Similar thoughts are conveyed in the song, "In the past I went, with willow trees trailing behind; now I think of it, with rain and snow falling down."
“昔我往矣，杨柳依依；今我来思，雨雪霏霏” - 《诗经·小雅·采薇》
Du Fu inherited this method of employing lovely scenes to convey emotions, but he enhances it with more intense emotions to produce a more stunning result.
烽火连三月，家书抵万金。
For months on end, the beacons blaze day and night, My family's letters worth more than gold in sight.
The poet ponders on the continuous warfare, which has lasted all spring and shows no signs of abating. Despite the fact that Emperor Xuanzong has fled to Shu and Emperor Su has ascended to the throne, government forces have yet to take the upper hand, and the Western Capital's recapture remains doubtful.
Meanwhile, the poet is stranded, caught by the enemy, and has not heard from his family in a long time. He longs for a letter from home, which would be more valuable to him than anything else in the world.
The phrase "a letter from home is worth ten thousand in gold" expresses the poet's deep longing and yearning as he awaits news from his loved ones. The true value of a letter from home during war cannot be quantified in monetary terms, and this attitude reflects the collective psychological state of all those who suffer the ravages of war.
It expresses a basic universal human sentiment: the desire for peace and tranquillity, as well as the desire to put an end to the horrors of war.
白头搔更短，浑欲不胜簪。
My hair is grayer, shorter with each passing day, My head's almost too sparse to hold a hairpin in place.
He is overwhelmed by both national and personal concerns after months of conflict and no news from his family. The bleak reality in front of him, combined with the crushing dread in his heart, creates a sense of aimlessness and restlessness, causing him to scratch his head and pace back and forth.
As a result, his once-black hair has grayed and thinned. He can't even put a hairpin in it anymore. The poem illustrates not only the nation's ruin and the agony of being apart from loved ones, but also the poet's age.
Readers can feel the poet's sorrow and hatred through the alteration of his hair, and empathize with his longing for home and family.
I yearn for a better world, a return to peace, Where people can live without fear or disease.
The lush spring scenery may be a sight to behold, But it only serves to deepen my homesick fold.