秋夜望单飞雁

Meaning

A cold goose, cut off from its flock, calls through the night with a cry that moves the poet; watched at the edge of the moon, it becomes his own likeness. What begins as pity for a bird turns into an admission that the poet, like the goose, is without a companion and without rest. The poem is short because the situation is complete: observer and observed are both awake, and neither can be consoled.

失群寒雁声可怜，夜半单飞在月边。无奈人心复有忆，今暝将渠俱不眠。

Appreciation

[Plain Paraphrase] A cold goose that has lost the rest of the flock cries in a voice that is pitiable; at midnight it is still flying, alone, at the edge of the moon. Then comes the turn: there is no way around it, because the human heart too still holds its memory, and so tonight neither the goose nor the speaker will sleep. [Structure] The four lines run as a single movement: object, time and place, a rhetorical pivot introduced by 'and there is nothing to be done about it', and a conclusion that joins two sleepless beings in one sentence. [Imagery] The goose, the moon and the night are the whole apparatus of the poem, chosen from the stock vocabulary of exile and used without ornament, and their plainness is what makes the identification land. [Acknowledgement] Yu Xin wrote this in the north after being held there by the Western Zhou court, far from the southern dynasty he had served. The goose is not a decoration; it is the situation made visible. What saves the poem from self-pity is its exactness: the poet says he too is awake, and leaves the rest to the reader.

【白话串讲】 庾信写《秋夜望单飞雁》：“失群寒雁声可怜，夜半单飞在月边”——“无奈人心复有忆，今暝将渠俱不眠”——他写失群的孤雁——无奈人心复有忆。 【意象与手法】 “失群寒雁声可怜，夜半单飞在月边”以失群寒雁起兴写孤寂；“无奈人心复有忆，今暝将渠俱不眠”以人心有忆与雁俱不眠写羁愁。借物起兴、情景交融，以雁自况。 【情感与主旨】 庾信羁留北朝、望孤雁而自伤之作，借失群寒雁写自己身陷异乡的孤独与乡关之思，是庾信后期感怀诗的代表。 【名句点睛】 常考“失群寒雁声可怜，夜半单飞在月边”以失群寒雁写孤寂；“无奈人心复有忆，今暝将渠俱不眠”以俱不眠写羁愁。

Allusions

That the poem presses no named story into service is itself a decision worth noticing: there is no erudite allusion, no borrowed line, no historical figure. Its depth comes instead from the two things it names being saturated with convention already, the cold goose that has lost its flock and the moon at whose edge it flies. In the Chinese tradition the wild goose is the bird of letters and of separation, flying in ranks, sent as a messenger in the old legends, and associated above all with the exiled official writing home. The moon is the same conventional stronghold, the standard ground of northern exile writing after Yu Xin, where looking toward the moon is looking toward the south. The poem works because it touches both and stops.

诗中「失群寒雁声可怜夜半单飞在月边」「无奈人心复有忆今暝将渠俱不眠」等语，皆含典故故实。「失群寒雁声可怜夜半单飞在月边」写失群寒雁声可怜夜半单飞在月边；「无奈人心复有忆今暝将渠俱不眠」写无奈人心复有忆今暝将渠俱不眠。诗人以寒雁、月边等语入诗，不着痕迹，而把羁旅感怀之情写得真切可感，是善于熔铸典故的体现。此等用典之法，熔铸古今而不着痕迹，既不炫博以示学，亦不拘泥于旧解，正见诗人学养之深与运思之巧。读者于此等处尤当细心玩味，方能领会其言外之旨与味外之味。此等用典之法，熔铸古今而不着痕迹，既不炫博以示学，亦不拘泥于旧解，正见诗人学养之深与运思之巧。读者于此等处尤当细心玩味，方能领会其言外之旨与味外之味。此等用典之法，熔铸古今而不着痕迹，既不炫博以示学，亦不拘泥于旧解，正见诗人学养之深与运思之巧。读者于此等处尤当细心玩味，方能领会其言外之旨与味外之味。

Commentary

Critics have long treated the quatrain as a compressed emblem of Yu Xin's situation: a man of the Liang, held in the north by a court that had no further use for him, watching on a night when the only companion available to him is a bird. Read that way, the sleeplessness is political as well as personal. Read without the biography it is faster and better, which is why it survives anthology after anthology. Later writers echoed the structure rather than the words: the pattern of a small wounded creature, the observer recognizing himself in it, and the two jointly denied rest, recurs well into the Tang and after.

这首《秋夜望单飞雁》，是庾信写羁旅感怀之作，写失群寒雁声可怜、无奈人心复有忆、今暝将渠俱不眠之情，凄清感怀。起「失群寒雁声可怜，夜半单飞在月边」——失群寒雁声可怜，夜半单飞在月边。写失群寒雁声可怜：失群寒雁声可怜、夜半单飞在月边——声可怜、在月边；结「无奈人心复有忆，今暝将渠俱不眠」——无奈人心复有忆，今暝将渠俱不眠。写无奈人心复有忆：无奈人心复有忆、今暝将渠俱不眠——复有忆、俱不眠。这「无奈人心复有忆，今暝将渠俱不眠」，是全诗之结：以今暝将渠俱不眠写其感怀。全诗凄清感怀，以雁写情，正是庾信诗中的名篇。综观全诗，情真、景切、理深，三者浑融无迹，故能于短短数语之中寄无限深意，令人百读不厌。其含蓄蕴藉之处，正是中国古典诗歌以少总多、言有尽而意无穷的美学精神的生动体现。综观全诗，情真、景切、理深，三者浑融无迹，故能于短短数语之中寄无限深意，令人百读不厌。其含蓄蕴藉之处，正是中国古典诗歌以少总多、言有尽而意无穷的美学精神的生动体现。

Prosody

Line by line

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