芙蓉楼送辛渐二首 一

Meaning

On a rainy night the poet accompanies his friend to the river, and at dawn, as the guest departs, the hills stand alone. He entrusts Xin Jian with a message for his friends and relatives at Luoyang: tell them that his heart remains pure, like a piece of ice held in a vessel of jade. The statement answers, by anticipation, the rumours and disappointments that had attended his official career.

寒雨连天，夜入湖中。平明送客，楚山独孤。洛阳亲友，如相询问，一片冰心，在玉壶中。

Appreciation

[Plain Paraphrase] Cold rain stretches across the sky and falls into the lake in the night; at daybreak I see off my guest, and the Chu hills are lonely. If my kin at Luoyang ask after me, say that a heart of ice lies in a jade pot. [Structure] Two couplets with two entirely different tasks. The first is pure scene - rain, night, dawn, a solitary hillside - and contains the whole of the parting feeling without a word of it. The second is pure statement, addressed not to the departing friend at all but to people far away. [Imagery] The cold rain and the lonely hill externalise the speaker's position: exposed, chilled and single. Against that stands the closing image, which is not a landscape at all but an object held up for inspection. [Effect] The movement from desolate weather to luminous self-declaration gives the quatrain its peculiar nobility.

【白话串讲】 王昌龄写《芙蓉楼送辛渐二首其一》：“寒雨连天夜入湖，平明送客楚山孤”——“洛阳亲友如相问，一片冰心在玉壶”——他在芙蓉楼送辛渐——一片冰心在玉壶。 【意象与手法】 首句“寒雨连天夜入湖”写寒雨连天；次句“平明送客楚山孤”写平明送客楚山孤；三句“洛阳亲友如相问”写洛阳亲友若问；末句“一片冰心在玉壶”以冰心玉壶写高洁。以送别写高洁品格。 【情感与主旨】 王昌龄写芙蓉楼送别之作，写寒雨连天、楚山孤的送别之景与“一片冰心在玉壶”的高洁表白，是送别诗的名篇。 【名句点睛】 常考“寒雨连天夜入湖，平明送客楚山孤”写送别之景；“洛阳亲友如相问，一片冰心在玉壶”以冰心玉壶写高洁。

Allusions

The central figure belongs to a tradition of self-definition through pure materials. The image of ice in a jade vessel had been used in earlier writing to describe an official whose conduct is without stain, and the pairing of the two substances is significant: ice is liable to melt, so its purity needs a container, and jade, the emblem of the gentleman in the classical canon, supplies exactly that. The cold rain of the first line therefore prepares the ice of the last. The mention of Luoyang also carries weight, since the eastern capital was the centre of the gossip and judgment that a demoted official most feared, so entrusting a message there is itself an act of defiance.

此诗用典于关键处见深意。「芙蓉楼」，写芙蓉楼——芙蓉楼在润州（今江苏镇江）西北，为送别之地，「芙蓉楼送辛渐」写芙蓉楼送别。「楚山」，写楚地的山——润州一带古属楚地，楚山写楚地的山，「平明送客楚山孤」写楚山孤峙。「冰心」，写冰清之心——「冰心」写如冰般澄澈之心，「一片冰心」写一片冰清之心。「玉壶」，用「玉壶」之典——玉壶为玉制之壶，鲍照《白头吟》「直如朱丝绳，清如玉壶冰」正以「玉壶冰」写品格的清白，王昌龄「一片冰心在玉壶」正用此意，写一片冰清之心在玉壶之中。值得注意的是，冰心玉壶之喻，出于鲍照「清如玉壶冰」，本写品格的清白，王昌龄化而用之，以「一片冰心在玉壶」写自己的高洁——那寒雨凄寒的送别，正是以玉壶冰心自明品格，正是「以物喻人」的深意。这些意象，或写芙蓉楼、或写楚山、或写冰心、或写玉壶，皆围绕送别与高洁这一核心，织成一张苍凉澄澈的情网，正是盛唐送别诗「以典明志」的特点。

Commentary

The last line has been quoted for more than a thousand years as the standard Chinese way of protesting one's integrity, and it has passed into ordinary speech. Critics admired the economy with which the first couplet does two things at once - establishing the weather of the parting and anticipating the ice of the close - and they noted that the poem's structure is unusual: the departure itself is never described, only the setting before it and the message after it. Later readers also valued the way the poem refuses self-pity. The speaker does not ask to be vindicated or recalled; he simply states what he is, and lets the statement travel.

读此诗，最值得注意的是「洛阳亲友如相问，一片冰心在玉壶」所写出的「以玉壶冰心自明高洁」。前两句写送别之景：寒雨连天夜入湖——那寒雨，连天而下，夜入湖中，正是送别之夜的凄寒；平明送客楚山孤——天刚明，送客而去，楚山独自孤峙。那寒雨、那孤山，写尽送别的凄寒与孤独。而后两句是嘱托与表白：「洛阳亲友如相问」——那辛渐将往洛阳，亲友若问起；「一片冰心在玉壶」——就说我一片冰心在玉壶。这一「一片冰心在玉壶」，是全诗的关键：那亲友若问起王昌龄的近况，便说一片冰心在玉壶——不是报平安，而是明品格；那冰心玉壶，正是鲍照「清如玉壶冰」的品格，王昌龄以之自明：虽遭贬谪（王昌龄此时已贬江宁丞），而品格的清白，如冰心在玉壶，不改其洁。值得注意的是，那「寒雨」「楚山孤」的凄寒，正是「冰心玉壶」的衬托——越是凄寒的环境，越是显出冰心玉壶的澄澈；那送别的凄寒，正是品格的试炼。王昌龄的送别诗，不写离愁，而写品格，那「一片冰心在玉壶」的表白，正是「七绝圣手」的高格。

Prosody

Line by line

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