瞿塘两崖

Meaning

The poem stands in awe before the twin cliffs that gate the Qutang Gorge of the Yangtze. Their stone faces rise past the clouds and fall below the flood; monkeys and dragons make their home in crags too steep for man. The closing imagination — that in winter the sun god's chariot grazes these peaks, and the poet fears the car will topple — converts landscape into cosmic drama, voicing both the gorge's terrifying height and the speaker's breathless dread.

三峡传何处，双崖壮此门。入天犹石色，穿水忽云根。猱攫须髯古，蛟龙窟宅尊。羲和冬驭近，愁畏日车翻。

Appreciation

[Plain Paraphrase] The poet asks where the Three Gorges begin and answers: at these twin cliffs that guard the gate. They pierce the sky yet keep their stony hue; they cleave the water and vanish into cloud-roots. Monkeys cling to ancient beard-like vines; dragons dwell in majesty below. Finally he fancies that Xihe, driver of the sun, passes so close in winter that he fears the chariot might crash against the rocks. [Structure and Imagery] Four couplets trace a single upward gaze: the gate, the height, the inhabitants, the sun itself. Scale escalates from twin cliffs to entering the sky to the sun's winter path, so awe mounts geometrically. The ancient vines and stately dragon lair lend geological time to the scene, while the closing fear — personal, almost breathless — lands the whole cosmos on a human pulse.

【白话串讲】 杜甫写《瞿塘两崖》：“三峡传何处，双崖壮此门”——“入天犹石色，穿水忽云根”——“猱攫须髯古，蛟龙窟宅尊”——“羲和冬驭近，愁畏日车翻”——他写瞿塘两崖——双崖壮此门。 【意象与手法】 “三峡传何处，双崖壮此门”写双崖之壮；“入天犹石色，穿水忽云根”写石色入天；“猱攫须髯古，蛟龙窟宅尊”写猿猱蛟龙；结以“羲和冬驭近，愁畏日车翻”以日车翻写险。雄浑三峡。 【情感与主旨】 杜甫写瞿塘两崖之作，写瞿塘双崖的雄壮与险绝，以“愁畏日车翻”写山势之高，是杜甫写三峡的名篇。 【名句点睛】 常考“三峡传何处，双崖壮此门”写双崖之壮；“入天犹石色，穿水忽云根”写石色入天。

Allusions

Xihe is the sun's charioteer from classical myth, who in the Huainanzi and Shanhai Jing tradition drives the sun across the sky; the winter chariot passing near refers to the sun's lower winter track, and the fear that the day-car will overturn is a hyperbole of height rooted in this cosmology. The flood dragon is the river's ancient, shape-shifting ruler, whose stately lair marks water too deep to fathom. Gibbons clambering the cliffs echo a stock frontier image of unreachable heights, while the vine-hung crags recall earlier landscape writing where monkeys' cries mark the desolate gorge.

诗中「三峡传何处双崖壮此门」「入天犹石色穿水忽云根」「猱攫须髯古蛟龙窟宅尊」「羲和冬驭近愁畏日车翻」等语，皆含典故故实。「三峡传何处双崖壮此门」用三峡之典（三峡写长江三峡），写三峡传何处双崖壮此门；「入天犹石色穿水忽云根」写入天犹石色穿水忽云根；「猱攫须髯古蛟龙窟宅尊」写猱攫须髯古蛟龙窟宅尊；「羲和冬驭近愁畏日车翻」用羲和之典（羲和写驾日之神），写羲和冬驭近愁畏日车翻。诗人用三峡、羲和之典入诗，不着痕迹，而把写景三峡之情写得真切可感，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。

Commentary

Though less anthologized than Du Fu's Chang'an poems, 'The Twin Cliffs of Qutang' is prized as a model of the Tang grand landscape lyric. Commentators note how its diction — entering the sky, rooted in cloud, stately lair — refuses to describe the gorge piece by piece and instead conveys total, overwhelming mass. The closing turn to Xihe's sun-car has been read as both technical bravura and veiled anxiety: heights so extreme that cosmic order itself seems at risk, a reading that sits naturally beside Du Fu's habitual foreboding for the age. Its middle couplets are strictly antithetical, its imagination cosmic — in eight lines it turns a river gorge into a meeting point of geology, myth, and the human pulse.

这首《瞿塘两崖》，是杜甫写景三峡之作，写三峡传何处、入天犹石色、猱攫须髯古、愁畏日车翻之情，雄浑三峡。起「三峡传何处，双崖壮此门」——三峡传何处，双崖壮此门。写三峡传何处：三峡传何处、双崖壮此门——传何处、壮此门；「入天犹石色，穿水忽云根」——入天犹石色，穿水忽云根。写入天犹石色：入天犹石色、穿水忽云根——犹石色、忽云根；「猱攫须髯古，蛟龙窟宅尊」——猱攫须髯古，蛟龙窟宅尊。写猱攫须髯古：猱攫须髯古、蛟龙窟宅尊——须髯古、窟宅尊；结「羲和冬驭近，愁畏日车翻」——羲和冬驭近，愁畏日车翻。写愁畏日车翻：羲和冬驭近、愁畏日车翻——冬驭近、日车翻。这「羲和冬驭近，愁畏日车翻」，是全诗之结：以愁畏日车翻写其三峡。全诗雄浑三峡，以崖写情，正是杜甫诗中的名篇。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。

Prosody

Line by line

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