Li Qingzhao

Famous sentence: Life is a hero, and death is a hero.

Guide reading

The title of this poem is "Summer quatrains". After Li Qingzhao crossed the south, she made a suggestion for three years (1 129) and went to Wuhu by boat with her husband, going upstream and crossing the Wujiang River in the county (Chu Wang Ba Xiang Yu committed suicide in defeat). This poem may have been written at this time. In this poem, Li Qingzhao does not talk about heroes by success or failure, but expresses admiration and admiration for Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu who ended in failure in the battle between Chu and Han.

Original poem

Life is a hero, and death is a ghost.

I still miss Xiang Yu and refuse to cross Jiangdong.

To annotate ...

Outstanding person: a hero among people. Emperor Gaozu once praised the founding heroes Sean, Xiao He and Han Xin as "outstanding figures". Ghost hero: the hero in the ghost. Qu Yuan's national mourning: "When you die, God takes the spirit, and the soul is a ghost." (3) Xiang Yu: the leader of the rebel army in the late Qin Dynasty, that is, the overlord of the western Chu Dynasty. ④ Jiangdong: now called Jiangnan, the Anhui section of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River flows southwest-northeast. Xiang Yu and Liu Bang competed for the world and were finally defeated by Liu Bang. Others advised him to go back to Jiangdong and install the army again. Xiang Yu thought that none of the 8,000 Jiangdong children who crossed the river with him came back alive and went back to see his elders alone, only to kill himself in Wujiang River.

Translate poetry

To live is to be a hero in people's hearts.

Be a hero in ghosts when you die.

I still admire Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu,

I would rather die than go back to Jiangdong.

Make an appreciative comment

This is a magnificent epic and a well-known poem. The poem takes the story of the overlord of Chu as the theme, satirizes the rulers of the Southern Song Dynasty, praises the failed hero Xiang Yu, and shows the poet's spiritual outlook of advocating integrity.

This poem clearly puts forward the value orientation of life: people should be heroes in life and contribute to the country; Even if you die, you have to die for your country and become a hero in ghosts. Patriotism is beyond words. Faced with the painful reality that the rulers of the Southern Song Dynasty abandoned the rivers and mountains of the Central Plains, but begged to drag out an ignoble existence, the poet remembered Xiang Yu. Xiang Yu broke through to Wujiang, and the director of Wujiang Pavilion advised him to cross the river quickly and return to Jiangdong for assembly. Xiang Yu felt ashamed to see his elders in Jiangdong, so he turned around and killed hundreds of enemy troops, and then committed suicide. Here, the poet praised Xiang Yu, a hero who refused to bear the burden of humiliation and drag out an ignoble existence, and lashed out at the * * * behavior of the establishment in the Southern Song Dynasty, borrowing the ancient to satirize the present.

There are only twenty words in the whole poem, and three allusions are used in succession, but it's no harm to pile them up, because they are all the poet's voices. Poems that hit the floor are so generous and vigorous that they are written by women and graceful poets, which is really rare. "Life is an outstanding person, and death is a ghost hero" has also become a heroic voice passed down from generation to generation.