Listen to this article徐邦达 行书：刘长卿《逢雪宿芙蓉山》
【释文】日暮苍山远，天寒白屋贫。柴门闻犬吠，风雪夜归人。
【款识】随州诗，戊辰冬月书于京寓，邦达。
【简析】
这首诗用极其凝炼的诗笔，描画出一幅以旅客暮夜投宿、山家风雪人归为素材的寒山夜宿图。诗是按时间顺序写下来的。首句写旅客薄暮在山路上行进时所感，次句写到达投宿人家时所见，后两句写入夜后在投宿人家所闻。每句诗都构成一个独立的画面，而又彼此连属。诗中有画，画外见情。
诗的开端，以“日暮苍山远”五个字勾画出一个暮色苍茫、山路漫长的画面。诗句中并没有明写人物，直抒情思，但使读者感到其人呼之欲出，其情浮现纸上。这里，点活画面、托出诗境的是一个“远”字。它给人以暗示，引人去想象。从这一个字，读者自会想见有人在暮色来临的山路上行进，并推知他的孤寂劳顿的旅况和急于投宿的心情。接下来，诗的次句使读者的视线跟随这位行人，沿着这条山路投向借宿人家。“天寒白屋贫”是对这户人家的写照；而一个“贫”字，应当是从遥遥望见茅屋到叩门入室后形成的印象。上句在“苍山远”前先写“日暮”，这句则在“白屋贫”前先写“天寒”，都是增多诗句层次、加重诗句分量的写法。漫长的山路，本来已经使人感到行程遥远，又眼看日暮，就更觉得遥远；简陋的茅屋，本来已经使人感到境况贫穷，再时逢寒冬，就更显出贫穷。而联系上下句看，这一句里的“天寒”两字，还有其承上启下作用。承上，是进一步渲染日暮路遥的行色；启下，是作为夜来风雪的伏笔。
这前两句诗，合起来只用了十个字，已经把山行和投宿的情景写得神完气足了。后两句诗“柴门闻犬吠，风雪夜归人”，写的是借宿山家以后的事。在用字上，“柴门”上承“白屋”，“风雪”遥承“天寒”，而“夜”则与“日暮”衔接。这样，从整首诗来说，虽然下半首另外开辟了一个诗境，却又与上半首紧紧相扣，不使读者感到上下脱节。但这里，在承接中又有跳越。看来，“闻犬吠”既在夜间，山行劳累的旅人多半已经就寝；而从暮色苍茫到黑夜来临，从寒气侵人到风雪交作，从进入茅屋到安顿就寝，中间有一段时间，也应当有一些可以描写的事物，可是诗笔跳过了这段时间，略去了一些情节，既使诗篇显得格外精炼，也使承接显得更加紧凑。诗人在取舍之间是费了一番斟酌的。如果不下这番剪裁的功夫，也许下半首诗应当进一步描写借宿人家境况的萧条，写山居的荒凉和环境的静寂，或写夜间风雪的来临，再不然，也可以写自己的孤寂旅况和投宿后静夜所思。但诗人撇开这些不去写，出人意外地展现了一个在万籁俱寂中忽见喧闹的犬吠人归的场面。这就在尺幅中显示变化，给人以平地上突现奇峰之感。
就写作角度而言，前半首诗是从所见之景着墨，后半首诗则是从所闻之声下笔的。因为，既然夜已来临，人已就寝，就不可能再写所见，只可能写所闻了。“柴门”句写的应是黑夜中、卧榻上听到的院内动静；“风雪”句应也不是眼见，而是耳闻，是因听到各种声音而知道风雪中有人归来。这里，只写“闻犬吠”，可能因为这是最先打破静夜之声，也是最先入耳之声，而实际听到的当然不只是犬吠声，应当还有风雪声、叩门声、柴门启闭声、家人回答声，等等。这些声音交织成一片，尽管借宿之人不在院内，未曾目睹，但从这一片嘈杂的声音足以构想出一幅风雪人归的画面。
诗写到这里，含意不伸，戛然而止，没有多费笔墨去说明倾听这些声音、构想 这幅画面的借宿之人的感想，但从中透露的山居荒寒之感，由此触发的旅人静夜之情，都不言自见，可想而知了。
另欣赏：爱新觉罗·启骧
爱新觉罗·启骧 行书：刘长卿《逢雪宿芙蓉山》
【款识】一九九八年初秋，爱新觉罗·启骧。
【Simple Translation】
This poem uses extremely condensed poetic strokes to depict a picture of a cold mountain at night with travelers staying at night and mountain families returning from the wind and snow as the material. The poem is written in chronological order. The first line is about what the traveler felt while walking on the mountain road at dusk, the second line is about what he saw when he arrived at the lodging house, and the last two lines are about what he heard at the lodging house after nightfall. Each stanza forms an independent picture, yet they are connected to each other. The poem contains a painting, and the painting reveals emotions.
At the beginning of the poem, the poem begins with five words: “The sunset is far away from the mountains”, which draws a picture of a long road at dusk. The poem does not explicitly write about the characters and expresses their feelings directly, but it makes the reader feel that the person is eager to appear and the feelings emerge on the paper. Here, the word “far” is what brings the picture to life and brings out the poem. It gives people a hint and draws their imagination. From this word, the reader can imagine someone traveling on the mountain road at dusk, and can deduce his lonely and tiring travel situation and his eagerness to stay in the hotel. The next line of the poem makes the reader’s eyes follow the pedestrian along the mountain road to the borrowed house. “The word “poor” is a description of the family’s house, and the impression of the house should be formed from seeing the hut from afar to knocking on the door and entering the house. In the previous line, the word “sunset” precedes “the distant mountains”, while in this line, the word “cold sky” precedes “poor white house”. This is a way to increase the level and weight of the verses. The long mountain road already makes people feel that the journey is far, and when they look at the sunset, they feel even more distant; the humble hut already makes people feel poor, and when it is cold in winter, they feel even more poor. The word “cold” in this sentence also serves to carry on the above and enlighten the below. It is to further exaggerate the color of the road at sunset, and it is to set the stage for the snow and wind coming at night.
The first two lines of the poem, which together use only ten words, have already completed the scene of the mountain walk and the lodging. The last two lines of the poem, “I heard the dogs barking at the door of the woods, and I returned home at night in the wind and snow,” are about what happened after I stayed at the mountain house. The last two lines of the poem, “The dogs are barking at the door of the woods, and the people are returning at night. The word “night” is connected with “sunset”. In this way, although the second half of the poem opens up a separate poetic realm, it is closely linked to the first half, so that the reader does not feel disconnected from the top. But here, there is a leap in the succession. It seems that, since “the dogs were barking” at night, most of the travelers who were tired from the mountain trip had already gone to bed; and from twilight to nightfall, from the cold to the wind and snow, from entering the hut to settling down to sleep, there was a period of time in between, and there should be something to describe, but the poem skips this period and omits some episodes, which makes both However, the poem skips this period and omits some episodes, which makes the poem appear extraordinarily concise and compact. The poet has made a great deal of deliberation in choosing between the two. If the poet had not made this cut, he might have gone further in the second half of the poem to describe the depressing situation of the borrower’s house, the desolation of the mountain house and the silence of the environment, or the approach of the snow and wind at night, or else he could have written about his own lonely travel situation and his thoughts at night after staying in the house. But the poet leaves all these aside and unexpectedly presents a scene in which dogs barking and people returning are suddenly seen amidst the silence. This shows the change in the size of the painting and gives people a sense of the emergence of a strange peak on a flat land.
In terms of writing, the first half of the poem is written from the scene seen, while the second half is written from the sound heard. Since the night has come and people have gone to bed, it is impossible to write about what we see, only what we hear. The line “the door of the woods” is about the movement in the courtyard in the darkness of the night and on the couch; the line “the wind and snow” is not about seeing, but about hearing, knowing that someone has returned in the wind and snow because of the various sounds. Here, only the “barking” is written, probably because it is the first sound to break the silence of the night and the first sound to enter the ears, but what we actually hear is not only the barking of the dogs, but also the sound of the wind and snow, the knocking on the door, the opening and closing of the wood door, the sound of the family answering, and so on. These sounds are interwoven into one, and although the borrowers are not in the courtyard and have not witnessed them, it is enough to conceive a picture of people returning from the wind and snow from this cacophony of sounds.
The poem ends abruptly, without going into much detail to explain the feelings of the people who listened to these sounds and conceived the picture, but the sense of the coldness of the mountain residence and the feelings of the traveler’s quiet night, which are revealed, are self-evident and can be imagined.
