一花一世界——中国古代诗词中的豆蔻意象

On the Image of Cardamoms in Ancient Chinese Verse

豆蔻种类繁多,文学作品中经常吟咏或借以抒情的为豆蔻和红豆蔻两种。由于生于南方和开于春天,豆蔻意象最初的含义便是指代地域与时令。晚唐杜牧在《赠别》中借豆蔻比喻娇羞的少女,产生了极为广泛的影响,也使豆蔻意象的这一层含义深入人心。豆蔻因连枝而生的特点受到历代文人的垂青,在诗词作品中赋予其连理、相思等人类所特有的情感寄托。

Of its great variety, the two often-used cardamoms in literary works are the cardamom and the red nutmeg. Bred in the south and in bloom in spring, the cardamom originally referred to regions and seasons, as is manifest in Presents for Farewell - a poem by Du Mu, a poet of the late Tang Dynasty - in which the cardamom symbolizes a shy lass, thus having exerted an extensive impact and gained much popularity for the image of the cardamom. Thanks to its traits of interconnection, the cardamom has been favored by scholars of different eras and has been endowed with such unique human emotions as matrimony and lovesickness in poems.