From Wang Xizhi's Preface to the Lanting Pavilion, the Preface to the Lanting Pavilion describes the beauty of the landscape around the Lanting Pavilion and the joy of gathering, and expresses the author's feelings about the impermanence of life and death.
The whole poem (excerpt) is as follows:
Every time we look at the reasons for the excitement of the ancients, if we unite, we will not be without sorrow, and we can't compare it to something in our chests. Knowing that a dead life is a false birthday and the destruction of Peng Qi is a mistake. Look at the present in the future or look at the past today. Sad husband! Therefore, as soon as people go public, they record what they say. Although the world is different, they are happy and they are one. Later visitors will also be impressed by Sven.
The translation is as follows:
Whenever I see the reasons for the feelings of my predecessors, the reasons are consistent, and it is inevitable that I will feel sad and incomprehensible when reading the articles of my predecessors. It turns out that it is wrong to equate life and death, and it is wrong to equate longevity and short life. It is sad that future generations look at people today just as people today look at their predecessors.
So write down the people who attended the meeting one by one and record the poems they made. Even though times have changed, things have changed, but the reasons for people's feelings are the same. Future readers will also be deeply touched by the poems of this gathering.
Extended data:
In the 9th year of Jin Yonghe (353), on the third day of the third lunar month, Wang Xizhi, who "went to Zhejiang first and was determined to win", once held an elegant gathering with 4/kloc-0 celebrities such as Gao Shi Xie An and Sun Chuo in the Lanting under the shade of Huiji Mountain (now under the Zhu Lan Mountain outside Shaoxing). Participants wrote poems, expressed their arms and copied them into collections. It is recommended that the convener of this gathering, the respected Wang Xizhi, write a preface and record this exquisite collection.
The fourth natural paragraph: from the experience of reading the works of the ancients in Sense of Style, it shows that the ancients also felt the feeling of death and life; Then he turned to the in-depth description of life and the world, criticizing the current literati that "death is a false life and Peng Qi's mourning is an illusion", which shows Wang Xizhi's persistent resistance to the illusion of life.
Then, I lamented that "it is sad to look back on the present and the past from now". It can be seen that the author has a special love and persistence for life in his keen and profound feelings for life. Then, the author expounds the origin of Preface to Lanting Collection and summarizes the whole text.
In the fourth paragraph, while lamenting the impermanence of life of the ancients, present and future generations, the author criticizes the nihilism of Zhuang Zhou's Life and Death and Peng Qizhi's Sorrow, which should of course be regarded as positive.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Preface to Lanting Collection