Li Shangyin's most obscure poem is heartbreakingly beautiful.
golden
I want to know why my Jinse has fifty strings, and each string has a youthful interval.
Zhuangzi daydreaming, a saint, was bewitched by butterflies, and cuckoo crowed in the imperial spring.
Mermaids shed pearl-like tears on the moon-green sea, and the blue fields breathed their jade to the sun.
A moment that should last forever? Before I knew it, it had come and gone.
This poem is the most obscure poem of Li Shangyin, and although Li Shangyin named it Jinse, it is actually an untitled poem with a hidden title. Why are untitled poems untitled? Naturally, it is because the author doesn't want to or can't directly express the theme of the poem with the title. This kind of poem usually contains the author's unspeakable feelings. This "Jinse" is like this. The creative intention of this poem has not been determined yet, and there are different opinions. Some people think that this poem is a poem to mourn the death of his wife, and some people think that it is a work that hurts his life. In addition to these two views, there is also a love story about maids, which implies political patriotism.
This poem uses a lot of allusions. The first couplet uses the allusions of "Motome playing the drums and harps", which implies that the poet is outstanding in talent and naturally leads to the next sentence recalling his youth. Then, the couplets used two allusions, "Zhuang Zhou Meng Die" and "Wang Di Tiao", which caused the poet's grief and indignation and paved the way for the following. The two sentences in the necklace also use allusions, but this sentence "Mermaid drops pearl-like tears on the moon-like green sea" is a mixture of many allusions. "Sea Moon" was originally a beautiful scene, but it brought this poem into a wonderful artistic conception with tears, which made people think deeply. However, the source of the latter allusion cannot be verified because of the loss of ancient books. I only know that Dai Shulun, a poet in the middle Tang Dynasty, once advocated that "the poet's scenery, such as the warm Lantian, the beautiful jade, and the curling smoke from the kitchen can't be placed in front of him." However, it can be seen from the two antitheses of the Necklace that Li Shangyin is meticulous in rhetoric and profound in literary knowledge.