Flowers are not flowers, fog is not fog, come at midnight and go at dawn. Come like a spring dream, go like a cloud 1.
Note 1 Chaoyun: This is the allusion of King Xiang of Chu borrowing "Dream of the Goddess of Wushan".
It's a flower and not a flower, it's a fog and not a fog. It comes at midnight and leaves at dawn. When you come, it's like a spring dream, and your stay is very short. After leaving, like a cloud floating in the morning, there is nowhere to be found.
Appreciating Flowers but Not Appreciating Flowers is a sentimental poem in Bai Juyi's Collection of Bai Changqing. The whole poem is short and pithy, and the language is simple but contains many artistic conceptions. According to Zhu Jincheng's Notes on Bai Juyi, the writing time of this poem should be before the third year of Changqing (823). The title of the poem is taken from the first three words of the poem, which can be said to be almost "untitled" In the eyes of poets of past dynasties, flowers have always been a good object of chanting things, so there are many poems in this regard. Bai Juyi loves flowers very much, so many of his works are also about flowers. In his poems, he often compares flowers with beautiful women. But the first two sentences of this poem tell people that the protagonist is neither a flower nor a fog. What could it be? The last two sentences are the author's exclamation. "Come in the middle of the night and leave at dawn" gives people the feeling of dreaming, but "coming like a spring dream" also shows that this is not a dream. The whole poem has never clearly described what it is, but judging from the whole poem, the poet should describe the scene of men and women tryst at night, and the protagonist should be a tryst. Between "coming" and "going", the scene of tryst between men and women is clearly presented under the question and answer. The poet implicitly described the relationship between men and women in poetic language. Poetry is a series of puns, with natural and fluent writing style and hazy beauty.