"I wonder why my inlaid harp has fifty strings, each with its flower-like fret an interval of youth" means: Jinse, why do you have fifty strings? Each string and section is reminiscent of the year of Huang Jinhua.
Jinse: A richly decorated instrument. Plucked instrument, usually 25 strings.
unprovoked: why not? Words of resentment.
Fifty strings: Here are the words of Tuogu. The author's original intention is to say that Jinse should have been 25 strings.
Li Shangyin's wife died in his later years, so twenty-five strings were broken and turned into fifty strings. Breaking a string means losing his wife, and remarrying. But in this poem, Li Shangyin is full of nostalgia for his dead wife. Extended information
1. The source of the poem
"I wonder why my inlaid harp has fifty strings, each with its flower-like fret an interval of youth" comes from Jin Se written by Li Shangyin in the Tang Dynasty. The original text is as follows:
Jinse
Tang Dynasty: Li Shangyin
I wonder why my inlaid harp has fifty strings, each with its flower-like fret an interval of youth.
the sage Chuangzi is day-dreaming, bewitched by butterflies, the spring-heart of Emperor Wang is crying in a cuckoo.
mermen weep their pearly tears down a moon-green sea, blue fields are breathing their jade to the sun.
and a moment that ought to have lasted for ever, has come and gone before I knew.
2. Translation
This poem means:
Jinse, why do you have fifty strings? Each string and section is reminiscent of the year of Huang Jinhua.
My heart is like Zhuangzi, and I am lost for butterflies dreaming. Another example is to look at the emperor and turn the cuckoo into a cuckoo.
The sea and the bright moon are shining high, and Jiao Ren's tears become beads. Lantian is sunny and warm, and you can see good jade and smoke.
The feelings of joys and sorrows should not be recalled today, but they were careless in those days and have long been disconsolate.
3. Appreciation
The poet borrows a lot of allusions such as Zhuang Sheng's dream butterfly, cuckoo's crying, tears in the sea, smoke in fertile fields, etc., and uses metaphor and imagination to transform his auditory feelings into visual images, creating a hazy realm with the combination of fragments of images, thus conveying his sincere, strong and deep thoughts with the help of visual and sensible poetic images.
*** uses four allusions, showing different artistic conception and mood.
Zhuang's dream butterfly is a trance and confusion of life.
longing for the emperor's spring heart includes the persistence of hard pursuit.
the tears in the sea are a kind of vast loneliness.
It's warm in Lantian, which conveys warm and hazy joy.
The images extracted by the poet from allusions are so magical and ethereal that his mind is slowly opened to readers, and the beauty of the Chinese New Year and the feelings of life are all integrated into them, but they can only be understood but not expressed.
4. The author introduces
Shang Yin, whose name is Yishan, was born in Yuxi (Xi) and Fan Nansheng, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty. His ancestral home was in Qinyang, Hanoi (now Jiaozuo City, Henan Province) and he was born in Xingyang, Zhengzhou. He is good at poetry writing, and his parallel prose is also of high literary value. He is one of the best poets in the late Tang Dynasty. Together with Du Mu, he is called "Little Li Du", and together with Wen Tingyun, he is called "Wen Li".