Appreciation of Works "Preface to Mao's Poems" says: ""The Flower of Tiaozi" was written by the official Min Shiye. During the reign of King You, the Xirong and Dongyi invaded China, and armies and armies merged, resulting in famine. The gentleman Min Zhou's family is about to die, and he hurts himself, so he pretends to write a poem. "From the perspective of the poem itself, it is written that people have no food and cannot survive in disaster years. Faced with this reality, the poet feels that in this famine, it is better not to do it. It is better to be born. "Yi Lin Zhongfu's Litigation" says: "The gentleman is not full if he makes sheep's soup. There is famine in the year, and the people are in danger." This is the understanding of Qi's poems. It is more straightforward than the statement in "Mao's Preface" and is in line with the meaning of the poem. The original meaning does not include the conjecture attached to the preface of Mao's poem (i.e. the so-called "Min Shi", "the death of the Min Zhou Dynasty" and so on). As for the author, it is difficult to say that he is a "doctor". Judging from the content of the poem "Singing His Food", it is speculated that he may be a hungry citizen, or a lower-class scholar who understands and sympathizes with the people. There are three chapters in the poem. The first two sentences of the first two chapters are intertextual, saying that the sweet potato is in full bloom, with a yellow leaf, green leaves, and lush green leaves. In these two sentences, the poet saw the flowers and leaves of the sweet potato rising. The sweet potato leaves were green and yellow, full of vitality, but the people in the famine years found it difficult to make a living. The poet introduces emotion through association, and the two sentences at the end of the two chapters of the poem reflect his emotion. The poet lamented that in the famine years, people were struggling with hunger and almost died. It was difficult to survive. On the contrary, it was not as good as plants like sweet potato, which could live freely and vigorously. For this reason, he was so sad that he felt that his biggest regret was being born into this world. The world is so vast that people are originally valued, but in the poem, they envy the unconscious plants, and even say "it's better than being without life", expressing feelings of sadness and anger. Although the poet's emotions are intense in the first two chapters, and the uncontrollable sorrow and anger spurt out like fire, the cause of this sorrow and anger is still hidden in Bixing and is not revealed until the third chapter. The two sentences "Zangyang" are just like what Fang Yurun said in the Qing Dynasty, "the language is very strange" ("The Original Book of Songs"). It is precisely because of the "strange" that the old theories are divergent and unclear. Only Zhu Xi's explanation is the most poetic. He said: "When a sheep is barren, it has a big head. There are no fish in the raft and the water is calm, but only the light of three stars can be seen." "When there is famine, everything is withered like this." ("Collected Poems") This is the reason why the poet expressed his sorrow and anger, which means: "In the famine years, there is nothing to eat, so I slaughter the ewe, but it is so thin that only one is left." A big head; let's go fishing, there are only stars in the bamboo vessels for fishing but no fish." Listing these two things, Wang Zhaoyuan of the Qing Dynasty analyzed: "You can see the desolation of land objects by lifting a sheep, and the withering of water objects by lifting a fish. The consumption can be imagined." ("Poetry") The last two sentences, "People can eat, fresh food can be full" are the most painful cry. People cannibalize people and kill each other. It is already a cruel world, but this poem says that even if people can eat each other, they can eat each other. It can be eaten, but there are very few people left, and as readers can imagine, the sheep grazing have become so thin that there is no meat to eat, let alone the people who have been hungry for a long time. Needless to say, they were all as skinny as firewood. Even if they ate all these few people, it would be difficult to fill their stomachs. This statement in the poem makes readers feel very horrified, and takes the tragic scene one step further. It is even more frightening than the poem written by the Tang Dynasty "When there is a drought in the south of the Yangtze River, people in Quzhou cannibalize people" (Bai Juyi's "Light Fat"). Regarding these two sentences, Wang Zhaoyuan also specifically wrote down a fact she heard to confirm it. The article said: "In the three or four years of Yisi and Bingwu in Eastern Province, hundreds of miles of bare land were barren, and everyone was eating each other. The men were sold for sale. The woman was too cheap to sell, so she died in a pillow. I saw it with my own eyes, and I was so relieved to read this poem." He also noted: "At noon, a man from Shanzuo had a meal with his brother He. When Mr. Lan talked about this poem, he said: "People can eat", which is eating people; "fresh food can be eaten", which means people are thin. This statement is absolutely painful, so I add it here. "So, what this poem reflects. The cruel social reality and people's suffering in the Zhou Dynasty were universal in the long-term feudal society, which fully demonstrated the power of the realism spirit of "The Book of Songs".
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