The everlasting regret of love
-on the theme of everlasting regret songs
The controversy over the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow has never stopped, but it has long been confined to the study of the meaning of the poem itself, so there are many controversies. This paper attempts to expound its theme from three aspects: writing background, poem content and poem title. By analyzing the first love and tragic love experience of Bai Juyi and Xiang Ling recorded in historical materials, it is concluded that the poem Song of Eternal Sorrow is based on this emotional experience, and its theme must have nothing to do with love. At the same time, "Song of Eternal Sorrow" spent a lot of ink to describe the development and final outcome of Li Yang's love affair. The meaning of the word "long regret" in the poem is a long-lasting and eternal regret, and it also implies its intention. Therefore, the author thinks that the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow should be to describe and praise love. Keywords: Song of Eternal Sorrow Bai Juyi's writing background The Song of Eternal Sorrow by Bai Juyi, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, is a famous piece sung through the ages. However, for such an article that everyone can read and recite, its theme has been inconclusive, and it has always been a controversial issue for ancient and modern researchers. The author believes that the ideological meaning contained in an excellent work is always complicated, and it can't be summarized in one or two sentences. But we can always come to a conclusion, although it is not easy to get universal recognition. Some people think that the previous debates on the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow are not absolutely mutually exclusive. They all have certain basis and rationality, and they can blend with each other, thus * * * constructs the multiple meanings of Song of Eternal Sorrow. This view seems to be comprehensive, but in fact it is eclectic, and behind the multiple meanings is actually an escape. Therefore, the author tries to re-explore the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow. First of all, from the creation background of Song of Eternal Sorrow, the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow was created in December of the first year of Yuanhe, Tang Xianzong. Writing background: Bai Juyi, who was appointed as the county commandant at that time, visited Xianyou Temple with his friends Chen Hong and Wang Zhifu, and talked about the legacy of Tianbao 50 years ago, that is, the love story between Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei. At that time, Wang Zhifu proposed to tell this story with literary works. What her husband hoped to do for the future was not polished until he was born, but faded with the times and was unknown to the world. Lotte is deeper than poetry and deeper than emotion. How about trying to sing? Bai Juyi wrote the Song of Eternal Sorrow, while Chen Hong wrote the Song of Eternal Sorrow. The theme of literary works is always associated with some writing purpose. What kind of thoughts I want to express can only be studied from the original question of why I wrote this article. Otherwise, it is against historical facts to speculate and judge without the author's own writing intention. Of course, Bai Juyi himself is dead, so we can't personally ask his old man's original intention, but we can judge his writing purpose by analyzing the background at that time. Therefore, its theme should also be the starting point for us to study its theme from its writing reasons and purposes. For a long time, the researchers' discussion on the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow still stays in the superficial meaning of words and events, so can we study it from another angle? Judging from the writing background, Bai Juyi was talking about the love story between Li (Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty) and Yang (Yang Guifei) with friends at that time, and wrote the Song of Eternal Sorrow. Therefore, the author thinks that the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow should be to narrate Li Yang's love story, so as to express sympathy for Li Yang's love tragedy and praise for faithful love. It is easy for us to ask: he is alive and well, what is the sense of emptiness for no reason? Is this explanation far-fetched? We can give two answers: first, literati like to express their minds in vain, make much ado about nothing, and insist on squeezing something out. He likes to talk about love, and there is nothing we can do, but this explanation is obviously unconvincing. The second explanation is that Bai Juyi's Song of Eternal Sorrow was written at the suggestion of Wang Zhifu, but it incorporated the poet's own emotional experience. Bai Juyi and Xiangling had their first love experience. Some scholars believe that this experience played an important role in the creation of Song of Eternal Sorrow. The poem "Song of Eternal Sorrow" was a condemnation of the hero and heroine at first, but with its development, the poet enriched the story with his own feelings and imagination, giving this love tragedy a more universal meaning, which made the author and readers highly resonate with it. (3) When Bai Juyi was 1 1 years old, he moved with his mother to the place where his father was an official. After leaving Xuzhou (now Suxian County, Anhui Province), he met a neighbor woman who was four years younger than him. Her name is Xiang Ling, lively and lovely, and she knows a little about temperament, so they became childhood friends. When Bai Juyi 19 years old and Xiangling 15 years old, the seeds of love began their first love. Bai Juyi has a poem "Daughter Next Door", which tells the story: a graceful girl won fifteen immortals, and a daytime girl grew a lotus flower on the dry land. Where can I teach parrots to learn to talk at leisure? Under the screen window, in front of the embroidered bed. Praise Xiangling for her beauty and sweet voice. In the 14th year of Zhenyuan (708), Bai Juyi was 27 years old. For the sake of family life and his future, he had to leave Fu and his uncle in Jiangnan. Along the way, he wrote three poems in memory of Xiangling. The first two songs are Send Xiangling, Cold Night, and the third song is Sauvignon Blanc: the west wind starts in September. The moon is cold and cold. The autumn night is long and the soul rises for nine nights. In February, the east wind comes and the grass breaks and flowers bloom. I miss you late in spring, and my intestines go back nine times a day. My concubine lives in the north of Luo Qiao and your husband lives in the south of Luo Qiao. We met at the age of fifteen, and we are twenty-three this year. Like a radish, born by the pine tree. The vine's short branches are bitter and tall, and its back cannot move. People say that people have a wish and it will come true. Willing to be a distant beast, step by step. I would like to be an old tree in the mountains, with branches connected. The last sentence "Branches are connected" coincides with mine. We hope to fly in heaven, and two birds will become one and grow together on the earth, two branches of a tree. In Song of Eternal Sorrow, we have to admit that Bai Juyi wrote Song of Eternal Sorrow with rich emotional foundation. It can be clearly seen that Bai Juyi and Xiangling have been together for 17 years and have been in love for 8 years, and their feelings are already deep. After I left, I not only missed each other, but also thought about getting married. Xiangling is worried that the bottom of her family (the urban poor) will not be able to climb Bai Juyi (three generations of local officials). Finally, I expressed my sincere hope to work together step by step. At the beginning of the sixteenth year of Zhenyuan, Bai Juyi was admitted to the Jinshi at the age of 29 and lived outside for nearly 10 months. She earnestly asked her mother to marry Xiangling, but was rejected by her mother with strong family values. Bai Juyi left home with great pain. In the autumn of the twentieth year of Zhenyuan, Bai Juyi went to school in Chang 'an and needed to move his family to Chang 'an. After returning home, he begged his mother to allow him to marry Xiangling again, but the mother, who had the highest authority in the children's marriage, not only refused his request again, but also refused to let them meet when the whole family moved away. Their marriage was hopeless, but their deep love didn't end there. Bai Juyi punished his mother's mistake by not marrying others, and wrote three poems to commemorate Xiangling: Missing Xiangling on a Winter Night, Feeling Autumn and Farewell. At the age of 37, Bai Juyi was forced to death by his mother and was introduced to marry his colleague Yang's sister. But until Yuanhe seven years ago, he still wrote poems for Miss Xiangling. Such as rain at night, sensors, etc. Later, Bai Juyi was wronged and demoted to Jiangzhou, and met the wandering Xiangling father and daughter with Mrs. Yang. Bai Juyi and Xiangling cried bitterly and wrote a poem entitled "Meet the Old": I comb my white hair to add new hatred, and you sweep the worms to reduce the old face. It should be strange and melancholy, young people leave and meet old! At this time, Bai Juyi was 44 years old and Xiangling was 40 years old and unmarried. Here Bai Juyi used the word hate again! The author thinks that this hatred has nothing to do with the hatred in Song of Eternal Sorrow. It was not until Bai Juyi was 53 years old that on the way back to Luo Jing from Ren Man, the secretariat of Hangzhou, she saw the change of the old village neighbors, and Xiangling had disappeared, and this love tragedy that lasted for 35 years came to an end. This love experience is over, but the thoughts and sadness left to Bai Juyi are endless. He realized that it is natural for men and women to pursue ideal love, and it is very wrong for anyone to obstruct it for any reason, which also became the cognitive and emotional basis for his poems such as Song of Eternal Sorrow. Generally speaking, Bai Juyi wrote Song of Eternal Sorrow based on his own emotional experience, rather than moaning without illness. Through the study of his writing background, the author thinks that the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow should be to express the poet's praise for pure, loyal and single-minded love. Why sing praises? This is because Bai Juyi himself has a tragic emotional story about his first love, so when Wang Zhifu proposed to write about Li Yang's past, the poet immediately remembered his emotional experience and decided the theme of writing-expressing his views on love by writing this poem. To some extent, it is also a silent protest against the failed marriage. However, this kind of protest did not rise to the political level, so it could not be promoted to the theme of disclosure and irony, which to some extent reflected some aspects of the complex and sharp class aggregate of the society at that time; On the one hand, due to the feudal scholar-bureaucrat position, the author expressed some sympathy for the tragedy of the emperor. (Selected Readings of Tang Poetry) This is obviously divorced from the author's own writing intention and does not conform to the emotional tone of the work. If you want to expose irony, but spend a lot of ink to describe love, is it necessary? Secondly, from the poetry content of Song of Eternal Sorrow to study its theme, Song of Eternal Sorrow contains a large number of poems describing Li Yang's love, mainly in two parts: one is the love between Li Yang and his mistress Chun and his tyrant at night. There are other ladies in his court, 3,000 of whom are stunning beauties, but his love for 3,000 is concentrated on one person. When she gets dressed in her golden room, it will be almost evening. When the table in the jade tower is cleaned, she will hang around and drink slowly. Second, after Yang Guifei's death, she was deeply in love with last contact, the dragon car returned home, and the emperor never left. The memory and pain are buried in the soil of Maweipo. Where is her white face? . Rulers and lords, when their eyes met, cried on their coats. They rode horses, loosened the reins and slowly returned to the capital. Pond, garden, palace, everything is the same as before, Taiye Lake hibiscus, Weiyang Palace willow. But the petals are like her face and the willow leaves are like her eyebrows ... How to explain the theme of Long Hate? This is the key problem that affects the theme orientation of this poem. Some people think it's hatred, and the theme of the poem is everlasting regret, which is Bai Juyi's hatred for emperors with desires such as Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, and he is fascinated to death. However, the author thinks that it is more appropriate to explain it as regret, that is, Yang Guifei's lifelong regret in Xuanzong period of Tang Dynasty. Just think, is it worthy of your lifelong hatred that the king has no desire or desire and is confused to death? No matter whether the long story is interpreted as long-term or extended to life, hate can only be interpreted as regret. The thought expressed in Bai Juyi's "Song of Eternal Sorrow" is exactly the poem title chosen by the poet for this long song, that is, the word "Song of Eternal Sorrow". Hate is regret and resentment. (5) What's the long-term hatred for writing Li Yang's story with the author? The author has actually pointed out the ending of this poem. In the last paragraph of the poem, the poet put down the situation that Li Yang was separated from life and death, thinking but not seeing, and loving but not reuniting, and ended the whole article with two meaningful poems: everlasting and everlasting; One day both will end, and this endless sadness will last forever. . In the poet's view, a couple who love each other deeply suffered such misfortune, which can only be remembered by the couple and all future generations. Bai Juyi's famous sentence, which he hated for a long time, also wrote a tragedy in history. Li Yang's touching love tragedy story shows the poet's great sympathy for the tragic hero. Poetry expresses ambition, writing poetry is always for expression, and the topic is the eyes of poetry, so studying the topic can determine the theme of the work to a certain extent. Judging from the title of Song of Eternal Sorrow, the poet's original intention should be to express an eternal regret, which is consistent with the regret of the poet's own emotional experience. Therefore, the author thinks that Song of Eternal Sorrow is a love story. Although the story it wrote is not completely in line with historical facts, it is a love affair between Li Yang. Therefore, Song of Eternal Sorrow is a famous poem describing and praising love, not a political satire. Of course, there has been a lot of controversy about the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow, and many famous artists have expressed their views. The author's exposition is only based on his own understanding, and there are many superficial points in the exposition, so this article only dares to make a brief discussion. Note: ① Wai-Man Chan: Multiple perspectives of love in Li Yang and Song of Eternal Sorrow? /B& gt； Multiple meanings, Journal of Anhui Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), Volume 26,No. 1998,No. 1. (2) Selected Readings of Tang Poetry, People's Literature Publishing House, 1978, p. 150. ③ Cheng: Selected Poems of Today, p. 354. ④ Wang Yongzhong: The Tragedy and Creation of Bai Juyi's First Love, Journal of Northwest University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) (Vol.27, No.2, 1997). ⑤ Chu Binjie: "Long-lasting hatred of amorous feelings" (interpretation of famous scholars' Tang poems, Shandong People's Publishing House, 1999 edition). (28 April 2002)