Spring Thoughts
Li Bai
The swallow grass is like silk, and the green branches of Qin mulberry are low.
When the king returns home, it is the time when the concubine has a broken heart.
If you don’t know the spring breeze, why should you enter the Luo curtain?
The title of Li Bai's five-character ancient poem is "Spring Thoughts". It is obvious at a glance that this is a poem describing the inner world of a missing woman. According to the traditional expression habits of Chinese classical poetry, whenever the word "spring" is mentioned, it is usually a semantic pun. Firstly, it certainly refers to the spring of nature. Secondly, it can also be a metaphor for the love between men and women. In ancient times, whenever a woman in her boudoir had a beautiful spring day, her thoughts would naturally be about her husband who was away from home. Many poets in the Tang Dynasty were experts at writing poems about women missing their wives, and there were indeed many vivid works on the subject of young women missing their wives. For example, Wang Changling, who is known as the "Seven Masters", wrote in "The Girl's Grudge": "The young woman in the boudoir does not know her sorrow, and goes up to the green building with makeup in the spring. Suddenly she sees the color of willows on the street, and she regrets teaching her husband to find a prince." It is vivid and delicate. It reappears a "young woman in the boudoir" who was originally carefree. Because she lived a carefree life, she dressed herself up carefully and climbed up to the tall green building to watch the beautiful spring scenery outside. Unexpectedly, it didn't matter, but the beautiful spring scenery aroused the "spring thoughts" deep in my heart: I regretted that I had encouraged my husband to go to the border to make contributions, but in the end, I failed to live up to this wonderful "spring scenery". , wasted "youth". However, since "Bouise's Resentment" was created using the most popular Qijue form at the time, it presents a relatively superficial secular aesthetic emotion and trend, which is to say that it is popular. However, Li Bai's "Spring Thoughts", Although it belongs to the same theme, it is written in five-character ancient poetry because of its different genre. Therefore, the expression of emotions is more tortuous and euphemistic, with one song and three sighs. "Girlfriend" is a typical Tang poem at first glance, and is undoubtedly a work from the prosperous Tang Dynasty, while "Spring Thoughts" gives people a sense of beauty that is both simple and elegant. Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty once commented on this poem: "The ancient meaning has a beautiful color, and the style is close to the Qi and Liang Dynasties." This means that in terms of style, it is very similar to the folk songs of the Qi and Liang Dynasties in the Southern Dynasties, but in terms of expression, it conveys the meaning. But it is more subtle and implicit. This style that is quite similar to the "Book of Songs" is the so-called "ancient meaning". However, it is still very particular about rhetoric, using different pairs of sentences. It starts with a general and neat couplet, "Swallow grass is like bisi, and Qin mulberry is low in green branches." Then it carefully constructs a couplet that is quite beautiful. Seeing the "flowing water" of skill, "when the king returns home, it is the concubine's heartbroken". This kind of artistic refinement and refinement is the "beauty" affirmed by Emperor Qianlong.
Bixing opens with confusion and confusion. Since the whole poem is quite short, with only six sentences in a sentence, every word and every sentence must be carefully arranged, and there is no room for randomness and randomness. "Swallow grass is like blue silk, Qin mulberry trees are as low as green branches." If you don't understand it carefully, you may think that this beginning is mediocre, but that's it. Because in terms of technique, this is Xing in Fu, Bi, and Xing, that is, "preface other things to trigger the words to be chanted" (Zhu Xi's "Collected Poems"). Starting with the foreground and arousing lovesickness later on, this has been the most common opening method in folk songs since the "Book of Songs". And in rhetoric, it is also a general antithesis, that is, the most stable form is adjective to adjective and noun to noun. Such as "Swallow Grass" versus "Qin Sang", "Bisi" versus "Green Branch". However, this inconspicuous and ordinary thing hides a very rich connotation. Just like the title of this article, it gives people the feeling of "being confused and confused, just because of the sultry scenery of spring". Yandi refers to the northern part of Shanxi and Hebei today, and Qindi refers to the Guanzhong area of ??Shaanxi today. The two places are far apart, and it is impossible for one person to see the two different spring scenery at the same time. After a brief thought, it is not difficult for readers to understand that the woman with "spring thoughts" in the poem must be in the spring-filled Qin land, and the conscript she is thinking about is of course Yanbei where the spring cold is still there. Outside the Yanbei Great Wall, the weather was cold. When the spring grass finally sprouted green buds as thin as hair, the missing woman at home in Qin was already in the mulberry forest with drooping branches.
The missing woman lives in Qinzhong. What she sees in front of her eyes is the luxuriant mulberry forest, but what she thinks about is the grass that has just sprouted in the cold spring of Yanbei. In fact, she has no intention of appreciating the things around her. Chunguang, because she had been aroused by the spring light, thinking about her husband who was away on duty in Yandi and had not returned for a long time. The meaning of "Xing" in this poem is actually hidden. Literally, it means that due to different climates, there is a big difference in spring time between Qin and Yanbei. Another meaning of "spring" refers to the love between men and women, that is, in The meaning of "huaichun" often appeared in ancient poetry. So, when Yanbei's husband began to feel that he had been away from home for a long time and just started to want to go home, the wife at home had already broken up all day long. Living life with fingers crossed, eagerly looking forward to her husband's return. Does "Qin mulberry and low green branches" have a more intrinsic meaning? Because every time "Qin Sang" is mentioned, people always think of the famous Han Yuefu song "Mo Shang Sang": "The sun rises in the southeast corner, shining on my Qin family building. The Qin family has a good daughter, who calls herself Luofu. Luofu "Good at sericulture, in the south corner of the mulberry picking city" "Qin's Tower" in "Mo Shang Mulang", "good at sericulture", "south corner of the mulberry picking city" and "Qin mulberry with low green branches" in this song "Spring Thoughts". Maybe it's not a completely unrelated coincidence.
Li Bai is probably hinting to people that the heroine in "Spring Thoughts" is just like "Luofu", a woman from a good family who is both beautiful, steadfast and witty.
As a short poem with Qi Liang style, Li Bai also used the most common rhetorical technique of "homophonic pun" in folk songs of the Southern Dynasties at that time, using "silk" to harmonize with "thinking" and "branch" with "branch". "Knowledge" not only makes the whole poem more like a Southern Dynasty folk song in overall appearance, but also connects and echoes the following emotions such as "huaigui" and "broken heart", which maximizes the rhythmic beauty and beauty of the poem. Subtle beauty can be said to kill two birds with one stone, getting twice the result with half the effort.
Let’s talk to each other and express our feelings directly. The three or four sentences of the poem are directly derived from the idea of ??"Xing" at the beginning, so they are still two sentences, and both sides write, "When you return home in your arms, I will be heartbroken." When I learned that my husband was in the spring breeze, After arriving belatedly to the land of Yanbei, and finally starting to plan the return journey, my wife, instead of feeling relief and joy, felt heartbroken. The wife's reaction was really unexpected. Where did this "heartbroken" feeling come from? It turned out that although the husband had already planned to go home, the infatuated wife thought it was too late for him to think of going home until now, because she had long been looking forward to his return. The subtle inner connection between the "Swallow Grass" and "Qin Sang" mentioned at the beginning of the poem, and the "Return to Huai Day" and "Broken Heart Time" below are revealed. Although knowing that her husband would eventually come back was undoubtedly a great good thing for the missing woman, when she thought about it, she felt aggrieved again, why did you not think of going home until now? I am alone at home, waiting and looking forward to it every day, and I am almost looking forward to it. Thinking of this, I may even lightly curse: "You have no conscience", and maybe even shed a few tears of joy. Woolen cloth. Therefore, the "broken heart" felt by the missing woman at this time is not really heartbreaking, but a kind of resentment and complaint full of true feelings. Maybe if her husband didn't say he was coming home, she would still miss him bitterly and wait for him without complaining. After the missing woman received the news that her husband had returned home, this seemingly unnatural complaint and venting expressed her deep love for her husband. This is the saying that deep love leads to deep responsibility. After reading this, we can't help but admire Li Bai, who is famous for his romantic and bold personality, for having such a detailed grasp of female psychology.
The question mark ends with endless thoughts. The ending of the poem is also unexpected and sudden. After learning that her husband was about to return home, the beloved woman concentrated on waiting for him to come in as soon as possible. But her husband has not come back for a long time, so the missing woman can't help but become more and more anxious. However, she is the only one in the house. Who can she confide to and tell her all her resentments and feelings? It is precisely because there is no one to vent to, so in desperation, this woman who is usually as quiet as a virgin will complain loudly to the unconscious spring breeze, and condemns it: "I don't know the spring breeze, why should I enter the Luo curtain?" ? "The spring breeze blew into her boudoir, lifting the curtain covering the bed. Seeing the curtain swaying in the wind, it further touched the thoughts of the missing woman. She once again asked a puzzling question, But this time the object turned out to be the spring breeze: "You and I have never met, why do you want to go deep into my boudoir?" This is not a question and rejection of the spring breeze, but because the spring breeze enters the boudoir and stirs the tents. It further touched her longing for her husband. Even the spring breeze, which she had never met, came to visit her. Shouldn't her husband, who knew the cold and the warm, come back? You must know that this boudoir and this tent are originally It belongs to both of us. This kind of behavior of staying alone in the spring boudoir and being bored, so the spring thoughts are lingering, so the behavior of attacking the spring breeze is a vivid reproduction of the missing woman's overflowing "spring" feeling, which may seem unreasonable, but is actually sentimental. The pain of lovesickness, the depth of love, and the desire to express it are amazing.
Li Bai also wrote two five-character companion poems "Autumn Thoughts", which are also poems for women. One of the poems specifically mentioned the scene in spring, "The spring sun is like yesterday, the green trees are singing orioles. The grass is deserted at dusk, and the cool breeze blows. Under the autumn leaves, the moon is cold and the partridge is sad. I sit and worry about the autumn fragrance. Rest, the white dew is withering. "Yesterday it seemed like it was a bright and sunny day in spring, but today in a blink of an eye, it's already a cold autumn scene. Not only have the leaves on the green trees fallen, but even the autumn flowers have withered. Not to mention that the cheerful and melodious spring song of the oriole has long turned into the sad and sad autumn song of the partridge. The days passed silently in this endless waiting and expectation. What does it mean to grow old? What does youth no longer mean? The protagonist of this poem "Autumn Thoughts" seems to have lost the waiting, hope, complaint and confession of the missing woman in the "Spring Thoughts" poem. Her nerves seem to have been numb. After too many regrets and disappointments, She didn't dare to hope for anything anymore, so she had to resign herself to fate and let nature take its course. Comparing the state of the heart like a dry well in "Autumn Thoughts", we will deeply understand that "Spring Thoughts" is full of passion for life. Although the lovely missing woman sometimes expressed extreme "dissatisfaction" with her husband, claiming that she was "broken-hearted" because of his long absence from home, at other times she "blamed" the spring breeze, thinking that it was not good enough. You should come without any disturbance and come uninvited. But through these "dissatisfaction" and "blame", we can easily find that what beats in the heart of the missing woman is still the melody of love and the yearning for a better life.
Because this kind of waiting in "Spring Thoughts" is just around the corner and there is hope, it can give the missing woman confidence and the courage to live. When she says that she is "broken-hearted", she is obviously using this to impress her husband even more. Rouchang, and being indifferent to the "unfavorable" "spring breeze", is of course showing his loyalty and determination. So even though she was complaining and suffering, she was full of hope and expectation. Therefore, every kind reader will feel a deep blessing after reading "Spring Thoughts", so let our heroine get her wish as soon as possible! Let her husband return to Qinzhong from Yanbei as soon as possible! Don't let her wait another long summer in vain, and then express the same sentimentality as "Autumn Thoughts" in autumn.