The meaning of the poem "The plantain does not show its lilac knots, but both are sad in the spring breeze" means: the heart of the plantain has not yet unfolded, and the lilac buds have not yet bloomed. They face the evening spring breeze, each with infinite sadness.
Source:
"Two Poems as Gifts" by Li Shangyin? [Tang Dynasty]
Upstairs, desire rests at dusk, and the jade ladder cuts across the moon like a hook.
The plantains do not show their lilac knots, but they all face the same sorrow in the spring breeze.
The sunrise in the southeast shines on the tall buildings, and the people upstairs are singing Shizhou.
I always sweep my eyebrows away from Chunshan, but I don’t know how much sorrow I have to bear.
The banana heart has not yet bloomed, and the lilacs have not yet blossomed. They are both sad towards the spring breeze.
The sun rises in the southeast and shines on the tall buildings, and the people upstairs who are sad about separation sing "Stone Island".
Even if the eyebrows are like spring mountains and the spring mountains are like eyebrows, I don’t know how much sorrow I have to endure?
Notes:
⑴Want to stop: Looking at the dusk scene from a distance, but it soon became dark. Mid-moon hook: One makes the moon like a hook?[2]?.
⑵ The jade staircase is crisscrossed: the gorgeous staircase is crisscrossed and there is no way to get up.
⑶The banana is not spread out: The heart of the banana is tightly wrapped and not spread out. Lilac Knot: After the lilac blooms, its seeds are knotted in a thick shell.
⑷Shizhou: See "Yuefu Poetry Collection", which is a work written by a woman who misses her future.
⑸General: Even though. Mei Dai (dài): Dai Mei. In ancient times, women used to paint their eyebrows with blue and black paint.
Appreciation:
The first poem is written in the voice of a woman about her sadness at not being able to meet her lover. The time written in the poem is spring dusk. The poet uses the technique of using scenery to express her inner feelings from the missing moon, plantains, lilacs and other scenery seen by the protagonist of the poem. The first four words of the poem indicate the time and place: "Twilight upstairs". The next three words "desire to rest" vividly describe the woman's actions: she walked to the top of the building and wanted to look into the distance, but stopped sadly. Here, readers not only see the woman's posture, but also reveal her helpless look. "Desire Quit" is a work of "Wish Desire Quit". "Xiu" means "stop" or "give up". "Desire" means wanting to see her lover. But the desire is still there. Jiang Yan, a poet of the Southern Dynasties, wrote in "Ode on Advocating Women's Self-Grief" that a beautiful woman in the Han Palace fell out of favor and lived alone. There is a sentence: "The moss is accumulated in the silver pavilion, and the net is raw and the jade ladder is empty." "The jade ladder is empty" means that the jade ladder is empty and no one comes to climb it. The "jade ladder is absolutely horizontal" in this poem means that the jade ladder is horizontal and there is no way to get up. It means that lovers are blocked and unable to meet each other. The last sentence in this sentence means that the woman is eager to see her lover, so she wants to look at it, but she suddenly thinks that he will not come, so she has to stop. The desire is still there, and the woman's complicated and contradictory psychological activities and lonely, boring and disappointed mood are written cleverly and realistically. "The moon is like a hook" is written as "the hook in the middle of the moon", which has the same meaning. It not only highlights the loneliness and desolation of the environment, but also has symbolic meaning: the moon is missing but not round, just like a pair of lovers who are unable to meet.
The three or four sentences still further reveal the woman's inner feelings through description of the scene. The second sentence is about the moon that is missing like a hook, which refers to the scene in the sky that the woman sees in the distance when she raises her head; these two sentences are the scene on the ground that is nearby when she lowers her head. High and low, far and near, well-proportioned. The banana here is a banana whose heart has not yet unfolded. It is this scene that the poet Qian Jue wrote in his poem "Unexplored Plantain" in the poem "The heart is still curled up in the cold spring"; the lilac here is not a petal. The lilacs in full bloom are buds that cannot bloom. They all face the cold spring breeze at dusk, feeling boundless sorrow. This is not only a true depiction of the real scene in front of the woman, but also a description of people using objects. The banana is used as a metaphor for her lover, and the lilac is used as a metaphor for the woman herself. It is a metaphor that the two people are in the same place in a different place, and they are both worried about not being able to meet each other. The sorrow of things arises and deepens the sorrow of people, which is "xing"; the sorrow of things, which is also the sorrow of people, is also "bi". The plantains and lilacs are not only carefully arranged by the poet, but they are also visible to the naked eye. They are picked up casually and appear particularly natural.
The second poem is also written in a woman's tone about the sadness of parting with her lover. The specific writing time is no longer available.
The integration of scenery and emotion, objects and people, the integration of "bi" and "xing", the careful structure without any artificiality, are the great success of this poem. In particular, the two sentences "The plantains do not show their lilac knots, but they face the same spring breeze and each have their own sorrows." The artistic conception is beautiful and the implications are endless. It has always been praised by people. It was specially highlighted in "Shi Hua Lei Bian" and was highly praised.
About the author:
Li Shangyin (about 813-about 858), also known as Yishan, also known as Yuxi (Xi) Sheng or Fan Nansheng, was a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty and his ancestral home was Hanoi (now Henan). He was born in Qinyang, Jiaozuo City, Zhengzhou Province. He is good at poetry writing, and his parallel prose is also of high literary value. He is one of the most outstanding poets in the late Tang Dynasty. Together with Du Mu, he is known as "Xiao Li Du", and with Wen Tingyun, he is known as "Wen Li". Cheng Shi and Wen Tingyun have similar styles, and they are all ranked sixteenth in their families, so they are called the "Thirty-sixth Body". His poems are novel in conception and beautiful in style, especially some love poems and untitled poems, which are sentimental, beautiful and moving, and are widely read. However, some poems are too obscure and confusing to be understood. There is a saying that "poets always love Xikun and hate that no one writes Zheng Jian." Because he was caught in the partisan struggle between Niu and Li, he was very frustrated in his life.
After his death, he was buried in his hometown Qinyang (now the junction of Qinyang and Boai County, Jiaozuo City, Henan Province). The works are included in "Li Yishan's Collected Poems".
Creative background:
Giving on behalf of others refers to poems written on behalf of others as gifts. It may also be that the poet deliberately titled it this way, and it does not mean that there is a real representative, because this type of poem mostly writes about lovesickness. Feelings. These two poems are not chronological, and the specific year of their creation is unknown.
Expressing the theme:
These two poems are about women's lovesickness and separation. The first poem is about the boredom of the heroine looking into the distance at dusk, and the scenery she sees overlooking the courtyard downstairs, which adds to the sadness of separation; the second poem is about the infinite sadness of the heroine when she climbs the stairs in the morning. In these two poems, scenery and emotion, objects and people are integrated into one, "bi" and "xing" are integrated into one, and they are carefully structured without being artificial. This is the success of these two poems. The two poems have beautiful artistic conception and endless implications.
Comments from famous experts:
"Chengzhai Shihua" by Yang Wanli of the Song Dynasty: The five-seven-character quatrain is the least and the most difficult to work on, although the author rarely has four lines that are all good. The people of the late Tang Dynasty and Jie Fu worked best here. For example, Li Yishan... "The plantains do not show their lilac knots, but they all face the same sorrow in the spring breeze."
Ming Dynasty Xu Xueyi's "Differentiation of Poetry Sources": Shang Yin Qijueru's "Giving on behalf of others" says: "The bananas do not show their lilac knots, but they all face the same spring breeze and have their own worries." Erotic and beautiful.
Qing Dynasty·Shen Houshuang's "Review of Li Yishan's Collected Poems" quoted Ji Yun: "Emotions lead to self-improvement, and a gorgeous body does not harm elegance."
Modern Dynasty·Yu Biyun's "Continuation of a Brief Introduction to Poetry": the first two sentences "upstairs" and "jade ladder" mean the same as Li Bai's "the dark color enters the high building, and there are people upstairs who are worried", "Standing on the jade ladder in the sky, looking forward to returning to the flying wings" has a similar meaning, describing the sadness of looking far away. The last two sentences are about borrowing objects to write about sorrow: the knots of lilacs are not unstretched, the hearts of banana leaves are not spread out, even if the spring breeze is good, it is difficult to break the traces of sorrow, things are like this, how can people be embarrassed! It can be said that he is kind and resentful.