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 He is good at sericulture and picks mulberry trees in the south corner of the city.
"The "Qin family building", "good at sericulture", "south corner of the mulberry picking city" in "Mo Shang Mulang" and the "Qin mulberry with low green branches" in this song "Spring Thoughts" may not be completely connected. It's an accidental coincidence of relationship. Li Bai is probably hinting to people that the heroine in "Spring Thoughts" is like "Luofu", a good-looking woman with unrivaled beauty and steadfastness and wit.
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 "thinking", and "branch" to harmonize "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 implicit beauty of the poem. , it can be said that killing two birds with one stone can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
The three or four sentences of the poem directly follow the idea of ??"Xing" at the beginning, so it is still two sentences. Both sides wrote, "When you return home in your arms, my concubine will have her heart broken." "When she learned that her husband had arrived in the land of Yanbei in the belated spring breeze and finally began to plan his return journey, instead of feeling relieved and happy, the wife felt heartbroken. This reaction of the wife was really unexpected. Besides, where does this "heartbroken" feeling come from? It turns out that although the husband has already planned to go home, the infatuated wife thinks that it is too late for him to think of going home until now, because he is already early. Just as I was looking forward to his return day and night, 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 were revealed. Although knowing that her husband was finally coming back was undoubtedly a great thing for the woman, she felt aggrieved when she thought about it, why did you not think of going home until now? I am waiting alone at home every day, looking forward to it day by day, and I am almost looking forward to it. Thinking of this, I may have to gently curse: "You have no conscience", and maybe even shed a few tears of joy. . Therefore, the "broken heart" of 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 does not say that he will come home, she will still miss him and wait hard. Go on without complaining. After the missing woman got the news that her husband was coming home, this seemingly unnatural complaint and venting just expressed her deep love for her husband. The so-called deep love means deep responsibility. This is the truth. After reading this, we can't help but be impressed by Li Bai, who is famous for his romantic and bold nature.
The question mark is full of endless emotions. The ending of the poem is also unexpected and sudden. After learning that her husband was about to return home, she was at home waiting for him to come back as soon as possible, but her husband never came back. She couldn't help but feel more and more anxious, but she was the only one in the family. Who could she confide her resentment and feelings to? It was precisely because she had no one to vent to, so in desperation, this usually quiet person couldn't help but feel anxious. Like a virgin who misses a woman, she will complain loudly to the unconscious spring breeze and condemn her in a major way: "If you don't know the spring breeze, why should you enter the Luo curtain?" "The spring breeze blew into her boudoir, lifting the curtains covering the bed. Looking at the curtains swaying in the wind, it further touched the thoughts of the missing woman. She once again asked a puzzling question, and This time the target turned out to be Chunfeng: "You and I have never met, why do you want to go deep into my boudoir?" "This is not a question or rejection of the spring breeze, but because the spring breeze enters the boudoir and flutters the tents, it touches her longing for her husband even more. Even the spring breeze, which she has never met before, comes to visit, and she knows the knowledge and the coldness. Shouldn't Zhi Nuan's husband come back? You must know that this boudoir and this tent originally belong to the two of us. This kind of alone in the spring boudoir is boring, so we are lingering in spring, so we are intrusive to the spring breeze. The act of revolt is a vivid representation of the missing woman's overflowing "love for spring", which seems irrational but is actually affectionate. The pain of lovesickness and the depth of love are breathtaking.
< p>Li Bai also has two five-character companion poems, "Autumn Thoughts", which are also poems for women. One of them specifically mentions the scene in spring, "The spring sun is like yesterday, and the green trees are singing oriole." The wild grass is at dusk, and the cool breeze blows. Under the autumn leaves, the cold moon is sad. Sitting and worrying, the autumn fragrance rests, and the white dew withers the beauty. "Yesterday it seemed like it was a bright and sunny day in spring, but today in a blink of an eye, it has turned into a cold autumn scene. Not only have the leaves on the green trees fallen, but even the autumn flowers have withered. Not to mention the cheerful and melodious spring songs of the oriole have long since changed. It has become the sad and mournful autumn song of Shaji. The days pass silently in this endless waiting and expectation. What does it mean to grow old? What does it mean to lose youth? The protagonist of this poem "Autumn Thoughts" It seems that there is no longer the waiting, hope, complaint and confession of the missing woman in the poem "Spring Thoughts". Her nerves seem to have been numb. After too many regrets and disappointments, she dare not hope for anything anymore. We have to resign ourselves to fate and let nature take its course. Comparing this state of mind as dry as a well in "Autumn Thoughts", we will deeply understand that the lovely missing woman in "Spring Thoughts" expresses her passion for life from time to time. Extremely "dissatisfied", he claimed that he had become "broken-hearted" because of his long absence from home, and sometimes "blamed" the spring breeze, thinking that it should not disturb him 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.