This poem is clear in narration, natural in structure, clear in hierarchy and strong in logic. At the beginning of the poem, the background is explained first, indicating that May is the busy farming season for wheat harvest. Then write down that women lead their children to the fields to give food and water to young people who are cutting wheat. Later, it described young farmers cutting wheat with their heads down in Nangang wheat field, fumigating their feet with the heat, and baking their backs in the hot sun. They are tired and don't feel hot, but they just cherish the long days in summer and can do more work.
At this point, the farmer's hard work has been strongly demonstrated. Then I described another sad scene: a poor woman, with a child in her arms and a broken basket in her hand, was picking wheat by the wheat harvester. Why are you picking wheat? Because her family's field has "lost all taxes"-it has been sold to pay the heavy taxes in the palace. Now there is no field to plant and no wheat to harvest, so we have to rely on wheat to satisfy our hunger. These two scenes are intertwined, with both differences and connections: the former reveals the hardships of farmers, while the latter reveals heavy taxes. Since heavy taxes have made poor women lose their fields, they will also make this peasant family who is cutting wheat lose their fields. Today's wheat pickers are yesterday's wheat pickers; Today's wheat harvesters may become tomorrow's wheat harvesters. Strong irony is self-evident.
The poet linked the pain of farmers' life with the ease of his own life, feeling ashamed and unable to calm down for a long time. This lyric text is the essence of the whole poem. It is the product of the author's touching feelings and shows the poet's deep sympathy for the working people. Bai Juyi wrote satirical poems with the aim of "only making people sick, and I hope the emperor knows." In this poem, he made a sharp contrast between the peasants and himself as a court official with his own personal feelings, that is, he hoped that the "son of heaven" was affectionate and tactful, which could be described as well-intentioned.
Bai Juyi is the master of art who is best at writing narrative poems. His narrative poems can fully express people's feelings and things, and write the events described in them in twists and turns. Moreover, his narrative poems always contain the revelation of the soul, so they always contain feelings. Although he didn't write much in Watching the Wheat Harvest, he vividly described the hard and painful life scenes of the wheat harvesters and gleaner during the summer harvest. Not only wrote things, but also wrote hearts, including the author's own heart and the hearts of working people.
What is commendable is that while describing the working people, the author can also truly write the voices of the working people, especially depicting the abnormal psychology of the working people in a certain situation and profoundly revealing the theme of the poem. In The Charcoal Man, "Poor man's clothes are simple, but he is worried about charcoal, wishing it would be cold", describing the abnormal psychology of the old man who sells charcoal because of food and clothing. "I don't know the heat when I'm exhausted, but I regret the long summer" in "Watching Wheat Cutting" is also a kind of abnormal psychology. This description depicts the working people's hearts in detail and goes deep into the details.
The perfect unity of writing and writing in poetry is more shocking than the general unity of narrative and lyric. Bai Juyi is also an expert in using contrast techniques. In his poetry creation, he not only compared the poverty and kindness of the working people with the luxury tyranny of the landlord class, but also compared his own comfort with the poverty of the working people.
After writing about the hardships and pains of farmers in the hot summer, the poet also thought of himself, feeling that he had no "merit" and "didn't work for farmers and mulberry", but he was paid "three hundred stones" and still had "surplus grain" by the end of the year, so he was "ashamed of it and couldn't forget it every day". It was very rare for poets to take the initiative to compare with farmers at that time. This contrast is really novel, accurate, commendable and thought-provoking, which shows the ideological height of this poem.
Seeing Wheat Cutting is a poem written by Bai Juyi when he was a county magistrate in zhouzhi county, and he felt the hard-working and poor life of the local people. The work criticizes the heavy taxes that caused people's poverty, and feels deeply guilty about not doing anything with enough food and drink, showing the humanitarian spirit of a conscientious feudal official. This poem was written in the second year of Yuanhe in Tang Xianzong (807), when the poet was thirty-six years old. Zhouzhi county is located in the west of Xi City, Shaanxi Province. The county commandant is responsible for catching thieves and collecting taxes in the county. Because Bai Juyi is in charge of this matter; Therefore, he is also most aware of the disaster suffered by the working people in this respect: harvesting.
The whole poem is divided into four layers, the first layer is four sentences, explaining time and its environmental atmosphere. As the saying goes, "farmers have less leisure in January and people are twice as busy in May", and the following things will happen in May when people are twice as busy. These two sentences always affect the whole body, revealing the author's sympathy for the working people at the beginning; "At night, the south wind rises and the wheat is covered with yellow." There is a harvest scene, and the big picture is pleasing to the eye. But who can think of the sadness of farmers under this harvest scene?
The second eight sentences, through a specific family, illustrate that the basic feature of this poem writing is to truthfully describe the real life scene without any exaggeration. He chose the busy family and the bleak gleaning scene, which made them form a strong contrast. Although the former is bitter and tired, there is still hope for them for the time being. As for the latter, it is completely broken duckweed, which is in jeopardy. The scenes, atmosphere, image and psychology shown by the two lenses are very good.
At the end of the poem is a comment, which is the same as many satirical poems by Bai Juyi. The discussion of this poem does not directly point to the root of social diseases, but shows my guilt, which is also a vague criticism of the whole bureaucratic aristocratic society. Bai Juyi is a 300-stone county marshal. Shouldn't those big bureaucrats and big noble feel more guilty? The emperor is in charge of taxation, and Bai Juyi can't openly oppose it. He can only use this ending to achieve the purpose of irony.