Tang Dynasty: Li Bai
The birds flew without a trace, leaving the lonely clouds free and unfettered.
You look at me, I look at you, and there are only my eyes and Jingting Mountain's eyes.
Birds fly high without a shadow, and lonely clouds go alone for fun. You look at me and I look at you. They don't hate each other. It's just me and Jingting Mountain ahead.
Creation background
In the second year of Shang Dynasty (76 1), Li Bai was in his sixties. Wandering after An Shi Rebellion experienced the humiliation of unjust imprisonment and exile with crime. Li Bai came to Xuancheng for the seventh time and for the last time. There was no scene of guests and friends like clouds and welcoming guests, and there was no elegance of indulging in wine and talking about poetry in the North Building.
He hobbled up Jingting Mountain alone, and sat alone for a long time. He felt moved by the scene before him, very sad, lonely and desolate, and couldn't help singing the poem "Sitting alone in Jingting Mountain". This is more in line with the time and space background of Li Bai's creation of this poem.
Extended data
Jingting Mountain, located in Xuanzhou (now Xuancheng, Anhui), is a famous county in the south of the Yangtze River since the Six Dynasties. Great poets such as Xie Lingyun and Xie Tiao once served as satrap here. Li Bai traveled to Xuancheng seven times in his life. This five-line poem was written in the autumn of the twelfth year of Tianbao (753), and it has been ten years since he was forced to leave Chang 'an in Tianbao for three years.
The long-term wandering life made Li Bai taste the bitterness of the world and see through the coldness of the world, thus deepening his dissatisfaction with reality and increasing his sense of loneliness. The interest of this poem when sitting alone in Jingting Mountain is a portrayal of the poet's life with lonely feelings and seeking comfort in the embrace of nature.
The first two sentences, "Many birds fly high, and the lonely clouds go to leisure alone", seem to write the scene in front of them, but in fact they write all the loneliness: several birds fly high in the sky until they disappear without a trace; There is still a white cloud in the vast sky, but I don't want to stay and drift away slowly, as if everything in the world is rejecting poets.
The words "exhausted" and "doing nothing" lead readers to a realm of "peace": it seems that after eliminating the noise of a group of birds in the mountains, they feel particularly peaceful; After the thick rolling clouds disappeared, I felt particularly quiet. So these two sentences are written as "dynamic" to see "static", and "static" is defined by "dynamic". This "quietness" reflects the loneliness and loneliness of the poet's mind.
This vivid writing can give readers association, and imply that the poet has been visiting Jingting Mountain for a long time, outlining his image of "sitting alone" and paving the way for the next couplet "never tired of looking at each other".
In the second half of the poem, personification is used to describe the poet's love for Jingting Mountain. After the birds flew away, only the poet and Jingting Mountain were left quietly. The poet stared at the beautiful Jingting Mountain, and Jingting Mountain seemed to be looking at the poet motionless. This makes the poet very emotional-probably the only person in the world who wants to accompany me? "Never tire of looking at each other" expresses the deep feelings between the poet and Jingting Mountain.
"Xiang" and "Liang" are synonymous, which closely connects the poet with Jingting Mountain and shows strong feelings. The word "only" in the conclusion is also tempered, which highlights the poet's love for Jingting Mountain. "It is enough to have a bosom friend in life", and it is not worth mentioning that birds fly away!
The artistic conception created by these two poems is still "quiet". On the surface, it is written that the poet looks at Jingting Mountain with deep affection. In fact, the more poets write about the "sentimentality" of mountains, the more they show people's "ruthlessness"; And his lonely and desolate situation is revealed in this quiet scene.
"Quiet" is the blood of this poem. The reason why this plain and quiet poem is so moving lies in the "quiet" realm created by the high integration of the poet's thoughts and feelings with the natural scenery. No wonder Shen Deqian praised this poem as "the god of sitting alone" in his Tang poems.