Ancient Style (Nineteen)
Li Bai
Going west to Lotus Mountain, I saw the stars from afar.
Hibiscus is held in plain hands, and the steps are too clear.
The wide ribbon of neon admiration floats up to the sky.
Invite me to Yuntai and bow to Wei Shuqing.
Go with it in a trance, driving the dragon to Ling Ziming.
Looking down at Luoyang River, you can see the vast number of Hu soldiers walking by.
Bleeding smears the weeds, and the jackals are stripped of their crowns and tassels.
This is an ancient poem written in Youxian style, probably written after Anlu Mountain conquered Luoyang. The poem expresses the poet's ideological contradiction of being both good and good, and his deep feelings of concern for the country and the people. In his imagination, the poet climbed to the Lotus Peak, the highest peak of Mount Huashan in Xiyue, and saw the star fairy from a distance. "Xingxing" is originally the name of a beautiful girl from Huashan, but the literal meaning gives people the illusion of a star in the sky. The first two sentences show a mythical world where lotus peaks reach into the sky and stars twinkle. The beautiful girl holds a pink hibiscus in her slender hands and walks in the air, swimming in the high Taiqing. The snow-white neon dress drags a wide long belt, flutters in the wind, and rises to the sky. The poet used magical colored pens to draw an elegant and ethereal picture of a goddess flying into the sky.
The beautiful jade girl invited Li Bai to Yuntai Peak in Huashan Mountain to bow to the immortal Wei Shuqing. According to the "Biography of Immortals", Wei Shuqing once rode a cloud chariot and a white deer to see Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, thinking that the emperor was a good man and would be treated with courtesy when he saw him. But the emperor only treated him as a minister, so he was disappointed and left. The story of Wei Shuqing is used here to secretly relate Li Bai's own experiences. In the early years of Tianbao, didn't the poet also enter the imperial palace with the grand plan of helping the world and benefiting the people? However, he was not put into any important position by Xuanzong in the end, and he was slandered and left the capital three years later. So I had no choice but to introduce Wei Shuqing as a co-tune, and ride the swan goose with him on a tour of Ziming.
Just as the poet was flying in space with Wei Shuqing in a trance, he looked down and saw the Luoyang area occupied by Hu soldiers. The people were slaughtered and blood flowed everywhere, while the rebellious minister An Lushan and his The subordinates were well-dressed and sitting in the court. The social turmoil shattered the poet's dream of transcending reality, causing him to suddenly turn back from the fairyland and face the tragedy of war. The poem ends abruptly and does not explain his whereabouts, but in the poem Li Bai faces up to and cares about reality, and is very clear about his concern for the country and the people.
In this song "Ancient Style", the ideological contradiction between the poet's birth and use of the world is expressed through the strong contrast between the beautiful and clean fairyland and the bloody and dirty human world. This results in a rapid change in the mood of the poem from melodious to tragic, and a strong contrast in style from elegant to melancholy. However, they are harmoniously unified in one poem, which mainly depends on the poet's vertical and horizontal writing power, superhuman talent and positive enterprising spirit.
Li Bai's later poems about immortals often incorporated the legends of Taoist immortals into a magnificent artistic realm while galloping around with rich imagination, giving the lyrical protagonists a strong color of banishing immortals. This is inseparable from the fact that he was politically unsuccessful, believed in Taoism, and lived a hermit life of traveling around mountains and rivers, practicing Taoism and refining elixirs for a long time. However, he used Youxian to express his resistance to reality and pursuit of ideals, which gave new life to the Youxian poems that have been preached since the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Chapter 19 of "Ancient Style" is an example.