Bai Juyi's Selected Poems of Handan Winter Solstice Night Thinker Bai Juyi Series: Bai Juyi's Selected Poems of Bai Juyi | Bai Juyi's Selected Poems of Handan Winter Solstice Night Thinker
On the first day of the winter solstice in Handan, I was accompanied by a kneeling lamp. If you want to sit at home late at night, you should also talk about travelers.
Note 1: Handan, Hebei Province today. Post: Post station, a place where officials stopped on the way to deliver official documents or go on business trips in ancient times. Winter solstice: one of the twenty-four festivals, it was an important festival in ancient times.
On the cold winter solstice night, I lived alone in the post office in Handan, sitting with my knees in front of the lonely lamp, only the swaying shadows accompanied me silently. At this time, my family probably stayed up late at night like me, sitting together and talking about me when I was away from home.
Appreciating the winter solstice is one of the important festivals in the Tang Dynasty. The court will have a holiday on this day, and people will put on new clothes and give each other wine and food to celebrate the festival. The scene is very lively. However, Bai Juyi happened to be traveling in another country on this day, so he had this poem. The first sentence of the poem explains that the poet was forced to spend the night in a foreign post station during the festival when he should be reunited with his family. The second sentence vividly describes the poet's lonely look in a foreign land through the word "hugging his knees"; And "in front of the lamp" not only implies the time background of "night", but also provides conditions for the appearance of "shadow"; The word "companion" endows "shadow" people with emotion, and further highlights people's loneliness through the companionship of "shadow" with people. In the latter two sentences, the poet did not directly express his feelings of missing his hometown, but used a method of profile description. The poet imagined such a scene: family reunion, * * * holiday, but because of the lack of himself, he still couldn't sleep in the dead of night, sitting in front of the lamp like himself, missing his distant relatives. What's wonderful is that the poet didn't specify what the family members of "people who are talking about traveling far away" said, but left a wide imagination space for the readers. Seeing this, everyone who has suffered from homesickness will probably have their own answers.