Wade across the river to pick hibiscus, and there are many fragrant grasses in the orchids.
Who do you want to leave behind? Thoughts are far away.
I still look back at my old hometown, the long road is long and vast.
We share the same heart but live apart, and we end up in sorrow.
Notes
Hibiscus: Another name for lotus.
Lanze: a swamp with bluegrass.
Wèi: gift.
Far way: Still talking about "far away".
Jiuxiang: hometown.
Manhaohao: Just like "manmanhaohao", describing the long and endless road. Describe the boundless.
Tongxin: An idiom commonly used in ancient times. It is mostly used in the love between men and women or the harmonious relationship between husband and wife, which means deep feelings.
End of life: spend your old age until death.
Look back: look back.
Translation
I walked across the river to pick hibiscus, and the orchids in the water were covered with vanilla.
Who should I give the lotus flowers to? I want to give it to my lover far away.
Looking back at the hometown where we lived together, the journey is endless.
Two hearts love each other but are separated from each other. They are sad and sad until they end up in a foreign land.
Appreciation
There are many touching lyrics. When I first read it, I always felt that it was extremely simple. After chanting it repeatedly, I discovered that this "simplicity" is actually contained in a rather subtle and euphemistic expression.
"Plucking Hibiscus across the River" falls into this category. At first glance, it seems that no further explanation is needed to understand its purpose, which expresses the homesickness of a wanderer in a distant place. The poem "still looking at my old hometown, the long road is so long" expresses the wanderer's longing for the "old hometown" and the difficulty of returning, which is extremely sad. So, the person who "wades into the river to pick hibiscus" at the beginning of the chapter must also be a wanderer away from home. However, the wanderers seeking eunuchs in the capital were in the Luoyang area, and it was impossible to "cross" the "river" in the south to pick hibiscus. Moreover, according to the homophonic puns commonly used in Jiangnan folk songs, "lotus" (lotus) is often associated with a hidden meaning. The word "husband's appearance" clearly indicates the woman's tone of thinking about her husband, so we should not refer to her as a "wanderer". Even the identity of the protagonist is in between, which shows that this poem is not simple. You might as well start with a woman’s tone to appreciate its beauty.
The turn of summer and autumn is the beautiful season when lotus flowers are in full bloom. In the beautiful wind and sunshine, sailing in a small boat on the lake where "lotus leaves are in the fields" and "lotus flowers are over the head", and starting the annual lotus picking activity, is a joy for farm girls in the south of the Yangtze River. When picking lotus flowers, picking a few lovely red lotus flowers and sending them back to your sweethearts is a reflection of the sincere affection of wives and girls. What's more, on the shores of the lake, there are countless orchids and wild grasses. They are picked together in the sleeves and inserted in the hairline, and the fragrance is astonishing, which is even more intoxicating. ——This is the picturesque scene displayed by the two sentences "When you wading across the river to pick hibiscus, there are many fragrant grasses in the orchids". If you listen carefully, readers will surely hear bursts of joking and laughter coming from the lake and "Lanze".
But this beautiful and joyful scene was instantly changed by the sighs that filled the lines of poetry. The camera quickly panned in, and people discovered that the sigh came from a woman standing on the bow of the boat. Different from the laughter and banter of many girls, she stared at the hibiscus in her hand and remained speechless. At this moment, "Fu Rong" had a friendly and smiling face in her eyes - he was the husband that this woman missed so hard. "Who do you want to leave behind? My thoughts are far away!" The long sigh pointed out the source of all the woman's worries: when the girls competed to pick the lotus flowers, claiming to choose the best one for their "sweetheart" "At that time, the husband the heroine missed was far away in the world! She picked the beautiful "hibiscus" in vain, and now it is difficult to leave it to people far away. People always think that if you want to express the loneliness and desolation of a character, it is best to place him or her alone in Qingqiu, because that can best highlight the character's desolate state of mind. But have you ever thought that sometimes placing characters on a beautiful and joyful lotus-picking background to express the sadness of the heroine missing her husband alone has a strong effect of using "joy" to contrast "sorrow".
The space of the next two sentences suddenly changes, and what appears on the screen seems to be no longer the heroine holding flowers and meditating, but the husband who is "far away": "I still look forward to returning home. The road is long and vast." As if it was a spiritual revelation, while the heroine was thinking about her husband alone, her distant husband was looking back at his wife's hometown with infinite sorrow. Of course he couldn't see the mountains and rivers of his hometown and his wife picking lotuses in the lake on the other side of the river. What was displayed in front of his eyes at this moment was nothing more than the "long road" that stretched to the end of AD
and the vast smoke and clouds that blocked the mountains and rivers. Many readers think that these two sentences describe the reality of looking forward to the "old hometown", thus creating the illusion that the protagonist of the poem is a wanderer who has left his hometown. In fact, the "perspective" of these two sentences is still in Jiangnan, and the expression is still the same. It is the painful thoughts of the woman picking lotus. However, in the way of writing, it adopts the "suspense" method of "guessing the meaning from the opposite side, and looking back to the hometown and lamenting the long distance" (Zhang Yugu's "Appreciation of Ancient Poems"). It creates a wonderful virtual environment where "poems fly from the opposite side".
This kind of expression of "guessing the other's meaning from the opposite side" is similar to the protagonists "Juan Er" and "Zhi'an" in the "Book of Songs". In suspense, the husband is riding a mountain to visit his hometown, and his parents are there. The illusion of Yunji calling his son has the same purpose - therefore, the realm in the poem should not be the transformation of space and the disappearance of the heroine, but the separation and simultaneous appearance of the picture: on one side is the painful wife, on the other hand Hibiscus, looking up into the sky, the dense lotus leaves and red lotus flowers behind her, against her fluttering dress, make her look lonely and desolate; on one side is the misty sky, faintly swaying as she looks back The figure of the husband, the face that flashed away, was very sad. Between the two are stacked mountains and mighty rivers. Both sides looked at each other blankly, and of course neither could see the other. It was in such silence that a sad sigh sounded faintly between heaven and earth: "We are separated with the same heart, and we will die in sorrow!" This sigh undoubtedly comes from the heart of the heroine, but because it is in suspense on the "opposite side" What the reader feels when it comes out of the realm is not just a voice: it seems to come from thousands of miles apart, and is the painful sighs of a couple who are separated from each other. This is the meaning conveyed by the conclusion of the poem. When you read this conclusion, you may feel that although the feeling of longing for nothingness expressed in this poem is so "simple", because it adopts such a graceful way of expression, it is like the twists and turns of a mountain spring, and finally merges into a flying sky. Lingshan's rock masons rushed to the waterfall, making a soul-stirring sound.
As mentioned above, the protagonist of this poem should be a woman. What the whole poem expresses is the deep sadness of a wife in her hometown who misses her husband. But it would be wrong to identify the author of this poem as this woman. Mr. Ma Maoyuan said it well: "Literati poems are different from folk songs. Among them, the words about missing a wife are also based on the virtual reality of traveling." Therefore, "Shejiang Collecting Hibiscus" is still a work of wandering homesickness in the end, but it only expresses the wandering's depression and sadness. , using the "virtual" method of "thinking about women": "In the guest's sorrow of poverty and downfall, through one's own feelings, one imagines the separation of the family, thus expressing the same kind of depression from two different angles." (Ma Maoyuan's "On Nineteen Ancient Poems"). From this point of view, in order to express the anguish of homesickness of a wanderer in "Shijiang Collecting Hibiscus", not only does the whole story of "Missing a Wife" be fictionalized, but it also uses the tone of "Missing a Wife" in the fiction to "suspense" the wanderer's "regards" for traveling abroad. Looking back at my hometown" scene. This kind of poetic expression is not just a "melody", it is simply a fantasy.