General Zhao Guang
Bian, a modern poet, has a poem "Broken Chapter" which is well-known:
You stand on the bridge and watch the scenery.
The landscape observer is watching you upstairs.
Someone else decorated your window,
You decorated other people's dreams.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this poem is the change of perspective. The first sentence captures the scenery from the perspective of "you" and "bridge", the second sentence captures "you" from the perspective of "people watching the scenery" and "architecture", the third sentence draws "others" from a distance and "decorates" your window in a passive way, and the fourth sentence turns from reality to fiction.
This "transformation of perspective" in poetry can often lead to "cutting" or "reconstruction" of time or space, thus producing a montage-like effect. It cuts and combines the impossible phenomena in physical time and space in poetry to form an unconventional experience and express various life experiences. This technique is often used consciously in poems in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, such as Jia Dao's Du Sanggan: "I have been in the guest room for ten frosts and miss Xianyang day and night. There is no reason to cross the mulberry dry water, but I hope that Bingzhou will be my hometown. " Looking at Xianyang from the perspective of Bingzhou, the word "going home day and night" precedes the word "memory", which renders the poet's homesickness day and night; The last two sentences change from crossing the Sanggan River, that is, Xianyang, at an angle of 180 degrees, and look back at Bingzhou. The word "I wish Bingzhou is my hometown" corresponds to the word "unprovoked", which means a kind of loss and confusion. Because the transition between seeing Xianyang in Bingzhou and seeing Bingzhou in Xianyang is so strange, the poet's thought of returning home is nowhere to be attached, and even the poet himself doesn't know where to put it; Another example is Lu Wen's "Reading Little Brother's Poems": "I remember that I didn't enjoy my youth, when I was only in my twenties. Today, I admire you for looking at flowers, as if you missed yesterday's flowers. " From my perspective 20 years ago to my perspective today, and from my perspective today to your perspective, my flower viewing scene 20 years ago also includes your flower viewing scene today. Your flower viewing scene today and my flower viewing scene today, through the passage of time, show different moods, and also reveal a melancholy about the changes in China in the past. Another example is Bai Juyi's Sleeping at Home on the Winter Solstice, and Chen Tao's Walking in Longxi, "Poor bones along the river, still living in the dream of spring boudoir", all of which are transferred from the author's space to another space of "boudoir" and "spring boudoir", and from that space through "talk"
However, the most successful application of this technique at that time was Li Shangyin's Notes to a friend in the North on a rainy night:
When you ask about the return date, it's hard to say, evening rain, Manqiuchi.
When * * * cut the candle at the west window, but talk about the rain at night.
The first sentence of this poem is actually condensed from two questions and answers, and this question and answer seems to be going on between two people, but it is actually Li Shangyin's monologue. However, the two people set in this monologue ("the gentleman who returned from afar" and the "I" who did not return) make poetry have two related spaces, one is the distant hometown and the other is the "Bashan" in a foreign land, and the mutual yearning between the two places makes these two spaces have a close relationship; The next three poems draw an overlapping "fantasy picture of love between the two places" between the intangible relationship formed by two spaces with deep homesickness.
"Autumn pool night rain rises", which is the real scene in the poet's eyes. Bashan, point out the location; It rains at night, indicating time; Autumn pond, further explaining the season. A person in a foreign land, autumn night cold rain, listening to the sound of rain in the pool under the lamp of the hostel, how can you not miss your hometown and relatives?
"When to cut the candle at the west window" is a virtual scene in the poet's imagination. Time is, of course, the "future" after returning home. In the imagination beyond the real time and space, the poet and his loved ones can cut candles together and talk about their farewell. Readers can appreciate the poet's soul immersed in illusion, which has flown over Qian Shan and reached the hometown haunted by thousands of dreams.
Therefore, the poet there will certainly recall his lonely time in Bashan alone, and "when talking to the evening rain" with his "husband". The second appearance of the word "late rain" echoes the word "late rain" in the second sentence, which constitutes a semantic cycle, reminding people that in the poet's imagination, time and space once again transcend and return to the night of "Bashan" with continuous autumn rain. Imagination covers imagination, time and space overlap several times in this magical reverie, and the poet's yearning is also conveyed to readers in this overlapping shadow.
There are only four sentences in Notes for Northern Friends on a Rainy Night, but the poet's perspective has changed three times. In the three layers of reality-emptiness-emptiness, it seems that a poet who is addicted to homesickness shuttles back and forth between two places separated by thousands of waters in Qian Shan. Poetry is so magical, it makes the impossible possible in reality and makes the ordinary emotions in reality so touching. Notes to a friend in the North on a Rainy Night shifted the poet's immovable perspective in his poems for several times, transcended and changed the time and space that could not be surpassed and changed in reality in imagination, so he also wrote the yearning psychology that many people had had so delicately and subtly that Yao Peiqian said in Li Yishan's Poems: "It is expected to be a boudoir at night, let alone a traveler" (Bai Juyi's poem). This poem also flew home in advance, which is amazing! "
Many people have pointed out the influence of the ingenious space-time structure and composition structure of Notes for a Friend on a Rainy Night in the north on later generations. For example, Wang Anshi's Painting Long Yuan and Bao Jue Su, and When the Water Cloud Sword and the Moon Return to Me meet in asking for the moon, I will stay in Zhongshan as before, and Yang Wanli's Listening to the Rain will return to the boat and leave Yanling in the past, and the rain will make me smell the light. Last night, the eaves of trees were covered with rain, and the dream called the sound of awning. But few people find its relationship with modern poetry, just like Bian's Broken Chapters. We can also quote some works, such as Liu Dabai's Tears 94, People are in flowers, flowers are in the wind, but the wind is in people's hearts, and Guo Shaoyu's Riverside, Clouds are in the sky, people are on the ground, shadows are on the water, shadows are on clouds, and so on, and use the method of perspective conversion. Such as Taiwan Province poet Zheng Chouyu's "In the Land of Dreams":
Clouds are on my way, on my clothes,
I have a faint desire,
No bird's throat, no flowers-
I'm on the frozen soil.
In fact, the "I" here has no fixed place and is thrown into a floating dreamland. Sometimes the cloud depends on "I", it seems that I have become the basic point of perspective on a solid foundation, and sometimes "I" depends on "lack". It seems that "I" is floating with uncertain thoughts, sometimes in the high place, sometimes in the cold air, and sometimes in the middle.
Of course, modern poetry shows the loss of the subject by changing the perspective, which is different from Li Shangyin. Li Shangyin shows the homesickness of ancient people, while modern poets show the sense of loss of homelessness of modern people. But ancient and modern poets have a vague similarity in form, because when the perspective of poetry is no longer a fixed point, but an erratic point, the subject's confusion, confusion and melancholy are so strong, just like a person being swept into the endless wilderness by a whirlwind, unable to distinguish up and down, east and west, north and south, and can only drift from imagination. At this point, shouldn't modern poets thank Li Shangyin for his inspiration? -although they are not necessarily directly influenced by Li Shangyin.