The Book of Songs? Xiaoya? Picking Wei
In the past, I have left, and the willows are still there.
As I come to think about it, it is raining and snowing.
The journey is slow and full of thirst and hunger.
My heart is sad, but I don’t know how sad I am.
New Voices
Listen to Zhang Yunxi singing "The Book of Songs"
Zhang Yunxi, born in the 2000s.
Loves poetry and is good at playing the guzheng.
"Plucking Wei" is his own composition, playing and singing.
—Introduction to the author—
Ning Yi’an
Young writer. He has published more than 400,000 words of works, including a collection of essays "Plants and Plants in the Book of Songs: Notes on Plants in the Book of Songs" and a novel "Flowers and Fog". Novels, essays, reviews and biographies can be found in various newspapers and periodicals.
? 1 ?
"In the past, I went, and the willows were still there; now I come to think about it, and the rain and snow are falling." This is my favorite line in the Book of Songs. When a few syllables danced on the tip of my tongue, I seemed to have become a returning person walking again and again in the heavy snow thousands of years ago.
When I parted from you in the past, you broke willow branches under the willows on the street and gave them to me. Today I am back. It has been snowing heavily for several days and nights. In the former residence covered with heavy snow, a dim lamp illuminates the wanderer's way home.
After all the hardships, hardships, ups and downs, and the grievances in my heart and lungs, I can finally find a proper place to go. Do you know the twists and turns, hardships, and hunger and thirst I endured during my journey?
I was still young when I went there, and my face was full of joy. When I returned, my mood was already old due to having experienced too many difficult things in the world. After the war and chaos, it is me you meet again, and it is no longer me.
What I returned to was my hometown, and I saw my old friends again, but they were no longer the hometown and old friends I had back then.
Time and space rotate, and the order of matter circulates. During this time away, how many changes have the landscape, vegetation, and people in my hometown experienced?
With tears in my eyes and a smile on my lips, I looked at my old friend whose face was stained by wind and frost. I only talked about the willows when I left and the heavy snow when I returned.
? 二 ?
From the green willows to the falling white snow, from spring to winter, the time sequence changes.
We also know whether it took a year, a few years, or dozens of years in between?
What the poem talks about is the migration of natural phenology. And people have also experienced a long time and eternal hard labor, so how can they not grow old? The boy who had black hair all over his head back then is probably now also stained with frost on his temples and has prematurely gray hair.
In this way, the willows and white snow are clearly the same as the waterfall of green hair in the past, which has turned into gray hair today.
"In the past I left, and the willows clung to me; now I come to think about it, and the rain and snow are falling." In these eight words, there are so many emotions that are boiling over and over, with sorrow and joy, but no suitable one can be found. Words can express.
After being displaced, he finally returned to his hometown. The mountains and rivers are incompatible, but we have to meet old friends again. But how much time has passed like this. He will not stop for a moment just because of his own grief. There is also a feeling of fleeting time and the unkindness of heaven and earth.
Later in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Yu Xin's "Ode to a Dead Tree" said: "In the past, willows were planted to support Hannan; now they are crumbling, and the rivers and lakes are desolate. The trees are like this, how can people be embarrassed?" sentence. What I feel emotional about is the past events of the Eastern Jin Dynasty general Huan Wen recorded in Shishuoxinyu.
Huanwen led his troops to the north and passed through Jincheng. He saw that the willow trees that he had planted when he was king of Langya had grown to ten circumferences. So he sighed, "A tree is like this, how can people be embarrassed?"
In the withered glory of the willow, there is the endless passage of time. And how can people survive the rising and setting of the sun and the passing of time?
This is the sigh of time.
? 三 ?
The Book of Songs set a tone for the early people’s songs. The homesickness and sorrow of separation in Chinese poetry probably all started here. Over thousands of years, all people have learned the sorrow of parting from this willow.
"Plucking Wei" is not a farewell poem, but the Chinese people's lingering emotions when parting have found the most suitable carrier for the willow in "Plucking Wei".
"Liu" and "Liu" are homophonic, meaning to keep people. The soft branches of the willows covered with green leaves sway in the spring breeze, and they are clearly a pair of arms holding you, all filled with endless affection. The branches and leaves are broken and biting the heart. They are all reluctant to give up.
The "Nirvana Sutra" says that there are eight sufferings in life: birth, old age, illness, death, separation from love, meeting of resentment and hatred, not being able to seek what you want, and the five yin beings. One of the eight sufferings in Buddhism is "love and separation". There is separation in the world, because there are feelings, and feelings are like willows, so they have to keep people, but if they can't keep people, there is sadness.
I look at you who are about to travel far away, and no words can express my feelings. So please, please accept this branch of willow in my hand.
Since the Han Dynasty, there has been the song "Breaking Willows", which permeates the line of farewell poems.
Xiao Gang, Emperor Jianwen of the Southern Dynasty, composed "The Song of Broken Willows" and said, "There is no other meaning in the song, but it is for lovesickness."
In Luo City on a spring night, the moonlight is like water, The sound of the flute breaking willows spreads the rich longing throughout the moonlit city.
In the lonely city of Baiyun, beside the Jade Gate Pass where the spring breeze cannot be contained, the whimpering music on the Qiang flute is also the song of broken willows.
It’s sad to say goodbye to spring, a wanderer misses his home, and his wife misses her far away. The willow silk is long and the thoughts are long.
We have been breaking willows for thousands of years in front of Liren's horse, and we will continue to break them.
As long as there is love in this world.
It's raining and snowing." Human emotions, no matter ancient or modern at home or abroad, are always the same across time and space.
When I read this sentence when I was young, I just thought it was well-written, catchy, and had a very clear picture. Later, when you are in a certain situation, such as a deserted platform under a gray winter sky, and you think of this poem again, you will find that you are suddenly hit, and you have a clear understanding in your heart.
The feeling of displacement, the sigh of time. The flavor of so many lives is found in the willows and heavy snow thousands of years ago.