(Tang) Wang Wei
As a stranger in a foreign land,
Please think twice about your relatives during the festival.
Know where the brothers climb,
There is one person missing from the dogwood.
Writing background
I wrote this poem because I missed my relatives in my hometown on the Double Ninth Festival. Wang Wei lives in Zhou Pu (now Yongji, Shanxi Province), to the east of Huashan Mountain, so he is called "Recalling Shandong Brothers". When he wrote this poem, he was probably seeking fame in Chang 'an. Although the bustling imperial capital was very attractive to young literati who were keen on official career at that time, it was a "foreign land" for a young wanderer after all. The more bustling and lively, the more lonely and helpless the wanderer is in the vast sea of people.
Memories of Shandong Brothers Wang Wei on September 9th.
Wang Wei lives in Zhou Pu (now Yongji, Shanxi Province), to the east of Huashan Mountain, so he is called "Recalling Shandong Brothers". When writing this poem, he was looking for a name in Chang 'an. Although the bustling imperial capital was very attractive to young literati who were keen on official career at that time, it was a "foreign land" for a young wanderer after all. The more bustling and lively, the more lonely and helpless the wanderer is in the vast sea of people. [3] The first sentence of the poem uses the words "independent" and "different", which is enough. The poet's yearning for his loved ones and feelings about his lonely situation are all condensed in this word "independence". "Stranger" is just a stranger, but the artistic effect caused by the word "stranger" is much stronger than that caused by general narration of strangers. In the feudal era when the natural economy dominated, customs, languages and living habits in different regions were quite different. When the poet left his hometown where he lived for many years and went to a different place, he felt that everything was strange and unaccustomed, and he felt that he was a duckweed floating in a different place. "Foreign land" and "stranger" are the simple and true expressions of this feeling. A stranger's homesickness also exists on weekdays, but sometimes it may not be shown, but once it encounters some kind of catalyst-the most common one is "festival"-it is easy for generate to come out, or even impossible to stop it. This is the so-called "I miss my relatives twice during the festive season". Festivals are often a time for family reunion, and many fond memories of hometown scenery are often associated, so it is natural to describe "I think of my loved ones twice in festivals". Everyone has this experience, but before Wang Wei, no poet has successfully expressed it with such plain and highly summarized poems. Once the poet speaks it, it becomes an epigram that can best express the homesickness of the guests. The first two sentences use the "direct method" of artistic creation, almost without any detour, but go straight to the core, quickly forming a climax and appearing epigrams. However, this kind of writing often makes the last two sentences unsustainable, resulting in insufficient stamina. The last two sentences of this poem, if extended in a straight line along the line of "I miss my relatives twice during the festive season", will appear snake-footed; It is also difficult to find new ideas and form a new climax. The poet found another way: following the torrent of emotion, a rippling lake appeared, which seemed calm, but actually deeper. In three or four sentences, if we only think about how brothers climb mountains and wear dogwood in the Double Ninth Festival, and the poet himself is alone in a foreign land and can't participate, although he also writes about homesickness in the festival, it seems straightforward, lacking originality and affection. The poet thought in the distance: "There is one person missing from the dogwood." That is to say, brothers who are far away from home put on dogwood when climbing the Double Ninth Festival, only to find that one brother is missing-he himself is not among them. He didn't spend the holidays in his hometown with his brothers. It seems that it is not a regret, but that his brothers didn't get together completely during the holidays. It seems that it is not worth mentioning that he is a stranger in a foreign land alone, but the shortcomings of his brothers need to be understood. This is tortuous and unnatural. And this unusual place is precisely its deep place, where the new police world lies. In Du Fu's Moonlit Night, there is a sentence "She watches the moonlight in Fuzhou, but she watches it alone in her bedroom window", which is similar to these two sentences, but Wang Wei's poems don't seem to be so focused. The poem "Alone in a Foreign Land" secretly describes a lonely environment, which is especially sensitive for teenagers who leave home for the first time. "Stranger" emphasizes the feeling of stranger. The combination of "uniqueness" and "two differences" in a poem greatly deepens the degree of subjective feelings. The second sentence, "I miss my relatives more often during the festive season", is a reasonable development of my previous emotions, which shows that I usually have the pain of missing my loved ones, and this kind of missing will get deeper and stronger during the festive season. The clever use of the word "time" is the key to connect the upper and lower emotions. These two sentences constitute a level of the whole poem, expressing homesickness from the subjective feelings of the lyric hero. In the Qing Dynasty, Shen Deqian thought that the last two sentences of a poem were "poems" (Collection of Tang Poems, Volume 19), and their expressions were quite similar. In the last chapter of The Book of Songs, Feng Wei Yi Zhong said, "I admire Gorkon and look forward to him. A brother goes to work for his brother every day and leaves at night. " Dreaming of relatives, not letting them miss the author himself. This expression method is also used in Wang Wei's poems, which makes the development of poetry take a sharp turn from "knowing each other from a distance" and deepens the expression of love between the two places from the perspective of relatives. "Knowing from a distance" is all imagination. I imagine that when the Double Ninth Festival comes, relatives will get up and drink as usual. This closely follows the theme of the poem and points out the specific meaning of the "festival" mentioned in the second sentence. The poet expects that when his relatives get together to celebrate the Double Ninth Festival and "plant dogwood everywhere", they will remember him as a wanderer in a foreign land. The conclusion sentence pushes the emotion of the whole poem to a climax, leaving room for imagination instead of saying homesickness loudly. The last two sentences highlight the poet's thoughts with his own imagination. [ 1]