Spring Thoughts
Li Bai
The swallow grass is like silk, and the green branches of Qin mulberry are low.
When you are pregnant and return home, your concubine is heartbroken.
If you don’t know the spring breeze, why should you enter the Luo curtain?
Appreciation:
The title of Li Bai's five-character ancient poem is "Spring Thoughts". It is obvious at a glance that this is a poem describing the inner world of a missing woman. According to the traditional expression habits of Chinese classical poetry, whenever the word "spring" is mentioned, it is usually a semantic pun. Firstly, of course it refers to the spring of nature. Secondly, it can also be a metaphor for the love between men and women. In ancient times, whenever a woman in her boudoir had a beautiful spring day, her thoughts would naturally be about her husband who was away from home. Many poets in the Tang Dynasty were experts at writing poems about women missing their wives, and there were indeed many vivid works on the subject of young women missing their wives. For example, Wang Changling, who is known as the "Seven Masters", wrote in "The Girl's Grudge": "The young woman in the boudoir knows no worries, and goes up to the green building with makeup in the spring. Suddenly she sees the color of willows on the street, and she regrets teaching her husband to find a prince." It is vivid and delicate. It reappears a "young woman in the boudoir" who was originally carefree. Because her life was carefree, she dressed herself up carefully and climbed up to the tall green building to watch the beautiful spring scenery outside. Unexpectedly, it didn't matter, but the beautiful spring scenery aroused the "spring thoughts" deep in my heart: I regretted that I had encouraged my husband to go to the border to make contributions, but in the end, I failed to live up to this wonderful "spring scenery". , wasted "youth". However, since "Bouise's Resentment" was created using the most popular Qijue form at the time, it presents a relatively superficial secular aesthetic emotion and trend, that is to say, it is popular. However, Li Bai's "Spring Thoughts", Although it belongs to the same theme, it is written in five-character ancient poetry because of its different genre. Therefore, the expression of emotions is more tortuous and euphemistic, with one song and three sighs. "Beautiful Resentment" is a typical Tang poem at first glance, and is undoubtedly a work from the prosperous Tang Dynasty, while "Spring Thoughts" gives people a sense of beauty that is both simple and elegant. Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty once commented on this poem: "The ancient meaning has a beautiful color, and the style is close to the Qi and Liang Dynasties." This means that in terms of style, it is very similar to the folk songs of the Qi and Liang Dynasties in the Southern Dynasty, but in terms of expression, it conveys the meaning. But it is more subtle and implicit. This style that is quite similar to the "Book of Songs" is the so-called "ancient meaning". However, it is still very particular about rhetoric, using different pairs of sentences. It starts with a general and neat couplet, "Swallow grass is like bisi, and Qin mulberry is low in green branches." Then it carefully constructs a couplet that is quite beautiful. Seeing the "flowing water" of skill, "when the king returns home, it is the concubine's heartbroken". This kind of artistic refinement and refinement is the "beauty" affirmed by Emperor Qianlong.
Bixing opens with confusion and confusion. Since the whole poem is quite short, with only six sentences in a sentence, every word and every sentence must be carefully arranged, and there is no room for randomness and randomness. "Swallow grass is like blue silk, Qin mulberry trees are as low as green branches." If you don't understand it carefully, you may think that this beginning is ordinary, but that's it. Because in terms of technique, this is Xing in Fu, Bi, and Xing, that is, "preface other things to trigger the words to be chanted" (Zhu Xi's "Collected Poems"). Starting with the foreground and arousing lovesickness later on, this has been the most common opening method in folk songs since the "Book of Songs". And in rhetoric, it is also a general antithesis, that is, the most stable form is adjective to adjective and noun to noun. Such as "Swallow Grass" versus "Qin Sang", "Bisi" versus "Green Branch". However, this inconspicuous and ordinary thing hides a very rich connotation. Just like the title of this article, it gives people the feeling of "being confused and confused, just because of the sultry scenery of spring". Yandi refers to the northern part of Shanxi and Hebei today, and Qindi refers to the Guanzhong area of ??Shaanxi today. The two places are far apart, and it is impossible for one person to see the two different spring scenery at the same time. After a brief thought, it is not difficult for readers to understand that the woman with "spring thoughts" in the poem must be in the spring-filled Qin land, and the conscript she is thinking about is of course Yanbei where the spring cold is still there. Outside the Yanbei Great Wall, the weather was cold. When the spring grass finally sprouted green buds as thin as hair, the missing woman at home in Qin was already in the mulberry forest with drooping branches.
The missing woman lives in Qinzhong. What she sees in front of her eyes is the luxuriant mulberry forest, but what she thinks about is the grass that has just sprouted in the cold spring of Yanbei. In fact, she has no intention of appreciating the things around her. Spring scenery, because she had been aroused by the spring scenery, "spring thoughts", thinking about her husband who was away on duty in Yandi and had not returned for a long time. The meaning of "Xing" in this poem is actually hidden. Literally, it means that due to different climates, there is a big difference in spring time between Qin and Yanbei. Another meaning of "spring" refers to the love between men and women, that is, in The meaning of "huaichun" often appeared in ancient poetry. So, when Yanbei's husband began to feel that he had been away from home for a long time and just started to want to go home, the wife at home had already broken up all day long. Living life with fingers crossed, eagerly looking forward to her husband's return. Does "Qin mulberry and low green branches" have a more intrinsic meaning? Because every time "Qin Sang" is mentioned, people always think of the famous Han Yuefu song "Mo Shang Sang": "The sun rises in the southeast corner, shining on my Qin family building. The Qin family has a good daughter, who calls herself Luofu. Luofu "Good at sericulture, in the south corner of the mulberry picking city" "Qin's Tower" in "Mo Shang Mulang", "good at sericulture", "south corner of the mulberry picking city" and "Qin mulberry with low green branches" in this song "Spring Thoughts". Maybe it's not a completely unrelated coincidence.
Li Bai is probably hinting to people that the heroine in "Spring Thoughts" is just like "Luofu", a woman from a good family who is both beautiful, steadfast and witty.