This poem comes from the famous poet Bai Juyi's Flowers Are Not Flowers in the Tang Dynasty, and it is an ancient poem with miscellaneous words. This poem expresses the feeling that life is like a dream, like fog and electricity, and shows a kind of nostalgia and regret for the beautiful people and things that once existed and disappeared in life.
The original text of the poem "Flowers Are Not Flowers" is as follows:
Say it's flowers, not flowers, say it's fog? Not fog.
It came in the middle of the night and left at dawn.
When did a short and beautiful spring dream come?
When they leave, they are like clouds in the morning.
What does the whole poem mean? Translated into vernacular as follows:
Like flowers, like fog.
Come at midnight and leave at dawn.
How much time will it be like a beautiful spring dream when you come?
I'm gone, like a cloud in the morning, with nowhere to see.
Some words, I think it is necessary to explain them separately:
Flowers are not flowers: flowers are not flowers, which began to become an epigram in this poem.
Lai Ru: When I came.
How long: Not much time.
Gone: gone, like a cloud floating in the morning, nowhere to be found.
Chao (zhāo) said: This is the story of King Xiang of Chu's dream of Wushan Goddess.
What is the background of the author's writing this poem?
There are two mourning poems in Bai's Changqing Collection: Mother's Tomb and Bamboo Slips Poetry. The poem "Flowers Are Not Flowers" is the same volume as the above two poems, and was later compiled. Therefore, it is speculated that the poem "Flowers Are Not Flowers" and the poem "Notes on Bamboo Slips" were written for the same purpose at the same time.
Now that we know the creation background and the meaning of the whole poem, let's enjoy it together:
Flowers are not flowers, an ancient poem by Bai Juyi, a poet in Tang Dynasty. This poem expresses the feeling that life is like a dream, like fog and electricity, and shows a kind of nostalgia and regret for the beautiful people and things that once existed and disappeared in life. The whole poem consists of a series of metaphors, which are obscure and true, rhythmic, organized and intricate in description. This is a masterpiece of love poems. Later generations used it to compose music, which was widely circulated.
The first two sentences, "flowers are not flowers, and fog is not fog", first give people an unpredictable feeling. Both "non-flower" and "non-fog" are negative, but they all contain a self-evident premise: like flowers, like fog. Therefore, it can be said that these are two clever metaphors. Su Dongpo seems to have got a little inspiration from this, and wrote the famous sentence "Like a flower, it is still like a non-flower, and no one repents of teaching" ("Water"). Su Ci chants catkins, while Bai Shi's is not obvious. But from the narrative of "coming at midnight and leaving at dawn", we can see that the metaphor here is flowers and fog, for example, what is sung is fleeting and difficult to last.
Just watching "come at midnight and leave at dawn" makes readers doubt that they are talking about dreams. But it can be seen from the next sentence "coming like a spring dream" that it is not. "Dream" turned out to be a comparison. Here, the words "come" and "go" play a connecting role in sound and emotion, thus giving birth to two vivid metaphors. Those who "came in the middle of the night" had a spring dream, which was beautiful but short-lived, and then led to a question: "How long will it be like a spring dream?" "Xiao" sees the morning glow. Although the cloud is beautiful, it is easy to be disillusioned, which leads to a sigh: "The cloud seems to be nowhere to be found".
Poetry consists of a series of metaphors, which are called metaphors. They are closely connected, fluent and natural, and their writing style is natural. Repeatedly highlight an unexplained metaphor with vivid images. There are many examples of making good use of metaphors in poems, such as "there is a dispute between the north and the south, and the morning glory bears the yoke" in Nineteen Ancient Poems (the bright moon shines that night), and "Yichuan Tobacco, the wind in the city, the plum yellow rain" in He Zhu's Jade Case. However, these metaphors are only part of the poem, and the metaphors that run through this poem are rare. Furthermore, the above example compares the astrology such as Nanji, Beidou and Petunia, which means "what is the benefit of writing"; Compared with the scenes of tobacco, catkins and plum rain, the latter situation means "asking how much is idle", and its metaphor (metaphorical thing) is clear. And this poem only sees metaphor (used as metaphor) and doesn't know metaphor, just like an intriguing mystery. In this way, the artistic conception of poetry is covered with a layer of "hazy" color.
Although this poem has no metaphorical meaning, it was compiled by the author in a department that concentrated on "sentimentality", and there are similar works in the same department. The first one is "The Tomb of the True Mother", which reads: "Frost destroys the wind of peaches and plums, and the true mother was still a teenager when she died. Fat skin and fat hands are not strong, so it is difficult to stay in the world. Difficult to stay, easy to sell, Saibei flower, Jiangnan snow. " The other is Bamboo Slips Poem, which reads: "first frost's peach blossoms are exhausted in February, I want to marry next year and die this year", and "most good things are not firm, colorful clouds are easy to disperse, and glass is broken". Both poems are mourning works, and the metaphor of the last sentence, especially the "Saibei Flower" and "Caiyun" which are easy to disperse, is different from this poem. The poem "Flower is not a flower" is closely compiled after "Bamboo Slip Poetry", which tells readers a piece of news about the poem's return to interest. This poem and Song of Jane were written for the same purpose at the same time.
This poem adopts the form of alternating three sentences and seven sentences (this is the flexible use of the three-seven-seven sentence pattern of folk songs at that time), which has both orderly rhythm and intricate aesthetic feeling, and is very similar to later poems. Therefore, later generations actually adopted this rhyme method as the tone of words, with "flowers are not flowers" as the tone name. A major change in the content of the May 7th poem is that the words tend to express people's inner feelings. At this point, this poem is similar to this word. It is natural that this phenomenon of "poetry is like fine print" appeared in the works of Bai Juyi, a poet engaged in ci creation in the early Tang Dynasty.