As we all know, the Tang Dynasty was a prosperous time and also an era with rich poems, and Bai Juyi lived in this era. People often say that "being in a heroic age is also a kind of sadness", which is both the best and the worst for those poets and literati. In this era, everyone can use poetry to soothe their love, but some people can be famous all over the world, while others can only be tepid all their lives and eventually do nothing all their lives.
The simplest poem is the most beautiful.
However, among many poets and poems, Bai Juyi walked among them with the help of Song of Eternal Sorrow and Pipa, and stood out from the crowd, breaking out of his own world in the field of poetry. One unique feature of his poems that other poets don't have is that his poems are very simple and easy to understand.
So Bai Juyi has such a habit. Every time he finishes writing a poem, he will take it to the vegetable market and read it to the women in the vegetable market. If a woman in the vegetable market can understand it, it is a good poem, because he thinks that the simpler the poem, the better, and the more popular the poem, the more beautiful it is.
Parting is the most parting.
Bai Juyi's Farewell to Ancient Grass also continues Bai Juyi's consistent poetic style, which is very easy to understand. This poem is not difficult to understand. Grass growing on the grassland will turn green every spring, yellow in autumn and green again in the following spring. Even if there is a wildfire, it will not burn out, only the branches on the surface, and its roots are still underground. When the spring breeze blows in the following spring, it will sprout and grow new grass.
This poem can be said to be very easy to understand, but there are two words in it that are very meaningful, that is, the word "separation". We didn't translate the word "Lili" in detail when we translated it, but the word "Lili" is very worthy of scrutiny.
In fact, the original text of this poem is "Xianyang is used to grass and comes and goes with the four seasons", but in the Qing Dynasty, it was changed to what we know as "grass over the plain and comes and goes with the four seasons". So why change "Xianyang" to "separation"? It turned out that people at that time thought this poem was a farewell poem. If it is changed to "parting", it will rhyme more and have a stronger meaning of parting.
In some ancient books, we usually interpret "parting" as "dense appearance". Cao Cao once wrote "How could his leaves leave" in Walking on the Pond. The departure here can be directly used in Bai Juyi's Farewell to Ancient Grass, which is easy to understand and literal. This meaning is used in poetry. The grass on the ancient plain is very dense, and the spring scenery will get stronger every year.
However, through the research of scholars, it is found that Bai Juyi's "separation" does not necessarily refer to thick grass, but an ancient place name, which has a lot to do with Bai Juyi's childhood experience.
Bai Juyi was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi, and was born in a small bureaucratic family in Henan. It stands to reason that life should be very good, but at that time, the Anshi Rebellion had just ended, and it was the era of separatist regime in the buffer region, and our local troops in Henan respected themselves. Therefore, the place where Bai Juyi lives is constantly at war. Shortly after Bai Juyi was born, a big war broke out in his hometown and the people were in dire straits. As a last resort, Bai Juyi's family had to move to Xuzhou, where his father worked.
However, I never thought that Xuzhou was also a war again and again. Bai Juyi's father had to send the young Bai Juyi and his mother to Fuli County in Zhu Yi in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. Fuli County is located in Fuli Village, Suzhou City, Anhui Province. Bai Juyi, who eventually drifted away, finally spent his adolescence in R&F and lived there for 22 years.
As we all know, the first four sentences of Fu Degu's Farewell are catchy and familiar, but there are also the last four sentences in this poem, that is, sweet and they are pressed on the old road and reach the crumbling gate. I once again sent my bosom friend, and the thick grass represented my deep affection. The "ancient road" and "desolate city" are exact places, but obviously they are not like the scenery on the grassland, so this "separation" is probably Lifu County, Bai Juyi's permanent residence.
Moreover, in Bai Juyi's original poem, this poem once wrote, "Xianyang used to grow grass, and it comes and goes with the seasons." Later, in the Qing Dynasty, 300 Tang Poems was changed to A Vast Grass, which made this farewell poem more meaningful.
Moreover, "Farewell to Ancient Grass" was written by Bai Juyi during the Zhenyuan period, which was about three years. At that time, Bai Juyi was about 16 years old, when he lived in Fuli County. Besides, Bai Juyi has many poems that describe Lifu County very clearly. For example, in Six Brothers Lifu, he wrote: On the south bank of the river, Lifu leans eastward; In "Sacrificing Little Brother", I wrote: I used to have the right of funeral, which was in the south of the ancient plain. (Fuli County in ancient times).
Unforgettable is acacia.
In Fuli County, Bai Juyi has many good memories. At that time, Bai Juyi's residence was called "Lindong Caotang", and his neighbor had a sister named Xiangling, who was four years younger than him. Xiangling can be said to have spent her youth with Bai Juyi, and this sister next door is very talented in singing, so Bai Juyi likes her very much. Bai Juyi once praised Xiangling's "fifteen wins and graceful demeanor" in "Daughter next door".
Xiangling can be said to be Bai Juyi's first love, but because Xiangling is just an ordinary peasant girl in Fuli County, and Bai Juyi is indeed an official's family, such a family pays most attention to family status. The relationship between Bai Juyi and Xiangling is not right, so Bai Juyi's mother naturally opposes it.
As a last resort, Bai Juyi had to leave Fuli County and embark on a career. Until I was 37 years old, I finally married a suitable young man under the pressure of my mother. But Bai Juyi didn't forget his sister next door, so he wrote poems for Xiangling many times, such as "Sauvignon Blanc" and "Sending Xiangling", and even wrote his love for Xiangling in his masterpiece "Song of Eternal Sorrow", in which one sentence "This worry is endless" exhausted Bai Juyi's love for Xiangling.
Even after marrying Yang, Bai Juyi still wrote poems for his childhood, such as Rain in the Night and Feeling in the Mirror, trying to tell his young lover about his life through poems. When Bai Juyi was forty-four years old, during the ten years of Yuanhe, Bai Juyi was demoted to Jiangzhou. When he and his wife moved, they met Xiangling's father and daughter on the way. They wandered here, so he wrote a poem "Meet the Old" for Xiangling to express his feelings of "seeing the young after seeing each other".
Bai Juyi had an indissoluble bond with Liv all his life. After he left Liv for many years, he went back, only to find that Liv had changed a lot, and his old friends at that time had long since disappeared. It can be said that Xiangling is a stumbling block to Bai Juyi's life. He felt guilty and regretted his cowardice all his life.
It can be said that Lifu County is not only the place where Bai Juyi lives, but also his first love, the people he loves all his life, his youth and too many stories. Therefore, the "Ber Ber" in "Faud Gu Farewell" naturally refers to the grass at the foot of the mountain and the grass at Gu Yuan, where the spring breeze blows high.