Walking on the river embankment of Shengzhou City in the evening, I saw from afar that the traditional Chinese Yue Opera repertoire "Butterfly" was being performed on the big stage of the people, "Butterfly" tells the story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai who were martyred to death and turned into a dancing butterfly companion, some people can't help but ask, why turn into a butterfly, and not become other symbolic love creatures, such as winged birds, mandarin ducks, blue birds, and swallows.
In fact, the earliest term for butterfly appeared in the Warring States Zhuang Zhou's "Zhuangzi Qi Wu Theory".""The former Zhuang Zhou dreamed of butterflies, lifelike butterflies, and self-described as suitable and aspiring!I don't know how to do it. Oh Ran Jue, then Yu Ran Zhou also. I don't know that Zhou's dream is a butterfly, and a butterfly's dream is Zhou'sZhou and butterflies must be separated. This is called materialization. Zhuang Zhou dreamed of butterflies, I don't know if he turned into a butterfly in his dream, or if the butterfly turned into "me" in his dream. The butterflies flying vividly in Zhuang Zhou's dream are both concrete and tangible, but also hazy and illusory, bringing him into the virtual and the real."A big dream, like a world away"The wonderful realm.
In folk culture, butterflies break out of their cocoons and are reborn and become butterflies. Breaking the cocoon into a butterfly has always had a strong mysterious color such as "resurrection from the dead", "life reincarnation" and "soul immortality". Liang Zhuzhong, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai died and martyred, which itself is a love story with strong tragedy, but this story does not end with the termination of their lives, but the two end with butterflies after death. For Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, turning into a butterfly after death is a kind of transformation and rebirth of life, and it is another way to get the consummation of love. He also said that Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai broke through the barrier of external forces, transcended the shackles of reality, and turned into dancing butterflies. Turning into butterflies is the beginning of their new life, a metaphor for the two of them to get out of their predicament and regain their freedom and rebirth. Although the world knows that "people cannot be resurrected after death", out of the pursuit of a happy and satisfying life, people always tend to see "lovers eventually become married" in literary works. Liang Zhu turned into a butterfly after his death, so that this love story with a strong tragic color, "sad but not despairing", has a hopeful and warm ending. It is precisely because of this that this love story, which was born 1,700 years ago, is so enduring and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
As a symbol of beautiful love, butterflies are not unique to Liang Zhuzhong, but also appear in other literature, such as Li Bai's".When did you say goodbye to your concubine last year, the green grass in the South Park flew butterflies", Du Fu's".Wear the flower gorge butterfly deeply, and the water is flying", Wen Tingyun's".Embroidered shirts cover smiles, and tobacco sticks to flying butterfliesThey are all famous sentences that use butterflies to convey their feelings.
In The Peony Pavilion, before the author Tang Xianzu depicted the love between Du Liniang and scholar Liu Mengmei, he also expressed it in the inscription: ".I don't know what to do, and I go deep. The living can die, and the dead can live. Those who are born and cannot be resurrected, and those who die and cannot be resurrected are not lovely. The meaning of butterfly love.