Recently, it has often been said that the Chinese writing system is like a file that can be inserted into a compressed package at any time, and the characters are very concise. Idioms and afterwords are the packages that can give very deep meaning to a few simple words.
In the field of ancient poetry, such a situation is even more exaggerated.
Sometimes one or two words are an allusion, and where the author puts it, it represents the meaning that the author wants to express. Bai Juyi in the Tang Dynasty was recognized as a straightforward poet in China, but there is no lack of allusion in his poems.
Modern writer Yu Qiuyu once lamented in his book that even he didn't expect that the most popular poet in China was Bai Juyi.
Because Chinese itself is rich in meaning, it is not suitable for non-native Chinese speakers to learn, and ancient Chinese is even more obscure, making foreigners scratch their heads.
Ancient poetry is the most concise existence in ancient texts, and poets often use allusions in poems in order to rhyme and enrich emotions, which greatly increases the difficulty of Chinese learners.
Bai Juyi is an alternative among poets, although he was born in the scholar class, he is in a high position, and he has been educated by poetry and etiquette since he was a child, but he was born with a compassionate heart, and was able to care about the people at the bottom of the society at that time, and wrote poems for them.
Most importantly, his writings are not confined to ornate and beautiful writings, and he does not go into long speeches for the sake of beautiful rhetoric.
Bai Juyi's writing is simple and smooth, easy to understand, but also profound, and has a unique beauty in the whole Tang Dynasty poems. This is the reason why foreigners love his poems, because they are easy to understand.
Even, many families in China are willing to use Bai Juyi's poems as early childhood enlightenment. The unrelenting verses are very easy for children to read, understand, and memorize.
I believe that many people have the memory of reciting Bai Juyi's poems when they were children, such as the famous poem "Farewell to the Ancient Grass":
"Leaving the grass on the plain, one year old and one withered. Wildfires burn inexhaustibly, and spring breezes blow and regenerate. ”These four lines of poetry are so catchy to read that they are easy to understand without looking at the notes.
The grass in the wasteland grows every year and is vigorous, even the wildfires in the sky cannot burn them out, and the spring breeze blows in the next year, and the weeds grow again.
What's even more rare is that this is a very positive emotion, showing a very tenacious vitality, which can win the love of parents.
It is worth mentioning that in these four sentences, many people may not understand the meaning of the word "detachment", but this does not affect everyone's understanding of the meaning of the whole poem.
But what exactly does this "separation" mean?
China is a country with a long history, and the unit of measurement of historical time in other countries is "years", which is only a few hundred years at most, that is, "centuries". In China, the unit of measurement of historical time is often millennium.
There are many allusions that modern people are familiar with, and they are thousands of years old. And the history of the word "Lili" is indeed nearly a thousand years old for the Tang Dynasty.
Translated in modern Chinese, "Lili" means the appearance of lush vegetation, which is an adjective if it is divided according to the part of speech. This word first appeared in the book "Book of Songs", which is the beginning of ancient Chinese poetry and the earliest collection of poetry in China.
The Book of Songs collects poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, from the princes and nobles to the peddlers and pawns, and the poems they sang casually were recorded by the recorder of the royal court, sent back to the royal court, and compiled into a book.
The word "Li" comes from the Book of Songs, Wang Feng, Huang Li, which is a poem in the surrounding area of Luoyi, the capital of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.
"He is leaving, and he is a seedling. ”It means that looking at the rows of millet, sorghum rice seedlings are also growing. Millet is a crop that can be eaten as a staple food.
Lili describes the neatly arranged millet seeds, and later says that sorghum rice grows vigorously. So later, "separation" had the meaning of exuberance. It is worth mentioning that this is a typical poem that writes mourning with music.
Although the poem tries its best to depict vigorous crops, what it wants to express is an extremely vicissitudes of national anxiety. The famous sentence "Those who know me say that I am worried." Those who do not know me say what I want. It's from this poem.
The author of this poem traveled to the Western Zhou Hojing and saw the ruins of the palace chamber of the Jongmyo Temple. It is overgrown with lush millet grass, and the prosperity of the past is long gone, and even the traces of the war that led to the disappearance of the Jongmyo are gone, as if nothing had happened.
The author was sad that this thing was neither human nor human, so he sang this poem.
So, was it unintentional for the erudite Bai Juyi to add these two words to his poem? Necessarily not, in fact, Bai Juyi's song "Farewell to the Ancient Grass" is about such an emotion.
Most people only memorized the first two sentences of "Farewell to the Ancient Grass" when they were children, but in fact, there are four lines in the whole poemThe last two sentences are "Yuanfang invades the ancient road, and Qingcui connects the deserted city." He sent Wang Sun to go, and he was full of farewell. ”
The spring grass in the distance encroached on the ancient road, and the green in the sun connected the imperial city. I am here again to say goodbye to my friends, and the grass is my parting feeling. This "deserted city" refers to the Leyouyuan on the outskirts of Chang'an, where is the war site of the Anshi Rebellion, although Chang'an is very close, but not prosperous, and even a little desolate.
This poem was written by Bai Juyi when he was taking the imperial examination, when Bai Juyi was sixteen years old and was still a weak-crowned teenager.
He traveled all the way from his hometown to Chang'an to take the exam, fantasizing about how the capital would prosper, but the first thing he saw was the battlefield site of Leyouyuan.
The excitement cooled down a little, and some other feelings spontaneously appeared, leading him to write this poem during the exam. It is said that when the examiner read his paper, he first joked about his name "Juyi", saying that although Chang'an is big, it is not easy to live.
When the examiner read "the wildfire burns inexhaustibly, and the spring breeze blows and grows", he applauded again and again, and when he read the two sentences of the parting friend hanging the monument at the back, he felt that this person was full of talent.
Bai Juyi was one of the most important poets of the late Tang Dynasty, he was different from the poets of the Tang Dynasty, but like them, he was shrouded in the Anshi Rebellion.
For the poets of the Tang Dynasty, the Anshi Rebellion was the catastrophe of their lives, they once lived in the wealth and prosperity of the Tang Dynasty, and suddenly suffered from the war and chaos, and the pain was painful.
For the late Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi, the Anshi Rebellion was more like a ghost of vain death, haunting the entire Tang Dynasty and lasting for a long time. It is not the kind of bloody tragedy, but the desolation of declining living standards and prosperity.
It is the suffering of the charcoal seller who is "worried about the charcoal and wishing that the weather is cold", and it is the suffering of the prosperity of the past that can only be imagined by hanging on the monuments.
Just like the Tang Dynasty made Li Bai Dufu, this kind of barrenness also made Bai Juyi, allowing him to write about the worries of the people.
"Lili" is a lush barren grass, and it is also the Tang Empire, which is sinking westward.