I want to know why my Jinse has fifty strings, and each string has a youthful interval.

Zhuangzi daydreaming, a saint, was bewitched by butterflies, and cuckoo crowed in the imperial spring.

Mermaids shed pearl-like tears on the moon-green sea, and the blue fields breathed their jade to the sun.

A moment that should last forever has come and gone before I know it.

-Li Shangyin's "Jinse"

Jinse is one of the most controversial poems in the history of China's poetry. This poem is famous for its obscure meaning and hazy artistic conception, and also for its unique hazy beauty and rich suggestibility, which has attracted poetry critics and annotators of past dynasties to try to uncover her mysterious veil again and again.

Most of Li Shangyin's poems are difficult to understand, among which Jinse bears the brunt. The use of allusions is one of the main reasons why Li Shangyin's poems are difficult to understand. Because Li Shangyin's poems often use allusions sentence by sentence, and when using allusions, they are "often used secretly, borrowed or used flexibly." (1) or even one code for multiple purposes. So the meaning of a poem is often different from the original allusions. There is more than one allusion in the poem Jinse, which is integrated by the poet. "After the creation of subjective imagination, there is a brand-new image." It has been separated from the original concept of the lake of historical time and space, and has become an image of the present independently. "(2) This paper will summarize and analyze the comments of the poetry critics in the past dynasties on this poem, and try to interpret and appreciate it by analyzing the use of allusions in this poem.

First, the theory of past dynasties

From Liu Ban and Su Shi in the Northern Song Dynasty to the present, there are more than 100 translators. Poets of all ages have made magnificent interpretations of the poem, but their opinions are different and even contradictory. If slightly classified, it can be roughly divided into the following seven items: (3)

1, Lezhi said

We should pay attention to the topic of "Jinse" and think that this poem is about musical instruments. "Qian Su Miscellaneous Notes" said: "The golden harp is just a vessel, with a string of fifty and a column. Its voice is also suitable for resentment and peace. Shi Li's "Saint Zhuangzi daydreaming, bewitched by butterflies" is appropriate; Wang's "The cuckoo crows in spring", complaining; "Mermaids shed pearl-like tears on the moonlight green sea", Qing also; The blue fields are breathing their jade to the sun. In an article, the song is the ultimate. " (4) zhouyan's Poems and Hu Zai's Tiaoxi Conghua also hold this view. The author pays too much attention to the topic and ignores the original meaning of the poem. (5)

2. Mourning theory

He Chao said in "Poetry on the Mountain" that "this mourning poem is also. In the first couplet, the 50-string virgin drum was used to mourn, and the Emperor Shenshi began to express his grief, and some people could not stop; The second link is sad that he has become a foreign body; The Abdominal Association is also sad that it can't be revived. It is clear that' thinking about China' and' recalling'. " (6) Hao, Zhu and Zhu Yizun also advocated this theory. (7) The history of Meng Xinshi's close friends proves that Li Shangyin's life is a mourning poem. (8) This statement has a certain theoretical basis, but unfortunately, when it comes to mourning objects, it is often a slap in the face.

3. Love theory

From the word Jinse, we can say that it is a woman's name, or that it is something of love. Liu, for example, thinks it is the Tsing Yi of Linghu Chu's family. Song Ji Min's "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty: The Concubine of Jinse Hu Ling" (9) Su believes that "Jinse is a love memorial of Shang Yin". (10) Zheng Xuping thinks this is written by Li Shangyin to his sister-in-law. (1 1) This statement is purely arbitrary and unreliable.

4. Self-injury theory

In Qing Dynasty, Wang Shihan thought that Li Shangyin was self-harming when he used the golden harp in On Poetry. (12) In addition, close friend Wang Fumin also said so. The statement (13) is reasonable, but the solution of couplets is problematic. For example, Wang Fumin said, "The sea is the officialdom, the moon is the worthies, and the day is the monarch, thus drawing the conclusion that the worthies are ineffective and the emperor's kindness is rare" (14), which is obviously a metaphor.

5. Metaphor theory

In Qing Dynasty, Zhang Caitian thought that this poem expressed the poet's nostalgia for Li Deyu in Notes on Yuxi Chronicle. (15) and Liu Wenying thinks that this poem "means that the whole story is due to the unconsciousness of Linghu Taoju, lamenting the depravity of her life experience." (16) This statement is far-fetched.

6. On the theory of poetry

As this poem was included in the textbook of Li Yishan's poetry anthology in Song Dynasty, people thought it was a summary of the poet's life. In Qing Dynasty, Wang Yingkui held this view in Talia Liu's essays. (17) Qian Zhongshu and Shao Derun interpreted this poem as a work on poetry from the theory of image thinking. ( 18)

7. Others

Some people think that poetry is tasteless if it is exhausted, and they advocate not to delve into it. For example, Wang Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty said in "On the Whole Tang Poetry" that "there is nothing if you don't understand, but there is something if you understand." (19) Liang Qichao also thought that this poem "opened a sentence and asked me to explain. I don't even know the original intention. I think it is beautiful and gives me new pleasure in reading. " (20) This statement puts too much emphasis on perceptual impressions and can only be used as appreciation notes.

Looking at all the theories, there is no lack of objective remarks, but many poetry critics often add too many arbitrary speculations when they go against their will. When people talk about the world, they often take this poem as a fact and misinterpret it, regardless of the difference between narrative and historical facts.

Second, solve the problem.

Before the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, the relationship between poems and topics was relatively loose, but from the Tang Dynasty, the relationship between poems and topics began to be closely combined. Poetry not only "writes the theme word for word", but also "the understanding of poetry often relies on the theme to provide clues". (2 1) On the other hand, because most of the titles in the Tang and Song Dynasties are clear, "those vague titles often imply that this poem is poetic, but there is other meaning." (22)

The title of the poem Jinse has also caused a lot of controversy. Many critics think that the title of Jinse is named after the first two words of this poem, but it is actually the same as the untitled poem. For example, "Lianzhou Poetry": "Yishan is a poem with no title or title, which means something, but it doesn't necessarily mean something." Jinse is a special song. It does the same thing as the three songs of Bi Cheng ... It is no problem to take the first two words as the title. "(23) Yu Shouzhen and Shi Zhecun also agree with this statement. (24) Although this statement is reasonable, it also has flaws. Since Li Shangyin intends to write untitled poems, why not name a poem whose style and practice are similar to untitled poems "untitled"? Therefore, although "Jinse" seems to take only two words as the title, it should have its meaning. This poem is really different from the general object-chanting poem, but it is not just an untitled poem that simply "intercepts the first two words" to make a comparison and has nothing to do with the literal. Although what I wrote is related to Joseph, I have something to trust.

Third, research.

Faced with a beautiful and confusing poetic realm and a lot of different assumptions, I was dazzled at first, but after careful search, I found that there were clues to follow in the chaos and similarities in the diversity. Many conjectures are actually hints of the command of the poem itself, and different readers' different feelings and associations about time. They are often integrated, rather than seeing the whole leopard at a glance, but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If we find its theme and tone according to the clues provided by the poet, and integrate various theories that could have been interlinked, compatible or parallel, we may be closer to the true essence of this poem without strictly observing its rich connotation, and we will also have a more practical observation and understanding of its artistic characteristics.

Generally speaking, the beginning and end of rhyme have more narrative and direct lyric elements, which often include the whole idea, sometimes even 100% can't be separated. However, the connection between chin and abdomen is often perfunctory, and the image density is high. The first couplet of this poem is in the shape of "fifty strings", which leads to "thinking about the New Year" with the sad sound of "one string and one column", and the last couplet responds to the word "thinking" with "recalling the past" and arouses the feeling of thinking about the New Year with "melancholy", which tells us to some extent that this poem is a poet's work recalling the past of the New Year. Of course, this illusion of China people's life experience has a very wide range of contents, which can cover the poet's grief and even the tragedy of love life, and it is also related to the poet's poetic creation that describes his unfortunate life experience and is full of sentimental sentiment. Personally, I think that hurting a person's life experience, chanting mourning and narrative creation can be said to be a trinity for Li Shangyin, a gentleman in a desolate and lonely situation and a poet who can "recover from the spring injury". Jinse can be regarded as both a symbol of the poet's bleak life experience and a metaphor of his sentimental life experience poetry creation, as he said in the poem "Let the East Palace Drunk and Work": "A good name makes a beautiful life experience." Of course, according to poems such as Qu in the Room and Xixi, it is considered to be related to the memory of his wife Wang, but in fact, this goes hand in hand, because the wailing includes the wailing.

The first sentence begins with a golden harp. In the face of Jinse's sadness, the poet made a stupid speech to mourn. Jinse has nothing to do with strings, but it is argued that it is "unprovoked", and a kind of resentment arises spontaneously. Therefore, Xue Xue said in "A Poem of Gone with the Wind": "This poem is full of the word" unprovoked ",and that's the beauty." (25) Jinse has so many strings, which is neither "wrong" nor "wrong". The poet insists on complaining: Jinse, why do you have so many strings? As far as Jinse is concerned, "fifty strings" is a common practice in poets' poems, such as "A Dream with the Scholar Wang Zhenger on the Night of July 28th": "Fifty strings of Xiangling are hit by rain", and another example is "Fifty strings are written, and the middle part is divided into palaces", which shows that there is no special intention in the poem. Some people say that the poet is nearly fifty years old in China (according to the chronology, the poet is forty-five years old at this time), and he regrets the passage of time and can't help recalling the past years. In fact, Fifty Strings is to create an atmosphere to see the heavy past and the nine songs of love. The poet didn't write this to make people die. Therefore, to understand this poem, we must first understand the main idea, not stick to the column, pass the parcel. He Zhu, a poet in the Song Dynasty, wrote Jade Case: "Who is the golden flower?" But this couplet is by no means the year of China's writer. Because "flower years" and "years" are different. This "China Year" cannot be interpreted as age, but refers to "youth", which is the so-called youth. "Every flower has a youthful interval" means: the poet listens to the complicated strings of Jinse and thinks about China's past; The sound is complicated and confusing, so it's hard to say. Our fighting spirit is very extensive for the past China New Year, so the poet will not only feel that he has lost his youth. At this time, he should be "silent and worried, thinking for a thousand years; Quietly, see Wan Li. " At this time, he may be thinking about the late national flag and the creation of conference life, but all these thoughts are triggered by sad drums and musical instruments. It was the poet who heard the plaintive sound of "one string and one column" and couldn't help touching his own life experience and immersing himself in the memory of the passing of the New Year. William james once said, "Man's consciousness is not a pile of fragments as he thinks. At first glance, it seems that the word' chain' or' series' can be used to describe it, but it is actually inappropriate. Consciousness is not pieced together. " (26) Therefore, the poet's thoughts can't be just a diachronic activity at this time, that is, a fragment is a fragment, and at the same time it should be * * *, and many pictures emerge in front of the poet at the same time. It is reasonable for a poet to look at things and think about people. In the past, calligraphers generally only paid attention to this sentence "teasing the next four sentences", but the beauty was actually the word "one string and one column". The first pair of couplets consists of "fifty strings" and "one string and one column", which is a continuation of the characters, while the two sentences "one string and one column" and "thinking of China" are in the same strain. In addition, this couplet is a general hint of the content and performance of couplets and necklaces, indicating that what they describe is not only the sound of the harp, but also the voice of the poet "thinking about China". Although the theory of "music ambition" is not completely suitable for the scene written in each sentence, it shows that the middle four sentences directly describe the realm of music and are quite enjoyable.

The intention of starting the alliance is very clear, and it depends on how to undertake it below. The last sentence of Zhuan Xu uses the code name "Zhuang". The key to this sentence lies in the word "fan", which not only describes the dreamlike trance, but also describes the emptiness and disillusionment after waking up. From the perspective of describing the musical realm, this blurred realm and blurred feelings describe the dreamlike and confusing sound of the harp; It is a symbol to express the poet's sense of China calendar and life experience. In other poems, the poet used dreams to describe the vagaries of his life many times, and sometimes he directly used the Canon of Butterfly Dream. For example, what else is an angel's life but a dream? I have a big dream? Pity me for dreaming butterflies in autumn? Pillow butterflies in cold villages and so on. You can cross-reference this sentence. Saying "Meng Xiao" is the speed of disillusionment. Although The Butterfly of Meng Xiao was written by Zhuang Zhou, once the poet uses it, it is not just a matter of "vivid expression". Wang Di's next sentence in this couplet is the legendary Du Yu, that is, Du Fu. In Li Shangyin's poems, "hurting the spring" refers to the sentimental life experience when worrying about the country and the people. The so-called "eternal change of heart is not much more than hurting spring", "deliberately hurting spring to say goodbye" and "nothing happened during the New Year, only hurting spring itself". On the one hand, it shows the sadness of voice, such as cuckoo weeping blood; On the other hand, it seems to be a metaphor for one's own love and hate, but it is entrusted to a poem like a cuckoo weeping blood. There are many examples in the poet's poems that compare his poems with the singing of birds, such as "How can a clever tooth be careless, and a beautiful moment may not have a beautiful time" and "Five people are heartbroken and a book is heartless".

Because the injury, mourning and narration of life are trinity, this couplet also contains the poet's memory of his dead wife. When the poet was in his prime, he was madly in love with his wife. Now that his wife is dead, he is like a "spring silkworm to death", and even mourns day and night like a cuckoo after death.

After the couplets, it's time to change the "qi" and "cheng" of metrical poems. When the pen comes here, it has probably reached a point in front, which seems to be a knot, and its meaning has yet to be applied. At this time, in all disillusionment, "a potential detail will suddenly attract his attention, thus disturbing the balance of his composition." (27) So what are the potential details? Of course, it is the colorful myths and legends described by the poet. So he shook out the abdominal joint.

The sentence of "sea" includes both the legend that Jiao Ren's tears turned into pearls when he cried in the South China Sea and the classic of "a drop in the ocean". It is not only a description of Jinse's lonely and miserable musical realm, but also a symbol of the poet's lonely life experience when he was abandoned. "There are tears in the sea" is actually the poet's idea. His dead wife will miss herself in the moonlight and cry every night. The poet described the musical artistic conception played by Jin Seming as vague and hazy, which also symbolized his lifelong pursuit as elusive as "Lantian breathes its jade to Japan". Similar realms or feelings often appear in other poems of the poet. For example, "The light is far away from Puwai, and there is a slight noise in the smoke", "How to make the snowy moon and the bright night on the 12th floor of Yao Ming" and so on. Qian Zhongshu once pointed out: "Today we don't say' beads are tears', but say' beads have tears' because we see that although beads are round, they still contain tired tears; It has become a rare drama, still sour and pungent. It is essential to lose popularity. " Let's see how the poet put his thoughts on his dead wife in it. According to legend, Fu's mother's tomb is in lantian jade Mountain, where many Tang Dynasty literati and women were buried. Li Shangyin's flag was also buried on Yushan Mountain. On Yushan Mountain, Wang's soul is full of vitality under the moon, like purple jade, nowhere to be found. The poet wrote in Worship of the Mountain that he went to lantian jade Mountain to offer sacrifices to his wife. "It's never a long rope. It's hard to hate water when it reaches the cloud. If you want to buy sea for Magu, a cup of spring dew is cold and hungry. " The death of a wife, like water flowing from the east, has endless hatred.

The end of the film is tied together, and the word "this feeling" is clearly put forward, which echoes the beginning of the year of China. "This realm" refers to the situation summarized by couplets and abdominal couplets, that is, various realms of a person's tragic life experience. The meaning in the poem is: such feelings, don't wait until today's memories begin to feel depressed, then it will be in vain. The word "melancholy" sums up all the feelings of "thinking about China", and all the confusion, sadness, loneliness and fantasy are unified in this word. Regret at that time not only emphasized the sadness of the past during the Chinese New Year, but also set the past and the present against each other, doubling the disappointment and sadness that cannot be tolerated in today's memories. If couplets and ventral couplets are the situational imagination of hearing the sound of the piano in my mind, and the sad sound from the deep heart corresponding to the sound of the piano, then couplets are disillusionment and meditation after the sound of drums and piano. The sad voice of Jinse stopped, but in the silence, there was still endless melancholy, echoing with a long and desolate aftertaste-"How can countless ties be like words? I am sad for the eternal love in the world!"

Fourth, appreciation and analysis.

Ji Xiaolan commented: "From the year of thinking about China, the word' this feeling' was passed on, and the cover began to have fun, but there was resistance inside, so it was recalled." (29)

This is an ambitious and talented poet who plays a sad song of life when he recalls his tragic words about you. The whole article is shrouded in a thick sad atmosphere, reflecting the tragic psychology of an honest but inevitably weak intellectual in the declining era; Not only dissatisfied with the repression of the environment, but also unable to resist the environment; Pursuing imagination and feeling empty and disillusioned; I am deeply saddened by my tragic fate and feel disconsolate about the cause of the tragedy.

On the whole, this poem is similar to the poet's own chapter. However, because he did not use the usual way to express his life when reviewing The Passage of Chinese New Year, he turned his tragic life experience and tragic psychology into an independent and well-documented picture. These pictures not only have vivid and rich images, but also have vague, abstract and hazy connotations. This makes them not only lack the clarity of the usual lyric way, but also more suggestive than the usual lyric way, which can arouse readers' association in many aspects. However, these vague symbolic images are confined to the scope of "thinking about China" and "disconsolate", so some specific differences in readers' feelings and understanding do not affect the overall grasp of the poet's tragic life experience and situation. The clearness of the overall meaning and the vagueness of the local meaning, the distinctness of the symbolic picture and the obscurity of the symbolic meaning constitute the greatest characteristics of the poem, and the advantages and disadvantages of the poem also lie in this.

Ji Xiaolan said, "The middle four sentences are lost and dreamy, and the so-called' disconsolate' is also." (30) Indeed, the most elusive and uncertain thing about this poem is the four sentences in the middle. If you think about it carefully, it is not difficult to find that the symbolic pictures displayed in these four sentences have the characteristics of trinity of poetry, painting and music in terms of image composition and implication. They all use the language and consistency of poetry to turn various artistic conceptions of Jinse into vivid pictures, thus summarizing his various life realms and feelings in China and conveying his feelings of confusion, sadness, loneliness and melancholy in China. This is similar to the expression of Picasso's masterpiece guernica, a western cubist painter. We all know that guernica is a painting about the war experience. "The content of this painting is to reflect the widespread violence by symbolic means, and of course it should also reflect the tragedy of guernica. As we can see, the form of this painting is to break the internal and external opposition and establish a kind of uncertainty and ambiguity. "(3 1) When the painter expresses the pain caused by the war, the manager said". There are many open mouths in the painting that seem to be shouting, showing great pain, but this is a painting and there is no sound. Through these open mouths and sticking out tongues, Picasso seems to be saying, I want to express and express this fear, but art can't achieve this goal. All I can do is' I want to express'. Painting can't make sound or speak, so what artists have to do is to show silent cries. Picasso wanted to make his art reach the intensity he directly felt and make it full of power, but painting could not, so he could only express this silent cry. "(32) Then we have every reason to believe that the poet wants to express his confusion, sadness, loneliness and melancholy, but it is impossible for the poet to shout out" I am confused "or" I am in pain ". Because poetry is more valuable than moral, hysterical calls and shouts are all poems. Therefore, the poet must externalize his inner pain through the object, that is, the formal image. Of course, the poet can choose the image he needs. Because the poet's thoughts are endless at this time, it is impossible for him to convey his inner feelings with a specific five spices, which makes the image he chooses uncertain and vague. The poet hopes that his poems can make his inner pain reach the point where he can directly complain to the main complaint, so like Picasso, he encountered the problem of "from extreme pain to difficult expression", and the poet chose those symbolic pictures with vague meaning to express his inner pain. Similarly, poetry is a stagnant language, and writing on paper is silent. What the poet can do is "I want to express", and this silent cry is expressed through the Jinse, so these pictures have three meanings: musical artistic conception, picture image and poetic image. The fusion of these multiple hints, on the one hand, makes its meaning particularly rich and complex, on the other hand, it has the beauty of the three. It can be said that the symbolic meaning of the trinity of poetry, painting and music is the fundamental feature of the overall conception of this poem. If readers can't grasp this feature and simply explore it from the aspect of poetry, it will inevitably lead to misunderstanding.

Although there is no fixed order and logical relationship in time, space and emotion, the symbolic pictures displayed in Chinese couplets all have a sad and confused mood. Coupled with neat antithesis, plaintive rhymes and related images, the whole poem still has an obvious sense of wholeness, and the plaintive emotion blends with elegant and agile poetic language, making this poem more beautiful.