Jiang Chengzi
Su Shi
Remembering Dreams on the Twentieth Night of the First Month of Yi Mao
Ten years of life and death are so vast, without thinking, one will never forget them .
Thousands of miles away from the lonely tomb, there is no place to speak of desolation.
Even if we meet each other, we should not know each other, our faces are covered with dust and our temples are like frost.
When night comes, I suddenly return home with a deep dream. Xiaoxuan window, dressing up.
We looked at each other without words, only a thousand lines of tears.
It is expected that the place where the heart is broken every year is: on a bright moon night, short of Matsuoka.
This is a eulogy. The author combines his unfortunate encounters and infinite emotions in his ten-year political career to vividly reflect his sincere emotions and deep memories of his deceased wife that he will never forget.
The author was serving as magistrate of Mizhou (now Zhucheng, Shandong) when he wrote this poem. His wife Wang Fu died in Kaifeng in the second year of Zhiping of Song Yingzong (1065). By this time (the eighth year of Xining), it had been ten years. The small preface before the words clearly states that the theme of this article is "Remembering Dreams". However, the dream scene only appears briefly in the second part of the poem and does not occupy a dominant position in the entire poem. The reason why the author can enter the land of "dreams" and "remember dreams" with words. It is completely the inevitable result of the author's longing for his deceased wife and his long-term inability to forget her. Therefore, the opening chapter points out the tragic reality of "the uncertainty of life and death in ten years". What is written here is a personal tragic life experience over a long period of time. Life refers to the author; death refers to the deceased wife. This shows that both the living and the dead have been missing each other for a long time, but the news has been blocked and the voices have been lost. The reason why the author mentioned life and death together is not only to clarify the theme, but also to emphasize the sorrow of the living. Therefore, the words "if you don't think about it, you will forget it" immediately appear. "Not thinking about it" actually means retreating in order to advance, and it is used to express the depth of the living person's "unforgettable" emotion. The two sentences "A thousand miles away are lonely graves, and there is no place to express desolation" immediately supplemented this. Clarify the actual content of "self-forgetfulness". After Wang's death, he was buried in Meishan, Su Shi's hometown, so it was natural that there would be an "isolated grave thousands of miles away". Due to the distance between the two places, it was difficult for the author to even visit the grave to pay homage. The dead are "desolate" and the living are heartbroken. "Ten years" means a long time; "thousands of miles" means a vast space. In this long and vast time and space, and blocked by the insurmountable boundary between life and death, how can the author not double the sigh of "there is no place to talk about desolation"? It is difficult to cross the boundaries of time, space, life and death, so we have no choice but to meet in dreams. The above four sentences pave the way for "Remembering Dreams". The last three sentences of the film have a sudden change of tone, using progress as a retreat, imagining the unexpected consequence of not knowing each other even if they meet. These three sentences contain a lot of content, and they incorporate the author's painful experiences of ups and downs in his career over the past ten years, the mental torture of long-term memory for his deceased wife, and the aging of his body over the past ten years. Imagine that even if the boundaries of time, space and life and death are broken, the living and the dead can still "encounter".
But when they meet, it may be difficult for them to "know each other". Because ten years later, the author has become like an old man with his face covered with dust and his temples as frosty as frost. These three sentences are based on the imaginary reflections of the deceased to set off the misfortunes the author has encountered in the past ten years (including the three years of life when he opposed the new law and begged for a transfer out of Beijing) and the great changes in world affairs.
The next part describes the sudden appearance of dreams: "The dream comes at night and suddenly returns home." In terms of the whole word. This article is indeed full of true feelings, every sentence is sad, but this sentence contains joy in the sadness. "Xiaoxuan window, dressing up" supplements the previous sentence with a vivid image, thus making the dream more realistic. It's as if the author was beside Ms. Wang when she was newly married. Seeing her expression and demeanor as she was bathing in the morning light and fixing her makeup in the mirror, her heart was full of sweetness and tenderness. However, the lyrics then turned from joy to sadness. "Looking at each other without words, only a thousand lines of tears." These two sentences correspond to the two sentences "A thousand miles
A lonely grave". Now that we can "return to our hometown", it should be the time to "talk about the desolation" to the fullest, but , there were thousands of words in my heart, but I didn’t know where to start for a while, so I had to "look at each other in silence" and let the tears flow. These five sentences are the theme of the poem: "Remembering Dreams". Precisely because the dream is illusory, the artistic conception of the poem is inevitably a bit confusing, and it is impossible and unnecessary for the author to describe it fully.
In this way, it can leave room for readers' imagination. The last three sentences are the exclamation after the dream, and they are also the comfort to the deceased. If we connect the "ten years" at the beginning of the chapter and add the indefinite "years", then wouldn't the author's nostalgia for his deceased wife be "this hatred lasts forever"? One of the artistically noteworthy features of this article is that it expresses one's feelings directly and sincerely. Because the author had extremely deep feelings for his deceased wife, even ten years after her death, the author still fantasized about meeting her in a dream. And through dreams (or parts related to dreams) to express one's true feelings heartily and vividly, without any avoidance or obscurity. Sentences such as "If you don't think about it, you will never forget it", "There is no place to talk about the desolation", "Looking at each other without words, only a thousand tears" all reflect the characteristics of expressing one's heart directly and expressing nature. Another characteristic is rich imagination and exquisite conception. The author gallops his imagination from the long time and vast space, and integrates the past, the present, the dream and the future into a unified artistic whole, closely surrounding the four "thinking" and "unforgettable"
Word expansion description. The whole poem is tightly organized and coherent, but it also has twists and turns and ups and downs.
The eight sentences in the first part describe the memories and emotional ups and downs before the dream, the first five sentences in the second part describe the joys and sorrows in the dream, and the last three sentences describe the sighs after the dream. The plot has its ups and downs; the writing has its advances and retreats; its emotions include sadness and joy; it is full of twists and turns. Another characteristic is that the language is straightforward and purely drawn in white. Because this is a lyric that expresses true feelings, the language is also extremely simple, natural and true to the situation. It's as clear as words, without any trace of elaboration. Such simple language combined with the interlaced use of different sentence patterns (three, four, five, and seven words) makes this poem both handsome and sad, appropriately expressing the author's agitated heart and unyielding mood. Thoughts and feelings. It has an inherent sense of rhythm and exciting artistic charm that is difficult to produce in ancient poetry and rhythmic poetry.
Most of the poems describing women in the Tang, Five Dynasties and Northern Song Dynasties were narrow in scope and dusty in terms of words. Su Shi's poem has a broad realm, pure emotions, and noble character. It is refreshing to read it. It was Su Shi who pioneered the use of words to mourn the death. This article should occupy a certain position in expanding the subject matter of Ci and enriching the expressive power of Ci.
This article can be compared with Pan Yue's "Poem of Mourning", Yuan Zhen's "Revelation of Sorrow" and Wu Wenying's "Preface to the Cry of Orioles" in the Southern Song Dynasty.