Li Shangyin

When you asked about your return date, you have not yet heard of it. The night rain in Bashan swelled the autumn pond.

Why should I cut off the candles from the west window and talk about the night rain in Bashan?

This poem is also titled "The Night Rain Sends Inside". Regarding the recipient, there are two opinions: wife and friend. "Selected Tang Poems" by the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, according to Feng Hao's "Yuxi Sheng Chronicle", dated the writing of this poem to the second year of Dazhong (848), when the author was traveling in Sichuan and Hubei. Therefore, although the two theories can coexist, for the convenience of appreciation, this article will only follow the theory of "sending a wife".

The first sentence is a reply to his wife's inquiry about the return date. However, it should be noted that "asking about the date of return" and "no date" are not just ordinary questions and answers, but also contain contradictions between wishes and reality that are difficult to unify; it is this contradiction that makes the undercurrent of the poet's emotions surge. It creates unstoppable waves. "Return" is the wish of relatives and the poet's own wish; if there is a clear "return date", then after all, one can still hope to reunite with relatives while waiting eagerly. However, the current actual situation is that it is "unexpected", so this hope has been swallowed up and buried in the long river of time. In the first sentence, the two words "Qi" appear repeatedly, one question and one answer, one call and one response. They express the disappointment and resentment that cannot be returned in the contradiction that cannot be unified. This is the emotional connotation contained in the first sentence of the narrative. It is also the emotional basis for the lyrical description of the scene below.

"The rain at night in Bashan makes the autumn pond rise." The poet continued to write about the scenery. The connection between the narrative in the first sentence and the scenery in the next sentence seems abrupt, but in fact it is not. Since he can only answer his relatives with "Not yet", he will inevitably feel sad about the scenery outside the window in a lonely and melancholy mood. The things narrated and the scenery written are connected by the poet's emotions as a link. And because the poet views these external scenery with melancholy and sentimentality, these scenery must be smeared with a strong emotional color; at the same time, the continuous autumn rain will undoubtedly also It makes the poet's sorrow add to his sorrow, so the misery and sorrow melt into each other and become one. The pond in my heart is like an autumn pond, and my sorrow is like the rain at night. "The night rain in Bashan rises to the autumn pond." A wanderer living in a foreign land is not as sad and distressed as the continuous autumn rain, which increases with time and overflows his heart! This is the scene of the second sentence. The feeling in the heart.

The third and fourth lines of the poem are famous lines that have been passed down through the ages. The poet's emotions jumped out of the real and immediate scene, transcended the limitations of time and space, and flew into another world: he had returned to his hometown, and was sitting with his wife under the west window, holding candles and talking at night, recounting The autumn rainy night in Bashan that once made him unbearable... Ji Xiaolan, a native of the Qing Dynasty, pointed out: The poet's writing method is a technique of "exploring one step to conclude". The so-called "taking a step forward" means that the poet does not say what is going on now, but takes a step forward, not thinking about what it will be like today when he looks back in the future. This is a unique and new creation in poetry creation, so it has always been well received. This way of writing is very beneficial: 1. Instead of directly writing about how you miss your loved ones tonight, after the virtual reunion, you can tell your loved ones how you miss them tonight. This makes the emotional expression of the song profound and expresses the feeling of missing your loved ones. The expression is more delicate and passionate. 2. The poet's emotions originally looked towards the future from today, but when he wrote, he recalled today from the past orally, so that the real scene of "Bashan night rain rose into the autumn pond" was transformed into a virtual scene in the future, allowing readers to change. Appreciate the angle and get a feeling of ethereal beauty and hazy beauty. 3. Since the third and fourth sentences are preceded by "why", the nature of the virtual scene is clearly defined: it is nothing but a desire and desire generated by the poet in the contradiction between desire and reality. It's just a longing. The more urgent the desire and the better the longing, the greater the distance between it and the lonely and sad reality, and the stronger the contrast. It can be seen that this "exploring one step" technique expresses the poet's feelings extremely deeply and strongly, and is a rare artistic innovation in the creation of lyric poetry.