I ponder on the poem of The Precious Dagger.
My road has wound through many years.
...Now yellow leaves are shaken with a gale;
Yet piping and fiddling keep the Blue Houses merry.
On the surface, I seem to be glad of new people;
But doomed to leave old friends behind me,
I cry out from my heart for Xinfeng wine
To melt away my thousand woes.
Original Poem:
「风雨」
李商隐
凄凉宝剑篇， 羁泊欲穷年。
黄叶仍风雨， 青楼自管弦。
新知遭薄俗， 旧好隔良缘。
心断新丰酒， 销愁斗几千。
Interpretation:
A natural wind and rain triggered the poet’s feelings about the wind and rain of life. Perhaps at this time the poet is wandering in a foreign land, perhaps at this time the poet is detained in the journey, poor and downtrodden, as if it has been the end of the road, but think of their own full of talent and ambition, ultimately is not willing to ah. The whole poem seems to be a symphony of destiny with pathos, repeatedly sighing the life of depression and indignation and injustice.
The contrast between the poet’s own drifting and the prominence of others. Yellow leaves are still falling in the wind and rain, cold, lonely, like the fate of the poet; the green house is a music noise, soaring people in the pursuit of pleasure, lively, noisy. The bitter is still bitter, enjoyment of enjoyment, human indifference, this is a cold and true social reality.
Then he writes about the despondency of his own travelling. Newly made friends were denigrated by the shallow world, and old friends were broken for various reasons. Poet due to cattle and Li party strife and was hit by the exclusion, in the cracks to survive, cold and lonely inevitable. Neither new knowledge, no old good, the poet felt deep soul loneliness. They have great ambitions, but nothing to build, know that drinking can not drink the luck of Ma Zhou, but the heart of the anger and depression can not be expelled, can only use wine to drown their sorrows, but how much wine can be eliminated sadness ah! The poet’s dissatisfaction with the reality and the injustice of his unfulfilled ambition are rendered to the fullest extent by a question.
In the poem, the two allusions before and after are cleverly illustrated, with many contrasting images, and the strong emotion penetrates into the narrative of the object, revealing the inner pain of a talented man of letters after he fell victim to partisan struggle in those days.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Li Shangyin (李商隐), 813-858 AD, was a great poet of the late Tang Dynasty. His poems were on a par with those of Du Mu, and he was known as “Little Li Du”. Li Shangyin was a native of Qinyang, Jiaozuo City, Henan Province. When he was a teenager, he lost his father at the age of nine, and was called “Zheshui East and West, half a century of wandering”.
