Chapter 5 beauty of air

"In the south of the Yangtze River, you can pick lotus, the lotus leaves are in the fields, and the fish are playing between the lotus leaves. The fish are playing on the east of the lotus leaves, the fish are playing on the west of the lotus leaves, the fish are playing on the south of the lotus leaves, and the fish are playing on the north of the lotus leaves." This beautiful and cheerful poem is a lotus-picking song titled "Jiangnan".Tiantian looks like a lush lotus leaf.In addition, there is nothing in the whole poem that needs to be annotated.A beautiful scene of a Jiangnan water town is just in front of you.

In "The Source of Ancient Poetry" selected by Shen Deqian, there is a comment on the word "Qige" at the back of this poem.Indeed, the first time I read it, I was secretly amazed that "Fish Playing Between the Lotus Leaves" could have ended, but I still sang it down, and that's all I sang down, and I didn't sing anything else, just sang fish, And it still sings that the fish is in the middle of the lotus leaf, but it is specific to east, west, north, south, almost synonymous.Don't know why this is happening. Later, I read "Selected Yuefu Poems" (annotated by Yu Guanying, People's Literature Publishing House, 1957 edition), and the annotation said that the words "Fish Playing with Lotus and Yedong" may be harmony.That's it. "Jiangnan" is one of the "Songs of Xianghe" in the lyrics of Han Yuefu. Xianghe songs were originally sung by one person and the others.What's more, it reads like it-in the pleasant play on the water, one person sings, and everyone agrees with it casually.

Isn't that surprising?Still odd.Such a few simple sentences, so naive, can be recited almost as soon as they are read, but they are hard to forget.After reading other complicated and beautiful or strange and ancient poems, and reading it again, it is still not inferior at all. Why is this? After thinking about it, I think it is because: there is air in it.As a work, it is not a solid piece, but air is flowing. In the picture composed of lotus leaves, lotus flowers, fish and lotus pickers, it is full of air. The fresh and moist air can allow people to breathe.Breathing like this, you have entered that space, beautiful, pure like a fairy tale, the lotus leaves cover the sky and the sun, the fragrance dyes the clothes, people and fish are under the lotus, invisible, only laughter comes from bursts.

With air, the work is alive; with air, the work is an open world. When it comes to picking lotus, one cannot but think of "Xizhou Song".The first thing I knew about the title of this poem was because of the "Moonlight in the Lotus Pond" in the middle school textbook. In the famous moonlight that night, Zhu Ziqing remembered the two lines in "Xizhou Song" "Picking lotus in Nantang in autumn, the lotus flower surpasses the head ".I didn't read this poem until I was in college.After reading it, it was amazing, and it has haunted me ever since. With beautiful syllables, beautiful colors, beautiful artistic conception, melodious and gentle but with deep thoughts, it can be called the pinnacle of Yuefu.It is not surprising that the whole story is written about a woman's longing for her sweetheart. What is rare is that it depicts a piece of love between children, which is as picturesque as it is heard.

It is even more rare to reflect the passage of time and the change of seasons in the eyes of a woman in love. The camera moves from a small close-up to a wider and wider space, and finally reaches the universe where the sea and the sky meet.The contagious power of this sense of time and space can only be felt when I meet Zhang Ruoxu's "Spring River Flower and Moon Night" and Su Dongpo's "Yongyule" ("The bright moon is like frost, the good wind is like water, and the clear scenery is infinite...") . The poem is equally full of the beauty of the air, and the air is constantly changing.During the day, there is an air with a feeling of fog in the morning, and there is an air that is as cool as water in the middle of the night.In a year, there is the air in early spring with the cold fragrance of plum blossoms; there is the warm air in late spring when you wear single shirts without feeling the cold; Turn cool, dry up the air.

Scholars believe that it "should be" a folk song in the Yangtze River Basin, but I, who is purely a reader so I don't have to be so rigorous, think that it must be, of course it is.Such poems do not belong to Jiangnan, where can they belong?Take a breath, isn't the mild and humid air with four distinct seasons full of the unique smoke and water vapor in the south of the Yangtze River?