Chapter 10 Beriberi and Poetry

While writing vernacular articles for the "Jingye Xunbao", Hu Shi also began to learn to compose poetry.His poetry learning has something to do with beriberi. When Huizhou people go out to Shanghai to study or do business for a living, they often suffer from beriberi due to "unaccustomed water and soil".During the illness, both feet were swollen, severe limbs could not move, and even died.According to the condition, it is probably a kind of rheumatism.Hu Shi's father, Hu Chuan, died of this disease. Hu Shi also got beriberi less than half a year after entering Chinese public school.He had to ask for leave from the school, and went back to the Ruixingtai tea shop opened by his family in South Shanghai to recuperate.During the recuperation period, it is easy to get bored, so I look for books for entertainment.By chance, he found an ancient prose reader, which was selected by Wu Rulun, the last prose writer of the Tongcheng School in the late Qing Dynasty, and the fourth one was full of ancient poetry.Hu Shi was very interested in this ancient poem. He read a few poems every day during his illness, and found them to be much more interesting than the verses he read when he was a child.So, he recited with great interest, "Mulan Ci", "Yinma Great Wall Cave Tour", ... until Tao Yuanming and Du Fu, and felt that he had discovered a new world.I also learned to write poems myself.

One day, when I was going back to school, I passed by the office of "Jingye Xunbao". I went in to see Fu Junjian, and he said that he would go back to Hunan soon.I went back to the dormitory, wrote a farewell poem, brought it to Jun Jian myself, and asked him if it looked like a poem.I can't remember this poem, but I only remember that it started with "For what reason do I have to give Fu Junjian".Jun Jian praised my farewell poem very much, but I was a little unconfident in the end.One day later, he sent a poem called "Farewell and Goodbye", which was written on Japanese scroll paper. I opened it and saw it, and I was really shocked. In the eyes of a child who has just turned 15, I am really flattered! "Could it be that he is lying to coax children?" I couldn't help thinking this way.I quickly hid Jun Jian's poem and note, not daring to show it to others.However, his two words of encouragement to children have hurt me! From then on, I read and wrote poems angrily, and wanted to be a poet. ①

Hu Shi learned to compose poetry like a demon.Back at school, my husband wrote the formulas of advanced algebra on the blackboard, but he flipped through "Poetry and Rhythm" under the big algebra textbook. What was written in the exercise book was not formulas, but poems! In May of the second year (1907), Hu Shi suffered from beriberi again, and his feet were more swollen than before.According to the experience of Huizhou people, they must return home quickly. As long as they go to the upper reaches of the Qiantang River, the swelling of the feet will gradually disappear.Hu Shi went back to his hometown in Shangzhuang, Jixi to recuperate, and stayed there for more than two months.His uncle and good friend Hu Jinren also encouraged him to compose poems, and the two often discussed and exchanged ideas and sang and answered each other.Hu Shi was influenced by Bai Juyi's poems at that time, and he made great progress and wrote some very decent poems.For example, "Abandoning Father" ②, writes the true story of a "person who abandoned his father" in the family. The poem goes:

"Wealth is easy to pay, and expensive is easy to marry." It is not heard that rich father and son leave.Thirty-year-old son of a businessman, Ju Yangen is extremely supportive.Ersheng began to receive books at the age of seven, and became a scholar after ten years of success.Next year, I will marry a beautiful woman for my son, and I will have countless grandchildren in five years.A Weng became more worried about this, and went to do business for thousands of miles.Scholars set up accounts and teach apprentices, but they don't have enough money to support their wives and children.The scholar's bride is well-known, and her mother is as pitiful as a treasure in the palm of her hand.Zhang Shangzhen has lost her home, and her son-in-law can't help but her mother is sad.Check the five hundred gold in the dowry, cherish the general and the daughter-in-law.When the husband and son-in-law get this sad face, they look down on their relatives like dust.Holding gold and lending to neighbors with heavy interest, three years of son's wealth is like mother's wealth.At that time, Aweng was unfavorable, and his business was bleak and eventually collapsed.Guan He really ruined his temples, and the years frequently urge his teeth to fall.Returning from poverty and despondency, the returned children suspect each other.Privately said, "I am old and never die, and I am poor when I am poor!" I am old and miss the meat, and my wife cried when I bought the meat: "Since ancient times, a man is more important to be self-reliant, and I would rather not be humiliated if I rely on my son?" Weng Wensiyan was furious , Bi Shiyu's efforts were in vain.From now on, I know how to raise children, and go out to die of old age.

The whole poem is plain and simple, with deep sympathy and grief and indignation in the plain description, completely imitating Bai Juyi's tone.It is very good for young people to write such poems. Hu Shi's beriberi was cured.So I bid farewell to my hometown and walked back to Shanghai.Passing through Fuchun River, we visited Diaotai and Xitai. ③He saw that under the fishing platform of Yan Ziling, a senior scholar, there were ancestral halls, couplets, and many tourists; while the Xitai, a patriotic literati, was deserted. How many people knew that he had wept here What about Guo Wen Tianxiang? Hu Shi was so moved by it that he wrote a song "Journey to West Taiwan":

In Yanshuli on the Fuchun River, there are steep stone steps facing each other. The west is Xitai and the east is Diaoyutai, and the east belongs to the Xie family of the Yan family. Ziling fished and swam by himself, looking at the world like a bucket. When Gao Yu came to visit, he wept bitterly, sadly, his patriotism was exhausted. Now guests come from Tongjiang, instead of visiting Xitai and Diaoyutai. This is the trend of people's hearts, and things in the world can be done! ④This is the first poem written by Hu Shi to praise the ancient sites. The patriotic thought of using the world.But this poetic theory is too rational, which is also a bias in his early poems.

From then on, Hu Shi chanted poems about things, and poems about sentimental things. He made poems when he visited places, read good books, took pictures, sent friends to friends, drank wine, and entertained actors.He gradually gained a reputation as a "young poet" in school, and often sang with his classmates and teachers.Once, he made a poem that rhymed with the word "", and asked his classmates and teachers to collaborate, and he composed more than a dozen poems.This made Hu Shi even more prominent.A few years later, Ren Shuyong, who sang the chorus, recalled: I used to know Shizhi, the public school on the sea.

The classmates are so handsome, but you are the only one who stands out. ⑤ In fact, the works of singing and socializing are so boring, there are no good poems.On the contrary, his poem "Autumn Willow" is quite philosophical and meaningful, and it is worth reading.The orderly cloud before the poem: Autumn is suitable for the wild, and every tree has a sense of decline.But willows are weak in quality and tall in autumn, so they can dance against the wind with ease.Is it that Laoshi said that he can survive the weak? He gave it out of feeling. The full poem is as follows: But seeing Xiao whiz and destroying thousands of trees, there are still weeping willows blowing people.

West Wind Mo Xiao is long and weak, so he also dances to West Wind once. ⑥ Hu Shi himself liked this poem quite a lot.A few years later, he was still talking about it in the United States, telling it to his American girlfriend Wei Liansi, ⑦ and gifting it to his Japanese friend Goichi Sawada; It should be deleted and discarded, only these 28 characters may not be without value! ⑨Hu Shi is a beginner in poetry, and mostly writes ancient poems, also composes lyrics and music, and also translates foreign poems.At that time, most of the English teachers in Chinese public schools were able to write old poems, and they often encouraged students to use old poems to translate foreign poems.Hu Shi once translated "A Soldier's Dream" and "The Stormy Waves" by the English poet Canber, and "Six Hundred Men's Walk" by Deng Naisheng. ⑩The only thing he didn't dare to do was verse.Because the two couplets in the verses have to be against each other, he never learned to match pairs when he was a child, thinking that it would be difficult to do.Later, he occasionally tried making one or two regulated poems to send to friends, and found it not difficult, and gradually saw through the "trick" of regulated poems.He said:

After doing customary poems, I realized that this genre is a trick that seems difficult but is actually easy; there is no need for content, emotion, or meaning, as long as you can juggle, transfer allusions, adjust syllables, and match pairs, you can do it Make it into a verse.This genre is most suitable for entertainment poems without content, whether it is to entertain the emperor in the court, or see off friends in the dormitory, shake your head a few times, come up with the two couplets in the middle, put together the beginning and the end, and it will be a poem If it is a poem with limited rhyme or harmony, it will be easier if you only need to think about the rhyme.The general verse style and the rhyme method cannot be abolished precisely because they are the most convenient tricks.

Hu Shi’s contempt for regulated poetry and his dissatisfaction with using allusions and restricting rhyme, isn’t it the origin of his criticism of regulated poetry and his advocacy of the “great liberation of poetic style” in the future? ① "In Shanghai (2)" in "Forty Self-Reports", Shanghai Yadong Library Edition, p. 681. ② "Abandoning Father", originally published in the 25th issue of "Jingye Xunbao", signed by Tie'er.Hu Shi has different opinions about the place and time of writing this poem.In "Forty Self-Reports", it is said, "The "Abandoned Father" made in my hometown shows the influence of "Changqing Collection"; . When I was sixteen years old, I heard about a certain family matter of a Taoist family member who came from here. I was deeply impressed. For writing "Abandoning my Father", I abandoned it for a long time and lost my memory. Yesterday I got a letter from Jinren, saying that this person's father is dead. Reminiscing about the old works, barely completed, recorded here. According to this, it seems to be written in Shanghai. In "Preface to the Experimental Collection", it only says "that year" and does not say the location. According to the "Zanghui Room Notes", it is copied out. ③On the side of the Fuchun River and on the Fuchun Mountain in Tonglu County, Zhejiang Province, there are two sets of East and West.It is said that Dongtai was the place where Yan Guang (ziling) of the Eastern Han Dynasty lived and fished in seclusion; Xitai was the place where Xie Ao (named Gaoyu) cried and offered sacrifices to Wen Tianxiang in the late Song Dynasty.There is Yan Temple under the stage, which was built by Fan Zhongyan in Song Dynasty.Sun Ji's inscription couplet said: "The mountains and rivers are picturesque, the high winds flow through the ages, and only the surnames flow, and the county is famous; Don't talk about the source, everyone can learn from the Qing Festival, and I would like to go to Mr. Lai Wuxie. "It's still there today. ④ "Xingtai Xing", published in the 29th issue of "Jingye Xunbao", published on September 11th in the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1908).Signed Tie'er, there is a small preface before the poem: "The west of Yan Guang Diaotai is Xie Gaoyu's West Terrace, and those who pass by only know that there is Diaotai, but they don't know that there is West Terrace. I feel that this is eighty-four characters." June 1929 The second issue of "Wusong Monthly" published on March 15th published Hu Shi's "Old Poems from the Era of Chinese Public Schools", and the title of this poem was changed to "Xie Gaoyu Xitai". ⑤ See the poem "Sending Hu Shizhi to Columbia University" by Ren Shuyong collected in "Notes from the Zanghui Room" Volume 11 "One by one, I will go to Columbia University and send a poem to Shu Yong as a farewell poem" (August 21, 1915).Shanghai Yadong Edition, pp. 753-754. ⑥ Originally published in the 33rd issue of "Jingye Xunbao", entitled "The Preface to Autumn Willows", signed by Ming You.It was published on October 21st in the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1908, Wushen). "Forty Self-Reports" notes "Jiyou", which is wrong.On page 211 of Li Ao's "Hu Shi's Commentary", he quoted "Three and Five Autumn Willows" in Volume 7 of "Zanghui Room Notes", and the words are the same. ⑦ See "Zanghui Room Notes", Volume 7, "Three and Five Autumn Willows" (November 13, 1914), Shanghai Yadong Edition, pp. 464-466. ⑧Ibid., Volume 12, "Visiting Sawada Goichi on March 2" (March 26, 1916), Shanghai Yadong Edition, p. 858. ⑨ See the postscript to the poem "Autumn Willow" in "Qu Guo Ji" attached to "Experimental Collection" (written in July 1916). ⑩ "Soldier's Dream", see "Forty Self-Reports" "In Shanghai (2)", note "Wushen" (1908). "Shocking Waves", contained in the 33rd issue of "Jingye Xunbao", signed "Written by British Canber, translated by Tie Er". "Six Hundred Men's Journey", attached to the article "Beautiful Talks about Soldiers" published in the 30th issue of "Jingye Xunbao", the signature is appropriate. Note ①, pp. 70-71.