Chapter 81 say "Lovesickness"

When I was studying for a master's degree at Wellesley Women's University Graduate School in the United States, the title of my thesis was "English Translation of Li Qingzhao's Ci".The tutor is Mrs. L, a professor of the Institute.We agreed to have tea at her house every Friday afternoon.Beforehand, I translated "Shu Yu Ci" into English prose, and then she and I deliberated on translating it into verse.We talked and laughed while eating tea, and we all felt that this kind of discussion was a pleasure. Once—the time was around the end of 1925—in the middle of a poem discussion, she suddenly asked me: "Have you ever written a love poem?" I said embarrassedly: "I just wrote a poem called 'Lovesickness'": put on fur and walk out of the brightly lit room.Peeping at the cold moon in the path, with dead branches - writing lovesickness all over the snow!

On the night of December 12, 1925, I also wrote the Chinese character "Xiangsi" to her, because the word "mu" next to the word "xiang" and the character "field" above the word "si" are both horizontal and vertical. So the dead branches on the snow will constitute "lovesickness" Two words.She laughed and said, "It's very interesting. If you use crooked English letters, you won't be able to write it!" She just smiled, but didn't ask me about the background of writing this poem.At that time, the dormitory supervisor and classmates in the same dormitory at Weida knew that I had a "boyfriend" from the daily letters.When Wenzao and I were taking French tuition at Qisejia University that summer vacation, we were still in love!On the night of December 12th, I received a letter full of nostalgia from Wen Zao. I felt that I couldn’t finish my studies in the lonely dormitory, so I put on my coat and went downstairs, thinking of the crowded library. Unexpectedly, on the snow outside the building, I saw the word "Lovesickness" written all over the ground!In the end, I didn't read a book in the library, but I wrote this poem.But except for my mentor, no one else has read it, including Wen Zao!

The word "Acacia" is a common word in China, especially in poetry.In Tang poetry, "lover complains about the night, but lovesickness at night", "May you pick more, this thing is the most lovesick", Li Shangyin of the Tang Dynasty said helplessly, "It is useless to love it directly", but Mr. Liang Rengong of the Qing Dynasty stubbornly said " Don't waste lovesickness because it is useless."In addition, there are endless lovesickness poems, which are not only often used between lovers and friends, but also used to satirize current events, so I won’t mention them here.

Speaking of this, I remembered a joke: In 1926, I returned to my alma mater, Yenching University, to teach Chinese for the first grade.Most of the students in this class are male and female students from Fujian and Guangdong who were specially assigned to my class by the Academic Affairs Office. They learn to read.Once I chose half a poem, remembering what kind of bird it was: The gold is far away, the jade pond is sparse, when will the sky and the sea be wide?When we are separated, we only know that lovesickness is dead, but when lovesickness is not dead! The words "lovesickness died" and "when he was not dead" were very difficult to pronounce, and the students couldn't get around them, only hearing "hiss, hiss, hiss" and laughter from the whole room!

Not long ago, one day a female colleague (I remember it was Jiang Xianqun, a teaching assistant in the Department of Biology, her fiancé was Mr. Li Ruqi, also a student of Tsinghua University, two classes higher than Wen Zao, and he was also in the United States at that time) asked me quietly with a smile: "I heard that you are teaching students some fragrant poems and songs in class. Is it possible that you are missing that person overseas?" I think she must be referring to the two sentences about "lovesickness" that I taught students to read. words.As I argued, I couldn't help but blush. On the morning of March 26, 1986 ① Jin Lie (lie), the boundary ditch paved with money, is luxurious in words. --author