"Touching the Fish and Yanqiu Words" is a poem written by the famous Yuan Dynasty lyricist Yuan Haowen, which is generally considered to be a famous "love word" in ancient times. Nowadays, people know it, mostly because Of Li Moxuan in "The Condor Heroes", recited this word when he appeared.
In the 1980s, when filming the TV series of the same name of "Condor Heroes", the lyrics of Yuan Haowen were specially adapted into the theme song of the TV series "Ask the World", and the famous singer Zhang Delan was invited to sing. The song is mournful and stubborn, and the audience smells broken intestines.
However, the words in this "Ask the World" are "condensed version". The lyrics only take the upper half of "Touching the Fish and The Words of Yanqiu", and the meaning of the words is simple and popular, which is convenient for dissemination, but it has lost the "literary nature" of the original work.
On the surface, it is a metaphor for human love by describing the love of a pair of geese, but in fact it is not just about love.
Behind this song, it also reflects the longing for the soul mate and life confidant in Yuan Haoqing's heart. Let's take a look at this work together.
I. Appreciation of "Touching fish and goose hill words"
"Touching the Fish, Yanqiu Words" - Yuan good question
What is the world and what is love? Orthodoxy lives and dies. Heaven and south and north double flyers, how many times the old wings have been cold and hot? Rejoice in fun, parting from suffering, there are even more idiot children. Junying has a saying: Ten thousand miles of stratus clouds, a thousand mountains and twilight snow, only for whom to go?
Hengfen Road, lonely drums, desolate smoke is still flat. Summoning some souls, the mountain ghosts cried out to themselves. Heaven is also jealous, unbelieving, warblers swallows are yellow earth. Throughout the ages, in order to stay for the rioters, they sang and drank bitterly, and visited the Yanqiu.
Vernacular Translation:
What are the feelings of the world? Why can some people make promises to each other regardless of life and death? For example, this pair of geese, they once went north and south, nestled next to each other, how many years have passed together?
How much joy there is, how much pain there is, or how infatuated there is like a child on earth. The martyred geese wanted to say in their hearts: That evening, I walked through the clouds and overlooked the earth, a thousand mountains, all covered with thick snow.
It's freezing and the future is uncertain. Now I am the only one left in this world. Who can come with me? Having lost my partner, why should I keep going?
When Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty crossed the Fenhe River, he could no longer hear the lively sound of pipes and drums. There was only a cloud of barren smoke, still shrouding the plain forest. Chanting the Chu Ci cannot bring back the soul of the deceased. Mountain ghosts can only cry secretly in the wind and rain.
The feelings of this goose are only jealous of even God. Such an infatuated goose, I don't believe that after it dies, it will become a piece of yellow earth like those ordinary warblers and swallows.
So I built a tomb for them, and left it for generations to come, and the most loving poets came to cry and sing.
In the opening part of this poem, there was originally a prologue written by Yuan Haoqing himself. In the preface, he confessed that when he was 16 years old, he went to the state to participate in a scientific expedition, and on the way he saw someone catch a goose and kill it.
Another goose that "went out of the net" saw the situation and immediately threw itself into martyrdom. So Yuan Haowen bought the bodies of the pair of geese, buried them by the river, and wrote the poem.
But the song we see today, "Touching the Fish and The Words of Yanqiu", is not the original version created by Yuan Haowen when he was sixteen years old, nor is it even the version he later revised, because the original version has long been lost.
The earliest version we can see so far is the version in the Ming Dynasty's "Relic Mountain Lefu". In this version, the first sentence of the word begins with "Hate the human world, what is love?" The rest of the story is similar to the words we see today.
Some people believe that the saying that "hate the world, what is love" is more in line with the temperament of a 16-year-old teenager. However, this does not prove that it is the earliest version of "Touching the Fish and The Words of Yanqiu".
Yuan Haoqing was a native of Xinzhou, Shanxi, of xianbei descent, and he was one of the most outstanding literary figures of the Jin and Yuan dynasties. His lifelong creations were very rich, and he made extraordinary achievements in the fields of poetry, lyrics, music and novels, influencing the literary circles of the Yuan Dynasty for more than 30 years.
Yuanhao's questioning style is changeable, blending two styles of elegance and boldness. At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhang Yan wrote "Etymology", believing that Yuan Haoqing's level in filling in words was very similar to Xin Qijie, and praised him for being "good at using things and deep in using feelings." There is a source of wind and current, not to reduce the Zhou and Qin."
In particular, Yuan Haoqing's "Touching the Fish and Yanqiu Words" is wonderful in "imitating the mood and setting high intentions". At first glance, it feels less heroic than the hard word, but after careful consideration, you can appreciate the deep meaning of his words.
Because in this song, there is not only lingering compassion and low-minded love, but also the deep affection between some like-minded confidants and friends in the world.
In addition to using emotional people, the creation method of the song of Yuan Haoqing is also quite successful. The upper half of the word begins with a discussion, supplemented by a description of an imaginary scene. The second half of the book reviews the historical past of Hengfen Road, setting off the desolation of things that are not human.
The phrase "summoning the soul of Chu Chu Some He Huo" is borrowed from the "Summoning Souls" in the "Chu Ci", implying that the partner that the author cares about is not actually the kind of "lover" who is only found by instinctive impulses, but from the kind of like-minded and confidants who seek it.
It is reasonable to say that the sixteen-year-old yuan is easy to ask, which is the age when the love sinus first opened. At this time, he saw a big goose martyrdom, so the first thing that came to mind must be love.
But the song we see today is actually a work that he revised after he became an adult. The reason why Zhang Yan said that it was "far-reaching" was that in the second half of this poem, the author mentioned the "Summoning Soul" in the "Chu Ci".
In "Summoning Souls", why did Qu Yuan return with his soul? What kind of soul is he calling? It turned out to be his former "confidant" king of Chuhuai, who was coaxed by the Qin people and imprisoned in Wuguan, and died of depression.
Therefore, when Yuan Haoqing, who became an adult, recalled this wild goose martyrdom incident, what he saw in his eyes was no longer a simple love between men and women. Such feelings are a kind of longing for "confidants" on a larger scale, including the feelings of men and women.
A person is actually very afraid of loneliness. But it is a great pity that most of people have to face loneliness for most of their lives.
We all want to find a like-minded soul mate with ourselves, because only in this way can we support us and complete this miserable and lonely life.
It doesn't matter whether the road ahead is a thousand mountains and twilight snow, or the Fire Sea Knife Mountain. As long as there is such a soul mate who is willing to come and walk with us, then we have nothing to fear. Conversely, we may even lose the confidence to live.
The ancients often said: A soldier dies for a confidant. At the beginning of this poem, a question is used to point out the theme of the word. That is - what kind of feelings can make a person without fear of life and death, and make a contract with another person?
People are afraid of death, why are some people not only not afraid of death, but after losing their soul mate, they take the initiative to die? Is all this due only to the instinctive impulses of animals? Obviously not.
The martyred goose in the word actually did not die for "love", it died for the sake of being able to "go to whom the mountains and twilight snow, only the shadow goes"!
Yuan Haoqing obviously felt that it was very difficult to find a soul mate who was willing to die for the other party. Therefore, he wanted to repair the grave of the big goose and write down this poem, so that the literati of eternity could take this opportunity to drink and cry bitterly for the sake of their confidants.
epilogue
"Touching fish and yanqiu words" is the work of Yuan Haowen when he was sixteen years old, but what we see today is not his original work when he was sixteen years old.
Although the original manuscript has been lost, we cannot arbitrarily say that the sixteen-year-old Yuan is inquisitive and cannot have the deep thoughts in the words. After all, the ancients matured early, and Yuan Hao asked the young man to be early and wise, and at the age of sixteen, he could already go to the examination.
In addition to this song, Yuan Haoqing also wrote a lot of lyrics. The creative level and intention of some of the lyrics are actually not worse than this word, or even better, but the influence is not as good as this word.
That's because what has been said earlier in this poem is very popular. Especially the upper half of the word. There is no need to have rich life experience, nor does it need a high level of culture, when it comes to love, everyone understands.
The far-reaching part happens to be in the second half of the unintelligible part. However, when the relevant TV series wrote the song, it "cleverly" cut off its waist. So in the end, through the TV series, this word has been spread on a larger scale.