Life is impermanent, and a lonely sail is also happiness

Reading Li Bai's extant poems, he used the image of "lonely sail" in three poems, first for himself and the other two for sending off friends.

The lone sail came to the side of the sun

Datang is so big, I want to go and see!

25-year-old Li Bai, a lonely boat down the Yangtze River, at the moment when he saw Tianmen Mountain in the distance, he couldn't help his passionate heart and wrote a poem for this mountain that has been passed down through the ages:

The Gate of Heaven interrupted the opening of the Chu River,

The clear water flows east to this back here.

The green mountains on both sides of the strait are opposite,

The lone sail came to the side of the sun.

At the moment of writing this poem, Li Bai did not think that his life would be closely related to a small city called Dangtu near this mountain, and he would not have thought that this small city would become the final destination of his life.

At this moment, Li Bai was full of vigor, full of green mountains and rivers, full of ambition.

In the simple combination of Chinese characters, what cannot be hidden is Li Bai's self-confidence of "heart and ambition" and a beautiful vision of a bright future.

The lone sail is far away

At this moment in Gangnam, it is fireworks in March.

Li Bai, 28 years old, met Meng Haoran, who was older than him.

At that time, Meng Haoran was already famous all over the world and was a real poetry celebrity, while Li Bai was still unknown, and he was in Anlu, about 300 miles away from Meng Haoran's hometown, living a life of hidden hot kangtou wine for his wife and children.

Meng Haoran to Li Bai, just as the later Li Bai to Du Fu, became a close friend from admiration, and the friendship between them became one of the indispensable contents that was praised by posterity like their poetry.

Hearing that Meng Haoran was going to go east to Yangzhou, Li Bai met with the idol big brother at the Yellow Crane Tower early.

Li Bai is a person who walks away, although he does not feel that he has come to Japan and the impermanence of life, but in his life, in order to get together with friends, he always does not hesitate, just like those friends who follow and admire him, wading thousands of miles through mountains and rivers, but only to get along with Li Bai for a few or even an overnight.

In the face of fate, no one can decide which one comes first tomorrow and the accident.

This style of saying and practicing the covenant immediately between Li Bai and his friends is worthy of my serious study and practice.

It is precisely for this reason that there is an age-old song in this farewell poem:

The late Man Xi ci Yellow Crane Tower,

Fireworks descend on Yangzhou in March.

The lone sail is far away and the blue sky is gone,

Only see the Yangtze River skyline flow.

Smoke and rain misty, flowers blooming, such a day, is the day of the long trip, not to mention the big brother who looks up in his heart to go to the most prosperous Jiangnan metropolis in the world, in addition to blessing the big brother, more is the infinite yearning for the destination where the big brother goes.

All the while watching the lonely sail that the eldest brother was riding disappeared little by little at the junction of the blue sky and the river, Li Bai's heart also followed the river water undulating, and could not be calm for a long time.

There is a way that the love is thin when the love is thick, and the 28-year-old Li Bai, with 28 Chinese characters, expresses the mood of sending off the eldest brother Meng Haoran along the jiangdong to Yangzhou almost perfectly. You can't feel That Li Bai is saying goodbye, and the poetry created by the 28 Chinese characters is a farewell.

Savoring carefully, in addition to the farewell feelings quietly soaked into the words, Li Bai's praise for the Tang Dynasty was even more shocking to people "listening to the thunder in the silent place".

The Yellow Crane Tower, Fireworks March, Yangzhou, and the Yangtze River have long become the four symbols of Chinese culture, and Li Bai's poem, just 28 words, has made a seamless endorsement of these four symbols!

Only Li Bai has such creativity and pen power.

About 27 years later, a Border Poet named Cen Shan also wrote a farewell poem for a friend, "White Snow Song Sends the Military Judge Back to Beijing", which contains two sentences at the end:

The mountain circuit turns out of sight,

Leave a horse line in the snow.

With a little chewing, is this poem similar to "the lone sail is far away and the blue sky is exhausted, only to see the skyline of the Yangtze River"?

The sea is wide and lonely

At the age of 34, Li Bai was in Jiangxia, sending off one friend after another, and this year can be regarded as the concentrated farewell year in Li Bai's life.

One of the poems, "Sending Zhang Sheren to Jiangdong":

Zhang Han went east, just in the autumn wind.

The sky is clear and the geese are far away, and the sea is wide and lonely.

Daylight is twilight, and the vicissitudes are difficult.

Wu Zhou is like seeing the moon, and a thousand miles are lucky to miss each other.

This is a poem that needs to be sung slowly and slowly.

Li Bai's poetry can be exaggerated and exaggerated, it can also be carved out of the hibiscus naturally, and it can also contain deep affection in the plain... This poem is the latter.

Someone once commented on some of Li Bai and Jia Dao's poems: "'Tianqing is far away from a goose' and 'the great river flows day and night', 'Under the leaves of the pavilion', and they carry the breath of the flying immortals." Jia Island 'fallen leaves full of Chang'an', makeup row whispering, talentless and talented, deceitful? ”

Comparing the verses of Jia Dao and Li Bai horizontally is not a principle of comparison. Jia Dao is no longer good, and his poetry is far beyond the so-called "poets" of today's self-congratulatory "bullshit body".

In this year, Li Bai also bid farewell to a friend who was closely related to his fate in Jiangxia.

Chu Shui is clear as the sky, and the distance will be clear to the blue sea.

People are thousands of miles away, happy in a cup.

The valley birds chanted on a sunny day, and the river apes whistled in the evening wind.

I can't cry in my life, but I cry endlessly here.

This friend's name was Song Zhi ti, Song Zhi Qing's younger brother.

From the perspective of poetic language alone, I have already felt the friendship between Li Bai and Song Zhiti.

People are thousands of miles away, happy in a cup. How cheerful to say, obviously it is that the wine is less than a thousand cups of confidants, but it is still necessary to pour out the cup of wine in the cup in his hand, and then thousands of miles away from the heavens, there are feelings and tears in the wine, there are tears and there are sighs about the impermanence of fate.

23 years after bidding farewell to Song Zhiti, the 57-year-old Li Bai was imprisoned for the "Yongwang Li Xuan Incident", and Song Ruosi and others in the imperial history were released for him to wash the snow.

Song Ruosi is the son of Li Bai's good friend Song Zhiti.

Inadvertently, Li Bai's experience has verified an unbreakable truth - multiple friends and multiple paths.

The premise is that every friend of the many must be a true friend, not those little people who see profit and forget righteousness. Of course, Li Bai may not have had such a original intention of making friends at that time, which is just another coincidence of history and fate.

Back to the title, life is impermanent, and a lonely sail is also happiness.

What I want to say is that living is the starting point of all hope and beauty, and then there is the poetry of walking alone, then there is the farewell of friends, then there is a drunken rest, then there is the anxiety and sweetness of waiting, and then there is the surprise of loss and recovery...

This is exactly what I lamented two months ago:

March 23, 2022