From "A Beautiful Lady", a work of Du Fu, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty. The poem is about a woman who was abandoned by her husband and lived in an empty valley.
The original text (excerpted) is as follows:
There is a beautiful woman in the most beautiful generation who lives in the empty valley.
Since I'm a good son, I've fallen by the grass and trees.
Brothers were killed in Guanzhong in the past.
It is not enough to say that I am a high official, but I am not allowed to take in my flesh and blood.
The translation is as follows:
A woman of great beauty lived alone in a deep valley.
The woman, who claimed to be from a famous family, drifted and fell into the wild forests of the deserted mountains.
When the Guanzhong area was at war, her own brothers were killed.
What was the use of having a high official position, when even the bones were not collected in the grave?
The notes are as follows:
Jedi Generation: the best of the present generation, unrivaled in the world. The best of the best: a beautiful woman.
Secluded: quietly in the boudoir, quiet and self-absorbed.
Fallen: to fall into pieces.
The "Death and Rebellion" refers to the Anshi Rebellion, which was the result of the Anshi Rebellion.
Expanded Information:
This poem was written in the fall of the second year of the reign of Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty, in the year 759. the fifth year after the An Shi Rebellion. In June of the first year of the Qianyuan reign (758), Du Fu was demoted from the post of left pickpocket to the rank of minister of justice in Huazhou. In July of the following year, he resolutely abandoned his post, dragged his family along, and lived in Qinzhou, where he picked acorns and chestnuts on his own payroll to support himself, and The Beautiful Lady was written in the fall of that year.
There has always been a debate about the meaning of this poem. Some people think it is all sentimental, others think it is realistic, but most of the time it is a compromise between the two. Before composing this poem, Du Fu was forced to resign from his post as a military officer in Huazhou, and to make ends meet, he brought his wife and traveled over the mountains to the remote Qinzhou prefecture. Du Fu's loyalty to the Tang court was so great that he was forced to abandon his post and wander the country.
Even when the mountains were difficult to cross and he was starving and cold, he never forgot the fate of his country and nation. This kind of unfair encounter, this kind of high moral character, and the heroine of the poem is very similar. Therefore, the author borrowed other people's wine to pour out the lumps in his chest, and symbolized his own feelings about his own life in her body. Huang Sheng, a Qing scholar, said, "Occasionally, there is this person, there is this matter, appropriate to cut the feeling of releasing ministers, so I wrote this poem."
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