Chinese poem illustration: 梦李白二首 其二/ Li Bai in Dream – 2nd by Du Fu
梦李白二首 其二
Li Bai(李白) and Du Fu(杜甫), the two brightest superstar in Tang dynasty, the two most popular poets through Chinese history, they enjoyed a very intimate brotherhood in between. This poem is one of the two condolence poems by Du Fu, when he heard the rumor that Li Bi passed away in a shipwreck.
Du Fu choose his adept 5 characters(五言) to express his deep feeling toward Li Bai, with decent three paragraphs.
King Wind(王风) is special. It is with aspects of Ya(雅) as well as State Wind(国风), it is also the last written poems among Book of Songs during the early stage of East Zhou dynasty(东周). The video gives an answser to it: why and how the King Wind was created and put into the Book of Songs(诗经).
Illustration to this poem starts at 14:01. As the 1st poem in King Wind, it is a mourning for the collapsed West Zhou(西周), a sentimental to the ruined homeland and glory. It created the word Sadness of Millet Twinkles(黍离之悲 or 黍离麦秀)for this sentiment in Chinese literaure, it established a poetry genre as well. A similar poem (破阵子·四十年来家国/李煜) written 1700 years later is a nice comparison.
Dec. 26th is the birthday of Mao Zedong(毛泽东), the founder of new China, this video is for him.
This poem was written in Feb. 1936, when Mao Zedong and his troop were in the darkest moment in his lifetime, while his great vision and utmost optimism were revealed thoroughly. it was regarded one of the best poem(Ci/词) in Chinese history when it was published in Nov. 1945, when China was at a main intersection, the lost people were enlightened by this poem.
The philosophy beneth the poem was analysed, the back ground history explored, the related poem and comment by Liu Yazi(柳亚子) is attached at the bottom as well.
Loess plateau or yellow earth plateau(黄土高原) is with a soil layer of 50-200 meters thick , it was wrongly put as 50km-100km in the video.
Ancient Chinese beleive the changes of universe are constant and predictable(常) with nature’s law, for example the season, while sometimes the universe behaves beyond its Constant(常). When ever it happhens, it is a wonder or disaster to the nature, to human beings. With the above understanding, the title Constant Wars(常武) is far from Zhou people’s philosophy, who values harmony and peace the most. In this video, I put up some reasoning upon this extraordinary title.
This poem is a typical war poem praising the mighty king and his powerful army. Many names in this poem appear very familiar to us, which also appear in some other poems in Book of Songs. Those names identify the poem is about King Xuan(宣王), the second last King of West Zhou dynasty.
