The grief had been lasting for a long time then people said it is the longest grief in China.
I love the poem since I was in my early teens. Yet, I cannot understand the poem until a recent discovery.
It was in the night when my grandmother died and we had to move away from the old house because we could not pay the rent.
My brother and I had rented a small room far away in the suburbs.
We carried only a few things from the old house. One was a large old clock.
I could not sleep that night, and then I heard the strike of the clock once every hour.
Suddenly the line from the unending grief sprang into my mind.
遲遲鐘鼓初長夜。耿耿星河欲曙天。
I had my first unending night when the stars were burning the light and the hour was late with the clock striking.
It was only a simple love story.
The king was crazily in love for a woman, and for political reasons, he had to execute the woman. And then he went for a war.
When he came back from the war, everything was the same as before, except people was getting old. Yet his love had not been subsided.
椒房阿監青娥老
The eunuchs in the winter room with walls heavily covered with chili paste to keep warm were old, like the aged maids.
He was still accompanied by eunuchs after the war.
What's it all about? How come the poet can master Chinese language so perfectly? It was so beautiful that everyone cannot forget?
I was sitting in a park in Hong Kong island. Some one turned on his radio, I heard this poem again.
My feeling of grief was suddenly aroused.
I cannot explain this feeling.
歸來池苑皆依舊。太液芙蓉未央柳。
When the king came back to his old palace, the garden was same as before. The trees and flowers had not changed.
What's the difference?
Why the emotion cannot be settled?
Everything was the same. Yet the beauty was gone.
It seems to be a lightning flashed into my mind.
It's not a love story. It must not be a love story.
It is the story of human emotions.
What the king had been searching was not a lady, but the beauty itself.
He was not allowed to search for the beauty for political reasons, he have to kill the beauty with his own hand.
Yet when he came back, He tried furiously to search for the beauty again.
But the beauty was gone forever.
note
Sorry I have to interrupt a little here:
In the emotions of the Chinese literature, beauty is same with truth. beauty is together with truth. What the king had been searching were more than a single beauty. It must be a complex feeling about everything.
忽聞海上有仙山
山在虛無縹緲間
中有一人字太真
蓬萊宮中日月長 ~ ~
she is there.
her name is 太真
it means "the highest truth"
長恨歌
唐朝白居易
.........
