Chinese poem illustration: 夜雨寄北 Writing to North in a Raining Night by Li Shangyin
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A letter to his wife in Chang’An city, in a lonely autumn raining night in the vast Ba mountains(巴山) of north Sichuan province.
In the fading late Tang period, struggling through his zigzag ways of career life in a corrupted government, he tasted the helpless and hopeless feeling since his early 30s, thus his political ambition diverted to his personal life and feelings more and more, this could be reflected in his poems of sentiment.
As one of top love poems in Chinese poetry, it also created some sentimental image for later Chinese: Ba mountains, Raining Night, Autumn Pond etc.( 巴山, 夜雨, 秋雨, 秋池, 西窗剪烛….) , it is also a good example of the writing technique: embedding feelings in the views(寓情于景). The delicacy of writing on time and space is explored.
夜雨寄北
李商隐
君问归期未有期，
巴山夜雨涨秋池。
何当共剪西窗烛，
却话巴山夜雨时。
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