Name: 蘇軾「水貂葛頭 (Su Shi "Shui Diao Ge Tou")
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:51:55.000Z
Duration: 2 min 30 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

水调歌头 (The name of a tune, used for title of poems and  prose)

The Chinese Mid-Autmun day comes on the  fifteenth of July in Lunar Calendar. On this day in  1076 A.D., one of the greatest

poet, artist, writer, calligrapher and statesmen in  Chinese history, Su Shi(Yeah I know it sounds like  sushi) wrote the following poem.

At this moment, his cousin just left him after a visit  for his government job. Su had been exiled from  the center of politics and he was drinking and...

Su Shi was exiled because he wrote poems that  contained words that were ruled out to be  provocative. The question to the appearance of

bright moon reflected that he anticipated a just  bureaucracy and hoped the supernatural power  would direct the system towards justice. This

stereotypical passion towards a political status is  the result of the thousand year old tradition of  feudalistic Chinese society: if you have talent,

then you should go and become a politician.

Su Shi was involved in confronting bureaucracies  who ruled in favor of government monopoly in the  salt business. And confined by the old thinking

that a political career is more deserving than all  other careers, Su Shi came into a complicated  situation where his door into politics is closed

because of his own political stance. Therefore  with the effect of alcohol, he fantasized dancing  in a world without constraint.

Red chambers, curtained door, the sleepless, if  you can feel it, are rhymes, and they describe the  motion of the moonlight. He then blamed the moon

for being round at this moment when he and his  cousin could not gather together. Some historians  concluded that he had the capacity for being

arrogant, and this sentence in this poem might  give a hint on his unjust feeling over his hardship.

The metaphor of moon’s waxing and waning is a  very good illustration of his artistic beauty. In the  end of this poem, he relieved himself by admitting

that sometimes things just don’t work out for  himself.  And his wishes at the end might refer to  him and his cousin, but also could be extended to

a broader sense of self-relief to his hardship,  thus showing his optimism at the very end.