Homesickness and Nostalgia

Water has often been personified and endowed with the poet’s own emotions in pre-modern Chinese poetry. The poet’s emotions resonate with the flowing water, so the continuously flowing gesture of water becomes a carrier of emotional expression and confession. Three famous poets of the Tang Dynasty, Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei, all used the long flowing water to express their longing and reluctance for their hometowns and old friends.

For instance, In the poems of the Tang Dynasty, poets often used the long flow of water to symbolize the endless sorrow of separation, expressing a kind of hometown sentiments. The poet transposes the spatial barrier of water to human emotions, which becomes a barrier between two feelings of people. The poet uses water as a metaphor for the sorrow of separation, rendering the feeling of parting and expressing the longing for home and friends. In addition, poets often use the metaphor of running water that never returns to express their nostalgia for past lives. Because running water never returns, just as many things that have passed and people that have been lost cannot be recovered, the poet uses the metaphor of running water that never returns as a metaphor for past events and old feelings that passed away. Furthermore, poets often use the long flowing water as a metaphor for the depth of feelings. The river flows endlessly and the lake is deep. Poets use the length and depth of the water as a metaphor for his emotions, expressing his longing for his friends and hometown. In conclusion, famous poets in the Tang Dynasty, like Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei, all use water as a metaphor for the barrier of two people’s emotions, for past events and old feelings that cannot be recovered, and for the deep feelings to express their nostalgia for their hometowns, old friends, and past lives.