Comparing Peach Blossom Fan And I M Explaining A Few Things

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Both Shangren’s Peach Blossom Fan and Neruda’s “I’m Explaining a Few Things” deal with the consequences of war and the impression it leaves on even those who wish nothing to do with it: the lovers in Peach Blossom Fan or the poet Neruda in his poem. In both stories, the subjects are preoccupied with their own lives and interests; the two main characters of the Peach Blossom Fan, Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangyun are entranced in their “young passion”, “so fine that they think of nothing else” (29), but they are soon forced to abandon their love as war rips the two apart while Neruda’s poem focuses on the author’s poems of “poppy-petalled metaphysics” and tales of “lilacs”, “rain”, and “bird In both of these two stories, the main characters seem to …show more content…

Li Xiangjun had the misfortune to fall in love with Hou Fangyu who opposed via letter Zuo Liangyu and his command over the rebellion, forcing Hou to enter into hiding and leave Li behind. Li then attempts suicide to avoid being taken as a courtesan, asking herself how she could “ever betray Hou Fangyu” (36), her one true love. Just as Li was endlessly loyal to her lover, Hou, Neruda holds this same loyalty to the country of Spain. Despite not even being Spanish or spending most of his life in the country, Neruda speaks of the country with a sort of reverence, exclaiming that from “broken Spain” will rise a resistance to the “bandits” which brought the country to its knees. Rather than using the self-defeating action of suicide as Li did, Neruda translates his love into anger. In Neruda’s words, every slain child is a “rifle with eyes”, every “crime” is a bullet. When the war takes away Li’s lover, she locks herself in her house and avoids the world, and when war takes away Neruda’s beloved Spain, he implores others to take up arms and fight back, illustrating their different approaches and outlooks on their respective …show more content…

Moving to Spain, Neruda found love for the country as purely as one may love another person- he speaks as proudly as a local of the bounty of Spain, its “palpitating bread”, “frenzied ivory of potatoes”, and “wave of tomatoes rolling down to the sea” and of the “feet and hands swelled in the streets” selling these goods. This “measure of life” emphasizes the character of the country he calls home and his love for it, making its destruction all the more heart-rending in his eyes. Suddenly, he writes, it all erupted in flames. “Bonfires leapt out of the Earth, devouring human beings” as Francisco Franco and his troops took away the country he loved so dearly. Pablo Neruda is to Spain as Li is to Hou. Having his house and the roots he hoped to grow there destroyed mirrors the Peach Blossom Fan’s separation of the two lovers; out of loyalty for Hou, Li attempts suicide and out of loyalty for Spain, Neruda implores people to engage in righteous struggle and fight back the fascist invaders. The “house of flowers” Pablo worked to grow was demolished in an instant, mirroring Hou Fangyu being torn away from Li overnight as he was forced into hiding. Blood stained the streets of Madrid as it stained Li’s fan and suddenly the poems about flowers, rain, and birds Neruda references in the first stanza no longer seem so important, just as at the end of it all, Hou and Li found out

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