"Dead Water" adopts the artistic techniques of symbolism and irony. The whole story profoundly exposes the dark rule of the Beiyang warlords and expresses the determination to be incompatible with this dark government.
The whole poem is divided into five stanzas and can be divided into three parts. The first part (section 1) expresses the poet's anger towards the corrupt reality of old China, which is like "backwater". The first line of the poem, "This is a ditch of hopeless stagnant water," has a profound meaning: it symbolizes the corrupt, dark, semi-feudal, semi-colonial old China that was in the midst of warlords' melee at that time. At that time, the traditional feudal forces of old China were deeply rooted and penetrated into all fields; the invasion of imperialism and the so-called civilization of the bourgeoisie caused some shameless Chinese to develop the idea of ????foreign slaves; the reactionaries colluded with each other and brutally stifled all progressive new ideas. , new things. It was all of this that made China at that time "a ditch of hopeless backwaters." In this poem, the word "despair" expresses the poet's deep disappointment. The second sentence of the poem, "The breeze cannot blow any ripples." "Breeze" is something that contrasts with "stagnant water" and can be used to metaphor all fresh ideas and power. However, these new things cannot arouse the slightest reaction from "stagnant water". Where the breeze blows, there are no waves, which shows that the stagnant water has become extremely silent. This sentence is a further description of "dead water". The third and fourth lines of the poem, "It's better to throw away more junk metal and just throw your leftovers", describe the poet's feeling of hatred and disappointment in the face of "stagnant water". Since the reality is so dark and makes people despair, it is better to let it completely rot and stink. Maybe it is terminally ill and incurable. It will rot faster and more thoroughly. The old one will die completely, and the new one will grow stronger. These two lines of poetry also show that the poet's passion is full of ardent hope for beautiful things. In the second part (sections 2, 3, and 4), the poet described the "stagnant water" in detail, specifically and vividly exposed the decadent social status quo of old China, and expressed his feelings of hatred, anger, and ridicule towards the old China. In these verses, the poet uses rich imagination, vivid metaphors, vivid color descriptions and sarcastic strokes to gradually and deeply describe the further changes in the stagnant water after throwing in scraps of scrap metal and splashing in leftovers. . "Broken copper and iron" thrown into stagnant water will produce green and red rust. The green rust is like "emerald" and the rust red is like "peach blossom"; in addition, the greasy "leftovers" are scattered on the water surface. , when the sun shines, it is like a shining "Luoqi"; some places are moldy and hairy, and they are like "yunxia"; after the stagnant water is fermented, it will turn into smelly water with the color of "green wine", then It was "covered with pearly white foam". It is in such a ditch of stagnant water that swarms of flower mosquitoes fly chaotically on it, sometimes accompanied by the noisy croaking of frogs. This disgusting stagnant water is so dirty and smelly that it is impossible to stand! Here, the poet gives a detailed and vivid representation of the dark reality of old China by further describing the stagnant water in detail. In this part of the content, the poet uses "jade", "peach blossom", "luoqi", "yunxia", "pearl", etc. with bright colors and beautiful shapes to describe the filthy and dirty stagnant water, just like putting clothes on the devil. A beautiful and elegant coat. This is using false beauty to contrast real ugliness. The poet writes in this way, making ugliness even more ugly. The poet writes about ugliness with beauty, and the ugliness becomes even uglier. The poet uses this unique method to more clearly show the rancid nature of stagnant water, and at the same time, it also gives the poem a strong sense of irony. The third part (the last section) expresses the poet's strong desire to curse reality and eager to change reality. In the first two sentences of this part, the poet completely negates the dark Chinese society in a very decisive tone: "This is a ditch of desperate stagnant water, and this is definitely not a place of beauty." After completely denying it, the sentence "It's better to let ugliness take over and see what kind of world it creates" also expresses the poet's hope in despair. The world created by ugliness can only become even uglier, but when ugliness reaches the extreme, there may be a turn for the better. Therefore, these last two sentences contain not only the poet's despair for the old China, but also his expectations and yearning for the new China, and the poet's strong desire to change reality. Although for the poet, this expectation was very hazy at the time. The whole poem compares the dark and stale old China under the rule of warlords to "a ditch of desperate stagnant water", and strongly lashes and curses it, showing the poet's deep patriotic enthusiasm. Wen Yiduo was the first poet to advocate and practice new metrical poetry, and this poem is also an example of practicing his new metrical poetry ideas. Wen Yiduo argued in "The Rhythm of Poetry" that "the strength of poetry includes not only the beauty of music (syllables), the beauty of painting (words), but also the beauty of architecture (the symmetry of stanzas and the uniformity of sentences)." This poem is fully consistent with his above assertions. First of all, from the perspective of syllables, the poem has the harmonious beauty of syllables, which is mainly reflected in the rhythm of the poem. The rhythm of this poem is very neat. Each line of the poem has four pauses, such as: This is/a ditch/desperate/stagnant water, and the breeze/cannot blow/a little bit/ripples. It's better to throw away more broken copper/iron and just throw your leftovers/leftovers. Here, every four pauses are composed of three "two-character rulers" and one "three-character ruler". Such neat pauses make the syllables of this poem very harmonious, just like a four-beat song, making its rhythm unique. The beauty of rhythmic music. The musical beauty of this poem is also reflected in its rhythm.
Except for the first stanza, the second, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas of the whole poem all adopt the form of intermittent rhyme, and the rhyme is changed once in each stanza, with some changes in unity, so that the rhythm is neat and not rigid. This also makes the new metrical poetry and the old metrical poetry have a clear difference in form. In addition, the first and last stanzas of this poem both use "This is a ditch of hopeless stagnant water" as the first sentence. This repetition is not only a kind of emphasis and echo in meaning, but also has the beauty of going back and forth in rhythm. Secondly, the architectural beauty of this poem is also obvious. The so-called architectural beauty of poetry refers to the even arrangement of lines and stanzas. This poem has five stanzas, each stanza has four sentences and each sentence has nine characters, so that the stanzas are well-proportioned and the sentences are even. Each verse is square and neat, like an angular, strong and upright building, with architectural beauty. Thirdly, this poem also has strong painting beauty. This is mainly reflected in the beauty of the poem's words. When describing stagnant water, the poet paid special attention to selecting words that are easy to arouse people's visual association to enhance the painterly beauty of the poem. For example, in the poem, there are rich and vivid "emerald" green, "peach blossom" red, and "pearl" white, plus descriptions such as "Luoqi", "Yunxia", and "green wine", which make the stagnant water appear. The complex colors undoubtedly greatly enhance the painting beauty of the poem. The poet uses beautiful colors to describe the "surface" of stagnant water, of course, just to powerfully reveal its ugly "inside". The strong contrast between appearance and interior creates a strong ironic effect, just like exaggeration in comics and irony in rhetoric.
The poem "Dead Water" has quite successfully implemented Wen Yiduo's own poetic ideas, and is worthy of being a masterpiece among the poet's many poems.