Wang Jiaxin was born in Xunxian County (now danjiangkou city) in Hubei Province from 65438 to 0957. 65438-0978 entered the Chinese Department of Wuhan University. 1982 graduated and assigned to teach at Yunyang Teachers College in Hubei Province. 1985 seconded to Beijing Poetry Magazine as an editor, 1990 left. 1992 went to England. 1994 returned to China to teach in the Chinese Department of Beijing Institute of Education. His published poetry collections include Commemoration (1985) and You Cliff (1997).
Second, the Sea Beyond the Mountain —— On Beyond the Mountain (Wang Jiaxin)
On the other side of the mountain is a poem I wrote more than 20 years ago, when I was a college student who came to the university campus from a remote mountainous area. Therefore, for me, rereading this poem is like opening an old photo album that has been sealed for many years and seeing me in my early years that is not naive but makes people feel sad and nostalgic.
Obviously, Beyond the Mountain originated from childhood experiences. I was born at the foot of Wudang Mountain in the mountainous area of northwest Hubei. My parents are primary and secondary school teachers. I have lived in five or six places with my parents since I was a child, but I have never left the world in the mountains. For me when I was a child, the world was a quiet campus after school, clear rivers in mountains and rivers, and silent mountains surrounding all this.
And I happen to be a teenager who is addicted to fantasy and full of strong curiosity about the outside world. The first two sentences of this poem are a true portrayal of my childhood. I think that almost everyone has some "hidden desires" in childhood and adolescence, and this "beyond the mountain" vision and fantasy in the poem constitutes the unique secret of my childhood-it still secretly affects my life.
However, this alone is not enough to form a poem, so "sea" appeared in my life and finally appeared in this poem. The appearance of "sea" just corresponds to "mountain". Show the structure of a poem. The "mountain" and "sea" here can be understood metaphorically: the mountain, a real world, is closed, gloomy and depressed; The sea, an imaginary world, is open, bright and free. The sea is the end of mountains and rivers and the beginning of another world. The sea, from ancient times to the present, is a call for human freedom and imagination. And these meanings are impossible for me to realize when I was young. I just look at the other side of the mountain and imagine the blue of the sea by virtue of my fantasy nature.
However, as people know, this fantasy of another world is the most vulnerable to setbacks in real life. It can be said that any "unrealistic" fantasy will one day be shattered in the face of "cold" reality. I also experienced such painful times repeatedly when I was young. However, it is incredible that the fantasy is frustrated, but the spirit of idealism has taken root in life-it has become more internal and stubborn because of the frustration of the real environment! The second section of the poem mainly reveals this belief in the "sea". Perhaps it is because of my unyielding nature, or perhaps it is a motto I read in junior high school, "As long as you walk along the river, you will find the sea", which gives me this belief. At this time, "sea"-this childhood dream has also been promoted to the whole life level to re-understand. It is different from the sea in the first section and has a certain symbolic color of life ideal. "Yes, I was disappointed again and again/when I climbed to the top of the mountain that tempted me again and again." Maybe any ideal is a trap of temptation, and any ideal is just beyond my power. However, it is in this difficult and tortuous process of seeking that life has been promoted and enriched, and life has been endowed with hope and meaning. "The white tide came night after night/soaked my dry heart again and again. ...
Fate thus created our generation. Our generation, born in the 1950s and 1960s, was educated by idealism since childhood, went to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and came to the university campus after the Cultural Revolution. Some people call us an idealistic generation, while others call us a disillusioned generation. Idealism has cultivated our fantasy and spiritual temperament, but we are also the generation that pays the heaviest price for the illusion of "ideal". Among my contemporaries, many people have gone through hardships and still maintained the spirit of idealism, but many people have lost their hearts and become very confused. It is based on this understanding of my contemporaries that I wrote at the end of this poem: "My friend, please believe-". This is a speech to my contemporaries, but it is also an inspiration to myself: I believe that life has a higher realm. I believe that after climbing countless mountains, I will eventually climb such a peak. I believe that the "ultimate sea" will eventually illuminate our eyes and life after going through hardships. ...
Rereading this poem today, of course, I feel its childishness in art, because the road it shows us far exceeds my imagination when I was young. In real life, although I have seen the sea that my childhood yearned for countless times, the "sea" in my mind is still out of reach. So, what is the most important thing for me now? Still "faith" If I can't reach this affirmation again at a higher level, it's hard to imagine that I will stick to it in my later life. Rereading on the other side of the mountain, looking at the direction of childhood, I have this feeling again.
Third, the guide of Beyond the Mountain (Zhao Xun)
What "On the Other Side of the Mountain" tells is obviously related to the frustration experience that he has been accompanying since he was a child, and his increasingly deep feelings and beliefs in this frustration. However, poetry is a special art, which requires the poet to deal with his repeated pains, passions, beliefs and experiences with "images" instead of simple and conceptual language. Different from many people, Wang Jiaxin did not turn the sufferings he suffered in his life into an angry noise, but experienced the disillusionment of all his ideals from it and turned it into a poetic meditation based on the opposition between "mountain" and "sea".
On the surface, the discovery of "beyond the mountain or beyond the mountain" is nothing more than the disillusionment of such naive illusions as "beyond the mountain is the sea". However, the "mountain" in poetry is a barrier that prevents the poet from reaching the "sea" he yearns for, and it is a realistic existence that prevents his dream from realizing. Therefore, this sense of frustration also indicates all the pains and failures in the poet's life, transcending the specific life experience and becoming a symbol of universal emotional experience.
Correspondingly, the "sea" symbolizes the tempting desire that always calls us to start: "On the other side of the mountain, it is the sea/the sea that embodies faith"; The snow-white tide comes every night/wets my dry heart again and again. The poet believes that "you will eventually reach the top of this mountain/and on the other side of this mountain is the sea"; This "sea", "is a brand-new world/brightens your eyes in an instant"!
Generally speaking, the opposition between "mountain" and "sea" is often unbreakable. As another poet said in The Mountain Man, "He thinks he can't walk out of here in his life. The mountain/sea is there, but it's far away./So he will die halfway/in the mountain and not get there yet." However, in this poem by Wang Jiaxin, the opposition between "mountain" and "sea" and the isolation between "mountain" and "sea" were overcome, because a stubborn "child (me)" appeared, and he kept climbing mountains and mountains to pursue the sea. This "child" can be said to be an unyielding "belief" itself. The Dreamcatcher between mountains and seas embodies our inner "secret desire" and the mental journey of a generation between the hardships of reality and the hard persistence of ideals.
In art, Beyond the Mountain seems to have simple lines, but it is full of waves and close to people's hearts. The poet is full of tenacious beliefs, but his tone is not always high. He didn't shy away from the truth of life. In the first part of the poem, he even wrote in a child's voice: "One day I finally climbed to the top of that mountain/but I almost came back crying/-on the other side of the mountain, or on the other side of that mountain, a cold face/gave my fantasy a zero." These frustrations from negative descriptions, in turn, enhance the authenticity of the opposition of "mountain/sea" from the senses and emotions, and make poetry fully complete the final reversal of "sea" to "mountain" in a powerful conflict. At the same time, this kind of emotional ups and downs also gives the whole poem an appropriate rhythm.