The creative background of prison songs

Writing background: Ye Ting, the author of this poem, was illegally arrested by the Kuomintang during the Southern Anhui Incident. He was imprisoned in Shangrao, Jiangxi, Enshi, Hubei and Guilin, Guangxi, and finally transferred to the concentration camp of the China-US Institute of Special Technical Cooperation in Chongqing. In prison, Ye Ting suffered all kinds of inhuman torture, but remained faithful and unyielding. In the face of all kinds of inducements from the Kuomintang, he showed the integrity of a producer. He wrote this poem on the prison wall and was widely read by later generations.

Introduction: Prison Song is a vernacular narrative poem. This poem was written in 1942. The whole poem is divided into two sections, which are clear and easy to understand, and seem to blurt out without saying anything, but the emotion is intense, the momentum is heroic and the artistic conception is clear and complete. This is the true expression of the poet's noble sentiment, which makes readers feel shocked and moved by the awe-inspiring righteousness in the poem and respects the poet's noble personality.

The original song of prison

(Transcribed according to the author's handwriting)

The doors that people come in and out are locked,

The hole the dog climbed was open,

A voice shouted:

Climb out and set me free!

I long for freedom,

But I also know-

How can a person's body crawl out of a dog hole!

I can only hope,

That day-

The underground fire burns rapidly,

Burn this living coffin with me,

I deserve to live forever in fire and blood!

This article is included in Poems of a Black Prison published by Chongqing University Press. Compared with his poem, it is no different from the original. This poem is now in Chongqing Geleshan Martyrs Cemetery.