Along the lotus pond, there is a winding little cinder road. This is a secluded road; Few people walk during the day, and it is lonely at night. Around the lotus pond, there are many trees and lush. On one side of the road, there are some willows and some trees with unknown names. On a moonless night, the road is gloomy and a little scary. It's fine tonight, although the moonlight is still very weak.
I was the only one on the road, walking around with my hands behind my back. This world seems to be mine; I also like to go beyond my usual self and go to another world. I love excitement and peace; Like to live in groups, like to be alone. Just like tonight, under this boundless moon, a person thinks about everything and thinks nothing, and feels like a free person. What must be done and said during the day can be ignored now. This is the beauty of being alone; I just appreciate the boundless moonlight with lotus fragrance.
On the winding lotus pond, I look forward to the leaves of Tian Tian. The leaves are high out of the water, like an elegant dancer's skirt. Among the layers of leaves, some white flowers are scattered, some bloom gracefully, and some are in bud. Like a pearl, like a star in the blue sky, like a beauty who just took a bath. The breeze blew, sending wisps of fragrance, like a faint song on a tall building in the distance. At this time, the leaves and flowers also trembled slightly, like lightning, passing through the lotus pond in an instant. The leaves are close side by side, so there are clear wave marks.
Below the leaves is flowing water, which is covered and can't see some colors; Leaves are more exposed to the wind.
Moonlight, like running water, falls quietly on this leaf and flower. A thin layer of blue mist floats in the lotus pond. Leaves and flowers seem to have been washed in milk; Like a dream in a sarong. Although it is a full moon, there are faint clouds in the sky, so it can't shine; But I think this is just a benefit-deep sleep is indispensable, and nap is unique. Moonlight shines through the treetops, and the bushes in the high places cast uneven and mottled shadows, but they seem to be painted on lotus leaves. The moonlight in the pond is uneven, but the light and shadow have a harmonious melody, such as a famous song played in the Vatican.
Around the lotus pond, there are trees far and near, high and low, and willows are the most. These trees surround a lotus pond; Only on one side of the path, there are some gaps, which seem to be reserved for moonlight. An example of the color of trees is cloudy, which at first glance looks like a cloud of smoke; But the abundance of willows can be recognized in the smoke. There are distant mountains on the treetops, just a little careless. There are still one or two lamps leaking through the cracks in the tree. What is listless is the eyes of those who are sleepy. At this time, the most lively are cicadas in the tree and frogs in the water; But it's theirs, and I have nothing.
I suddenly remembered the matter of picking lotus. Lotus picking is an ancient custom in the south of the Yangtze River. It seems to have a long history, but it flourished in the Six Dynasties, which can be roughly known from the poems. Lotus pickers are teenage girls, swinging boats and singing bright songs. Needless to say, there are many lotus pickers. It was a lively season and a romantic season. Emperor Liang Yuan put it well in "Lotus Picking Fu":
So the demon boy rowed the boat and said, "Yi Bird" made the first promise meeting and also passed the feather cup; I can move, algae can hang, boats can move and sail. Erqi slim waist bundle element, Yan Gubu; After long summer, in late spring, leaves are tender and flowers are early. I'm afraid of touching the petticoats and laughing, and I'm afraid of leaning over the boat and getting together.
It can be seen that there were wandering scenes at that time. This is really interesting, but unfortunately we are not happy now.
Then I remembered the words in Song of Xizhou:
Lotus is picked in autumn in Nantang, and the lotus is over the head; With his head down, he fiddled with the lotus seeds in the water, which were as green as the lake.
If there are lotus pickers tonight, the lotus here will be considered "over the top"; You can't just see some shadows of running water. This makes me really miss Jiangnan. -thinking like this, I suddenly looked up and felt that it was my own door; Gently pushed the door in, there was no sound, and my wife had slept for a long time.
Beijing Tsinghua University Campus, July 1927
Artistic Features of Zhu Ziqing's Moonlight on the Lotus Pond
The lost name
Moonlight on the Lotus Pond is one of the representative works of Zhu Ziqing's prose. This essay was written in July 1927, when the author was teaching in Tsinghua University, and the lotus pond described in this article was on the campus of Tsinghua. In the spring of this year, following the "April 12th" counter-revolutionary coup in Shanghai, the Kuomintang reactionaries launched the "April 15th" counter-revolutionary massacre in Guangzhou, and white terror enveloped the land of China. As an intellectual, the author is also in anguish and hesitation. He is dissatisfied with the dark reality, but he still lacks understanding of the revolutionary forces and can't see the direction of progress. In such a complicated mood, he used scenery to express his feelings and wrote this famous lyric prose.
At the beginning of the work, the "rather restless" inner state was stated, which not only pointed out the emotional clues of the whole text, but also laid the emotional color of the whole text, giving the moonlight of the lotus pond an "unusual" color and creating specific conditions for the lyrical scenery behind it. The author's thoughts are flying, his thoughts are flawed, his actions or stops, his happiness or sadness are all closely related to this "uneasy" mood.
Walking alone under the moon, the author said, "The elephant has transcended its ordinary self and gone to another world" ── "It is better to construct what it yearns for than to write down what it sees and feels" and "a strange artistic world opposite to reality". In real life, everyone should play a role, do what must be done and say what must be said. However, here, "you can think of everything or nothing", which is a free world that truly belongs to the author. This world is opposite and intertwined with the real world where the author lives, which shows the pain of the writer's soul struggle. This beauty of loneliness reflects the author's attempt to transcend reality. Wind-induced Lotus Leaf, Bai Lianhua, the author's yearning for "his own free world" shows that a free intellectual like him was caught in a dilemma and could not find a way out after the country (People's Party) and * * * (Production Party) split in 1927. The author's heart is contradictory, but he can't be completely divorced from reality. He can only seek temporary spiritual comfort with the help of the world of "lotus pond"
This paper analyzes and discusses the artistic characteristics of Moonlight on the Lotus Pond from the aspects of layout, narrative style, rhetoric, language use and lyricism.
1. The work is ingenious in conception and layout, which is the remarkable feature of Moonlight on the Lotus Pond.
At the beginning of the article, the mood is "quite uneasy", which is the origin of the lyric clue of the work. Behind the "I" to see the lotus pond as the main line, with the behavior of the characters as the clue. The lyrical process of the full text is gradually deepened with the author's steps and the movement of sight. In writing, the lotus pond and moonlight are the center, and the surrounding background is appropriately dyed. The layout is clear and distinct, the details are appropriate, the density is alternating, and it stretches naturally. In addition, the narrative technique of echoing from beginning to end and presupposing suspense is comprehensively used throughout. If you write the lotus pond at the beginning and "rush out", and then "push through the door" after enjoying the perfect scenery at the end, the structure will be very neat. At the beginning of the article, I pointed out that I was "quite restless" and naturally continued to express my emotions, but the author changed his pen to describe what he saw, heard and felt when enjoying the cool at night. Buried a "?" In the reader's mind. ; For example, the second paragraph of the article says, "It's sunny tonight, although the moonlight is still light." I have no intention of moonlight in the lotus pond at ordinary times, but the moonlight is still very good tonight, although it is only faint. What is the reason? For example, in the fifth paragraph, after writing "the cicada in the tree is the most lively, and the frog in the water", he wrote: "But the excitement is theirs, and I have nothing." The author always reveals his heart in the description of the scenery, arousing readers' doubts, attracting readers like a magnet and fascinating. The use of this narrative method, playing hard to get, firmly grasped the reader's heart.
Second, comprehensive use of a variety of descriptive and rhetorical methods.
Mr. Zhu Ziqing deserves to be a master of prose. In this work, he uses metaphor and empathy. The description methods of dynamic and static combination, whole and part, point and surface combination and distance combination show readers the infinite scenery of the lotus pond under the moon.
1, the rhetorical methods of metaphor and empathy and the use of reduplication are vivid and vivid:
The fourth paragraph describes the lotus leaf. "Tian Tian" describes the lotus leaf in the pond horizontally, with a large area, and "Layer" describes the lotus leaf vertically. The word "graceful" shows the graceful posture of the lotus leaf, and the metaphor of the dancer's skirt properly describes the posture of the lotus leaf fluttering in the wind. Write about the lotus flowers set off by boundless green leaves, which are in bud, so colorful, delicate and shy; "Like a pearl, like a star in the blue sky", "Pearl" is a crystal clear description of lotus; "Stars in the Blue Sky" depicts the lotus flowers twinkling in the distance against the background of green lotus leaves and moonlight.
With lotus flowers, there is no shortage of lotus fragrance. "The breeze blew and sent a faint fragrance, like a faint song on a distant building." Compared with singing, this easy-to-understand auditory feeling arouses readers' sense of smell with intermittent distant singing, connects hearing with sense of smell, and uses empathy expression. Make indescribable feelings accurately expressed, very vivid.
The harmony of light and shadow in the writing pool is compared with the famous music played on the violin, so this harmony of light and shadow becomes melodious music in the ear. Readers can appreciate the beauty of moonlight by imagining beautiful music. This description of moonlight can be said to be superb.
2. The description of dynamic and static combination, whole and local, point and surface, far and near, virtual and real describes the elegance of moonlight in the lotus pond from many angles and sides:
In the fourth natural section, after static description of lotus leaves, lotus flowers and lotus fragrance, the dynamics of the lotus pond are captured, and the breeze passes by, causing "slight vibration" of lotus leaves and lotus flowers. Because the leaves are "close side by side", this vibration is transmitted from one leaf to another, "to the other side of the lotus pond at once". The combination of motion and static makes the whole picture dynamic.
When describing the lotus pond, we always write the "twists and turns" of the lotus pond first, and then write the lotus leaf, lotus flower and lotus fragrance in the lotus pond separately, so as to make it clear from the whole to the part.
In the sixth paragraph, when describing the scenery around the lotus pond, the trees around the lotus pond "look like a fog at first glance", which describes the overall image of the tree as a whole, and "the abundance of willows" describes the moonlight from the point of view of combining point and surface.
The description of distance, such as the description of lotus in the fourth paragraph: "Like a pearl, like a star in the blue sky", describes the beauty of color and light of lotus from the perspective of distance. Pearl describes the exquisiteness of the near lotus, and "Stars in the Blue Sky" describes the shape of the far lotus swaying in the lotus leaf and moonlight.
The combination of reality and reality is like a dream. The second paragraph of the article describes the environment around the lotus pond as "quiet" and "few people walk during the day, but it is even more lonely at night", which shows the author's lonely heart in this atmosphere. Then write about the trees around the lotus pond, and then write about the gloomy weather when there is no moonlight, outlining the environment of the lotus pond and the author's mood at the moment. Scenery and lyricism are perfectly combined, without trace. The third natural paragraph "this world seems to be mine; I also like to go beyond myself and go to another world. " "Like" and "like" exist; Words and sentences such as "dream with veil", "nap" and "sound sleep"; The picture of Moonlight on the Lotus Pond seems to be filled with smoke. Vague, vague, vague, is the author's fiction. It is the author who deliberately creates a "dream-like" artistic conception and brings readers into a dreamlike world to enjoy the beautiful scenery described by the author. The author is original and seeks spiritual comfort by this dream.
Third, the language is fresh and natural, beautiful and elegant, vivid and concise.
Mr. Zhu Ziqing attaches great importance to the tempering of language. In the essay Moonlight on the Lotus Pond, the author uses poetic words, light pen and light color to describe the realm of God, and his expression is expressive. Read the words carefully, cadence and rhythm. The use of verbs and reduplications not only accurately and vividly renders and strengthens the meaning of poetry, but also has clear rhythm, harmonious rhythm and rich musical beauty. The fifth natural paragraph "moonlight is like running water, quietly leaking on this leaf and flower." The metaphor of running water not only describes the flow of moonlight, but also highlights its thorough and bright characteristics. The word "drain" turns static into dynamic, which further strengthens the sense of mobility of moonlight. Quiet writes about the softness of moonlight. Showed readers a beautiful picture of the moon and lotus. "Thin blue mist floats in the lotus pond." The author uses "thin blue fog" to describe the lotus pond filled with water vapor and shrouded in fog. "blue mist" is an aerosol emitted by moonlight on the green lotus pond, and the author accurately captures the mixed state of moonlight and water vapor. "Leaves and flowers seem to have been washed in milk; It's like a dream, with a layer of gauze inside. " The moonlight shines on leaves and flowers, just like washing them in milk. It writes about lotus leaves and lotus flowers in the moonlight. The opaque state of milk, such as flowers and leaves in the moonlight, gives people a vague feeling, which is just similar to the author's hazy psychological state. The full moon is not bright, and the unclear lotus leaves and lotus flowers create a hazy and ethereal artistic conception, like "a dream with a veil." In this case, the author temporarily forgot the sadness in his heart. Therefore, the author believes that "this is just a benefit." The use of four trees in the lotus pond and two sets of overlapping words "distance" and "height" shows the number and layering of trees. Be concise.
Fourth, make good use of colors to express emotions, and the description of scenery is integrated with the scene.
Excellent painters are good at expressing different emotions (emotions) with different colors. In his own works, Mr. Zhu Ziqing skillfully used this technique to express his feelings by describing his works in thick or light, cold or warm colors as needed. "Moonlight on the Lotus Pond" uses "pale colors" throughout: faint moonlight, faint clouds, continuous lotus fragrance, sparse beautiful images of curved willows, and one or two lights leaking from the distant cracks in the treetops ... This faint scenery is as faint as the author's inner loneliness and sadness, so the author thinks that "this is just a benefit". Articles such as spring and green are colorful, and the articles exude the spirit of optimism and enterprising. This kind of artistic technique, which contains feelings in scenery, feelings in scenery, setting off scenery with feelings and blending scenery, makes the scenery described by the author not pure scenery in nature, but "humanized scenery" full of human feelings. Mr. Zhu Ziqing always incorporates his own feelings and emotions when describing objective scenery. The so-called "mountaineering is full of feelings, while watching the sea is full of meaning." This is the reason why Zhu Ziqing's prose is enduring. Moonlight on the Lotus Pond describes the old custom of picking lotus in the south of the Yangtze River and describes the joyful scene of picking lotus. Between the lines reveals the author's infinite yearning for the leisure life in Jiangnan, so the author wrote: "This makes me miss Jiangnan after all." Liu Xie said: "The classics of emotion and literature, the latitude of rhetoric and reason, followed by classics." (Liu Xie: "Wen Xin Diao Long Cai Qing") The author writes the beauty of nature with true feelings, and replaces gorgeous sentences with simple and vivid language. Writing about scenery is a real geographical situation, not to write about scenery. Therefore, when appreciating Zhu's prose, the reader's heart can easily melt into the scenery described by the author, and there is no awkward and artificial feeling. Zhu's lyric is very distinctive, that is, sincere, implicit and moderate.
Sincerity is sincere, from the heart; Implicit euphemism, delicate, slightly embarrassing; The doctrine of the mean means appropriate shade, thick but not thick, clear but not light. For example, at the end of the article "Come Back", he wrote me a letter after I came to the north, saying, "I am in good health, but my arm hurts badly, so it is inconvenient to write a pen, and the time for me to leave is not far away." I read here, and in the crystal tears, I saw the back of a fat blue cotton robe and a black mandarin jacket. After reading his father's letter, the author showed his true feelings and burst into tears, imagining his father's back in crystal tears. The expression of emotion is very real, and the author's thoughts and affection for his father can be imagined. Zhu Ziqing praised the Dutch painter Ran Bolang like this: "He is different from ordinary people. He created the art of individuality and integrated his thoughts and feelings into his paintings. " In fact, Zhu Ziqing himself is a very distinctive writer, putting his thoughts and feelings into his works.
Five, contrast technique, rendering atmosphere
Contrast is a common technique in China's traditional art. It can highlight what the author wants to emphasize and render the necessary atmosphere of the work. People often use "drying the moon" to illustrate this artistic technique. Mr. Zhu Ziqing used the method of comparison freely. In Moonlight on the Lotus Pond, the lotus pond and moonlight set each other off: the lotus pond is a lotus pond illuminated by moonlight; Moonlight is the moonlight of the lotus pond. The two complement each other and form a harmonious picture. "Moonlight is like running water, quietly leaking on this leaf and flower." The thin blue fog floats in the lotus pond, and the leaves and flowers seem to have been washed in milk, and they are like dreams with veils. "Moonlight is like a stroke in Chinese painting. Under the irradiation of moonlight, the lotus pond adds more hazy beauty. For example, lay a layer of yarn on the lotus pond. The fog floating on the lotus pond is different from ordinary white fog, because it appears in green leaves and faint moonlight, so it is "blue fog" The lotus in the moonlight fog is white and soft, blurred and hazy. Described by the dream of "milk washing" and "sarong", this atmosphere is properly rendered.
Sixth, the description of scenery "has both form and spirit"
In ancient Chinese aesthetic theory, as early as the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Gu Kaizhi, a Chinese painter, put forward the theory of "describing God with form". Later, Sheikh of South Vietnam put forward "six methods" with "vivid charm" as the core. China's traditional literary criticism also requires the description of scenery to be "similar in shape" and "similar in spirit". "Similarity in spirit" requires that art should express the natural, true and individual characteristics of things. Form is the foundation, spirit is the sublimation of form, and form and spirit are the highest realm of literary description. The scenery in Zhu Ziqing's works often rises from similarity to spirituality, which has vivid charm with the author's experience and imagination of the scenery. Look at this passage in Moonlight on the Lotus Pond: "Leaves are high above the water, like graceful dancers' skirts. Layers of leaves are dotted with some white flowers, some of which bloom gracefully and some are in bud shyly; Like a pearl, like a star in the blue sky. The breeze blew, sending wisps of fragrance, like a faint song on a tall building in the distance. At this time, the leaves and flowers also trembled slightly, like lightning, passing through the lotus pond in an instant. The leaves are close side by side, so there are clear wave marks. Below the leaves is flowing water, which is covered and can't see some colors; The leaves are even more windy. " The shape of the lotus leaf is: "Tian Tian", "layer upon layer" and "like a graceful dancer's skirt"; The metaphor of "dancer's skirt" describes the "spirit" of leaves: leaves sway in the wind. After a comprehensive investigation, the author focused on the small white flowers in evergreen trees. The author first wrote the shapes of "beating" and "blooming" of the lotus, and then wrote the different postures of the lotus with two groups of modifiers of "elegance" and "shyness". Then, from the perspective of "light" and "color", it shows the different feelings of seeing lotus from a distance and from a close distance. Explain the main points in detail. Even the indescribable "A wisp of lotus fragrance" skillfully uses the rhetorical device of substituting flowers for trees to arouse readers' olfactory experience with the auditory feeling of distant singing, which can be described as vivid. When the breeze blows, the lotus leaves vibrate, turning into Bi Hen and swinging to the other side of the lotus pond. The description of this detail makes the reader immersive. After a series of descriptions, the author used the word "more wind-induced" to summarize the beauty of lotus leaves above running water in the moonlight. How to be "more windy"? Because the image description is concrete and realistic, readers can completely carry out creative imagination on the basis of existing experience. The author puts it in moderation here, just right. "The moonlight shines through the treetops, and the bushes in the heights fall in the jagged and mottled shadows, just like ghosts; The sparse shadows of curved willows are like paintings on lotus leaves. The moonlight in the pond is uneven; But light and shadow have a harmonious melody, such as a famous song played by Van Gogh. " Moonlight shines through the trees, and mottled tree shadows are reflected on the lotus leaves. The faint moonlight interweaves with the shadows of trees. The moonlight shone on the lotus pond through the cracks in the trees. Of course, the moonlight in the pond is uneven. There is a change of light and shade between light and shadow, and there is internal harmony in the middle. These changes are difficult to describe. Once again, the author uses the rhetorical method of moving with emotion to make the harmony of light and shadow become melodious violin music, so that readers can experience the harmonious beauty of moonlight in the imagination of wonderful music. This description of moonlight is also difficult to describe.
Moonlight on the Lotus Pond reads like following the author to appreciate a colorful picture. The author mobilizes all artistic techniques to create a realm of poetic and picturesque scenery. What is poetic in the works is the beauty of moonlight in the lotus pond. From time to time, the author takes the lotus pond as the main scene, moonlight as the background, combines dynamic and static, and uses vivid metaphors and synaesthesia techniques to describe the boundless scenery of the lotus pond in the moonlight from far and near, from inside to outside. The author sometimes uses the moonlight as the main scene and the lotus pond as the background, and skillfully uses the truth and reality to outline the moonlight style of the whole lotus pond in the shade. The author tries to explore the poetry contained in nature, so that the sound, light, color and taste are full of charm, which is as charming as the moonlight in the lotus pond. This writing method of setting off feelings with scenes and blending scenes not only makes the works poetic, but also makes them interesting and beautiful.
Mr. Zhu Ziqing, on the other hand, stands in the forest of May 4th prose with his "sincere and quiet attitude". His prose, with its unique artistic style, adds magnificent colors to China's modern prose and sets a "model of vernacular beauty" for establishing a brand-new aesthetic feature of China's modern prose.