My life, my life,
I failed at the end of my life and owed at the end of my life.
Now it's up to you to make up for the recovery,
But what do I have?
What can I ask of you?
Let me drown in your eyes, Wang Baoli!
Let me burn in the furnace of your heart!
Let me indulge in your music and die!
Let me suffocate in the fragrance of your breath!
Or let your dignity shame me to death!
Let your cold freeze me to death
Let your ruthless teeth kill me!
Let that ungrateful poison sword stab me to death!
If you give me happiness,
I'm so happy;
If you make me suffer,
I also died of pain;
Death is all I ask of you,
Death is my greatest contribution to you.
It has been said that there are two things in life that have the least self-selection ability, one is birth and the other is death. People can't decide whether they can be born in a satisfactory family. Similarly, it is impossible for people to meet death calmly after everything is satisfied. The arrival of death is often accidental, unexpected, and inevitably not accompanied by great pain. Death aroused people's thinking, and also inspired people's courage and extraordinary actions.
Complementing the topic of "death", people seem to be trying to resist death by action: prolonging life as much as possible is a meaningful "action", and creating and enjoying it before death is another meaningful "action"; But it seems to be the most thrilling to die voluntarily and put death under the control of people's subjective will.
Of course, a man full of rational spirit will not commit suicide for no reason after all. He must have died for a glorious goal and an ideal worth dying for.
Wen Yiduo's death expressed such an "action". Of course, this is not a real "action", but an action that Wen Yiduo completed ideologically, which is an imaginary "action". But the poet always associates imagination with reality, and his imaginary "death" is not necessarily more sincere and moving than the real "death".
So why did Wen Yiduo die? It is for "you", that is, the opposite sex, that is, the ideal love.
Love is not the joy of life. Wen Yiduo didn't enjoy himself, but wanted to die. Why?
The first paragraph of the poem answers this question. In the poet's view, his life is too heavy and unbearable because of too many failures and too many debts. At this moment, "you" appeared, like a gorgeous rainbow in the morning after a heavy rain, like a fountain flowing to a dry desert. You are my only hope and motivation, that is, my soul and my life. Poets are certainly eager to "seek" and "recover" from such an ideal opposite sex. Maybe the loneliness and pain he experienced was really unbearable. He obviously entrusted his whole life to such a "you". Then, when you step into my life, how will I meet and accept it? The tired poet seemed a little confused: "But what can I ask of you?" Love, but I don't know how to love!
Does confusion also contain such a layer of subconscious psychology: this kind of love is too precious and rare for a person like me who is always full of failures and debts. He couldn't believe it, and at the same time there was infinite sadness. Will this sudden light of life suddenly disappear? He is so cherished, so attached to this "life at the end of life". In the intersection of sadness and joy, I chose it. It is better to "die" at this happy moment than to let "You in the Wind" fill my life with desolation again, so "death" has become an ideal way for poets to surpass themselves and sublimate themselves. The poet overcame his fear of death in consciousness and entered the great freedom and happiness that only belongs to his life.
Then, the poet introduced four ways of death in one breath: drowning, burning, drunkenness and suffocation. Of course, every kind of "death" also brings the poet fascinating beauty: in her "eyes", "heart", "music" and "breath", the lover's eyes, heart, voice and breath constitute a wonderful and magnificent new world, which is quite different from the reality around us.
At this time, the poet's inner love is not easy to calm down. Its soul has been firmly attached to its lover's side, and "death" has almost become the only thought. He imagined that once his lover suddenly turned against her and gave her a cold shoulder, he would only be "dead." On the surface, this kind of "death" seems to be full of bitterness and injustice, which is no longer the result of the poet's active choice; In fact, in front of a fanatical admirer, no matter how mean and heartless a woman is, she won't really bite off her "heartless teeth" and stab her "ungrateful poison sword". Obviously, "death" is still the product of the poet's self-consciousness. He cherishes the dream of love and beauty very much. Although even this fantasy may disappear now, the world behind him is even uglier and more unbearable. It is better to die happily than to drag out an ignoble existence! Whether death in the first sense or death in the second sense shows the poet's worship and cherish of beauty and love, as well as his complaint and protest against unfortunate fate.
Mr. Zhu Ziqing once said this in China New Literature Series and Introduction to Poetry. China has always been short of love poems, and there are only things like "sending them inside". This is related to the lack of independent and strong personality consciousness of China poets. Love always belongs to the natural feelings of mature men and women. We can also see that due to the "weakening" of China poets' personality and the "peaceful" tendency of aesthetic taste, they seldom associate love with the ultimate concern of human beings-death. In the unconscious of China people, it really hurts the spirit of "being a man" to work hard for the love of Gangzi! In fact, the problem is by no means so simple. When the images of love and death appeared in a large number of western romantic poems in19th century, we can already see that "death" does not mean weakness caused by "love", and active "death" has nothing to do with "cowardice" in most cases. In a miserable world, living is not necessarily difficult, but facing death is not so simple. So, is it really worth dying for love (which is probably illusory)? This is a question that western poets in the twentieth century have to answer, but the contribution of the nineteenth century cannot be denied.
Wen Yiduo's Love and Death seems to be affirmed from such a historical development background.