The swallows have gone, but they will come again; the willows have withered, but they will be green again; the peach blossoms have withered, but they will bloom again. But tell me, wise one, why are our days gone forever? ——Someone stole them: who is that? Where is it hidden? It's just that they escaped on their own. Where are they now?
I don’t know how many days they gave me; but my hands are becoming increasingly empty. Counting silently, more than eight thousand days have slipped by my hands; just like drops of water on a needle's tip dripping into the ocean, my days have been dripping into the flow of time, without sound or shadow. I couldn't help but feel dizzy and burst into tears.
Whatever goes is gone, and what comes is coming; how hurried is it in between? When I got up in the morning, two or three slanting sun beams came into the hut. The sun has feet! It moved gently and quietly; I followed it in a daze. Thus--when I wash my hands, the days pass by the sink; when I eat, the days pass by the rice bowl; when I am silent, the days pass by before my gazeful eyes. I can feel his haste now, so I reach out my hands to hold him back, but he keeps flowing past my withholding hands. In the evening, as I lie in bed, he will stride over my body and fly past my feet in his agile way. Went. When I open my eyes and see the sun again, another day has slipped away. I hid my face and sighed. But the shadow of the new days began to flash through the sigh again.
What can I do in this world of thousands of households in the days when I am running away like flying away? There is only wandering, nothing but hurrying; in the rush of more than eight thousand days, what is left but wandering? The past days are like light smoke, blown away by the breeze, like mist, evaporated by the early sun; what traces do I leave behind? Have I ever left traces like gossamers? I came to this world naked, will I go back naked in a blink of an eye? But I can't get over it, why do I have to go through this life in vain?
Hurry
Zhu Ziqing's prose poem "Hurry" was written on March 28, 1922. It was the ebb of the May Fourth Movement, and reality kept disappointing the author. However, the poet was not willing to sink in the hesitation, and he pursued persistently from the standpoint of "neutralism". He believes: "Various processes in life have their own independent meaning and value - every moment has the meaning and value of every moment! Every moment has its own appropriate position in the duration of time." (Zhu Ziqing's "To Yu Pingbo") "Letter" November 7, 2022) Therefore, he must "step on the soil step by step and lay deep footprints" (Zhu Ziqing's "Destruction") in order to obtain "the satisfaction of the paragraph." The whole poem reveals the poet's inner complaint of injustice in a touch of sadness, which also reflects the common mood of intellectual youth during the ebb of the "May Fourth Movement".
"Hurry" is the poet's inspired work. The spring scene in front of him suddenly aroused his emotions, and the poet expressed it with the help of imagination. Imagination "makes unknown things take shape and appear, and the poet's pen makes their images complete, giving the ethereal nothing a place to live in and a name to call it." (Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream") The poet makes the ethereal nothing Time, an abstract concept, is expressed through phenomena, and the poet follows the clues of his emotions to select and capture the vivid image. The poet's emotions show undulating waves as time goes by, from invisible to tangible, from looming to clear, a set of constantly changing pictures.
"The swallows have gone, but they will come again; the willows have withered, but they will bloom again; the peach blossoms have faded, but they will bloom again." The poet outlines a light picture with a few strokes. The author does not describe the actual feeling of the spring scene, but brings the readers into the picture, accepts the emotional infection, and at the same time makes visual hints: the prosperity and decay of nature shown in this picture are traces of the passage of time, from which the poet Follow the path of your own life. But "my" days are "gone forever", invisible and intangible. Was it "stolen" or "escaped"? The signs of natural metabolism contrast with his invisible days, revealing the poet's feeling of loss in a series of questions.
"Like a drop of water dripping in the ocean, my days drip in the flow of time." Comparing my more than 8,000 days to a "drop of water" is a novel metaphor, an extreme exaggeration, and a metaphor for the ocean. Compared with the vastness of the flow of time, it highlights the "no sound, no shadow" characteristics of my own life. In fact, there are traces of my own life here, and a drop of water is its embodiment. When water drops in the sea, it has its slight sound. The poet tries his best to feel it visually and aurally, searching for the past days. But more than eight thousand days "slipped away" quietly. The ruthless nature of time and the shortness of life made the poet "weeping" and "crying".
How "hurried" is time? The poet did not make abstract discussions. He expressed his feelings and latent consciousness through images, "penetrating the familiar surface and looking for the "fresh things" where no one has been before. (Zhu Ziqing's "Poetry and Feelings") Therefore, the ethereal time is visualized, and the poet's "unique secret" is revealed in the accustomed life pictures
"In the morning, two or three directions shot into the hut. The slanting sun. The sun moves gently and quietly. "The sun is personified. He steps forward like a young girl, quietly walking past the poet, following the sun. The "movement" also "followed the rotation in a daze."
Then, the poet uses a series of parallel sentences to show the flow of time. Eating, washing hands, and meditating are details of people's daily lives, but the poet keenly sees the flow of time. When he tried to keep it, it "stepped over" nimbly, "flyed" lightly, "slip away" quietly, and "flashed" quickly, and the pace of time became faster and faster. The poet uses lively words to describe that the image of time is constantly changing, giving people a sense of living life. We hear the light and lively footsteps of time, and also hear the trembling of the poet's heart.
In the rush of time, the poet wanders, ponders and pursues stubbornly. The dark reality conflicts with his own enthusiasm, and the rush of time contrasts with his own inaction, which makes the poet see more clearly: "The past days are like light smoke, blown away by the breeze, like mist, evaporated by the early sun." Melting." If the third section still uses the author's specific feelings of a day to reflect the passage of time, and the individual to reflect the general, here, the author makes a high-level summary of the passage of more than 8,000 days, making time rush. The various images that have passed away are condensed into one point, making the passage of time more clear and perceptible: there is color, which is light blue and milky white; there is movement, which is "blown away" and "evaporated" ". The poet saw it, touched it, and consciously felt the passage of time with all his body and mind, pursuing the "gossamer traces" of his life.
As the poet's emotions fly, he creates a situation, visualizes the ethereal time, and adds a series of lyrical questions, naturally revealing his soul's self-struggle and self-confession of pain. See his wandering and persistent pursuit. There is a strong lyrical atmosphere in the simplicity and plainness.
Poetry has the quality of musical beauty. Metrical poetry relies on meter and rhyme to reflect its musicality, while free verse also uses line division and rhyme to maintain its rhythm. Prose poetry abandons all external forms, and its musical beauty naturally emerges from the organic unity of the poet's inner emotional ups and downs and the rhythm of language. Hunter believes: "Although it is prose, it sometimes shows the sufficient existence of rhythm, so it diverges from its nominal type and obtains the name of 'prose poetry', which is a semi-form in the field of poetry. Rhythm piece”. (Translated by Fu Donghua in "Introduction to Aesthetics") "Hurry" is such a "semi-rhythmic work".
"Hurry" expresses the rapid flow of emotions caused by the author's pursuit of time traces. The whole style is unified in "lightness", the rhythm is sparse and smooth, brisk and fluent. In order to harmonize the rhythm of emotions, the author uses a series of parallel sentences: "When I wash my hands, the days pass by the basin; when I eat, the days pass by the rice bowl; when I am silent..." The same sentence pattern is streamlined, one after another. The lively yet tranquil picture unfolded rapidly with strands of emotions, making me seem to see the flow of time. Moreover, most of the sentences are short, with five or six words per sentence and appear brisk and smooth. The syntactic structure is simple, without multi-level changes, like a flowing river that is continuous, like a well-tuned piano, with continuous sound waves. Its musicality does not focus on the rhythm of the pronunciation of the words, but on the smoothness and lightness of the sentences. The author did not deliberately carve it out, but just "wrote it casually and honestly", using vivid and vivid spoken language, Express the poetic feeling without restraint, and the rhythm of the language and the rhythm of the emotion will naturally match, making the poem achieve symmetry and harmony.
The use of overlapping words in "Hurry" also gives its language a rhythmic beauty. The sunshine is "slanting", it moves "gently and pretty", "I" rotates "in a daze", time goes "hurriedly", it spans "quickly and cleverly"... The use of these repeated words, The poem not only achieves visual authenticity, but also achieves auditory authenticity, that is, on the one hand, it depicts the appearance of the passage of time, and on the other hand, it writes the sound of time moving forward. At the same time, the poet describes objective things on the one hand, and expresses subjective feelings on the other. The sound of reality causes the poet's emotional fluctuations, which are expressed through the sound of language, and the emotions and scenery are naturally integrated. We can also see that the poet's repeated words are naturally and evenly distributed in each sentence to show its distant and distant rhythm, which is consistent with the author's subtle emotional fluctuations.
The use of repetition is also a common method used in prose poetry to maintain its musical characteristics. The so-called "saying it again and again" not only shows the depth of the poet's emotion, but also adds to the melody of the poem. "Only wandering, nothing but hurrying; in the rush of more than eight thousand days, what else is left but wandering?" Words such as "wandering" and "hurrying" appear repeatedly, and a feeling of resentment echoes repeatedly. "What traces have I left? Have I ever left traces like gossamers?" The changes in numbers in sentences with the same meaning advance the emotions layer by layer, showing neat beauty in the unevenness. The repetition of the conclusion repeatedly strengthens the main theme of the work and depicts the ups and downs of the poet's emotions. The use of fuda and repeated chanting have the effect of singing three sighs.
The structure of "Hurry" is also very simple. The eleven questions are clues to the ups and downs of emotions. Questions are asked without answering, and they float by, which not only shows the smoothness of the work, but also the jumping nature of the poem's mood, allowing the image to unfold quickly. In order to show the jumping nature of emotions, general poems are often different from the general syntactic structure of language and omit some sentence components regardless of grammatical restrictions. This is not the case with prose poetry. It basically uses prose sentence patterns, and the author's emotional jumps are generally not as wide as free poetry. But it is also different from prose. There are gaps between sentences and paragraphs, which are connected by the author's thoughts.
The questions in "Hurry" are asked but not answered, and the answers are implicit. This can not only inspire the readers' imagination, arouse deep thinking, and show its implicit beauty, but also the rapid flow of the collaborator's emotions, showing the poetic mood. The rhythm is beautiful.
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Zhu Ziqing
Zhu Ziqing (1898.11.22-1948.8.12) was originally named Zihua and Qiushi, and later changed his name to Ziqing. Zi Peixian, a famous modern writer. Originally from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, he was born in Donghai, Jiangsu, and later settled in Yangzhou with his grandfather and father. He studied in a private school when he was young and was influenced by traditional Chinese culture. He entered a higher primary school in 1912 and was admitted to Peking University Preparatory School after graduating from middle school in 1916. "Sleep, Little One" written in February 1919 was his first new poem. He was a participant in the May 4th patriotic movement and was influenced by the May 4th wave and embarked on the path of literature. Mao Zedong once praised Zhu Ziqing's integrity, saying that he was "seriously ill and would rather starve to death than receive US 'relief food'".
After graduating from the Philosophy Department of Peking University in 1920, he taught middle schools in Jiangsu and Zhejiang and actively participated in the New Literature Movement. In 1922, he founded the monthly "Shi" with Yu Pingbo and others, which was the earliest poetry magazine during the birth of new poetry. He is a member of the Early Literature Society. The long poem "Destruction" was published in 1923. At this time, he also wrote beautiful prose such as "The Qinhuai River in the Shadow of the Sound and Lantern".
In August 1925, he taught at Tsinghua University and began to study Chinese classical literature; his creations were mainly prose. "Back View" and "Moonlight over the Lotus Pond" written in 1927 are both popular masterpieces. In 1931, he studied in England and traveled around Europe. After returning to China, he wrote "Miscellaneous Notes on Travels in Europe". In September 1932, he was appointed director of the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University. When the Anti-Japanese War broke out in 1937, he moved south to Kunming with the school and served as a professor at Southwest Associated University, teaching courses such as "Song Poetry" and "Literary Studies". During this period, he wrote the prose "Semantic Shadow". In 1946, he returned to Beijing from Kunming and served as director of the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University.
Zhu Ziqing has 27 kinds of works, totaling about 1.9 million words, including poetry, prose, literary criticism, academic research, etc. Most of them were included in the 4-volume "Collected Works of Zhu Ziqing" published by Kaiming Bookstore in 1953. In 1988, Jiangsu Education Press once again comprehensively collected, organized and published Zhu Ziqing's Complete Works in six volumes. Although Zhu Ziqing began to compose new poems after the May 4th Movement, "Qinhuai River in the Shadow of Oars and Lanterns" published in 1923 showed his talent in prose writing. From then on, he devoted himself to prose creation and made remarkable achievements. The collection of essays "Back" published in 1928 made Zhu Ziqing a famous prose writer at that time.
Zhu Ziqing's prose is mainly narrative and lyrical essays. The themes of his works can be divided into three series: the first is a group of essays whose main content is to write about social life and criticize the dark reality. Representative works include "The Price of Life - Seven Cents" and "Caucasians - God's Proud Son" and "Chronicle of the Massacre by the Regulatory Government." The second is a group of prose represented by "Back View", "Children" and "Mourning the Dead Wife", which mainly describe personal and family life, express the human relations between father and son, husband and wife, and friends, and have a strong human touch. Third, there is a group of lyrical sketches focusing on natural scenery, such as "Green", "Spring", "Qinhuai River in the Sound of Oars and Shadows of Lights", "Moonlight over the Lotus Pond", etc., which are his representative masterpieces. The latter two types of prose are the most outstanding ones written by Zhu Ziqing, among which "Back View" and "Moonlight over the Lotus Pond" are even more popular. His prose is simple and meticulous, clear, meaningful and melancholy. It is refined with language and is famous for its clear and beautiful writing style, which is full of true feelings.
Because three generations have settled in Yangzhou, he graduated from Jiangsu No. 8 Middle School and High School, which was located in Yangzhou at that time, and worked as a teacher in Yangzhou, so he calls himself "Yangzhou native". He is a famous modern writer and scholar. Zhu Ziqing's grandfather, Zhu Zeyu, was named Jupo and his original surname was Yu. He changed his surname because he inherited the Zhu family name. He was a cautious person and served as a judge in Donghai County, Jiangsu Province for more than 10 years during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. His father's name is Hongjun, also known as Xiaopo. He is married to Zhou and is a scholar. In the twenty-seventh year of Guangxu (1901), Zhu Hongjun went from Donghai to Shaobo Town, Yangzhou Prefecture, and took office. Two years later, the family moved to Yangzhou City and settled in Yangzhou ever since.
Zhu Ziqing has lived in Yangzhou for 13 years, spending his childhood and adolescence here. His feelings about this period of life in the ancient city were subtle and complex. Probably because life was too monotonous, he later said that only "thin shadows" of childhood memories were left, "like being washed away by a flood of water, so lonely that it was shocking!" However, in the long and tortuous journey of life, , after all, it was the first "inn" when I was a child.
Professor Zhu Ziqing, a famous essayist in my country, suffered from serious stomach problems in his later years. His monthly salary was only enough to buy 3 bags of flour, which was not enough for his family of 12, and he had no money for medical treatment. At that time, the Kuomintang colluded with the United States and launched a civil war, and the United States implemented a policy of supporting Japan. One day, Wu Han asked Zhu Ziqing to sign a declaration "Protesting the U.S. policy of supporting Japan and refusing to receive flour from the U.S. aid." He resolutely signed and said: "I would rather die of poverty and illness than accept such insulting charity. "On August 12 of this year (1948), Zhu Ziqing died in Beijing due to poverty. Before he died, he told his wife: "I signed the document rejecting US flour aid. Our family will not buy American flour rationed by the Kuomintang in the future." Zhu Ziqing was seriously ill and would rather starve to death than receive "relief food" from the United States. ", showing the backbone of the Chinese people.
On the eve of the liberation of Beijing, he died of stomach disease