Abstract: "Melancholy" is the soul of Ai Qing's poetry creation and the key word for us to interpret his poetry. When poets feel and express people's sufferings, they show their innate sadness and melancholy. As a singer who always writes for the nation to get rid of all kinds of bondage, Ai Qing's "melancholy" complex mainly comes from three aspects: objective reality, subjective emotion and symbolism. This "melancholy" is not a person's own bitterness and sadness. For a poet who is loyal to reality and full of love for the motherland and people, his "melancholy" is a sense of national hardship and resentment of the times. As long as there is oppression and evil in the world, and as long as the poet's pursuit of good things is not realized, his "melancholy" complex will not end.
Keywords: Ai Qing's poetry, melancholy, human, suffering
"Melancholy" is the soul of Ai Qing's poems, and it is also the key word for us to interpret Ai Qing's poems. Melancholy complex pervades Ai Qing's poems, which constitutes the most remarkable personality factor in his poetry creation. From his poems, we can see: "The poet's melancholy is the people's melancholy, his sorrow is the people's sorrow, and the singing from the poet's soul is the voice in the people's hearts."
Ai Qing began to write Dayan River, a wet nurse who lived in poverty all her life. Although his poems in different periods have different colors of the times, "melancholy" has always been the basic connotation and main color of his poems, and the poet has made it clear many times. In "On Poetry and Service" at the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, he said: "In this era when suffering is familiar to us and happiness is unfamiliar to us, it seems that only shouting out the soul is the happiest thing." "It is the same naive hope to ask a faithful soul living in this era not to be depressed, just like asking a farmer tossing and turning in a muddy dream not to be depressed." In the mid-1950s, he said, "I wrote countless poems, while writing, I was sad." When the poet feels and expresses his sufferings to the people, he reveals his innate sadness and melancholy. After coming back in the late 1970s, Ai Qing still believed that "excessive anger and excessive sadness can produce poetry". As a singer who always writes for the suffering people to get rid of all kinds of shackles, Ai Qing's "melancholy" mainly has three reasons:
First of all, it comes from objective reality. Ai Qing was born in the historical period of the alternation of the old and the new, and social unrest made various contradictions increasingly acute. When he was a child, he saw the decline of the countryside and witnessed the chaos and injustice of the world. At first, he faced the "unfair world". When he picked up the brush, he drew dark huts, barren wilderness and stranded rowboats. Those hard-working farmers, women and children, vendors and drivers have all become the most common objects in his paintings to express his anger at social injustice. After the "128" incident, the difficult motherland groaned in a pool of blood. Ai Qing said, "I almost cried when I saw the ruins of Zhabei." My hometown is even more scarred. Shortly after he went to prison, he played a "curse song of destruction" to the dark old world with a cavity of anger. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, he saw the contest between light and darkness, between justice and evil. The poet was faithful to his own experience and dedicated his most sincere love to his times. Starting from the poetry collection Dayan River, he has created a series of excellent works, such as Land of Resurrection, Snow on the Land of China, Wilderness, Highway, Village and Country Poetry ... These are pictures of difficult China, affectionate arias, songs of longing for a new life and songs of praising struggle. The poet's "melancholy" is the projection of reality. He felt the suffering of the nation and immersed himself in the joys and sorrows of hundreds of millions of people with a sincere poetic heart before writing such a melancholy poem.
Secondly, it comes from subjective emotions. Closely related to the characteristics of the times and social reality are the poet's sensitive mood and his personal temperament. Ai Qing's unfortunate life experience in his early years was that he was infected with the depression of farmers since he was a child, and he realized "the humiliation of life" and "the bitterness of slaves" from his wet nurse. Lonely wandering and wandering in a foreign country, coupled with the prosperity and sin of the capitalist world, made him feel lonely, lonely and homeless. This wandering temperament laid the initial seeds for the melancholy mood in the poet's later creation. After that, Ai Qing was almost swallowed up by prison life, and it was natural that he was more melancholy and sentimental under the inspiration of harsh reality. After the founding of New China. He once said that he would sing for a new life, but political pressure and family life made him miserable. After his comeback, his poems such as Fish Fossil, Seawater and Tears, and Bonsai all showed more melancholy and tragic lyric styles. Rough life and unusual circumstances make the poet's feelings fluctuate constantly, and also make his love and hate more distinct. Ai Qing praised "the beauty of suffering" and thought that "tragedy makes life full of seriousness. Tragedy sanctifies people's emotions. " Ai Qing's melancholy shows this seriousness and sacredness.
Thirdly, it is the influence of symbolism and atmosphere. As a realistic poet, Ai Qing's poetry creation was also influenced by symbolism poetry. Baudelaire, the pioneer of French symbolism poetry, and Ye Saining, the Russian pastoral poet, had a far-reaching influence on Ai Qing's poetic art.
Although symbolism triggered the "melancholy" complex in Ai Qing's poems, it was not direct. The most direct and deepest factors were objective reality and subjective emotion, especially the grim reality he faced directly in China. His poems such as "I Love This Land" and "The North" all reflect this complex. As he wrote in "I love this land":
If I were a bird,
I should also sing with a hoarse throat:
This land hit by the storm,
This river will always flow with our sadness and anger,
This endless wind,
And the gentle dawn from the forest ...
And then I died,
Even feathers rot in the ground.
Why do I often cry?
Because I love this land deeply. ...
As he wrote in "The North":
Desert Yuan Ye
Frozen in the cold wind of December,
Villages, hillsides, river banks,
Collapsed walls and deserted graves,
Covered with earthy melancholy ...
Ai Qing's melancholy is not his own bitterness and sadness. For a poet who is loyal to reality and loves the motherland and people, his "melancholy" is a sense of national hardship and resentment of the times. Ai Qing said: "personal pain and happiness must be integrated into the pain and happiness of the times;" The bitterness and joy of the times must also be combined with personal bitterness and joy. "It is based on this understanding that the feelings of Ai Qing's poems are closely related to the people at the same time, thus shining with the color of realism. In fact, the poet's description of "suffering" and expression of "melancholy" have been transformed into a performance of "strength" and a strengthening of the will to serve the public and awaken human struggle. As he wrote in Ode to Light:
In this vast world
I used to sing for humiliated people.
I used to sing for the oppressed people
I sing about resistance, I sing about revolution.
Place your hopes on the dark dawn.
Sing the sun in the joy of victory
Obviously, Ai Qing's "melancholy" does not lie in his own fate or personal honor or disgrace. His heart of pain and anxiety is beating for the motherland and the people, and his deep sense of hardship is permeated with passionate fighting feelings.
In a word, from the above discussion, we can see that Ai Qing's "melancholy" is the inheritance and sublimation of China ancient intellectuals' feelings for their country and people, and it is a valuable lyrical quality that is in line with the patriotic feelings of modern outstanding poets in China. As long as there is oppression and evil in the world, as long as the poet's beautiful pursuit is not finally realized, his "melancholy" will not end.