This is a poem that fully embodies Ai Qing's early emotional tone. His sincere, passionate and persistent concern for the fate of the people of the motherland forced him to convey the social atmosphere at that time with anxious mood and cold and true brushwork. These are the two poems that we have seen repeated from the beginning to the whole poem:
Snow fell on the land of China,
The cold is blocking China. ...
These two poems are by no means simple episodes of "connecting the past with the future", but sincere feelings and strong shouts from the poet's heart. The changes of the four seasons in nature can only give people a sense of touch. What is important is that the poet deeply felt the cold blockade in his heart, which forced him to burst out with such a strong cry. The poet pays attention to his feelings about "farmers in China" and "hardships of people living on grasslands" in the north, and the rough fate of "unkempt young women" and "old mothers" in the south. All these constitute the concrete image and life picture of "cold blocking China"; And the poet's deep affection is also conveyed through all this. At the beginning of his creation, Ai Qing pinned his enthusiasm on caring about the fate of rural areas and farmers in China. Now, when the shadow of the national crisis hangs over the land of the motherland, he once again expresses this sincere anxiety and resentment with his own brush strokes. From this emotional attachment and concern, we can see this intellectual who is closely related to the fate of farmers. He always looks at the fate of the vast rural areas and farmers with very melancholy eyes. For a considerable number of revolutionary intellectuals in the 1930s, they not only saw the bankruptcy of rural areas and the misery of farmers' fate, but also always associated their own fate with all this. Therefore, while paying attention to farmers, Ai Qing couldn't help singing for her own destiny:
And I,
I'm not happier than you,
-Lying on the river of time,
The wave of suffering,
Swallowed me once and rolled me up several times-
Vagrancy and imprisonment,
I lost the most precious time of my youth,
My life,
Like your life,
The same haggard.
This kind of mood and temperament is typical of early Ai Qing. Without a thorough understanding of Ai Qing's personality characteristics, it is difficult for people to understand his early artistic style. At the same time, the author transforms himself from the narrator's point of view into a participant by contacting himself, which further narrows the distance with the broad masses of the people and is also convenient for directly expressing his feelings.
Poetic concept
Conceptually, this poem shows Ai Qing's ability to exert his rich imagination. Although he has never been to the north of our country, his image of a farmer in China wearing a fur hat and driving a carriage in the heavy snow is cordial and familiar. According to himself, he was asked if he had seen this phenomenon, and his answer was: I feel it should be like this. This "feeling" is the image created by imagination. Of course, greatness does not prove that you can leave life behind closed doors, but only that poets should let the wings of imagination fly on the soil of real life. A person without rich imagination will never become an excellent poet. However, Ai Qing's imagination is based on his familiarity with farmers' life and fate, so he is essentially different from that kind of unfounded imagination and artistic shoddy.
The Artistic Value of Poetic Thinking
In the poet's imagination, a series of life pictures that happened on the land of China constituted a heartbreaking tragic scene. The "unkempt young woman", "old mother" and "cultivator" who lost livestock and fields are all crowded in the dirty lane of life;
"Hungry earth, facing the dark sky"
Admittedly, this image in Ai Qing's works may be too sad and miserable. However, if we consider history realistically, we have to admit that all these are "cruel facts". Moreover, we should also see that the atmosphere and the tragic scene depicted in this poem are exactly what the author feels and experiences in reality, which makes him feel sad and worried. Expressing all this by artistic means shows the poet's concern for the fate of the times and his empathy for the people's sufferings.
Evaluation of artistic value of poetic thinking
If we don't have a deep understanding of that historical background and can't fully grasp the tone of the poet's thoughts and feelings, we will definitely regard this poem as a "gloomy and pessimistic" work, which will deviate from the actual content of the work, thus belittling and denying its ideological and artistic value.
Of course, we don't have to completely deny the melancholy mood revealed by the author in this poem, which is quite common in Ai Qing's early works. So, how should we know and understand this kind of melancholy? Ai Qing has a good explanation in his later poems. He said: "It is as naive as asking a farmer who is tossing and turning in a muddy dream not to be depressed, but to be a loyal soul living in this era." He also said: "Take melancholy and sadness as a kind of strength! The desire, injustice and resentment that gather in the vast land move on the ground like dark clouds ... I hope the storm will take it all away and sweep the whole ancient world! " This is the key for us to understand the melancholy and sadness in his poems. When you take this kind of "melancholy and sadness" as a kind of strength, you will also know why Ai Qing's early poems always have a layer of melancholy and sadness, but they always have an inspiring effect on people, instead of plunging people into a pessimistic and depressed situation. Distinguishing and grasping this boundary and scale is very important in literary and artistic creation, criticism and appreciation of works. Although some people also write melancholy and sadness, they just chew and sing about their humble and insignificant fate, from which they can't see the times and feel the people's feelings; Such a work cannot be of high value. Ai Qing's melancholy and sadness are closely related to the situation of the times and the feelings of the people, so he can stand out among many poets and have a unique style.
Poetry structure
It is hard to say that this poem has several obvious paragraphs, only a few ups and downs. The two lines of poems, known as the main theme, are a kind of verve and realm that stirs people's hearts, pushing the readers in at once, so that you are not only in it, but also covered with heavy snow inside and outside. Then, the poet began a series of silence. The first is the appearance of the wind, which "stretches out the cold fingers/tugs at the skirts of pedestrians, and speaks in words as old as the land/keeps talking ..." Readers feel the inevitable invasion of the wind and its ancient wailing, which makes people feel the heaviness of history. Then, from the hard years of the land and the people, the poet complained that he was "also a descendant of the peasants", experienced wandering and imprisonment and lost his youth. The fate of the poet is closely related to the fate of the whole ancient nation and land. The poet's sincere confession makes this poem full of warm and sincere blood and tears, which makes this poem, poet and reader closely linked at the moment of national crisis. Then, in the cold snow, I saw the kind woman who was ravaged and killed in the war, as well as the old mother who was on the road to exile. ..... The poet affectionately calls the code:
The roads in China are rugged/muddy.
How heavy the capacity of these three-line poems is! It contains profound historical and realistic thinking, which adds a lot of color to the image and connotation of the poem. This weight is an unshirkable burden, which falls fatally on the reader's mind, causing deeper and deeper tremors-this is the cold weight of snow falling on the land of China!
China,
Mine, at night without lights,
The feeble verse says,
Can I give you some warmth?
He spoke to his motherland in distress. This is because he saw the seriousness of the reality of war, and saw that those powerful people who persecuted the poet himself and countless democratic fighters and oppressed the broad masses of the people are still living a frenzied life; Can a poet not feel worried? These lines at the end of the poem are not moans without complaint, but shouts of trembling, cries of blood and tears, and ardent dedication to the motherland. It should be said that this poem full of grief and indignation strongly shocked people's hearts and brought people emotional warmth and spiritual encouragement!
Plain language
Ai Qing's poetic language is not a simple emotional externalization, but is inseparable from his inner life, forming a vivid and tangible pulsating life of poetry as a whole. Many critics say that this poem has the beauty of prose, which just shows its plain and natural artistic characteristics. It has no traces of carving and decoration, and almost no tangible skills can be seen. The so-called beauty of prose also shows the strong elasticity and tension of poetic language, which extends the situation of poetry to a far border and has a profound and vast feeling. This is the atmosphere of poetry. Although the words "cold" and "blockade" are concise, they are full of flexibility and expressiveness. They contain profound historical and realistic thinking, which adds great weight to the image and connotation of this poem. This weight is an unshirkable burden, which falls fatally on the poet's heart, causing deep tremors ── this is the cold weight of snow falling on the land of China.
Tangible image
Image is the basic element of poetic image composition, the unity of the poet's inner feelings and outer life images, and the tangible scene created by the poet through the fusion of "meaning" and "image". Ai Qing's poems were written in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War. When the country was in crisis and the mountains and rivers fell, it inevitably brought the tragic atmosphere of that era. Therefore, the images in his poems are bound to have this tragic color. From the images of "land", "wind" and "river", we can easily taste the ups and downs and bitterness experienced by the author, as well as the deep love for the motherland, the people and the land. "Land" is a common image of Ai Qing, which can be said to be his other life. He lamented the barrenness of the land: "Snow falls on the land of China,/Cold blocks China ……" The "land" here is no longer a simple objective scenery, but an "image" that focuses on the author's subjective feelings. The author feels extremely sad for the old, weak and sick motherland. When the poet looked around with melancholy eyes, the carrier of lonely and barren wasteland-land entered the poet's mind. By praising the "image" of the land, the author curses those who destroy it and fantasizes that the land can be full of vitality. In the poem, the author's voice is hoarse but generous, sad but broad, showing a strong sense of life; Although simple, it is vigorous, because land is the foundation of all things. It is precisely because of this love and attachment to the land that the other two images in the poet's works flow downstream. The modifier "like an old woman who is too sad" is added behind the wind, and adjectives "time" and "snowy night" are added in front of the river, which turns the two external pure scenery of the wind and the river into images containing the author's subjective feelings, making them appear in forests, rivers and wilderness on cold nights (not only for their own lives, it can be seen that the use of images in poetry can make abstract emotions tangible and arouse our rich associations and imaginations, so as to observe. Hong Zicheng, Director of the Teaching and Research Section of Contemporary Literature in China: Depression is caused by suffering; The reason why the melancholy of suffering has aesthetic value lies in people. The struggle of China people to get rid of suffering will always be accompanied by suffering. Therefore, in this heavy melancholy mood, we can feel the call for strength and persistent expectation that the storm will sweep across this ancient world. This poem, from a concrete example, also implies that Ai Qing's poetry creation summarizes the aesthetic characteristics of the nation and the times with his "self" feeling and personality.