This poem is about a scene in an alley in the south of the Yangtze River during the rainy season. In the drizzle, "I" walked alone in a long remote alley with a lonely and melancholy mood and a faint hope.
Rain Lane adopts symbolic lyrical techniques. The narrow and gloomy rain lane in the poem, the lonely traveler wandering in the rain lane, and the girl as sad as lilac are all symbolic images. These images constitute a symbolic artistic conception, which implicitly implies the author's confusion, sadness and expectation, giving people a hazy and profound aesthetic feeling. Musicality is another outstanding artistic feature of Rain Lane. In the poem, repetition of sounds, repetition of sentences, repetition of singing and other techniques are used, resulting in the cycle of melody and pleasant sense of music. Therefore, Mr. Ye Shengtao praised this poem for opening a "new era" for the syllables of China's new poems.
In Rain Lane, the poet created a girl with a lilac knot. Although this is inspired by some works in ancient poetry. It is a traditional expression in ancient Chinese poetry to use lilac knots, that is, lilac buds, to symbolize people's worries. For example, there is a poem in Li Shangyin's "Gifts for Generations" that says "bananas don't show lilac knots, but they are worried about the spring breeze in the same direction". In the Southern Tang Dynasty, Li Jing tied a lilac knot with me in the rain. He has a song "Huanxisha"
Roll up pearls to make curtains and hang hooks. In the tall building, I look like before, and my depression is still locked. Who is the Lord in the wind? Take it easy!
The messenger didn't bring news to the pedestrians far away. The lilacs in the rain reminded me of sadness. I looked back at the Three Gorges at dusk and saw the river falling from the sky.
In this poem, the lilac knot in the rain is used as a symbol of people's sadness. Obviously, Dai Wangshu absorbed the artistic conception and methods of describing sadness from these poems and applied them to form the artistic conception and image of Rain Lane. This kind of absorption and reference is obvious, but can we say that the artistic conception and image of Rain Lane are the expansion and desalination of the modern vernacular version of the old poem "Lilacs are sad in the rain"? I don't think so. When the poet conceived the artistic conception and image of the rain lane, he not only absorbed the juice of his predecessors, but also created his own. First, the ancients used the lilac knot itself as a symbol of sadness in their poems, while Yuxiang imagined a girl who was as sad as lilac. She has the image of lilacs disappearing in an instant, which is different from the old classical poems and other works created by the poet in his early days. She is full of the tone of the old poems and shows more flavor of the new era. "Lilacs in the rain bear sorrow" can arouse people's hope and disillusionment more than "girls who are as sad as lilacs", and this image is a rare creation in the field of expressing the sorrow of the times. Secondly, in ancient poetry, the lilac knot in the rain is based on the real life scene to pin the poet's feelings. The poet added his imagination to his life experience. It is the product of artistic imagination, more beautiful than life.
Rain Lane was first praised by people, and an important aspect is its beautiful syllables. Ye Shengtao praised this poem as "opening a new era for the syllables of new poetry". Although he was somewhat praised, he was insightful when he first saw the beautiful syllables of this poem. Rain Lane consists of seven poems. The first section and the last section are exactly the same except that "meet" is changed to "float". In this way, the ending is repeated, and the same theme appears repeatedly in the poem, which strengthens the musical sense of the whole poem and also increases the expressive force of the poet's hesitation and disillusionment. There are six lines in each section of the whole poem, and the number of words in each line is different and uneven, and the rhyme is generally repeated in the lines not far apart. Bet two or three times per quarter, and there is no rhyme change from beginning to end. The whole poem is very short, and some short sentences also cut off the connection between words. However, some of the same words appear many times in rhyme, such as "Rain Lane", "Girl", "Fragrance", "Melancholy" and "Longing", which intentionally make a sound repeat in people's hearing. This creates a resounding melody and a smooth rhythm. It reads like a gentle and considerate serenade. A lonely and painful recitation melody echoed repeatedly in the whole song, haunting people.
In order to strengthen the musicality of the whole poem, the poet also absorbed some skills from foreign poems and made the same words meet alternately in the same poem. The repetition and repetition of this language, like the repetition of intertwined lyric phrases, sounds pleasant and harmonious, adding more lyrical color to the poem. When romantic free poetry and "crescent school" tofu dry wind prevailed, Dai Wangshu published "Beautiful Rain Lane", which opened up a new world of musical expression of new poetry.