symbolizes the longing for free life and thinking about life. On the surface, this poem describes a natural phenomenon; In terms of expansion, it is the desire and thinking of free life.
The Tree was written in the spring of 194. At this time, War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression had been going on for more than two years and was turning into a difficult stalemate. This national war is giving all the people a baptism, making their souls undergo severe tempering in the war and gradually moving towards spiritual awakening. Ai Qing is deeply aware of the trend of the times and social pulse, aware that the national awakening has arrived, and created this poem.
Original text
A tree, a tree
stands apart from each other
Wind and air
tell their distance
But under the cover of soil
Their roots are stretched
In the unseen depths
They entangle their roots
. The high integration of image and thinking is the same feature of all successful literary works.
"A tree, a tree/standing alone from each other/wind and air/telling their distance". This is an independent tree, like the people of China who were bullied by the Japanese aggressors.
Then the poet used the image of "root" to write: "In the invisible depths/they entangled the roots". These trees, which are connected with each other in the underground, have formed an ideological understanding for readers: trees are both independent individuals and a United whole. This root is China's national spirit and thousands of years of cultural accumulation, and it is this "root" that makes the Chinese nation stand among the nations of the world.
In the past, foreigners insulted the Chinese nation as "the sick man of East Asia" and "fragmented sand". Although this is not necessarily all the facts, it does reflect some phenomena that the spirit of national humiliation has been distorted under the aggression of foreign powers, but these are just some trees that have not been fully provided with roots.
Ai Qing endowed those trees growing on the earth with vivid characters, and saw the potential fact of "under the cover of soil/their roots stretching" with unique eyes, and regarded them as a symbol that a great nation is uniting and condensing into a strong force. It is in this spirit that the Chinese nation moved towards the victory of the new-democratic revolution and established a new China.
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