The poet uses dark shades of gray, that is, gray, gray yellow and gray black, to express the images of land, wilderness, north, roads, the faces of the poor, clothes and so on, expressing the poet's deep anxiety about national suffering and infinite attachment to the motherland.
Such as "Yuan Ye": "A winding road with gradually blurred grayish yellow", "In the vast gray, there is a khaki and dark ochre, mixed with the smell of burnt tea everywhere.
This gray wilderness, black fields, black stone tablets, brown hillsides and gray turbid fog cover everything, forming a barren, barren and dilapidated picture. It is not a natural portrait of the northern land written by the poet, but a symbol of integrity and a reflection of the unfortunate fate of the motherland being invaded and destroyed in the poet's melancholy eyes.
The combination of color and emotion
Ai Qing's poems are not just about writing colors or expressing emotions, but combining the use of colors with the expression of emotions seamlessly.
The descriptions of "the grave covered with grass under the pressure of snow" and "the stone chair covered with moss" and the concrete works of Dayanhe all present a color of oil painting.
Writing about the streets of Marseille, the trembling servants of trucks, the noise of the market, the chaos of the sun, the wholesale soot of abandoned wives, the gray sputum of tuberculosis patients, and the sacks full of goods all give people a clear three-dimensional sense, and at the same time seem to see the blood flowing in them: warmth.
Taking life as an example is a call for life and a desire for national rebirth. Through the color characteristics of the human body, the poet turned the abstract "life" into "bright red" with a gray background, and "ochre yellow health" represented the Chinese nation. Compared with straightforward lyricism, this kind of expression is novel and cordial, concrete and general, and has a different aesthetic feeling.