Sleep beside me at night,
Cold as a sword.
It's lonely with me.
(translated)
Amy Rochel (USA)
This untitled poem is the fifteenth of the author's twenty-four haiku poems with modern themes. Amy Rochel is the standard-bearer of Imagist poetry. Because of her efforts, Imagism had a great influence in America. The poetess is fascinated by oriental poetry and tries to integrate it into imagery poetry. She wrote many poems imitating China, and the famous Poems in Chinese Style is one of them. She also wrote imitation Japanese poems, "strictly following the form of haiku". The above record is one of them, in the form of five, seven, five syllables and three lines of haiku. I'm afraid this poem is one of the shortest imagist poems (Pound's famous poem "Subway Platform" has only two lines, but there are as many syllables as this poem), so it goes without saying that it is condensed and concise. What is more worth pondering about this poem is its imagery. Some commentators correctly pointed out that Amy's imitation of China's poems was no different from the free verse advocated at that time, and she wrote "the scene of the world". Her imitation of Japanese poetry "depends on the instantaneous effect of concentration". In other words, her haiku is a more typical image poem. Pound said: "This monosyllabic poem (that is, haiku) is a form of image superposition." (For all the above quotations, see Zhao Yiheng: Poets Go Far, Sichuan People's Publishing House, 1985. This poem is about the perception and feeling of the "instant" of night, which is formed by the superposition of the "noumenon" image of night and the "sword" image of car. In order to deepen our understanding of this "complex", we might as well make a simple and intuitive analysis of this poem. If translated literally, the translation is: "Lie beside me at night/chastity is as cold as a sword/it is lonely with me." Judging from the meaning of the poem, the first line says that the night is close to me, the third line says that they are lonely, and the second line across it is composed of cold words such as chastity, coldness and sword, like a cold light, flashing the truth of their relationship, suggesting the reason for their loneliness. Poetry can be described as "solid classics" (spiritual rebirth). Judging from the words used, the only nouns in the poem are "night" and "sword", and the two notional words constitute a concrete "superposition", which deepens the physical oppression of You Hei and Li Ling; There are three pronouns in the poem: "I (object), it and I (Lord). "I" changed from the objective case to the nominative case, indicating that the subjectivity of "I" has increased. " "It" is the superposition of "night" and "sword", and its connotation is deeper and wider than the latter two, but it seems more abstract and ethereal. The juxtaposition of "it" and "I (Lord)" is not only the confrontation between the guest and me, but also the independence of each other. Four adjectives in the poem (chastity, indifference, profit and loneliness) dominate the tone of the poem: indifference and loneliness. Interestingly, the use of the word "chastity" is rich in associations and difficult to understand. It seems that they are "sleeping" together, but in fact they are "chaste", which shows that they have no contact and communication. No wonder "it" is lonely and "I" is lonely. As can be seen from the above, this poem wrapped in Japanese classical form reflects the basic topic of modern western society-the relationship between nature (society, others) and self; It seems intimate, but it is as cold as ice. After reading this poem, we can feel the poet's temperament. Even in this "sigh poem" of haiku, this unmarried poetess, who is strong in nature and likes to be unconventional, did not forget to show her "sword" and did not restrain her spirit, but still issued an extraordinary "sigh"!