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 of his heart, so that he couldn't help but 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 Yu couldn't help singing for his 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.
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.
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 written by Ai Yu may be too sad. However, if we consider history as it is, we can't help but admit that everything is a "cruel truth". Moreover, we should also see that the atmosphere this poem tries to exaggerate and the tragic scene it depicts are exactly what the author feels and experiences in reality today, which makes him 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. 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 Yu once gave 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.
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!