As far as lyric content is concerned, the realm and style of Rain Lane are not high. Rain Lane expresses the author's strong disappointment and hesitation with a deep and beautiful style. When we open this poem, we first see that the poet painted a gloomy picture of the alleys in the south of the Yangtze River during the rainy season. The poet himself is a lyric hero wandering in the rainy lane. He's lonely. In the drizzle, he "walked alone in a long, lonely rain lane with an oil-paper umbrella". In such a gloomy and lonely environment, he had a vague and painful hope in his heart: "I hope to meet a girl who complains like lilac." The girl was endowed with beautiful and sad colors by the poet. Although she has "lilac-like color and fragrance", she also has "lilac-like sadness". Her heart is full of indifference, sadness and melancholy. Like a poet, she is "sad and wandering" in a lonely rain lane. Moreover, she was silent, "like a dream" drifting away from her and walking through this lonely rain lane. This is a lyrical artistic conception with strong symbolic color. Here, the poet compared the dark and dreary social reality at that time to a narrow and lonely "rain lane". There is no sound, no joy, no sunshine here. The poet himself is such a lonely person wandering in the rain lane. He has good hopes in loneliness. I hope there is a beautiful ideal in front of me. The "lilac-like" girl described by the poet is a symbol of this beautiful ideal. However, the poet knows that this beautiful ideal is hard to appear. She is as full of sadness and melancholy as herself, fleeting and drifting away like a dream. What is left is only the poet himself who is still wandering in the dark reality, and the hope that the dream that cannot be realized generally floats away! Some critics say that Rain Lane is the poet's "self-liberation" to cover up the ugly truth with beautiful imagination, and it is "deceiving himself and readers with gorgeous illusion like soap bubbles". Apart from artistic harmony and beauty, it is "worthless in content". (Fanny: On Dai Wangshu's Poems, Literary Criticism 1980/4) These hecklings and criticisms are too simple and harsh for Yuxiang. The summer when Rain Lane produced 1927 was the darkest time in the history of China. The bloody slaughter of revolutionaries by reactionaries caused a white terror that enveloped the whole country. Young people who enthusiastically responded to the revolution suddenly fell from the climax of the fire into the abyss of the night. Some of them can't find the future of revolution. They are lost in pain, they long for new hope in disappointment, and they expect beautiful rainbows floating in the haze. Rain Lane reflects the mentality of some progressive young people. Dai Wangshu was only twenty-one or twenty-two years old when he wrote this poem. More than a year ago, he engaged in revolutionary literary activities with his classmates Du Heng, Shi Zhecun and Liu Naou, joined the * * * Youth League, and devoted himself to the party's propaganda work with his passionate pen. 1927 In March, he was arrested and detained by the reactionary authorities for propagating the revolution. After the "April 12th" coup, he lived in seclusion in Songjiang, Jiangsu Province, chewing "China people's distress in this era" in loneliness. ("Wang Shucao/Preface") His poems such as "Rain Lane" at this time are naturally full of feelings of hesitation, disappointment, sadness and pain. This kind of bamboo-like sadness can't be said to be a pure personal lament, but a projection of the darkness of reality and the illusion of ideals in the poet's heart. Rain Lane reproduces the typical voices in the hearts of these young people with short lyrical singing. Here we really can't hear the description of real suffering, and we can't hear the cry against the darkness. This is a deep confession, a confession of disappointment. However, from this kind of confession and confession, can't we clearly see the pain and pursuit of some young people after their disillusionment? This poem reveals the bitterness of losing good hope. Even the young people at that time were not so easily deceived. People don't want to wander in the rain lane forever after watching Rain Lane. People will hate this rainy lane and long to get out of it and go to a wide and bright place without rain and sadness. An important artistic feature of Rain Lane is the use of symbolism to express emotions. Symbolism is an art school that rose in French poetry at the end of19th century. They used the decadence of the end of the world to resist the capitalist order. In the way of expression, it emphasizes the use of implicit metaphor and other means to express the inner feelings. This school of art was introduced into China at the ebb of the May 4th Movement. Li Jinfa was the first person to write poems with a lot of symbolism. Dai Wangshu's early works also obviously accepted the influence of French symbolism. An important feature of his creation is that he pays attention to the ability of excavating implied metaphors in poetry and expresses his feelings with symbolic images and artistic conception. Rain Lane embodies this artistic feature.
The poet with an oil-paper umbrella in his poem, the lonely and long rain lane, and the girl with lilac-like sadness and dreams are not the concrete portrayal of real life itself, but the lyrical images full of symbolic significance. We may not be able to describe all the contents of these images in detail, but we can appreciate the hazy poetry expressed by these images. The social realistic atmosphere, lonely wandering mood and unattainable hope described in Rain Lane are clear and hazy, certain and erratic in front of readers. Imagination creates symbols, and symbols expand imagination. As the result of expressing emotions by symbolic means, the poet's emotional heart is more subtle, which also leaves readers with a broad imagination world and feels the fragrance and aftertaste of the poem. Mr. Zhu Ziqing said: "The Dai Wangshu family also adopted the symbolism of law. He translated the poems of this school. He also pays attention to the neatness of syllables, but it is not sonorous but light and clear; Also find a little hazy atmosphere, but people can understand. " "He wants to grasp the delicate place." (China New Literature Series/Poetry Collection/Introduction) Rain Lane is hazy but not obscure, low but not decadent, affectionate but not frivolous, which really captures the subtlety of symbolism poetry art, and Dai Wangshu's poetry creation is also deeply influenced by the nutrition of classical poetry art. In Rain Lane, the poet created a symbolic lyrical image, a girl with a lilac-like sad heart. This is obviously 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". Li Jing in the Southern Tang Dynasty linked the lilac knot with the melancholy in the rain. He has a song "Huanxisha": the jade hook rolls the real pearl, and the heavy building is locked to reflect the previous spring grievances. The fallen flower in the wind is so haggard, who is its owner? Think about it! The bluebird has been lingering for a long time, and the lilacs are sad in the rain. 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. However, can it be said that the artistic conception and image of Rain Lane are the expansion and dilution of the modern vernacular version of the old poem "Lilac Flowers Falling in Rain and Empty Sadness"? I thought I couldn't see it that way. When the poet conceived the artistic conception and image of Rain Lane, he not only absorbed the fruit juice of his predecessors, but also made his own creation.
In poetry, the ancients used the lilac knot itself as a symbol of sadness. Rain Lane imagines a girl as sad as waking incense. She has lilac-like sadness and lilac-like beauty and fragrance. In this way, from a simple metaphor of sadness to expressing a beautiful ideal with sadness. This new image contains the author's pursuit of beauty. It contains the pain of disillusionment of the author's beautiful ideal.
In Rain Lane, the poet described a girl who died suddenly like a lilac in the rain with fresh modern language, which is different from the old classics in classical poetry and other works full of old poetry created by the poet in his early days, showing more new era flavor. The image of "the lilacs in the rain are empty and miserable" can arouse people's hope and disillusionment more than "the girl who is as sad as lilacs", which is a rare creation in the field of expressing the sorrow of the times.
In ancient poetry, the lilac knot in the rain pinned the poet's feelings about real life scenes. The lilac-like image of a girl floating in the rain in Rain Lane brings more adults as the poet imagined. It is not only a possible scene in life, but also the crystallization of the writer's artistic imagination, and an artistic real image produced by the combination of truth and imagination. Dai Wangshu said: "Poetry comes from reality through imagination, not only from reality, but also from imagination." We say that the artistic conception of Rain Lane is a reference and transcendence of classical poetry, mainly because it was created by the poet according to his own life experience and imagination. 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 it is somewhat flattering, it is still insightful to say that moral syllables are beautiful. 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 knots are repeated, and the same theme is repeated in the poem, with six lines in each section, which strengthens the whole poem. Each line is different in length and uneven, and the rhyme is generally repeated in the lines not far apart. Each verse rhymes two or three times, 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 of parts of speech. 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 soft and thoughtful serenade. A lonely and painful 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. This kind of repetition in language, like the repetition of intertwined lyric phrases, sounds pleasant and harmonious, and adds lyrical color to the poem. When the romantic free verse and the "crescent school" style of dried bean curd poetry prevailed, Dai Wangshu wrote a beautiful and pleasant rain lane. Although it could not "open a new era for the syllables of new poetry", it at least opened up a new world for the musical expression of new poetry.
Dai Wangshu's pursuit of the musicality of new poetry reached its peak and end in Rain Lane. From then on, he began to "bravely resist his so-called' composition with poetry as the end'" and (Du) to pursue the inner emotional rhythm of poetry. His other famous poem My Memory is a new milestone in this pursuit. Dai Wangshu's transformation reflects his new aesthetic viewpoint and artistic pursuit, but this innovation cannot deny the significance of Rain Lane's attempt at the musical beauty of new poetry. Preference is the companion of art appreciation. Compared with Dai Wangshu's other works, it is this rainy lane that I can never get tired of reading. It is a shining pearl in the new poem, and it is worth reading!