Undeveloped-budding;
Will open-open;
What has opened-withered;
This flower spent her life peacefully.
-Life
A plum blossom that had been pierced died in the basin.
Her life is so lonely!
-"Loneliness"
Ba Jin was born in a closed and backward feudal family in Chengdu. What I have been exposed to since childhood is the darkness of society, the corruption of politics, the intrigue between people in large families, and the cruelty of feudal ethics to people. All this has created tremendous pressure. This made young Ba Jin feel depressed, lonely and sad. Life is a description of his feelings. There is also "a plum blossom that has been pierced died in the pot ..." It reminds people of Mei's tragic experience in Home, and reflects Ba Jin's deep sympathy for countless young men and women persecuted by feudal ethics and his disgust, accusation and resistance to feudal autocracy. He didn't want to be lonely, he longed for out of the dark and left. 1923 In May, he and his third brother Lin Yao decided to leave Chengdu and go to Shanghai to study. "An ideal waved to me in front, and my eyes brightened."
"I saw a red light shining in the distance. I don't know where the light is, but it pulls my heart as if someone is leading the way. " When the scenery of his hometown disappeared from sight, he looked at the boat for a long time and was moved by the scene before him, and conceived the poem "Night Sailing":
It's dusk. In this foggy river,
Where on earth is our ship going?
Far red light,
Please come closer!
In this poem, Ba Jin regards "far red light" as a symbol of light and future, and as a beacon of life. As he later said in the preface of Riptide, "I am still young, I want to live, and I want to conquer life. I know that the torrent of life will not stop, see where it takes me! " This poem just shows his positive attitude towards life.
After Ba Jin came to Shanghai, he was admitted to Nanyang Middle School with his third brother Lin Yao. When these three poems were published, he was living in the second grade of Nanyang Middle School. Nanyang Middle School is a famous private school in Shanghai. It is located in the suburb of Rihui Port. It has a beautiful campus, excellent education, complete facilities, teaching buildings, dormitories, physical and chemical laboratories and a library famous for its rich collection of books. However, the management of students is relatively loose, and students are encouraged to be independent and self-reliant. Enter such an environment. Ba Jin, far away from his hometown, got a stable place to stay and study. On the one hand, he studied foreign languages hard, read Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Olivia K, and on the other hand, he continued to engage in literary creation, so he edited and published the above three short poems after coming to Shanghai.