The whole poem is divided into five sections and can be divided into three parts.
The first part (the first section) expresses the poet's indignation at the "stagnant pool" of corruption in old China.
The first sentence of the poem, "This is a backwater of despair", has profound implications: it symbolizes the corrupt and dark semi-feudal and semi-colonial old China in the warlord scuffle at that time. At that time, the feudal traditional forces in old China were deeply rooted and penetrated into various fields; The imperialist aggression and the so-called civilization of the bourgeoisie have made some shameless China people have the idea of foreign slaves; The reactionaries colluded with each other and brutally stifled all progressive new ideas and new things. It is all this that makes China a "backwater of despair". In this poem, the word "despair" expresses the poet's deep disappointment. In the second sentence of the poem, "the breeze can't blow a bit", and "breeze" is the contrast of "stagnant water", which can be used as a metaphor for all fresh thoughts and forces. However, these new things can't attract the slightest reaction of "stagnant water". There are no waves where the breeze blows, indicating that the stagnant water has been silent to the extreme. This sentence is a further description of the third and fourth sentences in the poem "Dead Water", which describes the poet's extreme hatred after facing the disappointment of "Dead Water". Since the reality is so dark and desperate, it is better to let it rot and stink completely. Maybe it's incurable. It will rot faster and more thoroughly, the old will die out completely, and the new will become stronger and stronger. These two poems also show that the poet's anger is full of ardent hope for good things.
In the second part (the second, third and fourth sections), the poet described "stagnant water" in detail, vividly exposed the decadent social situation in old China, and expressed his feelings of hatred, anger and ridicule towards old China.
In these poems, the poet gradually and profoundly wrote the further changes of scrap iron and stagnant water after leftovers with rich imagination, vivid metaphors, vivid color descriptions and ironic brushstrokes. And "scrap copper and iron" thrown into stagnant water will produce green and red rust, such as "emerald" and "peach blossom". Moreover, greasy "leftovers" are scattered on the water, and the sunshine is like a flashing "Luo Qi"; Some places are moldy and hairy, just like "clouds"; After fermentation, the stagnant water will turn into smelly water with the color of "green wine", which is covered with "pearl-like foam". It is in this stagnant water that swarms of flower mosquitoes are flying around, and sometimes, noisy frogs are added. This disgusting stagnant water, dirty and smelly, is untenable! Here, the poet described the dark reality of old China in detail by further describing stagnant water. In this part, the poet used colorful "Emerald", "Peach Blossom", "Rocky", "Xia Yun" and "Pearl" to describe the dirty stagnant water, just like dressing the devil with a delicate and elegant coat. This is a contrast between false beauty and ugliness. The poet wrote this way to make the ugly class uglier. Write ugliness with beauty, and ugliness is even uglier. In this unique way, the poet shows the rancid nature of stagnant water more vividly, and at the same time makes his poetry have a strong irony.
The third part (the last section) expresses the poet's strong desire to curse reality and urgently hope to change it.
In the first two sentences of this part, the poet completely denies the dark China society in a very straightforward tone. "This is a pool of desperate stagnant water, which is definitely not the beauty." . After the complete denial, the sentence "Let Ugly take back the land and see what world he created" wrote the poet's hope in despair. The world cultivated by ugliness can only be uglier, but if it is ugly to the extreme, it is possible to reverse Gan Kun. Therefore, these last two sentences not only contain the poet's despair of old China, but also his expectation and yearning for new China, and his strong desire to change reality. Although for poets, this expectation was very vague at that time.
The whole poem compares the dark and stale old China under the warlord's rule to "a ditch of desperate stagnant water", and strongly lashes and curses it, showing the poet's deep patriotic enthusiasm.
Wen Yiduo was the first poet to advocate and practice new metrical poems, and this poem was also a model for him to practice new metrical poems.
Wen Yiduo argued in The Metre of Poetry that "the power of poetry includes not only the beauty of music (syllables), the beauty of painting (words), but also the beauty of architecture (symmetry of sections and uniformity of sentences)". This poem fully conforms to his above ideas.
First of all, from the perspective of syllables, poetry has the harmonious beauty of syllables, which is mainly manifested in the rhythm of poetry. The rhythm of this poem is very neat, with four pauses in each line, such as:
This is/a ditch/despair/stagnant water, the breeze/can't afford to blow/a little/a moment. Why don't you/throw more/scrap copper and iron, and be cool/sprinkle you/leftovers/leftovers.
Every four pauses here consist of three "two-character feet" and one "three-character foot". Such a neat pause makes the syllables of this poem very harmonious, just like a four-beat song, and makes its rhythm have a rhythmic musical beauty. The musical beauty of this poem is also reflected in the rhythm. Except for the first sentence, the second, third, fourth and fifth sentences of the whole poem are in the form of alternating rhymes, and the rhyme of each sentence is changed once, so that the rhythm is neat and not rigid. This also makes the new metrical poem and the old metrical poem have obvious differences in form. In addition, the first two paragraphs of this poem all use "this is a desperate backwater ditch" as the first sentence, which is not only an emphasis and echo in meaning, but also a beauty of going back and forth in rhythm.
Secondly, the architectural beauty of this poem is also obvious. The so-called architectural beauty of poetry means that the arrangement of lines and stanzas is uniform. This poem has * * * five sections, each with four sentences and nine words, with symmetrical envoys and even sentences. Every poem is square and uniform, like an angular, rigid and tall building with architectural beauty.
Third, this poem also has a strong painting beauty. This is mainly manifested in the beauty of poetry. When describing stagnant water, poets pay special attention to choosing words that easily arouse people's visual association, so as to enhance the painting beauty of poetry. For example, there are rich and vivid descriptions of emerald green, peach blossom red and pearl white in the poem, as well as descriptions of Luo Qi, Xia Yun and green wine, which make the stagnant water present complex colors and undoubtedly greatly enhance the painting beauty of the poem. The poet painted the "surface" of stagnant water with beautiful colors, of course, just to reveal its ugly "interior" powerfully. The sharp contrast between inside and outside has a strong irony effect, just like exaggeration in comics and irony in rhetoric.
The poem Dead Water successfully put Wen Yiduo's own poetic thoughts into practice, and it is a well-deserved masterpiece among many poets' poems.