The unopened-budding;
what will be opened-opened;
what has opened-withered;
Huaer lived her life quietly.
-Life
A plum blossom that had been pierced died in a pot.
Her life was so lonely!
-"Loneliness"
Ba Jin was born in a closed and backward feudal family in Chengdu. What he heard and witnessed from an early age was the darkness of society, political corruption, people's rivalry and intrigue in the big family, and the cruelty of feudal ethics to people. All this has created a great pressure, which made young Ba Jin feel depressed, lonely and sad. Life is the description of his feelings. And "a plum blossom that had been pierced died in the pot ..." People can't help but think of the tragic experience of "Mei" in Home, which 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 is unwilling to be lonely. He is eager to get out of the darkness and leave this big family he called "the dark autocratic kingdom" to explore the truth and run towards the light. In May 1923, he and his third brother Yao Lin decided to leave Chengdu and go to Shanghai to study. "An ideal beckons to me in front, and my eyes are bright." "I saw a red light flashing in the distance. I don't know where the light is, but it pulls my heart as if someone is guiding the way." When the scenery of his hometown disappeared from sight, he looked at the boat for a long time, touched the scene and conceived the poem "Sailing in the Night":
It's dusk
In this misty river,
Where does our boat go?
It's a red light far away.
Please come closer!
In this poem, Ba Jin regards the "far red light" as a symbol of light and future, and as a symbol of life beacon. As he later said in the preface to Riptide: "I am still young, I want to live, and I want to conquer life. I know that the torrent of life will never stop, and see where it takes me! " This poem just shows his positive attitude towards life.
After Ba Jin came to Shanghai, he and his third brother Yao Lin were admitted to Nanyang Middle School. When these three poems were published, he was living in 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 and complete facilities, including teaching buildings, dormitories, physical and chemical laboratories and a library in Shanghai famous for its rich collections. The management of students is relatively loose, and students are encouraged to be autonomous and self-reliant. Entering such an environment, Ba Jin, who is far away from his hometown, has a stable place to stay and study. On the one hand, he studied foreign languages hard, read many English original works such as Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Olivier K, on the other hand, he continued to engage in literary creation, so he compiled and published the three short poems mentioned above when he came to Shanghai.