It won't light up all night;
But my enemies and my friendship—
What a beautiful light it emits!
(translated by Huang Gao)
Precautions:
This poem comes from a collection of poems published by 1920, and some figs picked by thistle grass. This topic is given to the Chinese in Chapter 7 16 of Matthew in the Bible: "Can you pick grapes from thorns?" . Can you pick figs from thistle? Here, Millay's "fig" refers to the unconventional truth extracted from bitter and sweet experiences. Although this poem is extremely short, its first line has become the slogan of "young people are like fire" in that era, and it has become an idiom well-known to women and children in English-speaking countries, making the poet famous all over the world.
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When many poets turned their attention to the poetry theory that flourished in the period of modernism transformation, Millay was still weaving beautiful lyric poems in his spiritual attic. The modernist creed of abandoning personal feelings and describing reality objectively advocated by Eliot has little influence on Millay's creation, and her poems have profound personal experiences. At the same time, her attitude towards love is not recognized by the doyen of19th century. Her boldness and fierceness make her a "Byron" among female poets, a strange mixture of tradition and modernity.
In Millay's lyric poems, I quoted and read the first picture. This poem comes from "Several Figs Picked from Thistle Grass" (also translated as "Figs among Thorns"). "My candle burns at both ends" inspired countless warm-blooded young people of that era. There is no doubt that this collection of poems also opened the burning years of Millay. In many people's minds, Millay represents the new women liberated in the 1920s. Two Burning Candles shows personal energy, and many young people are infected by this reckless and bold declaration and become their personal motto. The poet also admitted that "it is impossible to shine all night". This is by no means a sad cuckoo crying blood. On the contrary, it can't last long, showing the brilliance and strength when it broke out, showing the broad mind of determination and liberation, and a little helpless sadness.
Then the poet talked about two sides of life: "but my enemy and my friendship-/what a beautiful light it shines!" " "* * * is a" good friend "of the lyric hero, an important driving force for achieving career and writing life, and a powerful energy hidden in the deep heart waiting to be discovered; The lost time is the "enemy" of life, the candle will eventually burn out, and life will always have an end. Many people like this poem because it is a poem about life. Looking at life with a pessimistic attitude, life always leads to death, which brings endless fear to people; Looking at life with an optimistic attitude, the quality of life lies in the meaning of life rather than the length, which brings infinite hope and joy to people. Millay chose the latter. In this poem, she not only praised love, but also praised a meaningful life-"What a beautiful light it emits! "At the same time, she also saw the helplessness of life." "Friends" and "enemies" are two sides of a whole, and they are two indispensable forces in a complete life.
Like Millay's own bold behavior, this poem openly praises the short and fruitless love. Although "it can't light up the whole night", what we feel from the poem is not the mourning for the love that is gone forever, but the intoxication and praise for the vigorous and short-lived love-"How beautiful the light it emits!" As a lyric poet in the 20th century, Millay's poems were directly born from the romantic tradition of19th century, such as the tradition of praising love. As some critics said, "She expressed a romantic character in the 20th century with the tools of19th century romanticism." However, some people think: "Her view of life-a romantic cynicism and complete disregard for middle class morality-really reminds people of Byron, Swinburne and Wilde's thoughtless, superficial and deliberate cynicism." In fact, Millay's boldness and frankness are fully displayed in her poems and daily life, and her romance is inevitably polluted by the prevailing criticism in the 20th century. In personal life, Millay is also a combination of romance and rebellion. It is said that she is bisexual, and she boldly declared that men and women should be unconditionally equal. So she won the double worship of personality and creation, and she herself was nicknamed "Byron".
(Qiao Hua)