1, the projection of the darkness of reality and the disillusionment of ideal in the poet's mind
A good lyric poem should be the crystallization of artistic beauty. It will go beyond time.
And arouse people's aesthetic feelings because of the limitation of space and space. Dai Wangshu's Rain Lane is such a beautiful lyric poem.
However, for many years, Dai Wangshu's poems such as Rain Lane have been regarded as the moans of symbolism and modernism, and have been excluded from the vision of literary history. Only recently did people dig these works out of the forgotten dust like unearthed cultural relics and see their artistic brilliance again.
Dai Wangshu left us only more than 90 lyric short poems on the bumpy and tortuous creative road for more than 20 years. Rain Lane is one of his early famous works.
Rain Lane was written in the summer of 1927. First published in Novel Monthly, Volume 19, No.8, published in August, 1928. Du Heng, a close friend of Dai Wangshu, wrote in 1933:
Speaking of Rain Lane, it is hard for us to forget Mr. Ye Shengtao's award. After nearly a year of writing Rain Lane, when Mr. Shengtao was editing a monthly novel, Wang Shucai suddenly wanted to publish it. As soon as Mr. Shengtao saw this poem, he sent a letter praising him for opening a new era for the syllables of the new poem. ..... strongly recommended by Mr. Shengtao, Wang Shu won the title of "Rain Lane" poet until now. ("Preface to Wang Shucao")
This well-known story in the history of literature reflects the value and influence of the poem Rain Lane at that time.
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 as sad as lilac." The girl was endowed with beautiful and sad colors by the poet. Although she has "lilac-like color and fragrance", she is also "lilac-like sorrow" Her heart is full of indifference, sadness and melancholy. Like a poet, in the lonely rain lane, "sad and hesitant." Moreover, she was silent, "like a dream" drifting away from her and walking through this lonely rain lane.
In the lamentation of the rain,
Remove her color,
Spread her fragrance,
Disappeared, even hers
Breathing eyes,
Lilac account.
This is a lyrical artistic conception full of strong symbolic colors. Here, the poet metaphorically described the dark and dreary social reality at that time as 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 hope 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. Like herself, she is full of sadness and sorrow, 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 some gorgeous illusions like soap bubbles". Apart from the artistic beauty of harmonious melody, it "has no merit in content". (Fanny: On Dai Wangshu's Poems, Literature Review1980,4), these questions and conclusions 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. (Preface to Wang Shucao) His poems such as Rain Lane at this time are naturally full of feelings of hesitation, disappointment and sadness. This feeling of hesitation and sadness can't be said to be a pure personal lament, but a projection of the darkness of reality and the disillusionment 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? The pain of losing good hope flows in the poem. 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.
2. The tragic theme with the characteristics of the times shows people's nervousness and unattainable ideals.
The poem "Rain Lane" is about a young man who is addicted to emotional pursuit and often wanders alone in a long rain lane, waiting for a good girl, because the girl's home is at the end of the rain lane. Apart from the sound of the oil-paper umbrella in the spring rain, the rain lane is lonely. The girl that the lyric hero hopes to meet is full of sadness and resentment. The wall of her house has collapsed, and she is obviously hit by fate. She is melancholy, sad, sighing and confused, but she is not depressed or begging; She is aloof and arrogant, and she is still so charming. She did not lower her noble head in heavy sadness and endured the hardships of landing on her head like a flag flying in the wind. The poet showed human dignity and tenacious vitality here. But the girl described by the poet is sentimental. He compares her to lilacs. In China's ancient poems, there are many famous sentences chanting lilacs, such as "Lilacs can worry in the rain", "Bananas don't show lilacs, but the spring breeze in the same direction worries" and so on. Lilacs bloom, and in mid-spring, poets often hurt spring with lilacs, saying that lilacs are worried about crystals. Lilacs are white or purple, and their fragrance is not frivolous. Lilac is a trinity symbol of beauty, nobility and sadness. Lilacs are good, but they fade easily. A girl like Lilac is a girl with fragile dreams, and her sadness is naturally indispensable.
In the long-term expectation, the girl finally came and complained in the rain. "She approached quietly." Sometimes two hearts almost understand each other, but they are disappointed in the end. "They breathed a sigh of relief again." Finally, they drifted away and the distance between them widened again. Both vagrants suffer from the same depression, so they are in the same situation. But because of the same symptoms, they can't recover from each other and have to break up. They are hesitating, but they continue to pursue in hesitation. From the deeper symbolic significance of poetry, the image of girls in Dai Wangshu's poems is often the embodiment of his ideals. He is looking for an ideal girl. The girl appeared, but, like "drifting in a dream", she only flashed in front of her eyes and disappeared in an instant. Along with her color, her fragrance, her sigh and her melancholy, the lyric hero was left wandering alone in the rain lane. When all is silent, the rain touches the paper umbrella, which increases the loneliness of the rainy lane. In this way, the poet expressed the belief that the pursuit of beautiful ideals was futile and lonely.
In Rain Lane, the image of the girl is tragic, and so is the image of the lyric hero, the wanderer (the lonely wanderer runs through all Dai Wangshu's works). His pursuit is so noble, with an idealized color. The girl he expects has both a deep inner world and charming charm; It is beautiful and does not bend over before suffering. However, he himself is so hard to understand. He knows neither himself nor each other well. Maybe what he expects is always the image in his heart. Therefore, in the face of idealistic expectations, he is always confused and has a tragic temperament. Dai Wangshu is familiar with the works of French poet Wei Erlun, and is close to Wei Erlun in sentimental temperament. Wei Erlun's Collection of Silent Songs expresses the depressed mood of the intellectuals who are at a loss after the failure of the Paris Commune, and its keynote is the tragic feeling that the poet's ideal is opposite to the dirty life around him. Dai Wangshu's poems show the ideal of flying happily from the May 4th Movement and the tragic consciousness of the great revolutionary reality from 1925 to 1927. Although his poems are not poems of resistance and fighting, they are not slaves of the environment. The tragic themes of man and ideal, neurotic man and unattainable ideal contain the characteristics of the times.
(B) The artistic features of Rain Lane
1, An important artistic feature of Rain Lane is the use of symbolism.
Lyric method.
Symbolism is an art school that rose in French poetry at the end of19th century. They rebelled against the capitalist order with decadence at the end of the century. In the way of expression, it emphasizes implicit metaphor and other means to express inner feelings instantly. 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 were also obviously influenced by French symbolism. An important feature of his works is that he pays attention to the ability of excavating the implied metaphor in poetry and expresses his feelings with symbolic images and artistic conception. Rain Lane embodies this artistic feature. Poets with oiled paper umbrellas in their poems, lonely and long rainy alleys, and girls with lilac-like sadness and dreams are not concrete portrayal of real life itself, but 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 state of mind 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 neat syllables, but it is not sonorous but implicit; Also find a little hazy atmosphere, but people can understand. " "He wants to grasp the delicate place." (Introduction to China's New Literature Series Poems) Rain Lane is hazy but not obscure, deep but not decadent, affectionate but not frivolous, which really captures the subtlety of symbolism poetry art.
2. Dai Wangshu's poetry creation is also deeply influenced by the artistic nutrition of classical poetry.
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":
Roll up pearls to make curtains and hang hooks. In the tall building, I look like before, and my depression is still locked. The fallen flower in the wind is so haggard, who is its owner? Think long term!
The messenger didn't bring news to the pedestrians far away. The lilacs in the rain reminded me of sadness. 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 "The Lilac Blossoms 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.
First, the ancients used the lilac knot itself as a symbol of sadness in poetry. Imagine a girl as sad as a lilac in a rainy lane. She has lilac-like sadness and lilac-like beauty and fragrance. In this way, it changed from a simple metaphor of sadness to an embodiment of 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.
Secondly, in Rain Lane, the poet described the image of 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 poetic tones created by the poet in his early days, showing more flavor of the new era. 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.
Thirdly, in ancient poems, the lilac knot in the rain entrusted the poet's feelings about real life scenes. The lilac-like girl image floating in the rain in Rain Lane brings more elements of the poet's imagination. 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." He believes that the essence of poetry lies in the eternal struggle between expressing himself and hiding himself, and he carefully hides his "truth" in the barrier of poetry's "imagination". The reason why French symbolist poets have a special attraction to him can be said that that special technique is just right for him, neither hiding himself nor expressing his motivation to write poetry. Judging from the poem Rain Lane, Dai Wangshu's poetry is different from romanticism's frankness, boldness and direct lyricism, and also from the supremacy of French symbolist poet Valery. Dai Wangshu puts feelings first, but he hides them as much as possible, especially the truth, by means of hints. Although Rain Lane also has the intangible feeling of symbolism, its inner state is erratic and its image is vague. However, it does not have the mysterious meaning of some symbolic poems. It is "easy to understand, with sincere feelings as the skeleton", with classical content, little overhead feelings, extravagance without hypocrisy, gorgeous and statutes. We speculate that the "truth" hidden in the "imagination" in the poem Rain Lane may be an emotional experience of the poet, and this emotional experience in life has become the skeleton of this poem. There are still some shadows and details of the real story in the poem, but the time, place and scene may be unrecognizable. This is also a big difference between symbolism and romanticism. Romantic poetry mostly describes people's actual affairs, and there are many improvisations; Symbolism is difficult to infer the author from poetry, at least, this speculation is quite tortuous. At the same time, the meaning and theme of symbolic poetry are often expressed by hints. The sense of tragedy and loneliness in Rain Lane is implied by the rendering of the long and lonely rain lane, the decaying fence, the cold sadness and drizzle, and the description of the expectations of the wandering people for the girl like lilac. Everything is not clear, not clear, but we understand and feel it. It is precisely because the poet does not limit the meaning of poetry to one level that we learn more from poetry.
We say that the artistic conception image 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.
3. 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 he was somewhat praised, he was insightful when he first saw the beautiful syllables of this poem. 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 ending is repeated, and the same theme appears repeatedly in the poem, which strengthens the musical sense of the whole poem and also increases the expressive force of the poet's hesitation and disillusionment. There are six lines in each section of the whole poem, and the number of words in each line is different 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 between words. 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.
reference data
1. Wang Zelong: "From the desolate" gutter "to the lonely" rainy lane "―― On the evolution of China's new poetry from romanticism to modernism in the 1920s", Journal of Jingzhou Normal University, 1994/04.
2. Sun: Analysis of the Artistic Characteristics of Rain Lane, Journal of Yanbian University (Social Science Edition), 03, 2000.
3. Blue wash: "Talking about Dai Wangshu's masterpieces", "Appreciation of masterpieces", 2002/0 1.
4. Zhang Junping: "Talking about Rainy Alleys" ―― Discussion with the article "Talking about Rainy Alleys by Dai Wangshu" 《 Appreciation of Famous Works 》, 2002/06.
5. Sun's Appreciation of Dai Wangshu's Masterpieces, China Peace Publishing House, 2002.
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