The monotonous chime of the clock,
A painful story at night!
Everyone is surprised by this language,
I feel awake again, like a conscience!
In this quiet moment,
Which one of us can be carefree to know:
Time of pain and hoarseness * * *
Playing farewell songs?
We want an irresistible fate.
Has been entangled in a sad and desolate world-
After this fierce and unforgettable struggle,
We were abandoned by the whole world;
Our life is ahead,
Like a phantom standing at the ends of the earth,
With our times, my friends,
Disappear in the distance of darkness and confusion;
Among them, a new young spark
Shining towards the sun,
It needs us and our years,
I have taken it far away!
Only sad funerals are held occasionally,
Only when the clock strikes midnight,
An instrument that purrs at funerals,
Because we keep crying!
(Translated by Chen and Zhu Xiansheng)
Chutchev is called "the greatest representative of Russian philosophical lyric poetry". This19th century poet and thinker was highly praised by contemporary writers, but it was not until recently this century that his poems were truly recognized and widely popularized. Soviet literary and art scholars have done a lot of research on his creation, pointing out: "As one of the most popular poets today, Chuchev is still the most puzzling poet in the19th century for the time being ... One of the main reasons why his poems are difficult to understand is the absolutely unique creative technique of this talented poet. His thoughts are so obviously beyond his own era that his works have always echoed the poems of the twentieth century, and he actively participated in the understanding of the world and people in the present era. " Chutchev loved poetry since childhood and was fascinated by classical philosophy. While serving in Munich, he met Heine, a famous German poet. Heine's unique artistic style, which is good at combining lyric with political theory and combining profound ideological content with superb artistry, has a great influence on Chutchev's creation. His association with Schelling, a famous German philosopher and the founder of natural philosophy system, made him a lyric poet who was good at expounding philosophy.
As a poet, Chuchev grew up in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, Europe experienced the storm of the French Revolution, and a new bourgeois society was gradually formed. The people's revolution and the national self-determination movement swept through Greece, France, Poland, Italy, Germany and other places, indicating that great changes are coming. Just at this time, Chutchev came from backward feudal patriarchal Russia to western Europe, which was hit by the new trend. He is more keenly aware of the inevitability of historical change than others, and foresees that "new trends" will also affect tsarist Russia. Before the revolution in storm warning, he could not help but feel the fragility and instability of the social order he was familiar with, thus feeling isolated in life. Insomnia, an early masterpiece, expresses the poet's sadness that his world will be washed away by the times and forgotten by people.
In many of his works, Chutchev described the inevitable passage of time from various aspects. So is insomnia. On sleepless nights, the poet was attracted by the strange and clear "language" of the clock, fantasizing about things and sighing about life. First of all, we heard the "monotonous" bell; Then, as Chuchev did before, very specific phenomena and details in daily life gradually began to gain another meaning-a more universal philosophical meaning. As a result, "monotonous ringing of the bell" began to be understood as "time is painful and hoarse" and "farewell song" The fantasy caused by insomnia and the surging night thoughts paint a thrilling picture: this lonely and sad world will be attacked by irresistible "fate", the whole nature will abandon us, our generation will be far away and gradually dim, and the new race will forget our times and peers long ago! The poet described the break of the connection between the times, making people understand that the passage of time is inevitable, and people who are divorced from the times will encounter unparalleled loneliness. This kind of loneliness may be more terrible than death itself, because when a person loses his past, future and present, his situation is hopeless. There is a bottomless abyss ahead, "life is like a mirage" and "standing at the ends of the earth"; Behind him, the times and friends that once belonged to him have blurred and "disappeared in the distance"; Nor can we expect the attention and understanding of the younger generation, because "we and our times" have long been forgotten ("drifting away"). At the end of the poem, we heard the bell ticking again, but now its knocking echoes "funeral" and "funeral". This is clear: it is "crying" for those "us" who are forever out of life and forgotten.
Chuchev acknowledged that life is an eternal struggle of opposites, and affirmed the mystery of this struggle. His lyric poems reflect the crisis of a whole stage of European culture in a unique form, and reflect the crisis of consciousness of aristocratic intellectuals when they feel the exhaustion and inevitable destruction of civilization for centuries. Chutchev feels the variation of the natural forces that dominate existence and touches the secrets of the natural forces, which makes his lyric poems tragic. In the poem Insomnia, the poet's exclamation of life is full of tragic beauty.
(Wang Jianqing)