Li Jinfa's poetry creation is based on early French symbolism, especially Wei Erlun, which Li Jinfa himself admits. As we know, symbolism was originally a reaction to romanticism. In addition to the "symbolic" means of language expression, it still can't get rid of the romantic emotions in its bones, but it is more subtle. True romanticism originated from German classical philosophy, so German romanticism has a strong philosophical metaphor. The early French symbolism was the product of the depressed and low-pressure society after the French Romantic Revolution, so Baudelaire, Wei Erlun, Rambo and others were more in line with the abstract philosophy of German romanticism than symbolism. In other words, people generally only pay attention to the "symbolic" technique of French symbolism, but seldom pay attention to its deeper romantic feelings. There is no doubt that Li Jinfa's poems are also romantic in nature, but this is German-style abstract romanticism, not British-French revolutionary romanticism. The author believes that grasping this point is helpful to understand symbolism and Li Jinfa.
Although Li Jinfa's poetry is rooted in symbolism, his works are obviously abstract and speculative (the source of this feature is actually German classical philosophy), which is the fundamental reason why people call it "obscure". In other words, his works hinder the entry of ordinary readers, not because of his linguistic imbecility or semi-illiteracy. The author carefully read some of Li Jinfa's works, which are recognized as "obscure", and found that there are not many sentences that are not fluent in the works (of course, we are talking about particularly poetic language), so as long as we look closely, we can basically understand them. Some people say that "he is the culprit who ruined the language", and some people say that he "speaks badly and can't write letters", which is obviously unfair.
It is generally believed that the first song "Abandoned Wife" in "Light Rain" is Li Jinfa's masterpiece. Many people take this poem as an example when criticizing Li Jinfa's "obscure" language. However, I suspect that these people have never finished reading Li Jinfa's poems. They just read the first few poems and jumped to a conclusion. In fact, a collection of poems by Li Jinfa (based on Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House 1987 edition) is more than 700 pages long (it is difficult for any contemporary poet to have such a creative amount in three years), which contains a large number of fluent and profound works, and the language style tends to be fluent in the future. Although we can often see colloquial sentence patterns in literature, on the one hand, it is a common phenomenon among China writers in the 1920s, on the other hand, it does not hinder understanding, and sometimes it helps to create a good artistic atmosphere. Up to now, many China poets still like to use classical Chinese sentences to create a special sense of language.