1. The projection of the darkness of reality and the disillusionment of ideals in the poet's mind, a good lyric poem, should be the crystallization of artistic beauty. It will transcend the limitation of time and space and arouse people's aesthetic feelings. Dai Wangshu's Rain Lane is such a beautiful lyric poem.
2. However, for many years, Dai Wangshu's poems such as Rain Lane have been regarded as the groans of symbolism and modernism, and have been excluded from the field of 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.
3. Dai Wangshu left us only more than 90 lyric short poems after more than 20 years of tortuous creation, and Rain Lane is one of his early famous works.
4. 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")
7. This well-known story in literary history 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.
8. Tragic themes with the characteristics of the times that express anxious people 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.
9. In the long-term expectation, the girl finally came, complaining in the rain, "She approached silently", sometimes two hearts were close to understanding each other, but they were finally disappointed, "took another breath", and finally drifted away, and the distance between them was re-opened. 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.
10. In Rain Lane, the image of the girl is tragic, and so is the image of the lyric hero, the wanderer (the lonely wanderer image 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.