What is the meaning of the rain lane in The Rain Lane of Poetry?

Rain Lane is Dai Wangshu's early masterpiece. After the poem was published, it had a great influence, so the poet was called "Rain Lane Poet". Poetry depicts a gloomy picture of Jiangnan alleys during the rainy season, which constitutes a lyrical artistic conception with strong symbolic color. Here, the poet figuratively described the dark and gloomy social reality at that time as a narrow and lonely "rain lane" without sunshine and vitality. The lyric hero "I" is such a lonely wanderer in the rainy lane. "I" still cherish the longing and pursuit of beautiful ideals and hopes in loneliness. The "lilac-like girl" in the poem is a symbol of this beautiful ideal. However, this beautiful ideal is slim and difficult to realize. This mentality is a true reflection of some young intellectuals who pursued after the failure of the Great Revolution. They were in a state of confusion because they could not find a way out under low political pressure. In art, this poem also clearly reflects the creative characteristics of Dai Wangshu's early poems. It not only adopts symbolism and symbolism, but also has the pursuit of musical beauty. "I", "Rain Lane" and "Girl" in the poem are not concrete portrayal of life, but lyrical images full of symbolic significance. The whole poem also echoes with smooth rhythm and melody. The sense of melody mainly comes from the rhyme feet, except that each rhyme foot rhymes in the third and sixth lines, and each rhyme foot selects many sound groups corresponding to the rhyme feet. The application of overlap and repetition in poetry also enhances the musical effect. As Ye Shengtao said, Rain Lane is "opening a new era for the syllables of new poetry".

In Rain Lane, the poet created a girl with a lilac knot. Although this is 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".

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, but can we say that the artistic conception and image of Rain Lane are the expansion and desalination of the modern vernacular version of the old poem "Lilacs are sad in the rain"? I don't think so. When the poet conceived the artistic conception and image of the rain lane, he not only absorbed the juice of his predecessors, but also created his own. First, the ancients used the lilac knot itself as a symbol of sadness in their poems, while Yuxiang imagined a girl who was as sad as lilac. She has the image of lilacs disappearing in an instant, which is different from the old classical poems and other works created by the poet in his early days. She is full of the tone of the old poems and shows more flavor of the new era. "Lilacs in the rain bear sorrow" can arouse people's hope and disillusionment more than "girls who are as sad as lilacs", and this image is a rare creation in the field of expressing the sorrow of the times. Secondly, in ancient poetry, the lilac knot in the rain is based on the real life scene to pin the poet's feelings. The poet added his imagination to his life experience. It is the product of artistic imagination, more beautiful than life.