I became a writer, Ye Zhi.

How did I start writing? I can't talk about anything that can help young writers. I just hope they don't start like me. When I was at school, I spent more time preparing my lessons for the next day than most of my classmates, but I learned nothing. My academic performance has always been at the bottom of my class, and I don't have to study one or two courses at all. My father would say to me, "You can't concentrate on things that don't interest you, but I send you to school just to let you learn things that don't interest you." I have never been tortured by "poetry". I write because of some psychological defect. If you can't become a university, you should become a greater poet. Even today, when I am among ordinary people, I still have to fight against the lack of self-confidence. This lack of self-confidence comes from daily humiliation, because I don't know what others know. I can read a little French poetry with difficulty, but I have forgotten all about Greek, Latin and German that I have studied hard. There is only one memory about my school days that can bring me happiness. Although I was always the last in my class when I was studying in schools in England and Ireland, my friends were among the best, because then, as now, I hated fools. When I want to know whether a person is trustworthy, I want to see whether his character is good or not and whether he studies well. My best friend in Irish school is charles johnson, whose father is the leader of Orange. In the senior high school entrance examination, he became the number one scholar in Ireland. When I met him in America a few years later, he said, "I can learn everything as soon as possible, but I don't want to learn anything." Some instinct brought us closer, and I only read my poems to him. They are all poetic dramas-except for a long poem written by Spencer, which describes a woman who has now forgotten. I can't remember clearly whether she is beautiful, where she copied it, and whether she got lost while shopping. I remember those three plays, which are of little value. One of them has a vague Elizabethan style, and the scene is a Germanic forest. Another script is an imitation of Shelley, and the scene is a crater on the moon; Another script comes from someone's translation from Sanskrit, and its scene is an Indian temple. Charles johnson likes some passages in these poems very much. I wonder if he ever thought that I wrote these plays at home. A fragment of that Indian script, or the whole script, was placed at the beginning of my poetry collection. I did this because Charles was still alive, and now the script is still in the book, because I forgot to withdraw it. Sometimes I wonder if I write poems to cure my mental anxiety, just like a cat eating valerian when it is constipated. But that won't do either, because before I became deeply humble, I was already interested in people who were proud and confident. Some people call me melodramatic. If so, maybe, because when I was eleven or twelve, my father took me to see Owen's famous Hamlet. Many years later, I was walking in the streets of Dublin. No one looked at me and I didn't know anyone. I assumed a cocky posture and was compared to Gordon Clegg's dance. I asked my character to speak in Owen's melancholy, depressed and savage tone. Two months ago, when describing the resurrection of Christ, I wrote the following two lines:

What coaxed mosquitoes and flies at once?

It's the smell of Owen and his pride.

We should not think that a young poet must be melancholy and weak, or that he must have had a lonely struggle. I think some successful old people will think that they gained a pleasant reputation when they were students; Of course, I also have a small group of people who appreciate my worthless works, and their appreciation gives me great reasons for confidence.

When I was eighteen or nineteen, I wrote an idyllic play, which was influenced by Keats and Shelley, and also by Johnson's The Sad Shepherd. A friend of mine showed it to some college students in Trinity College. At that time, they were publishing an ambitious political and literary journal, Dublin University Review, which had been published for several months. I don't remember who showed it to them. Definitely not Charles Johnston. He passed the civil service examination in India and went to India, where he stayed until he was tired of life there. At that time, I entered the art school, because art was my family's major, and because I felt that I could not pass the entrance examination of Trinity College. Those college students liked my poems and invited me to read them to people four or five years older than us. This man is Barry, who later became an expert in ancient history and editor of Gibbon's works. I am very excited, not only because he will decide to accept or reject my script, but also because he is the headmaster of a middle school. I have never met the headmaster before. When I was in middle school, I was called out by the headmaster Edward Doden. I was so nervous that my face turned red and white that Doden had to take me to another room. Maybe I can ask Barry to explain to me why I have to learn so many things that I can't concentrate.

I think a person should believe everything he does. I once told a photographer who was playing with horseshoe-shaped iron blocks that I should put my head in the right position: "Because you can't produce light and shadow with black and white photographic paper, you can't reproduce nature. The artist can do this because he uses some kind of symbol. " To my surprise, he was not angry with me for attacking him. He replied, "Photography is a technical job." Even today, I still have the habit of thinking like this, but only for those who are unknown. A few days ago, I read a report about a university conference. When someone says, "No one believes in personal demons today," Lord acton says, "I do." And I know that Lord acton is a living liar, because his planned history of the Oxford universe does not include the influence of individual demons on specific events. I don't know why I can't remember. Later, when I was alone with Barry, I tried to overcome my shyness and said to Barry, "I know that you will maintain the ordinary education system and say that it will enhance your willpower, but I believe it is only superficial because it weakens the influence." He smiled and looked embarrassed, but said nothing.

My pastoral drama "Island of Statues" was published in the review. I haven't seen you for years, but everything I did at that time was unsuccessful. There are two lyric poems of pastoral drama in my poetry collection, not because I like them, but because my friends related to them were still alive when I received them. As soon as this book was published, or before it was published, I was influenced by two people, who would have a far-reaching impact on the intellectual movement in Ireland. They are John O 'Leary Sr. and standish Ogly Dee. Orie was the leader of the Fenia Movement. In his library, I found the works of the poet of Young Ireland, while Ogly first rewrote some ancient Irish the legend of heroes in strong romantic English. Because of the conversation with these two people, because of the book lent to me by one of them and the book written by the other, I stopped talking about foreign subjects. I realized that race is more important than individuals, and I started writing Odyssey. This poem, along with many other short poems, was published by subscription, and John Orie found almost all subscribers. So I became one of the rising poets. I live in London and have many friends. If I can't earn 20 shillings a week to pay for a man's room and board, I will go to live with my family or relatives. At this point, I am much luckier than isadora duncan. Describing her early life in London, Duncan said, "I have fame and prince's love, but I don't have enough food." As a professional writer, I am clumsy, stiff and lazy. When writing a book review, you should write your own intense thoughts, because you don't know how to trigger ideas from the theme; When I write a poem with only six lines, it takes me almost six days, because I am determined to use natural words in the natural word order. My imagination is still full of poetic rhetoric, which is an old problem when I was studying at school. The only difference is that I have plenty of time now.

1938

(Nishikawa translation)

Precautions:

Edward Gordon Clegg (1872-? ): British actor and stage art designer.

John Bagnott Barry (1861-1927): He was a professor at Trinity College in Dublin and Cambridge University, and wrote The Late History of Roman Empire and The History of Greece.

Edward gibbon (1737—— 1794): British historian, who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Baron acton (1843— 1902): Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University.

Standish Ogly (1843-1928): Irish historian and novelist. His work "Irish History-The Heroic Age" had an important influence on the revival of Irish literature.

Isadora duncan (1878— 1927): American dancer and founder of modern dance.

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Ye Zhi is regarded as one of the greatest poets in Britain, and his poetic achievements occupy a core position in modern European and American literature. His poetic career is very long, from 65438+1980s to1930s. What made him a famous poet? What makes him have such a strong creative vitality? From this essay "I Become a Writer" written in his later years, we can understand his creative motivation and process. He said to himself, "I have never been tortured by poetry." I write because of some psychological defect. " If you can't go to college, you can be a greater poet. "It is this confidence that made his poems famous. Throughout his creative process, from youth to maturity, his road was not smooth sailing, during which his poetry creation experienced three slow and painful changes.

Ye Zhi's creation began with romanticism and symbolism. In his early years, he followed the example of British romantic poets Blake and Shelley, and also accepted the influence of French symbolism. Most of his poems are folklore and historical hero stories, full of fantasy, melancholy, pessimism and self-indulgence. Natural imagination, dreamy atmosphere and musical beauty constitute the main features of his early poems. For example, The Island in the Middle of Lake Foley in Inniss and The Man in Wonderland are representative works in this respect. However, just as Ye Zhi was convinced of symbolism, a photographer reminded him that "photography is technical work", just as the symbol of poetry is only technology, it can never "reproduce nature". Barry, an expert in ancient history, taught him the deep meaning of poetry, which prompted him to think further about poetry creation.

Ye Zhi's romanticism and symbolism continued until the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, Ye Zhi has changed from a traditional poet to a modern poet because of the disillusionment of political ideals and the pain caused by frustration in love. In addition to further accepting the influence of French symbolism and English metaphysics, he also absorbed the characteristics of modernist poems such as Pound and Eliot. After the transformation, Ye Zhi began to move from fantasy to reality, revealing profound and complicated human problems in the form of poetry, such as thinking about life, questioning love and understanding politics and religion. Melancholy and dreams in early poetry were replaced by indignation and pain after the disillusionment of realistic ideals. However, his poems are still concise and rich, with the wisdom of metaphysical poets, symbolic images and the breath of modern poetry. 1965438+September 2003 and Lida and Swan were both written in this period. These poems are full of bitter satire on social reality, and also express deep thinking on human survival and development.

Half a century later, Ye Zhi ushered in the third transformation of poetry creation, and the cynicism in his mid-term creation disappeared, which was followed by feelings about the passing of youth and the waste of life. He began to yearn for and call for the eternal world, trying to get rid of the unpredictable real world and enter the world of art and wisdom beyond time and space. The opposition between youth and aging, love and war, body and soul, life and art is the enduring theme of his later poems, so as to reveal the embarrassing living situation of mankind. Illusion-Interpretation of Life is one of his late masterpieces, which contains his multiple reflections on the ultimate significance of human existence in his later years, such as the meaning of life, the eternity of the universe and historical development. These ideas make his works more mysterious.

Ye Zhi's life is a life of constantly exploring poetry creation. In this memoir essay, he talked about the formation and transformation of his poetic style, from which we can see a poet's soul that is constantly pursuing, making progress, never getting tired and full of vitality. It is the lifelong love for poetry and persistent pursuit of poetry art that finally makes Ye Zhi a world-recognized famous poet. This also proves the poet's firm belief: "One should believe in everything he does."

(Wang Yuanyuan)