Hearing the first lark,
There is a beautiful and magical girl,
Come to the poor shepherd.
She was not born in this valley,
No one knows where she comes from;
Once this girl says goodbye to everyone,
Her eyesight will soon disappear.
I was relieved when she arrived.
Everyone is really happy,
But there is a kind of loftiness and dignity,
People can't be close to her.
She brought fresh fruits and flowers,
That's from somewhere else,
Growing up in another kind of sunshine,
In a better way.
She has something for everyone,
Give this fruit and that flower;
Whether teenagers or elderly people with crutches,
Everyone brought presents home.
Any guest is welcome by her;
Especially when a couple approaches her,
She will give the best gift,
Send them the most beautiful flowers.
(translated by Qian Chunkun)
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In the poem "A Foreign Girl", Schiller described his poetic ideal to the readers through personification.
This poem is like a painting, characters and scenes, vivid and vivid. "Foreign girl" is the personification of poetry. The poet has created a perfect female image in his poems, which is beautiful, magical, kind and cordial, and combines the ideal characteristics in the poet's mind. It can be said that "exotic girl" is similar to "lilac girl" in Dai Wangshu's poem Rain Lane. They are all created by poets according to real life and their own imagination, and they are the products of artistic imagination better than life.
Schiller's basic creed includes the contrast between reality and ideal, and this creed of the poet is also implied in the poem "Foreign Girl". This is a metrical poem, the whole poem is divided into six sections, and in terms of the number of lines in each section, it is a four-line couplet. The first section describes the arrival of "her". The real society is like this barren valley. Because of the arrival of "exotic girls", the closed society at that time was full of spring breath and vitality. Later, it was further written that "she" came from far away, and "she" did not come from reality, but from the other side of the distant world. The third section writes that the arrival of "she" makes people feel happy and gratified, just like a fresh wind awakens the dusty national consciousness and broadens people's hearts. Moreover, "she" also brought flowers and fruits from other places. The fresh fruits and flowers in the fourth section imply advanced ideas, and the poem particularly emphasizes that these flowers and fruits are produced in another excellent environment, and the richness of the other side of the world is in sharp contrast with the poverty of this side of the world. The fifth and sixth verses of the poem write "She" and give flowers and fruits to everyone, teenagers, old people and lovers. Everyone enjoys the beauty brought by advanced ideas and poems, which embodies the poet's humanistic care and fraternity concept. "She" in the whole poem is the product of a perfect ideal country and the embodiment of the poet's ideal. The poet hopes to break the closed national consciousness with advanced ideas and make the real social life full of new vitality.
This poem is fresh in style, concise in writing and realistic in description. Poets are also very skilled and superb in using rhetorical devices. Through personification, abstract thoughts are transformed into concrete characters, which makes poetry look beautiful and vivid. The use of contrast highlights the wealth of the ideal country and the poverty of reality, constitutes a symbolic artistic conception, and implicitly implies the poet's optimistic idealism. He hides all the anguish of real life behind the ideal full of expectation, so most of us will read bright hopes and beautiful longings in his poems. When referring to Schiller, herzen wrote: "When I am depressed now, his clear poems give me comfort."
The profound ideological content and superb expression style have made this "foreign girl" loved by many readers, and Schiller's fresh poems have also brought creative ideas to the whole world.
(Yang Haiying)