"My loneliness is a long snake, cold beyond words", what kind of loneliness makes the author so? It turns out that this is the poet's acacia. The poet misses the girl far away, taking the snake as a metaphor, giving his dream to his beloved girl, hoping that she can dream, and hoping to borrow a snake to take her "dream".
In the poet's eyes, the snake is a loyal companion, a strong black silk on the girl's head, and a hometown girl who is suffering from passionate love.
Therefore, the poet sent a snake walking gently in the moonlight, hoping that it would "take away your dream for me, like a crimson flower".
He Qifang once commented on Feng Zhi's early poems: the words are not embellished too much, but they express a thick and rich feeling, as if this feeling itself constitutes its artistic charm. Among his contemporaries and later poets, some are more unrestrained, some are fresher and some are more beautiful than him. But it is the author's specialty to express a gloomy atmosphere with strong colors and shadows, which makes people linger for a long time after reading it. Lu Xun called him "the most outstanding lyric poet in China", which is probably the reason.
He Qifang's comments reveal the artistic features of Feng Zhi's early poems. Reading the poem "Snake", the first thing that surprises us is the metaphor of "snake". "Loneliness" has always been the theme of China poets' writing, but it's probably the first time to describe one's loneliness with a silent snake! This metaphor is not only novel and bold, but also breaks through people's aesthetic conventions (that's why poets say, "If you dream about it, don't be completely afraid"), and also shows the depth of emotions. If you don't deeply understand your inner loneliness, you can't think of the strange metaphor of "snake". This reminds me of Haizi's "Looking North". The young poet imagines his fate at the seaside in July: "I opened a window on the rock/looked at the seven bright stars", but at the end of the poem, "My July haunts me, like the lonely snake that loves me-it will spend its life in the painful and bitter sea". It is this last metaphor that makes a poem that looks far away and is full of whimsy not empty, but suddenly has the depth of pain. Returning to the poem "Snake", the poet not only uses "snake" to describe his loneliness, but also says "it is my faithful companion", which not only expresses some gratitude, but also implies the depth of loneliness. The poet's loneliness is accompanied by a warm and silent love. This unexpressed love is what people call "unrequited love". Secret love is great because it cultivates imagination. Therefore, although the snake looks quiet, it is enduring warm homesickness: it is thinking about the dense grassland-"that thick black silk on your head." This is really touching! Please note that the poet here uses "homesickness" instead of "acacia", which is more meaningful than "acacia". Because snakes usually live in grass, the "dense grassland" is their hometown. It is a kind of homesickness, and only when you go back there can you feel the meaning of life. There, it is the home of its life. After reading this, the meaning of "you" in the poem gradually becomes clear: she is the interlocutor of the poem, an object with all the poet's desires and love. The whole poem is an imaginary conversation between you and me. In the last paragraph of the poem, the metaphor of "Moon Shadow" is used to describe not only the lightness and swiftness of the snake, but also its spirituality. "It took away your dream", so that from the beginning of the poem "in case you dreamed of it" returned to the other person's dream, and the whole poem wrote a kind of "mutual dream": "snake" dreamed of that "dense grassland". What is even more bizarre is that "it captures your dream/looks like a crimson flower". When the poem was written here, it changed from hazy artistic conception and strange imagination to concrete images, and the color tone suddenly increased. Please note the word "scarlet" used here. It is hard for us to imagine using "blue", "white" or even "red" instead, because it just conveys the rich and shy emotional tone of the whole poem. After reading this poem, we not only felt the author's introversion, but also deeply felt her shyness in dreaming of this snake. "Crimson" happens to be a shy tone. Indeed, "expressing a gloomy atmosphere with strong colors and shadows makes people linger for a long time after reading it", which is the inspiration of the poem Snake. It wrote wordless loneliness and the depth of love; It has a strange imagination and also depicts the heavy shadow it casts. According to the poet, he wrote this poem after seeing a woodcut of a snake with a red flower in its mouth. However, this is just a touch of his whole life. From a painting to a poem, there are many unspeakable secrets.
Youth is beautiful, but it is often lonely and even depressed, so such poems will have special appeal to young readers. However, Feng Zhi was not satisfied with his early poems. After liberation, Feng Zhi once said: "Poetry expresses narrow feelings and personal sadness. If they mean anything, it is that we can also see the anguish of some young people after the May 4th Movement. " . (Preface to Selected Poems of Feng Zhi) However, this has revealed the significance of such a poem as Snake. Deep depression in youth, pure and shy love and strange imagination are not the most memorable things in a person's life?