A tree, a tree
Stand apart from each other
Wind and air
Tell them the distance
But under the cover of soil,
Their roots are growing.
In the unseen depths
They twisted the roots together.
works appreciation
Trees are just a concrete thing in nature. The poet entrusted things to the tree, praising and expressing a spirit of unity and struggle that is independent, progressive and rooted. The high integration of image and thinking is the common feature of all successful literary works.
"Poetry should think in images", and the poet created the artistic conception with the help of the image of trees as a natural object. Through this perceptual image, the rational understanding of reality has become the concept in the poem. A tree, a tree/independent of each other/wind and air/telling their distance. This is an independent tree. Then the poet wrote with the image of "root": "In the invisible depths/they entangled the roots". These trees, which are connected with each other underground, form an ideological understanding for readers: trees are both independent individuals and United whole. Write God in form, which is the essential feature and spiritual character of the object. Of course, the emotion in the poem is not abstract, but dissolved in the image of the poem.
To understand this poem, we need to know a historical fact, that is, foreigners insulted the Chinese nation in the past as "the sick man of East Asia" and "fragmented sand". Although this is not necessarily the whole truth, it does reflect the phenomenon that some national humiliation spirits have been distorted under the aggression of foreign powers.
It was with the poet's sensitive spiritual feelings and keen political vision that Ai Qing profoundly observed the trend of the times and the pulse of society and realized that the national awakening had arrived. He was inspired by the image of trees standing in isolation from each other in "Yuanye", and produced the association of "in the invisible depths/their roots intertwined". Ai Qing endowed the trees growing on the earth with vivid characters, and saw the potential fact that "they are covered with soil/their roots are spreading" with a unique eye, and regarded them as a symbol that a great nation is uniting and condensing into a powerful force. His artistic expression makes people get a poetic pleasure in observing and integrating life phenomena, and then get a philosophical understanding.
The whole poem is implicit and deep, full of philosophical meditation, which is its success.