Telling a girl who is enjoying the fruits of youth about her twilight years is like telling a newborn child that he must die. This is cruel, but it is an irresistible natural law. The poet wrote this not only to tell her the "truth", but to express his love for her in this way. The poet seems to be a loner, watching from a distance, but clinging, loving this admired girl and giving her his unique but truly precious love, because others only love her true love or false love face, and the unique poet loves her noble soul. Beauty is easy to get old, but youth is hard to stay, but the noble soul and inner beauty of a girl will last forever in the passage of time, just like wine, the longer it is hidden, the more mellow it will be, so the poet's love can transcend time and external beauty.
This love poem is unique, and its uniqueness comes from the poet's unique and sincere feelings. Without this kind of emotion, deliberately being original will only make people feel artificial. Therefore, this poem is not so much an imaginary description of the girl's twilight years as an expression of the poet's true feelings for the girl and the fleeting years. In this sense, it is the sincere feelings of sadness and hopelessness that overflow from the poem that move us.
The whole poem has neat rhythm, concise language and beautiful artistic conception. There are no flowery words in the poem, but there are majestic emotions hidden behind the simple and plain words. The emotional trajectory expressed by Ye Zhi in his poems can be compared to a river: it flows in the canyon, then flows into the river, and finally disappears peacefully into the sea. However, just under the calm sea, I believe there must be rolling waves that buried all his hopes, disappointments and despair. Any young heart will not and will not face the old, dying, layers of wrinkles, such as silver hair, which is a heavy feeling. However, young Ye Zhi stood at the end of time, always telling and imagining his old age scenes in a calm and expressive tone, and showing his love for Maud Gunn to the fullest.
The whole poem is divided into three sections. These three poems, which have a beginning and an end, take care of each other and are quite ingenious. The first part begins with a hypothetical adverbial of time. The poet imagines an elderly lover reading a collection of poems by the fire a few years later. She was covered with frost and sat alone, but she was not alone, because Ye Zhi's poems accompanied her. When she recites it gently, she will recall everything in the past, her beautiful eyes, soft light and deep halo. Ye Zhi was only 29 when he wrote this poem, while Maud Gunn was only 27. The hypothesis of "when you are old" is embodied by images such as "hoary head", "sleepy" and "taking a nap by the fire". The moment of "old" suddenly came to us, hazy and static, but so vivid and shocking. What will you see when you look at yourself from the other side of time? The poet's emotional experience and the long years after writing this poem all confirm his feelings when writing this poem. The poet seems to have been moving towards his hypothetical time and space without hesitation, just like moving towards a belief.
The second section is the focus of the whole poem, and the poet skillfully uses the method of contrast to express his deep affection. "How many people like your beauty, hypocrisy or sincerity when you are young and happy? Only one person loves your pilgrim's soul and the painful wrinkles on your aging face. " The poet pointed out that others love your youthful exuberance and your beautiful appearance, while I love your holy heart that keeps fighting for national freedom. Even if the shade of youth has fallen, "I" will still love the sadness and wrinkles on your face. Compared with those people, the poet's love is undoubtedly deeper, more sincere and more loyal. Time has brought a heavy test to love, but time has also verified love. Only through time can love be rock-solid and last forever.
The third section turns to the future virtual artistic conception. The poet's language is as gentle as down, gently guiding lovers to enter just to visit in advance-"When you are old", your old man's hair turns white, your face is no longer bright and beautiful, your body is bent, and you take a nap by the fire, but I still feel heartache for your aging, but I still ring the bell of love for you. The poet's love in reality is so hopeless that he has to guide the other person to imagine the scene many years later, hoping that lovers can understand his infatuation as soon as possible after seeing this poem, instead of waiting for many years, everything becomes permanent pain. Then the poet wrote: "On the mountain overhead, it walked slowly, hiding its face among a group of stars." The poet's love did not disappear, but lingered on the mountain overhead, reluctant to leave, and finally hid himself among a group of stars. The images of "mountain" and "star" in these two sentences expand the artistic conception and space of the poem and make people feel a kind of holy beauty. The poet's love is constantly sublimated to the pure and lofty realm, sublimated to infinite space, and becomes an eternity.
"How many people have seen worship you when you were young? We know who is willing to bear the relentless changes of time. How many people come back and forth in your life, knowing that I will accompany you all my life. " For Ye Zhi, love will never die. In this time-based poem, the poet not only vividly conveys the unique emotional experience of individual life with exquisite brushwork, but more importantly, the poet understands the universal experience of all mankind from his personal feelings, thus realizing the individual's transcendence of life and the world. nervous
In this poem, the poet broke through personal misfortune, turned his sadness into a gentle poetic soul, created a beautiful artistic world in a gentle and tortuous way, and realized the transcendence of life and destiny. The whole poem embodies the full beauty of tension.
In this poem, tension is first reflected in the content and form of opposition and unity. Perhaps we will first notice that the whole poem is actually composed of one sentence. We can simply condense this poem into one sentence: You take down the collection of poems and read it slowly, remembering the past and lamenting the disappearance of love. However, behind the simple form is the profound connotation. This is inseparable from the wonderful use of the word "dream" in the poem. It is because of "remembering" that the long river of years rises in memory. The whole poem suddenly has a sense of space because of this word. So we can see that the tense in the poem points to the present in the first and third stanzas, but goes back to the past in the second stanza. On the one hand, the pregnant shape of time reflects the flowing track of the protagonist's consciousness, on the other hand, it is more important, because it expands the artistic conception and space of the poem. Looking at the "mountain" and "star" in the last two lines of the poem, we can easily find that the time and space embodied in the poem not only spans the past and the present, but also connects heaven and earth. In the time and space where the past and the present are intertwined, the poet's love flows. Because love is everywhere, throughout the ages, the poet's individual love has been sublimated into the eternal love of mankind. This coincides with the basic characteristics of symbolism: the pursuit from finite to infinite, that is, from personal feelings, to express the pursuit of eternal thought.
Tension is not only reflected in the content and form, but also in the change of rhythm. On the whole, the whole poem rhymes, the rhythm is basically neat, and each line is dominated by pentameter and iambic. But in some key places in the poem, the rhythm has changed. Therefore, as Mr. Yu Guangzhong said: "Metrics should be restrained, poets should resist, and two opposing forces will form tension." In When You Are Old, the change of rhythm is mainly reflected in the change from iambic to Spandy, which often brings unexpected tension between words. For example, in the third line of the second quarter, the poet used Yang Yang's song for the first time in/People Love/,and he had ulterior motives in stressing the word "people". The word "man" not only refers to the poet compared with other suitors on the surface, but also implies that the poet is a real man at a deeper level, which is of far-reaching significance, because in the eyes of Modogan, Ye Zhi is full of femininity, just like his name, unlike a real man, she devoted herself to a brave warrior, and the poet Ye Zhi is a poet after all, and his sigh, no matter how unforgettable, is unforgettable after all. In fact, Modogan's evaluation of the poet is not entirely correct. Ye Zhi wrote a poem "Bourbon Mountain" two months before his death, leaving his epitaph: Take a look at life, death/cold,/knight, forward! (cast a cold eye/opposite, to death/knight, pass by! From such a resolute poem, it is not difficult to see the poet's clank and iron bones. The poet rereads the word "person" here, and how many grievances, grievances, misunderstandings and wordless refutations are conveyed incisively and vividly, which is exquisite. In this line, another case is/-cold soul/. Due to the reinterpretation of "-grim", the word "pilgrim" has gained a richer meaning. The original modification of "soul" in the poem can be understood as that the lover's soul is holy and flawless, and the patriotic cause that the lover is engaged in is glorious and great. However, rereading the second half of the word "pilgrim" makes "-grim" meaningful again. Generally speaking, "-grim" has two meanings: one is "heartless"; The second is "strong and fearless." We can appreciate the poet's complex emotions and mentality: while appreciating Modaogang's firm revolutionary stance, does he also have a trace of bitterness and complain about her heartless and indifferent response to his love?
However, in the poem When You Are Old, perhaps the most important tension comes from or constructs the theme of the poem: the insurmountable gap between realistic love and ideal love. The poet lost the real love for the imaginary love, because the real love can't stand being destroyed, and only the imaginary love can last forever and be surrounded by a circle of shining poems forever. However, the more imaginative and ideal things are, the less powerful they are. In order to realize love, imagination should give way to reality. What a sad paradox this is! The poet realized the universal and identical experience of all mankind from his personal feelings, and realized the transcendence of life and the world.
Hypothetical imagination
Between the lines of the poem, we can see that the poet boldly used the artistic techniques of hypothetical imagination, such as: old, white-headed, sleepy/dozing by the fire. This is an old-fashioned scene envisioned by the poet at the beginning of the poem. As the poem continues, this scene immediately presents an old picture in the reader's mind: by the dark fireplace, the fire reflects the cheeks of an aging lover. In this quiet and cold environment, the lover is obviously spending the rest of her light with a tired and lonely heart. Then, the poet went on to write: Please write this poem down/read it slowly, and recall the tenderness of your eyes in the past/their heavy shadows in the past. These lines bring lovers and readers into memories of the past together. At that time, the poet still loved her lover deeply. Even though she is old, wrinkled and dozing by the fire, the poet still longs to be by her lover's side and look into her "gentle eyes", which can bring her some warmth and happiness for the last time. With the help of assumptions, the poet imagines the warmth of his later years and recalls his youth in order to express his love for his lover. It can be seen that the poet has developed a rich imagination in his poems, imagining young lovers entering their twilight years, white-haired and sleepy, and the soft and dazzling luster in their eyes no longer exists. When Cupid disappears without a trace, it leaves lovers with infinite loneliness and sadness, poets with endless thoughts and memories, and readers with huge reverie space and poets' loyalty to love.
contrast
However, the vows and firmness of love that the poet has always expressed have not received the due response from lovers. For some unknown reason, lovers have always rejected the poet's pursuit. In the second section, the poem adopts the technique of strong contrast, "How many people love you when you are young and happy" and "Is adore you's beauty false or true". The beauty and youth of lovers attract secular people to love and pursue her with sincerity, which doomed the difficulties and twists and turns of the poet's love. Then the poet confessed: "Only one person loves your pilgrim's soul" and "loves the painful wrinkles on your aging face". Poetry uses "how many people" and "only one person" to compare the poet's love: the poet not only loves people's sweet faces when they are happy, but also loves people's painful wrinkles when they are old. Love the soul of people more-that is the soul of pilgrims; Therefore, the poet's love has the loyalty and holiness of pilgrims. The poet's love will not be discouraged by the hardships of love. The poet's love will not fade because of the aging of his lover, but it will last forever. The more suffering, the stronger love. This sharp contrast can be understood as the poet's hope that lovers can have a thorough reflection on their experiences and feelings when they are old, as well as the poet's immediate reminder to the lovers who are being pursued by everyone. It can also be understood as the hope that lovers can truly understand the poet's sincere love for lovers. How many people love your youth? The beauty of adore you is fake or true. Only one person loves your pilgrim's soul and the painful wrinkles on your aging face. Today, this is still the best expression of loyalty to love, which is much heavier and more powerful than the popular promise of "I love you the most".
picture
"Image is the soul of poetry" and "the core of poetic expression". The third section of the poem, Burying One's Head by the Fire with Red Light, echoes the poem "By the Fire" again, which is not only a kind of echo before and after, but also a repetition and emphasis on these important images. As one of the few images in this poem, "stove" and "fire" appear before and after, and the poet has special expressive significance. The "melting pot" can be a melting pot of life or a melting pot of love; "Fire" can give people the greatest warmth, make people think back and think. In the face of the poet's fiery love like Red Light Shining and Fire, in this unforgettable scene of fire, lovers will "bury their heads" and "sadly tell about the passing of that love" and tell about the preciousness after loss. Although the person he loves is fruitless, the poet still hopes that lovers will recall the process of being pursued by love and the lost years, and when they are old, they will feel a little sad and sorry for this lost love. Through the image of "fire", it is easy to trigger the emotional experience of "old imagination", still in order to let lovers cherish the poet's feelings and understand the poet's sincerity.
sign
Different people have different versions of the last two sentences of this poem, but they are always incomprehensible. I'm afraid the true meaning of a poem is accurate only by the poet himself. In line with the emotion and writing logic of the whole poem, free translation instead of literal translation in the last two sentences of the poem may better reflect the poet's emotion. As a representative of symbolist poets, Yeats expressed his loyalty to love by symbolic means. "Mountain" symbolizes tenacity and "star" symbolizes eternity. Although love is tortuous, painful and hopeless, the poet's love has been sublimated when lovers may face old memories, confusion, fatigue, loneliness, sadness and helplessness and misunderstand my heart. It is a higher level of love-in the mountains overhead and among the dense stars, the poet still loves his lover forever, paying attention to and wishing him eternal happiness. The poet's love story is touching, and the poet's love masterpiece is told by the world. It is similar to the famous ancient poem "We hope to fly in the sky, two birds use one wing" and two branches of a tree that grow together on the earth. "The earth lasts forever, and the sky lasts forever; One day, both will end in China, "and this endless sorrow will last forever". Love has no geographical boundaries and no present time, only the same sincerity and firmness, the same beauty and emotion.