1, Generation 1: refers to people who grew up in the historical stage of the Cultural Revolution.
2. Night refers to the political movement of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976.
The meaning of this sentence is:
The background of this poem is the Cultural Revolution, when "the night gave me black eyes". For that generation of young people, the Cultural Revolution was a night that left them at a loss. But they all have black eyes, which is the characteristic of China people. They have the precious blood of the Chinese nation, which shows that they are all a generation of young people shouldering a great historical mission.
They must look for the light and the front for the motherland when the motherland is in cultural and humanistic catastrophe, because they have the "black eyes" endowed by the Chinese nation, so that they can "look for the light" for the motherland in the "dark night". They are a struggling generation, but they are also a generation with great responsibilities and indomitable noble qualities.
This poem expresses the poet's mental journey of a generation, the denial of dark politics, and the yearning and pursuit of light. This poem strongly proves that poetry is the essence of art, its ideological content is highly concentrated and its artistic expression is highly purified, which makes it have strength and capacity that novels, essays and other styles do not have.
Extended data:
Famous comments on "A Generation";
Wang Gan's transparent carrot-I read Gu Cheng's ":
In my opinion, the tragic significance of these two poems is first reflected in the non-historical abnormality of the environment. The image of "dark night" embraces a vast and infinite time and space, which is a deformed and inhuman year and environment, which is itself a tragedy in the development of historical process.
Give me black eyes is the result of this tragic development. The undertaker of the tragedy is "I", because it connects between "night" and "black eyes", and "I" passively becomes the undertaker of this disaster. "Black eyes" is actually a concrete form of "alienation", which has penetrated into people and the environment.
But the more profound tragic significance is "I use it to find light." It seems that "I" is in an active position here. There is no doubt that I have a spirit of daring to resist the "night" and look for light, and I will stick to it. The weapon I use is actually a derivative of "night".
This seems to indicate that this search is bound to fall into a new tragedy. This tragic cycle reveals that people can find themselves, but they cannot realize themselves. This has almost become an eternal tragic complex in human spiritual life.
Tang Xiaodu: There are only two sentences in this poem by Gu Cheng, but it has considerable weight in the history of contemporary poetry. It has high historical generality and philosophical light of dialectical thinking, high aesthetic value and strong artistic power.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia-A Generation