You and I can't profane this word,
Don't forget your oath before God.
Not only do I want your tenderest love,
Wrapped in my heart forever like a banana coat;
I hope your love is as strong as steel,
Build a wall in this flowing life;
Let the autumn wind blow away all the yellow leaves in the garden,
Let termites rot the painted walls for thousands of years;
So one day a thunderbolt shook the universe,-
It cannot shake the freedom in the "love wall" between you and me!
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(1) written in1August, 925, first published in Modern Review, Volume 2, No.39, on September 5 of the same year, signed by Xu Zhimo. Later, I received a collection of poems "Night of Cold Jade".
"appreciation"
For love, Xu Zhimo said: "I will visit my only soul mate in the vast sea of people;" I am lucky to get it; No, my life, that's it. "This shows that his attitude is firm. However, when he was studying in England, he fell in love with Lin Huiying, a talented woman as beautiful as flowers and pure as jade, but failed. After returning to China, I fell in love with Lu Xiaoman. Although all shall be well, jack shall have Jill, it caused quite a stir in the society at that time and was under great pressure. The poet himself said, "My second group of poems, Frozen Jade Nights, can be said to be a sign of another great turning point in my life. "Building a Wall" included in this collection of poems is the confession of the poet's pursuit of faithful love at that time, and it is also an ode to free life!
This poem takes the form of a speech to the second one, which is kind and warm. There is no doubt that "you" in the poem is the Lu Xiaoman that the poet was infatuated with at that time. "Neither you nor I can profane the word/don't forget to swear before God." The first two poems point out the poet's love, which is warm and holy. I swear to God, this shows us the pure feelings and devotion, devotion and innocence of men and women in love. The poet's love is not only as warm and faithful as the love of ordinary people, but also more beautiful and imaginative. Throughout the ages, there are many people who bravely pursue love, but here, love is linked with "God", which shows that the poet's understanding and pursuit of love is based on a specific ideological background. This view of love, like "God", is the result of the spread of the west wind to the east around the May 4th Movement. Love is considered to be one of the innate human rights with sacredness and justice. It is precisely because of this brand-new rational understanding that the poet's pursuit of free love belonging to his own rights is more enthusiastic, brave and indomitable; Sensibility permeates rationality, and rationality encourages sensibility.
Love is flower of life, beautiful and magical. The moon like water and the breeze like wine are so charming and intoxicating. The poet certainly longs for such love: "I not only want your softest gentleness/banana coat to wrap my heart forever." What kind of love is this! The poet used the two qualifiers "softest" and "forever" to express his loyalty and yearning for love. The poet also thinks that this is not enough to express his feelings, and compares it to a banana. The banana wraps the heart of a dried banana layer by layer, which is extremely strong and symbolizes the poet's love. But the poet's profound meaning is not limited to this, or not here. Will the banana tree have no heart? Without heart, it will wither. The poet compares bananas, which means that today's love is life to him. If you lose this love, you will lose your life! For poets, love is not a luxury of life, but a necessity of life.
But the poet's love is also difficult, and it is not easy to have her for a long time. The poet wrote, "I want your love to be as strong as pure steel/to build a wall in this flowing life." The poet's inner worries are revealed here, so it is not convenient to make it clear. Love is the feeling between two lovers, and all kinds of external pressures of society can only break up this feeling through the abandonment of both lovers. In other words, stress is always an external cause. The poet used "flowing life" to emphasize the change of life, not social aspects, which showed that he realized that personal change was the main reason for the disappearance of love. So the poet asked his lover, "Love is as strong as pure steel". The so-called strength is the firmness of one's lover. Only firmness can resist all kinds of social pressures. The power of love comes from the loyalty of love; As long as you are loyal, that kind of love can stand the wind and rain.
Next, the poet uses three different images to form a semantic sequence that deepens step by step: "Autumn wind blows away the yellow leaves in the garden", and "termites eat away the Millennium painting wall" means that time goes by and good things never return; "Thunderbolt shocked the universe", which means that not only good things do not exist, but everything does not exist-even under such pressure and turmoil, mutual love will always exist! Autumn wind blows yellow leaves, termites eat painted walls, and lightning shakes the universe. It was originally a sad, ugly or horrible scene, but it has a tragic beauty under the light of the poet's love!
I said earlier that the poet's brave pursuit of love took place in the new cultural background. The core of this new concept of love is to raise the enjoyment of love to the height of life freedom. In this sense, the poet's pursuit of love is not only to enjoy the happiness and perfection of love, but also to confirm his right to survival and free choice. Hu Shi said in "Mourning for Zhimo": "Real life can only be achieved by self-struggle, and real happiness can only be achieved by self-struggle! True love will find itself! " Here, not only "struggle" is emphasized, but more importantly, the right to freedom of self-choice is emphasized, so pursuing a higher level of love means "freedom is repaid to freedom." At the end of this poem, the poet said, "Even if one day a thunderbolt shakes the universe, it will not shake the freedom in our' love wall'!" It not only embodies the poet's sincere pursuit of love, but also embodies the poet's belief in free life. Therefore, this poem is not only the poet's confession of love, but also an ode to free life!
Xu Zhimo was organizing a poetry club with Wen Yiduo and others before and after writing "Pure and Beautiful". They are not satisfied with the traditional rigid metrical poems and some vernacular poems after the May 4th Movement are just side prose. They are keen on introducing and recreating western-style poems, trying to establish a diversified modern metrical poem with China characteristics. They use the images such as the tone, rhyme, color sense and symmetrical lines of poetry to achieve the harmony and unity of music, painting and architecture. This poem is a sonnet form imported from the west, each sentence uses similar words, and the two related poems have similar rhymes: word/oath, emotion/heart, strength/wall, reason/reason, which makes the whole poem form a scattered and regular rhythm and enhances the sense of music; So as to help express a relaxed and passionate love theme.