Author: Dai Wangshu
Dreams will blossom,
Dreams will bloom charming flowers:
To find priceless treasures.
In the blue sea,
At the bottom of the blue ocean,
There is a gold shell hidden deep.
To climb an iceberg for nine years,
Sailing on the dry sea for nine years,
Then you met the golden shell.
It has the sound of clouds and rain in the sky,
It has the sound of waves at sea,
It will enchant your heart.
Put it in seawater for nine years,
After nine years in Tianshui,
Then, it blooms on a dark night.
When your temples are covered with spots,
When your eyes are blurred,
Golden shells spit out peach beads.
Put the peach beads in your arms,
Put the peach beads on your pillow,
So a dream came out quietly.
Your dream has come true,
Your dream has come true,
When you are old.
Dreamer
This is a famous lyric poem by Dai Wangshu, which shows a dreamer's mental journey with beautiful images. The concrete image of "dream" in this poem is "peach beads spit out by golden shells", which is hidden deep in the blue sea, bathed in the essence of the sun and the moon, listening to the rain and the sea breeze, not human. In order to get this mysterious and beautiful thing, the dreamer has to climb an iceberg for nine years and sail in the dry sea for nine years. The journey to find it is extremely difficult and far away, but the golden light always tempts the dreamer until he holds the shell in his hand. But this is not the end of the dream. "It's a long way to go, Xiu Yuan Xi, Xiu Yuan Xi", and the dreamer will continue the road of "golden shell" that he raised in seawater and Tianshui for nine years. After persistent search, careful care and pious nourishment, it finally bloomed in a dark night, and the golden shell finally spit out the "peach pearl". When the dreamer finally saw this magical and magnificent dream flower blooming in the misty eyes, his temples were covered with spots, tired and aging. Dream chasers may cry because of the aging of their lives, and they may even smile with tears because their dreams have finally come true. What the poet wants to express is such a complicated life situation.
A series of "nine years" such as "iceberg", "dry sea", "seawater" and "Tianshui" in the poem are of course not true references, but symbols, symbolizing all kinds of hardships in the course of life. And some of these images, mostly found in ancient China fairy tales, seem to add the legendary color of chasing dreams. The dream catcher's experience seems to be a long road, and it also seems to be a romantic and legendary road. The whole poem describes a modern legend.
Due to the use of images, symbols and metaphors, poetry not only expresses hazy beauty, but also shows the richness and fuzziness of the theme. For example, what is the connotation of "dream", we can understand it as sacred love; It can also be understood as a beautiful ideal; It can even be understood as a free life form beyond real suffering. Dream seekers may roam the world for the truly sacred love in their hearts; Perhaps dissatisfied with the decline of reality, sailing in the ideal ocean; Or seek a poetic dwelling place in the suffering of life. In short, this poem gives us a variety of interpretation space.
In addition, the lyric hero in Dai's poems often appears as the first person "I", while this poem takes the second person "you" as the lyric subject, and "you" can actually be "I" or "he". The change of this person makes his emotional content break through the limitations of the poet, which has certain universal significance and broadens its performance space.
The Dreamcatcher is very ethnic. The whole poem is influenced by western symbolic poetry, but in many ways it shows the significance of the poet's efforts to accept traditional poetry and to find and construct the artistic intersection of Chinese and western poetry.
Excerpt from Sun: Looking for priceless treasures —— Reading Dai Wangshu's Dream Seeker, edited by Sun, China Modern Poetry Guide 19 17- 1938, Peking University Publishing House, 1990.
The poem "The Dreamcatcher" describes the mental journey of the dreamer, the joy and bitterness of the dreamer, and the confusion and sadness of the dreamer. In the performance skills, the exaggeration and repetition of folk songs are combined with the modern symbolic techniques with hazy images and no traces. ..... The author expresses the complex and subtle feelings of modern people in a measured way with friendly daily spoken English. ..... This poem profoundly and subtly summarizes the spiritual history of China's national struggle in the 20th century.
Transferred from Longquan Ming: Dai Wangshu: The Second Integration of New Poetry-The New Construction of Artistic Order in the Unity of Opposites, On the Evolution of China's New Poetry, pp. 345 and 346, People's Literature Publishing House, 1999.
On the Artistic Conception of Dai Wangshu's Dreamcatcher.
Dai Wangshu was a representative poet in 1930s, and he was famous for Rain Lane. The Dreamcatcher and Rain Lane both show the disillusionment of petty-bourgeois intellectuals after the failure of the Great Revolution. We can read Dai Wangshu's Dream Seeker and discuss his artistic conception and creative characteristics in contact with the junior college.
(1) Modern people's dream-seeking thought is embedded in a folk story of "looking for a golden shell", and one deficiency and one reality are skillfully intertwined.
(2) The poet transforms his artistic conception into an external formal feature: the exaggeration and repetition similar to folk songs are combined with modern symbolic techniques, and the image is hazy without showing traces; With the friendly tone of daily spoken language, the complex and subtle feelings of modern people are implicitly expressed.