Author: Lin Wenchen
Oh, wind, tear this heat,
cut this heat,
tear it to pieces.
The fruit can't fall
In this stagnant air-
The heat pushes up, which dulls
the sharp pears and
makes the grapes round.
Cut the heat-
Plow it open,
Push it away,
Push it to both sides of your road.
(translated by Li Wenjun)
(United States) Hilda doolittle
In Hilda doolittle's early creation, the poetry collection Hai Yuan (1916) was the culmination, which "won her the reputation as the best imagist poet." (Susan Stanford freedman: Psyche Regeneration, Indiana University, 1981) Hot is one of the most influential masterpieces in Sea Garden. The poet used this 13-line (original) free-form short poem to describe the stagnant and boring heat. Poetry first calls for the flowing "wind", calling it to "tear" and "cut this heat" to contrast the overall solidification of hot air; Then, with a strange association-it is the thick hot air that rubs from all directions, and the sharp fruit becomes full and round-it turns into an illusion of surging hot air; Finally, there is another heat-driving action, as if after several times of "cutting", "plowing" and "pushing", this stagnant atmosphere is fragmented and not hot. Reading this poem is first attracted by a series of verbs in it. The whole poem is about the untouchable, static and stuffy heat, but the thirteen-line poem uses more than a dozen creaking verbs such as "tear", "cut", "grind", "cut" and "plow", which are all over (almost) every line of poem, adding infinite movement to this dignified and stuffy heat. With some "tearing" and "cutting", this seamless hot air sometimes becomes angular pieces, floating in the air and piled up on the roadside, and sometimes becomes large and small spots, which set each other off with the rounded fruit. This artistic conception of "blotchy blocks" is inevitably reminiscent of the oil-colored blocks painted by impressionist painters. No wonder some people think that this poem is similar to Cezanne's apple. In the poet's pen, the elusive sultry, like a solid, can be cut horizontally and vertically, and like a liquid, it is constantly shaping other things, and it really seems to "flow out of the page" (A Brief History of American Literature (Part II)) makes people feel its existence and feel its dynamics. Therefore, it is not difficult for readers to experience the unique artistic expression of image poetry. Pound said that image is "a complex of reason and emotion presented in an instant". The image of "heat" in this poem is the poet's "instantaneous feeling" of heat. What kind of "reason and emotion" does it "compound"? This is another topic that readers talk about but can't agree. According to the poet's experience, some people think that the image of the poem in Sea Garden comes from her living in Cornwall and the coast of Maine, the uncultivated forest near her home, Yuan Ye and her grandmother, and more is the garden planted by her mother. This poem was published in Sea Garden and Selected Poems as the second part of the Garden group, which undoubtedly deepened people's impression. Some people regard many early short poems of poets, including this poem, as poems expressing "sexual consciousness", and think that "they reveal the passionate process of their psychological and even sexual characteristics ... In the magic of poetry, the natural environment and sexual experience are integrated. "(Psyche's Regeneration) Some people think that this poem is" a Greek drama without the name of the goddess, which shows a general abstraction of the opposing force ".In the poem," imbalance, struggle, oppression and confrontation-a gentle way without causality. " (Rachel: H．D．: The Struggle Life, Indiana University, 1986) This view emphasizes the antagonistic conflict expressed in the poem, which is quite philosophical. The above view is helpful to our understanding of the image in the poem, but it cannot replace the image itself. As readers, it seems that we would rather be attached to the appreciation of the "blotches" in the poem (its sense of color, music, sound, body and movement, etc.) than believe in a certain interpretation. Don't forget that "H．D．' s imagery poems are not landscape poems that are forced to respond to the modern world", and its artistic mission is to complete the specific "setting" of images. (Psyche Regeneration)