I left with the burden of my ancestors,
Ah, the simple marchers finally fell asleep on the side of the road.
-Li Jinfa: "I am carrying ..."
How to seek new artistic resources in China's new poems after breaking through the encirclement of classical tradition is a difficult problem faced by every poet. Almost all poets will pay attention to the blending and exchange of Chinese and foreign poetry art, although it may still be a beautiful nothingness in the end.
Interestingly, Li Jinfa, who was once pushed away from China's artistic tradition in the name of "Poetic Strange", also clearly expressed his communication with the classical tradition:
I wonder why no one has asked about the works of ancient poets in China in recent years, but after the literary revolution, they think it is ridiculous, but no one has ever really criticized them. In fact, eastern and western writers have a kind of concept, temperament, vision and material everywhere. If they pay a little attention, they dare not deny it or seriously seek for the roots, but they want to be owned by two families and try to communicate or reconcile.
Then, in Li Jinfa, the first person who distanced himself from China tradition with the style of western symbolism poetry, what special role does the cultural exchange between China and foreign countries have, or is Li Jinfa's "communication" ultimately a "pass" or a "failure"?
This in itself is an interesting topic in China's modern poetry.
1. Symbolism: Baudelaire and Malamei?
As one of the founders of symbolism in China's new poetry, Li Jinfa first became attached to French symbolism poetry. In Li Jinfa's own words, he wrote poems under the influence of Baudelaire and Wei Erlun. When Li Jinfa appeared in China's poetry circle, people found that as long as he wandered in a dark medium-sized clay pot, on the wasteland and on the carrion, no one could. Like him, he talked about death and fatigue, and talked about the worries that could not be eradicated at the end of the century. As Sun Zuoyun pointed out, "Consciously, Mr. Li's poems describe the darkest side and the most hopeless part of life, and the poet's pessimism is more obvious than anyone else." Therefore, in China's poems in the1920s, few poems were as close to the atmosphere and style of Baudelaire and Wei Erlun as Li Jinfa.
However, if we say that it is Baudelaire's harmony in China, or that poetry is the embodiment of China's modern art, it would be too rash, at least we can't understand the meaning of "another" hidden under these modern pains.
In addition to the atmosphere and style close to Baudelaire and Wei Erlun, Li Jinfa's soul actually has something "self" from the beginning. We might as well read the portrait written by the poet first:
That is, the moon sleeps at the bottom of the river,
Smile with the purple forest.
The spirit of Jesus,
Oh, so sentimental.
Thanks to these hands and feet,
Although it is still rare.
But I think it's enough.
In the past, samurai wore armor,
Strength can kill tigers!
Me? Feel ashamed.
As hot as the sun,
As gray as a crescent moon in the clouds.
I have straw sandals and can only walk in a corner of the world.
Feathers? There are too many things!
It is still a poem used by poets to evaluate their teeth, but its main spirit does not seem to be modernist: the poet wants to compare himself with the Jesuits who saved the souls of the world, but immediately feels "too affectionate"; Imagine that you are a hero who fights tigers, but you are ashamed to "hurt a little" and "I have sandals and can only walk in a corner of the world". Life is short, with seven feet and loess. There seems to be a little thin "modern experience" here, but looking at the whole poem, the poet is finally quite self-sufficient: "Thank you for this brother,/although it is not enough/but it is enough." Self-confidence in a smile is quite romantic, while the self-satisfaction, self-satisfaction and "independence" in words are obviously typical national traditional psychology, especially the last sentence: "There are too many things!"
For comparison, we might as well read Baudelaire's Portrait of Self-Writing again, and the fundamental difference will be clear at a glance:
I am a wound and a dagger at the same time!
I am a slap and a cheek at the same time!
I am also a four-legged torture car!
I'm on death row and an executioner!
I'm a vampire who sucks my heart,
-a smile that was sentenced to eternity.
Lian Xiao can't even laugh.
-an abandoned felon!
We can see from the poem that what the poet wants to do is not to show off his self-confidence and self-sufficiency, on the contrary, he wants to break this state of self-sufficiency and self-sufficiency. "I am a wound", but I have no intention of looking for a shelter for treatment. On the contrary, he had to associate with the dagger! "I am a slap in the face", but it does not conform to the evil enemy, because "I" itself is evil, and I also beat myself ... For the liberation and development of self, human beings have created civilization, and once civilization is established, it becomes the shackles and cages of human beings themselves. This increasingly clear and cruel reality has educated modern westerners since Baudelaire. Their traditional belief in the eternity and stability of human beings has been shattered, and Schopenhauer's predicament and helpless tragic experience are shrouded in their hearts. Therefore, for them, any complacency and self-confidence is just a dream of self-deception.
In this way, Baudelaire's "I" becomes an ironic, self-deprecating and masochistic "I", while Li Jinfa's "I" is a confident and complete "I". Pain returns to pain, and Tao returns to Tao. Li Jinfa's ideal and bright open space have been well protected, which has nothing to do with the decadent reality. In the theme of "the end of the century", the poet Li Jinfa still shakes the beautiful aura of the new century from time to time. Although the world is as noisy, disturbing and fidgeting as "buzzing", we may still "walk in the sky" and bathe in the sunshine (buzzing). This is certainly different from Baudelaire's ugly and broken eyes. Li Jinfa's cultural tradition does not seem to allow him to have a clear view of world life. Li Jinfa won't have such a poem: "Nothing will deceive us? /Everything, even death, is lying to us? " (Baudelaire's Skeleton Farmer)
Faced with this ugly and terminally ill world, Baudelaire's ideal can only be on the distant and vague shore, and can only be in a vague illusion: "When I open my eyes again,/I see my horrible shack,/I wake up from a big dream, and I feel/am cursed by sadness and thorns." Mirage, come and go in a hurry! Li Jinfa's ideal is much more realistic and solid. It is not too much to ask for "a long trip to cicily volcano and desert above ground" (buzzing). That afternoon, the heating came out: "Only the spring warblers in the branches broke the silence,/they couldn't scream twice, and the colleagues across the tree/sang together and admired the charming scenery." In the afternoon, it is a romantic poet's feeling to jump into the arms of the real corner.
If homelessness is the common distress of modernists, then Li Jinfa is not without "home", but just a lost person with "the cry of lost hunters". Therefore, as a seeker, a lonely hero who is temporarily frustrated, it is also necessary for him to protect his self-sufficiency and self-confidence, and it is unlikely to produce that feeling of self-division.
The poet also believes: "Oh, my love! God always knows,/but the devil confuses everything. " (Ugly Behavior) It seems that in Li Jinfa's place, it is not "God is dead", but only that Morpheus set up a "ghost against the wall" on the hunter's way home. The fragmentation of the world is the devil's reckless behavior. "Everything is shaped and gorgeous, not made by God's hand" (ugly): The world used to be harmonious. "When I was a child, I was called away by birds. /Oh, living in that clean country, the residents sang according to their walking sticks./I closed my eyes and looked at the bushes by the stream (My Autumn). Suffering is just an unexpected disaster, and we still have a chance to cry to God. Although hope is like fog, it is still hope (hope and sympathy).
In this way, Li Jinfa always believes that although there are too many ugliness in this world, beauty is not just an ideal. He often calls for the beauty of reality to dispel ugliness. "ah! This urgent autumn/urges us to have a grand love feast! /Go ahead, if you don't forget your obligations, we will always be friends. " ("Beauty God")
At this point, it seems that we can solve this mystery: Li Jinfa, as a symbolist, is influenced by Baudelaire and Wei Erlun on the one hand, but on the other hand, he thinks that he and Miao Sai and other romantic poets have "appropriate personality". Because Miao Sai is the image of a person who is constantly looking for ideals and constantly being disappointed. He has an aloof heart and often feels the separation of the individual "I" from others in the group. Loneliness is the experience of romanticism and modernism. In the romantic Miao race, everyone is drunk and I wake up alone, which is consistent with Li Jinfa's "only feeling lonely" (fantasy).
Although Miao Sai is constantly disappointed, he often encourages himself: "I have decided to fly far away,/to travel around the world,/to find the last glimmer of hope." Keep going, although it is difficult to go, but the belief still exists. "It is said that human nature is mainly good, but it has been eroded by the evil forces of this world. There is a similar belief that pursuing ideals can improve individuals and society. In fact, all aspects of romanticism contain such ideal factors. " Like Miao Sai, Li Jinfa also showed such beliefs and ideals, and they all belong to the "wanderer" and "hunter" in the shadow of this ideal.
In the history of modern literature in China, the theme of anti-feudalism and striving for individuality runs through all the time, and the ideal brilliance of romanticism deeply inspires people. Although romanticism as a complete movement may be short-lived, its spirit still has a potential impact on many writers. As pointed out by many researchers, many modernist literary practitioners in China chose "modern experience" from the standpoint of romanticism.
2. Tradition as personality temperament
The input of any literary trend of thought must go through the double screening of the characteristics of the times and the national cultural psychology. Li Jinfa is obsessed with western symbolism, but the theme of the times makes him unable to get rid of the romantic ideal, and what is more difficult to change is the aesthetic psychological structure of the nation.
"Crying" and sadness are Li Jinfa's usual lyric ways. Crying in the Long Night (Seventeen Nights), Abandoning Wife (Abandoning Wife) and The Wind in the Distance Calling Oak Forest (Leaving Late for Me) are the images of Li Jinfa's poems that break through the traditional harmonious beauty. But from a deeper level, there is still a unique national psychological accumulation. For example, from the psychological point of view, crying is not a great sadness, at least it has specific causes of pain, including this better way of digestion. People who are really sad and desperate can't find the specific reasons for their pain, and they can't find the specific means to vent their relief. For example, they fell into obscurity and were surrounded by the enemy, so they couldn't call out or call out four sounds. They are so sleepy that they can't even care about their tears. We should see that in French symbolism poetry, especially in the later symbolism poetry, we rarely see such sad confidences as "crying" and "tears", but there is a feeling that the soul is creaked by air drying and sun exposure, such as Baudelaire's On the abyss,/Shake me to sleep. Sometimes, it is calm, and it becomes a mirror of despair "(Baudelaire's music).
In traditional China, the road to self-realization provided by society to China intellectuals is narrow, and the dependent existence created by authoritarian system has formed a psychological state called "male and female personality" among China intellectuals, and the spirit of compromise and introversion has emerged. Crying, sadness and * * * are the natural manifestations of this psychology. The same sadness and pain are very different between Li Jinfa and French symbolist poets.
For example, Li Jinfa used wine to drown her sorrows. She said, "I drank my sadness and/or turned into tears" ("Dusk"), and her painful feeling needed to flow out in tears, hoping to regain stability. On the other hand, Baudelaire said, "In the same delirium .../fled to the paradise of my dreams." Being drunk can't cancel the transcendence of dreams.
For another example, Li Jinfa and Wei Erlun both like to express their feelings on the piano. Li Jinfa's piano music symbolizes the ideal of self. When the highest note is played,/seems to indicate the happiness of life. However, there is an external force attacking it: "irrelevant wind,/strolling out of the window,/knocking on my piano, he is out of tune", and the real tragedy is: "They don't understand." Here, tragedy is defined as the relationship between people, and it is the separation of human relations that causes the discomfort of self-spirit. The squeeze of interpersonal relationship leads to the poet's bitterness: "If I go to vilen, the piano will stop or continue weakly." Qin's funeral. Wei Erlun's piano sound is not so much a clear ideal as an unprovoked sigh and an inexplicable emotion: "A nameless sadness permeates my heart." ("Qiu Ge") More importantly, Wei Erlun clearly declared that his sorrow has nothing to do with interpersonal relationships:
The irrational flow of tears,
This heart is tired of itself.
How come? No one is ungrateful?
This kind of sadness is unreasonable.
In addition to the pressure of personal social relations, Wei Erlun's pain comes from his deeper thinking and concern about life and the world: "This is the heaviest pain,/when you don't know its cause. /There is neither love nor hate,/There is so much pain in my heart! "
It should be pointed out that many sorrows in Li Jinfa's poems are related to personal love experiences. Many of Li Jinfa's love poems give people such a feeling, as if the poet is struggling to pursue the ideal object, but it is not as big as it is. Our poet was exhausted and finally fell down in the middle of his life: "I am burdened by my ancestors and must leave." /Oh, the simple marchers finally slept on the side of the road. " ("I am burdened with ..." Fatigue and weakness come down in one continuous strain.
Therefore, such a poet needs a "crutch": "Oh, my protector,/magical friend,/we forgot to make friends." ("walking stick")
Thus, this kind of love is full of "Oedipus complex": "You hold my hand, as gentle as a mattress, and all my possessions/accessories are in your breath" (Untitled); "I see you in the distance, wandering all the way/like a lost animal" (impression); "I hate you like a crossbow horse under the yoke,/unable to tear the reins,/like a child complaining about his mother's harshness ..." ("My attitude towards you") Li Jinfa was living in Paris at this time.
Paris, as the epitome of western modern civilization, is summarized in Balzac's masterpiece "Gao Lao Tou", that is, "on the one hand, it is the fresh and lovely face of the most elegant society, all young, lively, poetic and enthusiastic, surrounded by wonderful works of art and rich ostentation and extravagance; On the other hand, it is a gloomy picture splashed with mud, and the characters' faces are only the remnants swept away by lust. "
A young man from the ancient East, who has a traditional psychology that he can't get rid of, faces a life of great contrast: impulsiveness and depression, enthusiasm and inferiority, humanity and * * *, realistic desire and psychological burden ... All these external attraction and internal self-resistance make a weak and tired soul miserable. This is similar to Yu Dafu's experience in Japan, but Yu Dafu is more "exhibitionist" and more willing to dissect himself mercilessly, while Li Jinfa seems more willing to hide himself.
In my opinion, the inflexion of Li Jinfa's poems can be partly explained from here: it comes from the poet's shyness about life desire. He is afraid to speak, treading on thin ice, hiding from Tibet, and the poet always seems to avoid some painful feelings.
It is true that Li Jinfa is one of the few people in China's poetry circle who openly writes about deep psychology such as "death", "darkness" and "fear". But at the same time, we should also see that most of these lyrical expressions only appear in some abstract and general descriptions, and when he enters the specific details of life, especially when he touches the poet's personal experience, his words become flickering. For example, in To Jeanne, what does the poet think of this French girl? Is it "vague sympathy,/and the truth is unpredictable?" Without the authority of creation,/I can't help flashing at night like fireflies. "Vague sympathy" refers to reality, and "truth" refers to "true feelings". Next, there should be no authority to create "I", so I can't influence you. "Night firefly" is probably a hint that a girl's eyes are shining. This is a complex psychology of loving and not being loved, but not restraining inner desires. An introverted and shy poet will not express his ideas directly at this time. He intentionally or unintentionally uses symbolic hints and ellipsis. If this technique is used more in poetry, poetry will appear clumsy and obscure.
The tradition in Li Jinfa's mind is not an artistic realm, but the psychological structure of China intellectuals that he can't change, an innate personality temperament. Because, although the poet said that he tried to communicate and reconcile China and western classicism, what we read in his poetry creation is not more mature ancient artistic skills and qualities, but a long-standing attitude and personality model.
Art exchange between China and foreign countries is only a tentative idea for Li Jinfa.
3. obscure
Above, we try to explain the obscure language of Li Jinfa's poems with the traditional psychological habits of China intellectuals, but this can only be applied to some poems. Shyness and distorted hints are just a deep psychology of modern China people. A poet can't always be shy and obscure. We need to combine the poet's spiritual temperament, his knowledge structure and poetic accomplishment to do some new comprehensive analysis.
An artist's cultural psychology is closely related to his rational knowledge structure, which ultimately affects the choice of art. As far as knowledge structure is concerned, he has accepted both western romantic poems and symbolic poems. As far as deep cultural psychology is concerned, he has obvious personality temperament of traditional intellectuals. The artistic orientation of these aspects is not consistent. For example, the optimistic ideal of romanticism constantly eroded the deep thinking at the end of the century, guiding the poet to face the reality firmly in self-sufficiency and self-confidence, and the poet's seemingly rich and heavy modernist consciousness was actually taken away and disintegrated. At the same time, the long-standing traditional interpersonal care has fundamentally transformed the grand theme of symbolic life care in the west, guiding poets to pour out their unspeakable stories and feelings in the tiny human sorrow.
But the problem is that the modern experience and expression carried by French symbolism poetry have already formed a kind of "knowledge" that impresses China students, and it seems that contemporary people should master, accept and use it. Li Jinfa himself can't refuse the temptation of this era. This is a rather difficult self-contradiction: the inner temperament and the rational pursuit of knowledge are so disharmonious. Therefore, we will find that Li Jinfa's creation constantly presents the ups and downs of several forces. When he was crying for a slim ideal, obstacles in pursuit, or building his own Eden, his poems were hazy and charming, but after careful analysis, most of Li Jinfa's poems at this moment had nothing to do with the symbolic poets praised in the history of literature; When he deliberately piled up modern images and colors under the banner of symbolism in his poems, he often broke away from the support of his own spirit, so he often appeared idealized and abstract. If we analyze them carefully, we will find that the inner feelings of these poems are incoherent, and many "modern" flavors are stuck in them.
For example, when the anxiety about the modernity of "time" becomes a transcendental concept, it will inexplicably appear in many modes that do not necessarily involve time. In the well-known masterpiece "Abandoned Wife", there is a saying that "the fire of the setting sun can't turn the boredom of time into ashes …" The artistic conception of the whole poem is basically coherent, but the word "time" is too abrupt, too abstract and too eye-catching. In the countless "time" poems of western modernism, all the "time" are concrete, sensible and practical, and they are a three-dimensional object with rich connotations. Li Jinfa also has a poem "The Temptation of Time", which is also an open topic and can be fully discussed. However, only by reading the whole poem can we know what "temptations" the poet has for time and how to "seduce" time. In fact, we don't know much. Every time I skim the water, no matter how much I order, there is not much water coming up.
Once knowledge and concepts are divorced from people's real feelings, there may be that kind of extrasensory artificial pulling, which will eventually destroy the emotional atmosphere of the whole poem and cause many cancer blocks in the blood of the poem. There are many examples in Li Jinfa's place. For example, wind and rain are the "why" of the world, and spring, summer, autumn and winter are the "then" of the world ("I know the wind and rain"); For example, "I love reciting poems without beating time in the music world" ("Remnant Road") is an unnecessary awkward sentence. Sometimes poets also deliberately pursue a philosophical flavor, such as "language reveals warm love everywhere/but this' today' and' tomorrow' makes my son/sick" (North). However, the philosophical significance of modern western poetry is not connected by philosophical concepts, but is integrated into the poet's blood and "refined" from the poet's most simple and authentic experience.
No matter philosophical consciousness or modern spirit, excellent poetry is always realized as a whole. It would be a sad thing if its meaning can only be realized by a few proper nouns with modern flavor (even adding quotation marks to attract people's attention). Everyone likes to quote Li Jinfa's famous sentence: "Life is a smile on the lips of death." Yes, the sentence is wonderful and modern, but it's a pity that there is only such a lonely sentence in the poem "Feeling". It's hard to imagine how it got in. This seems to be a way for ancient people in China to write poems. Occasionally, there are good sentences, and then they are patched up before and after, and the "poetic eye" is very eye-catching; It's just that if there is only one "feeling", it's better not to make up for it.
In addition, the poet's own poetry literacy (especially the language literacy of poetry creation) also fundamentally determines the success of poetry expression. Malamei once said: "Obscurity is either beyond the reader's power or beyond the poet's power." Here, we can't accurately locate the "modern" feelings of China readers, but we can analyze Li Jinfa's own poetry creation ability-poetry cultivation.
As a Hakka, Li Jinfa's mother tongue is far from written Chinese in vocabulary and syntax. The poet must overcome this distance and combine his instinctive thinking form with the general expression form. The question is, did he do it? People who have a lot of contact with poets keep sending us the message: Li Jinfa "is a Cantonese, an overseas Chinese, living in Nanyang Islands, and can't speak Chinese very well and express himself very well". This is indeed a depressing news, which basically doomed the poet to some kind of failure in his creation.
Not only that, Mr. Sun Xizhen also revealed that the poet's "French is not good" and "I have read a little book, and the purity of the language is gone". "By introducing symbolism, he made a contribution and ruined the language. He is the culprit. " For a poet who regards language as his life, it is undoubtedly the most serious accusation. If we still doubt its seriousness, Bian's circumstantial evidence, he is also a pursuer of symbolism, which deserves our calm thinking. Bian Zhilin concluded that Li Jinfa "has almost no feeling about his own language, such as vernacular and classical Chinese, but he doesn't even understand some basic French grammar".
At this time, Li Jinfa obviously could not communicate with the Chinese and foreign poems he envisioned. Even, it is quite difficult not only to complete a higher level of communication, but also to realize the fluency of one's own creation.
In modern poetry art, obscurity is a new aesthetic effect, but the obscurity of aesthetic significance is a form of complex thoughts and profound feelings, which does not mean that the expression is not smooth. As Valerie said, in modern poetry creation, it should be "the melody runs through without interruption, the semantic relationship is always in harmony, and the mutual transition of ideas seems to be more important than any thought". In a sense, Li Jinfa's poetry is a kind of anxiety that he is eager to find language resources, and when this search is not based on deeper language cultivation, he is likely to fall into an embarrassing situation.
From trying to communicate to being unable to move, the experience and lessons left by the poet Li Jinfa are profound.