Original works:
A generation
The night gave me black eyes,
I use it to find the light.
This poem is one of the representative works of obscure poetry in the new period, which is widely circulated. It expresses the voice of a generation, and also entrusts the ideals and ambitions of a generation-the tenacious desire and persistent pursuit of "light" after "night".
Extended data:
Gu Cheng (1956- 1993), male, originally from Shanghai, was born in a poet's home in Beijing on September 24th, 1956. He is an important representative of China's misty poetry school, and is known as a contemporary "Romantic" poet. Gu Cheng has high attainments in new poetry, old-style poetry and fable poetry. The phrase "The night gave me black eyes/I used them to look for light" of his generation became a classic sentence in China's new poems.
There are only two sentences. Images in poems are very common phenomena in daily life: night, eyes and light. Because of this, this poem has a thoughtful charm. Two novel combinations, seemingly contradictory turning points, contain wonderful rationality.
This contradictory logic is the essence of these two short poems. This contradiction is on two levels.
The first level is that the overall image presentation of poetry is contrary to their presentation in people's daily experience. This mainly focuses on the image of the eyes. In the vast darkness, the eyes are the only light.
In people's experience, eyes are always a symbol of transparency. However, the eyes in the poem are "black eyes". This is the feeling in the poet's heart and the poet's profound reflection. This feeling is a heartbreaking pain, and it is an accumulation over time. This kind of reflection is heavy, and there is great fear behind it. And these all point to the "dark night"-the background of that era.
The second level of contradiction is the internal contradiction of poetry. This focuses on the image of "light". In such an era, such an environment, such a deep night, poets should look for light. The poet looked for light with his black eyes. This is the horn that poets use to resist the night. This level is also the theme of this poem: the poet should not only reflect on the dark past, pour out the pain in his heart, but also look for it.
Therefore, the poet gave this poem with only two sentences a grand and intriguing title: a generation. But the content of the poem seems to point to two generations: it is not only a summary and reflection of the previous generation, but also a call and guidance for the next generation.
This poem also fully embodies the artistic characteristics of Gu Cheng's poems in artistic techniques and is unique in the construction of images. Poets use images closely related to life feelings in their lives and express their fresh experiences of the world, life and life with unexpected combinations. He also tried to express his feelings with clear and simple words and sentences to avoid obscure and other abusive pollution in poetic language.
This poem is brand-new in aesthetic principles. It avoids the direct expression of emotion and abandons the real narration of the scene. It does not deliberately construct a complete artistic conception, but only highlights a pair of unusual "black eyes" on a thick black background with images and metaphors. It seems that you can see a beam of white light coming out of a gap in the dark clouds.
Two short poems summarize the psychological course of a generation and express 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.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia-A Generation
Baidu encyclopedia-ancient city