The image of "land" embodies the poet's deep love for the motherland and mother earth, and his deep sense of hardship for the fate of the motherland. Patriotism and love for righteousness is an inexhaustible theme in Ai Qing's works, and his "I Love This Land" is the most incisive expression of this feeling.
The image of "the sun" shows the other side of the poet's soul: passionate and endless pursuit of light, ideal and a better life. In the poet's eyes, the eternal theme of "Sun" symbolizes the bright future of China and China's belief in victory, and contains the poet's yearning and pursuit for light, ideal and a better life.
The main types of Ai Qing's poems: Ai Qing's poems are usually full of the fighting spirit of the May 4th Movement and full of enterprising spirit. Before liberation, Ai Qing cursed the darkness and eulogized the light with deep, intense and unrestrained brushwork. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, we will, as always, praise the people, praise the light and think about life.
The central images in Ai Qing's poems are: the earth and the sun. Ai Qing's poetry has a vivid and profound image, and with the end of the poem, this image is completed. Sun and land are two image concepts that can best summarize the characteristics of Ai Qing's poems.
The image of "land" embodies the poet's deepest love for the motherland-Mother Earth, the poet's deepest love for the laborers who were born, cultivated and died in Sri Lanka, and the poet's concern and exploration of their fate. Ai Qing's truest poems are dedicated to farmers in China. Ai Qing's works generally describe symbolic things such as the sun, torches and dawn, showing Ai Qing's hatred of darkness and terror in the old society and his yearning and pursuit of dawn, light and hope. Poets' eager pursuit of light, ideals and a better life is often expressed through the image of the sun. Ai Qing seems to be a Kuafu, pursuing sunshine, light and ideals until his death.
Since the beginning of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese invaders have successively occupied vast areas in North China, East China and South China, and they have been raging everywhere in an attempt to destroy the China people's will to resist the Japanese war. The people of China rose up and waged an indomitable struggle. The poet wrote impassioned poems at the critical moment when the country was destroyed and the nation was in danger, with love for the motherland and hatred for the invaders.
Style of works
His poems in this period are always full of "the melancholy of the earth", and more about the suffering, sadness and resistance of the country and the nation. His style is very dignified, profound and atmospheric, such as the poem "Snow falls on the land of China", in which the poet repeatedly sings "Snow falls on the land of China/the cold is blocking China ...", pitying the sufferings of the lower classes and lamenting the fate of the motherland. Poets are good at expressing strong feelings by capturing impressions and feelings, tend to be simple and natural in form, and do not stick to the shackles of appearance, pushing new poetry to a new stage. For example, The North wrote that "the desert wind blowing from the Great Wall/has swept away the green of life in the North" and "I love this sad country/ancient country/raised the hardest/oldest race in the world I love", and conveyed extremely deep patriotic feelings with almost prose lines. Another example is the Notice of Dawn, which calls for "poet/get up" in the tone of "dawn", so that all people who love life and all "cities and villages" can get ready for the arrival of "pioneers of day and messengers of light". The whole poem spreads freely and expresses freely, and it seems to be reflected directly from the chest of "Dawn", which is patchwork, vivid and orderly, giving people great aesthetic feeling. In fact, in the poet's masterpiece "Wild Goose River-My Nanny", the characteristics of this kind of free verse are very obvious, which are manifested in the hearty call, wanton narration, scattered lines and irregular verse. During the Anti-Japanese War, this poetic style became Ai Qing's conscious pursuit.
During this period, the main images in Ai Qing's poems were "earth" and "light". His long poems "To the Sun" and "Torch" express his good wish to drive away darkness, persist in struggle and strive for victory with the help of the sun, so the poet is called the singer of "Sun" and "Torch". These poems are also representatives of free verse, showing the characteristics of conciseness and liveliness, showing a prose and colloquial style. They contain a lot of questions, calls, dialogues and quotations, which greatly enhance the authenticity and expressiveness of poetry.