The sudden prison life forced Ai Qing to enter the country of poetry from painting. He played the colorful reed flute brought back from Europa. He used poetry to discuss and accuse, think and recall, imagine and seek. Moreover, in Ai Qing's view, poetry is more suitable for writing some "flowing and changing" inner feelings and thoughts than painting that can only depict fixed things. This includes reality, life, individuals and art itself. Two prose poems, The Sailor's Pipe and Grey Goose Down Pants, are the fruits of the poet's meditation on the art of poetry in prison. They are beautiful and worth chewing carefully.
Both of these prose poems express their own poetic ideas: a great or mature poet must have his own artistic personality. The former tends to praise others, while the latter focuses on self-display, and their persistent pursuit of the poet's artistic personality and style is the same. Enlighten people that poets without personality are pathetic. The consistency of unique personality and emotional appeal is the most important symbol of a poet's maturity. Bosun reveals the author's admiration and love for the great romantic poets Whitman and Mayakovski. Through a series of imagination and association, Ai Qing created the images of these two great romantic poets in his own mind. The pipe spouts "white smoke" drifting with the current, and also spouts "white smoke" of Ai Qing's meditation on the art of poetry: "A thing must belong to people with the same mood." The whole poem is an emotional praise and a spiritual fit. It can be seen that Ai Qing showed deep spiritual connection with these two great romantic revolutionary poets at the beginning of his poetic career. The images of Whitman and Mayakovski with seamen's pipes in their mouths can even be said to be the externalization of Ai Qing's inner artistic pursuit. In the last paragraph of the prose poem, what we hear is the majestic and loud voice that broke out from Ai Qing's broad artistic mind: "For the reading of a large group, the mouth is open like an ocean. I want to add this logo to their portraits to show cosmopolitan feelings. Its white smoke flows to seafarers' pipes all over the world like the freshest poem. "
Grey Goose Pants clearly shows the enlightenment and influence of Mayakovski's famous long poem Clouds in Pants on the author. Ai Qing's idea is wise. He gave the "grey goose down pants" a deeper symbolic connotation. This is reminiscent of "a pair of smart, light and gray eyes tortured by enthusiasm" and "gray, light and smart" gray goose down pants, which is a symbol of the artistic personality of Ai Qing's poems. It attracted people's attention as soon as it appeared. The poet himself knows what a strange and novel feeling this exploration of artistic individuality has brought to people: it is like "a distant and memorable wind falling from the sky." Poets embrace life with this artistic personality and bring fresh and flowing life breath to their poems. And how this unique artistic personality and color tone are loved by the poet himself.
Therefore, when it is a stranger, it is loved by me.
It is good to me, just like all colors are good to the same color as it, it is my color! So light, so erratic, so indifferent. ...
The poet found his own artistic personality and style, and also found the road to success. Ai Qing was not a follower of others as soon as she set foot on the territory of a poetic country. He has his own posture and voice. And with strong self-confidence, adhere to and develop their own unique world. After reading the implicit narrative in prose poems, Ai Qing's famous sentences will naturally float in our minds:
I'm hungry.
Playing the reed flute proudly,
People laughed at my gestures,
Because that's my gesture!
People don't like my songs,
Because that's my song!
The artistic belief expressed by the grey goose down trousers is exactly the same as the melody played by Ai Qing's reed flute, and we remember Ai Qing's reed flute. We still remember this "pants without the sun are like clouds in the sky-velvet pants". Ai Qing showed the uniqueness of posture and voice with his creative practice called "human flower". It heralds a bright future.
Two prose poems express the concept of poetry, but they are not caught in the concept expression. Paying attention to the concreteness and symbolism of images has brought lyrical flexibility and profound connotation to the two prose poems. In the first article, the author starts with an imaginary portrait and quickly introduces the image of a sailor's pipe into the poem. Then the poet lets his imagination run wild and imagines the "cool" life images of two great poets. Ai Qing used the painter's brushwork to show us the romantic grandeur and feelings of the two poets: or on the ship's board of a long voyage, the great gesture of joy in a long journey stands, his arms crossed on his chest, his shirt needs to be unbuttoned ... The wind is blowing hard on the sea.
Thick hair undulates like wheat waves before a storm in Ye Ping, looking at the distance. ...
The sky was silent. ...
The white smoke from the pipe came back with the sound of the waves. ...
The concreteness of description makes readers' vision and imagination closer to the lyrical image of the author. In this way, readers will not accept the author's idea that something must belong to people with the same emotional appeal, but will digest it in rich concrete thinking. The combination of exaggerated realism, narration and description at the end of prose poetry pushed the whole poem to a climax. Two revolutionary poets, "for the sake of big groups, their mouths open like the ocean", let the white smoke of sailors' pipes flow to the world like the freshest poems, with the feelings of embracing the world. The pipe symbolizes the poet's artistic inspiration, artistic personality and great poet's broad feelings. The ingenious combination of the symbolic metaphor of Bosun and the poet's lyric ontology makes the rich connotation of this prose poem exceed the stipulation of that concept poem. This is the artistic life of Sailor's Pipe.
Compared with sailor's pipe, grey goose down trousers are more symbolic. The poet didn't have a language of concept statement from beginning to end, but completely revolved around the symbolic image of "grey goose down pants". It started suddenly. "It seems that I had worn these pants before I came to this world …", and then the poet introduced the center of this symbol to the readers: "surprisingly gray, light and flexible" goose down pants and a pair of "flexible, light and gray eyes". Fuzzy overprinting and interlacing give people a hazy imagination space. The author let his imagination "flow without direction" like the wind blowing outside that day. This flowing strangeness symbolizes the aesthetic effect of pursuing one's own artistic individuality. The author describes his life wearing this goose down trousers all the year round in a realistic style, but in fact it is a metaphor that this personality and style are everywhere in his poetry and life. Ai Qing pursues a simple poetic beauty, a lyrical world full of real life and inner tenderness, and a peasant-style melancholy beauty rooted in ancient land. These artistic trends at that time or later have been revealed in this symbolic lyrical image-"grey goose down pants".
New poetry in the 1980s has opened its own window to welcome the "wind falling from the sky". Ai Qing's two prose poems have not yet become dusty fossils. They still inspire us: poets should have a broad mind and state of mind in tune with the trend of the times; We should get rid of imitating and following others and create our own unique artistic personality. Anyone who is eager to copy the ancient or foreign countries will lose himself and his poetry.