I went out in the rain and came back in the rain.
I have been to the countryside where street lamps can't shine.
I have seen the darkest alley in this city.
I once passed by the night watchman,
I don't want to explain why I lowered my eyes.
The sound of me stopping,
At this time, there were intermittent shouts in the distance.
From another street, over the roof,
But not to tell me to go back or say goodbye;
At a mysterious height in the distance.
There is a shining clock in the sky.
It claims that the time is correct, but it is also incorrect.
I am already familiar with the night, familiar with the night.
(Translated by Cao Minglun)
Make an appreciative comment
This familiar night is included in Xiliuxi, a collection of poems published by 1928. The whole poem describes the feelings of a person who often stays overnight. Everything common at night-rain, street lamps, shouts, night watchman, alleys and so on. -It can arouse the narrator's meditation, and also embodies Frost's poetic creation concept: "unique experience, unique expression." This poem conveys Frost's consciousness of loneliness and homelessness, which is also the consciousness of human loneliness and homelessness, and then expounds the philosophical concept of returning to self and exploring the truth of things.
The emotional tone of Familiar Night is gentle and sad, and loneliness is deeply rooted in the hero's heart. He once went out and came back in the rain alone, and once "went to the countryside where street lights could not shine." "Rainy Night" and "Country" show the protagonist's life situation from the beginning. On the level of readers' feelings, bleak rainy nights, dark and barren villages and bleak alleys in bustling cities all give people the same feeling of loneliness and cold, which makes people feel sad. In addition, the well-known "night watchman" usually travels through the streets alone at night. The night watchman not only paints a lonely color for the night, but also implies the living state of each of us-sometimes, like the night watchman, we walk alone in the dark night. This feeling is reflected in the third and fourth section * * *: footsteps stop, silence rises, and there is no other footsteps. The silence of the night hangs over the protagonist tightly. He is completely lonely and isolated. There were intermittent cries from the roof in the distance. At this time, he stopped moving forward, as if expecting something. However, this call has nothing to do with him-"didn't tell me to go back or say goodbye". "intermittent crying" is a metaphor. This cry is neither a memory of the protagonist nor a farewell to him. In this cry, the narrator's loneliness is further conveyed. He didn't know the owner of the cry and lost contact with the crowd, even though he heard voices coming from a distance. These two sentences describe his complete loneliness and isolation from society, and also describe the ordinary experience of human beings living in a bustling city but homeless.
In this poem, we feel not only the loneliness of the protagonist, but also Frost's sense of loneliness and homelessness. He holds a negative attitude towards the city representing secular life, and he yearns for the "countryside" representing nature, where there is no "light" everywhere in the city. Just like the hero in the poem, he often travels at night and "has been to the countryside where street lamps can't shine". Frost is a master of pastoral landscape painting in New England. He is good at depicting natural scenery in his poems and then expressing his thoughts on the relationship between man and the world. We can see in all kinds of biographies about Frost that the poet voluntarily gave up flashy fame and fortune and lived in the fields and villages with his family in order to achieve inner peace. However, we can't help but guess that poets who voluntarily choose a lonely lifestyle actually feel the deepest loneliness and isolation.
In the protagonist's next trip, there are no more "lights" in the city, only "a mysterious height in the distance/a shining clock against the sky". Some people say that this "luminous clock" actually refers to the moon. The moon is also lonely, it hangs high in the vast sky alone; The moon is the only light. Perhaps, the moon tells the hero that it is not the time to walk into the crowd. This explanation is a bit far-fetched, but this lonely experience is really felt by every reader. This "shining clock" also implies the indifference of time. Time didn't play a guiding role in his journey-"It claims that time is right, but it is not", it just flows forward indifferently. Does this imply that the protagonist is a person who has nothing to do with time, and that human beings have no past or future? So, does this mean that the human beings described by Frost may become traitors to history?
Throughout the poem, we find that when the poet examines the living conditions of human beings from the two dimensions of nature and social history, he finds that human beings can never return to heaven: human beings can neither live in harmony with nature nor learn the strength and lessons of life from history. As a result, the poet developed a deep sense of alienation.
On the philosophical level, Frost believes that if we want to find the truth, we must eliminate all interference and return to ourselves. The poet seems to imply that if we want to find the truth in ourselves, we must isolate ourselves from society. Paradoxically, however, the experience of isolation is terrible, even for poets who are used to living alone. Isolation is not the true meaning of life.
Frost's skill in choosing words and making sentences is unparalleled. He used "familiarity" instead of "habit", which showed that he knew this "night" like the back of his hand. This is rational cognition, not emotional intuition. The repetition of the last line not only makes the whole poem form a reciprocating rhythm, but also strengthens the familiarity and invariance of the night. This poem is in the form of iambic pentameter sonnet with strong melody. Frost attaches great importance to the relationship between the form and sound of poetry and the transmission of meaning, and his obsession with the form and sound of poetry has reached a level that few people can reach. The technique of this poem is also very skillful, and the use of a large number of symbolic techniques makes this seemingly simple poem far-reaching to read.
(Qiao Hua)