Text/Dai Wangshu
Holding an oil-paper umbrella alone
Wandering in the long, long
Lonely rain lane,
I hope to see
Like cloves.
A girl with a grudge.
She does.
Clove-like color,
Lilac-like fragrance,
Sad as cloves,
Mourning in the rain,
Sad and confused.
She lingers in this lonely rain lane,
Hold an oil-paper umbrella
Like me,
Like me.
Silently (? chì？ chù？ ) look,
Cold, sadness and melancholy.
Rain lane (three sheets)
She approached quietly.
Get close and throw again.
Breathing too loudly ("too" means "sighing", which means sighing),
She floated by.
Like a dream,
Sad and confused like a dream.
Floating like a dream
A lilac,
I passed this girl by;
She went away silently, far away,
A crumbling fence,
Walk through this rainy path.
In the lamentation of the rain,
Remove her color,
Scattered her fragrance.
Disappeared, even hers
Breathing eyes,
Lilac is melancholy.
Holding an oil-paper umbrella alone
Wandering in the long, long
Lonely rain lane,
I hope to float over.
Like cloves.
A girl with a grudge.
Rain Lane is Dai Wangshu's famous work and early masterpiece, so he got the nickname "Rain Lane Poet". This poem was written in the summer of 1927. At that time, the whole country was in a state of white terror Because Dai Wangshu participated in progressive activities, he had to take refuge in a friend's house in Songjiang, chewing the disillusionment and pain after the failure of the Great Revolution in loneliness, and his heart was full of lost emotions and hazy hopes.
1927 rainy lane in summer, it has been written for almost a year, and the author posted it in the novel monthly. Ye Shengtao, the editor of Novel Monthly at that time, liked this poem very much as soon as he saw it, calling it "a new era of new poetry syllables" and giving the author the title of "Poet in Rain Lane". This year, the author was only 22 years old.
A good lyric poem should be the crystallization of artistic beauty. It will transcend the limitation of time and space and arouse people's aesthetic feelings. However, for many years, Dai Wangshu's poems such as Rain Lane have been regarded as the moans of symbolism and modernism, and have been excluded from the vision of literary history. People dig these works out of the forgotten dust like enjoying unearthed cultural relics and see their artistic brilliance again.
Dai Wangshu left us only more than 90 lyric short poems on the bumpy and tortuous creative road for more than 20 years. Rain Lane is one of his early famous works.
Dai Wangshu's poems have won the charm of graceful poetic style in China's classical poems, but at the same time, they are also influenced by the French symbolism poetry school, so his early poems generally show a kind of loneliness, melancholy and depression.
This poem is both true and illusory, which makes people stunned. "I" seems to be full of worries and infinite worries, but I don't want to make it clear or say it. "I" seems to be looking forward to something and pursuing something, but the goal of looking forward to and pursuing seems so distant and slim. "She" appeared, maybe it was an illusion, or it could be true, but "she" appeared so quickly and passed away so quickly, flashed by and disappeared in front of her eyes, "as sad and confused as a dream". "I" only feel sorry for myself and feel sorry for myself. The "girl" in the poem can be regarded as a real reference, a beautiful, noble and melancholy girl that the poet has been waiting for for a long time. But we can also regard this "girl" as a hazy ideal and pursuit in the poet's heart, which represents the poet's hazy vision for the future when his life is depressed.
In Rain Lane, the poet created a girl with a lilac knot. Although this is inspired by some works in ancient poetry. Lilac knot, the bud of lilac, is used to symbolize people's worries. Li Jing in the Southern Tang Dynasty associated lilac knots with sadness in the rain. He has a song "Huanxisha"
Roll up pearls to make curtains and hang hooks. In the tall building, I look like before, and my depression is still locked. The fallen flower in the wind is so haggard, who is its owner? Think long term!
The messenger didn't bring news to the pedestrians far away. The lilacs in the rain reminded me of sadness. I looked back at the Three Gorges at dusk and saw the river falling from the sky.
In this poem, the lilac knot in the rain is used as a symbol of people's sadness. Obviously, Dai Wangshu absorbed the artistic conception and methods of describing sadness from these poems and applied them to form the artistic conception and image of Rain Lane. This kind of absorption and reference is obvious, but can we say that the artistic conception and image of Rain Lane are the expansion and desalination of the modern vernacular version of the old poem "Lilacs are sad in the rain"? I don't think so. When the poet conceived the artistic conception and image of the rain lane, he not only absorbed the experience of his predecessors, but also created his own. First, the ancients used the lilac knot itself as a symbol of sadness in their poems, while Yuxiang imagined a girl who was as sad as lilac. She has the image of lilacs disappearing in an instant, which is different from the old classical poems and other works created by the poet in his early days. She is full of the tone of the old poems and shows more flavor of the new era. "Lilacs in the rain bear sorrow" can arouse people's hope and disillusionment more than "girls who are as sad as lilacs", and this image is a rare creation in the field of expressing the sorrow of the times. Secondly, in ancient poetry, the lilac knot in the rain is based on the real life scene to pin the poet's feelings. The poet added his imagination to his life experience. It is the product of artistic imagination, more beautiful than life.
This poem skillfully uses symbolism to create a vague and trance-like atmosphere. "I" wandered alone in the rainy lane, as if full of sorrow, but I didn't want to say it.
[1] The girl in the poem can be regarded as a real reference, a noble and melancholy girl that the poet has been waiting for for a long time, and can also be regarded as an ideal and pursuit in the poet's heart, expressing the poet's depression about life and hazy vision for the future.