We try to analyze it from several aspects.
First of all, why did the "warrior" commit suicide? What is the special significance of his "suicide"? After reading the Sword Box carefully, we can know that this is all because the unique world-weariness of this "warrior" led to his "suicide", and the uniqueness of the world-weariness determines that his "suicide" is different.
Although he is an idle farmer, "the town roams on the ridge", he is a fisherman who doesn't care about the harvest and a carefree woodcutter. He devoted himself to his sword box craft for a long time and enjoyed it. However, it is worth our attention that all these leisure and fun are only superficial phenomena, but in the deep heart of the "warrior", they are full of boredom with all kinds of lifestyles in this world. Heroes who have remained immortal in history ── Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu who changed dynasties, Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu, Li Guang, who was brave and skillful in fighting, and even Li Bai, a great poet, all had an attitude towards life that he could not tolerate. He sneered: Li Guang was too frivolous, Li Bai was too pedantic, Liu Bang was too cunning, and the change of dynasties in Xiang Yu had no practical significance! After retiring, he worked as a farmer, fisherman and woodcutter, but he never suffered from these three industries. He buried himself in carving his sword box, but the purpose of this effort was "suicide"-when all these secular life forms, heroic and civilian, thrilling and simple, were filtered in his heart, all he got was a series of boredom and dissatisfaction. In other words, in the battlefield of secular life, he has been defeated and abandoned. Since the objective society and subjective ego no longer give him the courage to survive, "suicide" has become the only choice. What is important is that even in this way of ending his life, he is challenging the "model" of secular significance. Throughout the ages, the overlord of Chu, Wujiang River, committed suicide and became the most magnificent ending of hero's failure. But as soon as the "master" opened his mouth, he declared that he was "not as stubborn as Xiang Yu and determined to throw himself into the trap of fate".
It can be seen that one of the most important characteristics of the "warrior" pessimism is thoroughness. His world-weariness is not a pretentious and lofty sermon, nor is it a self-show with ulterior motives, but the result of his comprehensive thinking about the whole world, society and life. Therefore, his "world-weariness" actually has distinct anti-social and anti-traditional characteristics. In the sense of cultural science. The lifestyles that "samurai" are tired of are just important components of China traditional culture in different senses: Liu Bangshi's "oily" is the essence of imperial culture, while Xiang Yu's "boring" belongs to those who have not mastered it; Li Bai's pedantry shows the essence of "Wen Zhi" culture, while Li Guang's frivolity belongs to the elements of "Martial Arts" culture. All of the above are "WTO accession". Accordingly, farmers, fishermen and woodcutter represent the cultural category of "being born".
Of course, the anti-tradition of "warrior" is objective and unconscious after all, while the anti-tradition of poet Wen Yiduo is conscious and conscious.
We know that Wen Yiduo in the Tsinghua era had different feelings for traditional culture from ordinary people, but this does not mean that under the infiltration, promotion and call of the May 4th spirit, he would praise everything in traditional culture as abnormal and abnormal, just like feudal adherents. In fact, the poet Wen Yiduo has been in the double sharp contradiction of loving tradition and betraying tradition from the moment he started writing. In almost all his declarations, he could not restrain the impulse to defend the essence of national culture, just as he could not hide the disadvantages of traditional culture he felt in real life experience.
So far, we seem to have explained the direct cause of "suicide": "world-weariness" with anti-traditional nature, but we still haven't solved the mystery. After all, there are all kinds of suicide methods to choose from. Why did he become interested in the extremely complicated and even quite difficult suicide method of "sword box"?
To solve this mystery, it is necessary to identify the strangeness of the sword case carefully carved by the "master" We can see that this is a work with wrong color, complicated technology and exquisite design: a Brahma statue of Taiyi and Venus riding on the back of an elephant. The blind people, dragons and phoenixes, Tianma, pythons, butterflies, Ganoderma lucidum, Yu Lian, Haitao, white clouds, incense burners and stars on drums and musical instruments are very exquisite. "This should be as fine as the Red Cliff Fu carved by Wang Shuyuan/Taohe", and the materials used are ivory, jet, rose jade, aquamarine, jasper and gold thread. In a word, this is an unprecedented beautiful work of art, made of all the most precious materials in the world. "Xiao Jiang" carved from day to night, from winter to summer, the sword box is his life's hard work and hard work. However, he emphasized that "this is not my handwriting" or "the product of my designer", but a "shadow copy of the original manuscript of Dream", which was carelessly "covered with weeds and vines". In other words, the sword box is something that has nothing to do with the field of consciousness of this world, and it is an extraordinary and sacred thing from another world. Poets also call it an "art palace" that provides a "permanent home".
This ideal of life and art is called "aestheticism". Aestheticism comes from aversion to the real world. It is firmly opposed to people rushing around or even dedicating themselves for any utilitarian purpose in this world. Everything that happens in real life is vulgar and boring to it, and meaningful things only exist in the "beauty" of those arts. Therefore, people should live and devote themselves to the beauty of art. From the perspective of literary history, the ideal of aestheticism mainly comes from western poetry, and aestheticism poetry is mainly between western romanticism and symbolism. Some romantic poets (such as Keats) show strong aestheticism. After romanticism, this artistic spirit has been fully practiced in French Barnabas School and British Victorian poetry, and its influence has continued to the works of some symbolic poets. As a preface, the poem "Sword Box" comes from the Victorian poet Tennyson's "Palace of Art". According to the translation of modern poet Lv Yuan, its main purpose is:
I built a high pavilion for my soul,
So it can swim in it forever.
……
"When the world goes in circles," I said,
"You are a bystander, like an idle king.
Silence is like a stable shadow when Saturn rotates.
Stop on its brilliant aura. "
So my soul immediately replied:
Oh, let me enjoy this blessing and I will live in peace.
In such a rich and vast
This beautiful house built for us. "
This is the most vivid description of the ideal of aestheticism: my soul lives in the "art palace" that belongs only to me and refuses to get involved in the "world running in circles". Obviously, the exquisite and rich sword box is such a "beautiful house" and "another museum", and the "palace of art" tempts the world-weary to give his life for him, because it is "beautiful" after all, and so is its "death", so beautiful!
Death has wavered from time to time since the birth of human literature and art, and "poet's suicide" is an eternal topic. Of course, in the face of death, different artistic ideals have their own different expressions. Romanticism is exciting, modernism is cold, and aestheticism is relatively elegant and peaceful: it neither raises the question of death from time to time, nor seems to have much pain. Despair. All this is because it thinks it has won a new ideal of life-beauty.
It's boring to die for worldly interests, so is it worthwhile to commit suicide for illusory beauty? Wen Yiduo had no time to think about this problem during the May 4th Movement. As a young man, he transcended the enterprising desire of cynicism and the soul nurtured by the poetic tradition of "mourning without hurting", which influenced him to put aside the temptation of aestheticism and enter the modern spiritual field more quickly. As for his giving up the goal of "dedicating himself to beauty", that was later. -But in any case, the poet can put forward a new life ideal that transcends traditional culture in his own poems, and can introduce the aestheticism spirit from the west into his poetry creation, which is a great contribution to the development of China's new poetry.
Some critics have thought of Keats' Ode to an Ancient Greek Urn from the concept of sword box. Ode to the ancient Greek urn is Keats' description and imagination of the pictures in the ancient Greek urn: "Ah, the shape of Greece! Aesthetic observation! /men and women with stone carvings on them,/trees and trampled grass. " Keats took these photos as the expression of eternal beauty: "Oh, happy tree! Your juice/will not peel off and will never leave spring; /The happy piper never stops,/His songs are always so fresh. " . Obviously, Wen Yiduo, who loves Keats' poems, has gained nutrition from this poem. However, Keats also has its own particularity. The "beauty" of his ancient Greek urn actually has a unique taste and a metaphysical light. He said: "Silent body, you are like' eternity'/make you surpass your thoughts", which is probably a special intention under the background of western culture. Wen Yiduo's aestheticism is more realistic. At that time, he even regarded "art" as one of the ways to "save the country". He believes that in front of the beauty of art, "the most insidious and hypocritical heart can shine with kindness and sincerity, and then all troubles and worries disappear;" At this time, the boundaries between men and women, old and young, noble and low, together with various ethical and moral constraints, have disappeared invisibly, so it is the highest standard of freedom and equality; At this time, we are not only happy, but also make others happy everywhere ... all the virtues of people are revealed. " The similarities and differences between The Sword Box and Ode to an Ancient Greek Urn are enough for us to ponder carefully in reading, and may even give us a lot of new enlightenment!
In terms of artistic features, it is worth noting that the sword box has its romantic imagination and symbolic conception.
The whole poem takes pains to describe the contents of the sword box. Materials and manufacturing technology, but obviously this is not the original intention, and a sword box is a metaphor for some ideal of life worth paying everything, which is the so-called "symbolic concept."
Generally speaking, the whole poem follows such an obscure clue as the origin, preparation, concentration and completion of the sword box, but it is interspersed with the imagination of the poet's romantic poetry. Imagination integrates myth with reality, communicates history with individuals, connects isolated islands with the world, and makes poetry full of fantasy colors.
All these artistic features can be said to be the inevitable requirement of aestheticism: it transcends vulgar reality with "symbol", imagines "eternity" of beauty, and conceives its own unique artistic palace with the light of dreams.