A subtle joke

The poet Xu Zhimo died by plane in the late autumn of193119. On that day, the poet Lin happened to have a public English speech about the ancient buildings in China, which was given in the Concord Auditorium in Peiping, and was aimed at the diplomatic missions in Peiping at that time. This speech, Lin is going to start with a poem by Xu Zhimo, that is, "The Sound of Listening to Rites in Tianning Temple in Changzhou". Because of this, Lin specially invited Xu Zhimo to attend the lecture, and Xu Zhimo agreed. At that time, in order to cope with the extravagance of Lu Xiaoman, Xu Zhimo taught in three universities and traveled in Shanghai, Nanjing and Peiping. Unfortunately, he flew from Nanjing to Peiping on a free postal plane early that morning, because when passing through Jinan, Shandong Province, he hit a mountain in a heavy rain and fog, causing death.

In the same year, on February 7, 65438, Lin published "Mourning Mo" to mourn the early death of this poet. In the following year, that is,165438+1October 19 1932, Lin and Xu Zhimo's close friends and students got together to commemorate Xu Zhimo. Autumn, this autumn, published by 1933, 165438+ 10, 18, and Lin (written in the middle of 10,/65438). From the letter Lin sent to Mr. Shen Congwen, we can know that this letter is to commemorate the second anniversary of Xu Zhimo's death. The article is not well written, and you have to rhyme when you lose your temper. I can't digest 1 1 months. I just want to cry when I hear the wind that the maple leaves are dying. I cried a few lines yesterday and barely called it a poem. "In June1935165438+10/0, Lint didn't mention the song Autumn that she wrote in mid-June 1933 65438+ 10. In addition to poetry, I also specifically mentioned how November spent this sad day of autumn wind and autumn rain in the past four years. The most touching thing to read is probably the autumn night of 1934 1 19. She returned to Shanghai by train from southern Zhejiang, passing through Shi Xia Railway Station, Xu Zhimo's hometown, and the train stopped at the platform. Autumn has been haunting her! In fact, the grief caused by Xu Zhimo's death can be said to be more intense in her later poems than in her middle poems. Gradually, in the poet Lin's mind, Xu Zhimo has been completely equivalent to "autumn"! The poem "For Autumn" written by Lin from 65438 to 0947 can be said to reveal all her inner despair, sadness, guilt, remorse and regret.

The poem "Autumn, This Autumn" was written in 1933, which is a dividing line between the early stage and the middle stage of the poet Lin's poetry. 1in July, 937, the Japanese invaded China, and the poet Lin was forced to leave Beiping at that time. Because she moved to the southwest for almost ten years, her poetic style began to change again. 1947 For Autumn is one of the representative works in her later poems. Both of them are chanting Autumn and thinking deeply about Xu Zhimo, but their styles are different and their inner world is completely different.

Second,

1865438+September 2, 20091day, British romantic poet Keats gave a message to his friend John? Renos wrote a letter, which read:

"How beautiful this season is now! How nice the air is! There is a mild chill. Really, no kidding, sunny weather-Diana-like sky-I have never liked fields with broken stems and broken plants so much-yes, it is really much better than the cold green in spring. Somehow, the flat ground with broken stems looks warm, just like some paintings look warm-I was deeply touched when I walked on Sunday morning, so I wrote a poem. "

This poem was written by Keats for Autumn on Sunday, September 6th, 2009. To Autumn is a ode, which is not only the most exquisite and beautiful one in Keats' ode, but also a nearly perfect one in English short poems. (Comments by harold bloom, a literature professor at Yale University. "This is the most subtle and beautiful of all Keats' ode poems, and it is also the closest to perfection in English." Allen tate, an American poet, not only agreed that this poem was "the closest to perfection", but also said, "I can't praise it! ("It is a very close to perfect style." "There is nothing to say." ) The so-called increase of one point is too long, and the decrease of one point is too short, which makes people feel overwhelmed by pure poetry. This poem, from objective autumn scenery to autumn harvest and autumn sound, presents a series of objective scenes, concrete and true, beautiful and warm, and the poet's own subjective feelings seem to have been completely forgotten. In fact, the poet's own feelings and thoughts are deeply hidden in the description of objective scenery step by step! This kind of poetry that does not directly add one's subjective thinking judgment and feelings to the current objective scene is the so-called pure poetry.

Keats's poem For Autumn deeply influenced two poets in the early 20th century, Wallace Stevens in the United States and Lin in China.

1915438+01autumn, Stevens published a poem "Sunday morning" in Poetry magazine, which questioned Keats' over-optimism for the first time. Charming autumn scenery, autumn harvest and autumn sound are not eternal at present, but also point to night and death. Why did she give her bounty to the dead? If divinity can only appear in silent shadows and dreams, what is it? Why is the middle-aged woman in the poem no longer enjoying the beauty outside and being chased by the shadow of death? At the beginning of the second paragraph of the poem Sunday Morning, the above two questions are raised: "Why did she give up the pleasure brought by her senses and go to death?" "If God can only come in the form of a quiet shadow or a dream, what is sacred?" The meaning is clear, but the religious promises to people after death, such as heaven and feasts, are not empty and abstract to the living, but have no substantive significance? Looking at autumn from the natural process, isn't night and death the inevitable outcome of autumn? Stevens repeatedly responded to Keats' For Autumn in several of his different poems. The beautiful autumn scenery in front of autumn scenery seems to point to the night and death!

Coincidentally, China poet Lin responded to Keats' famous poem "For Autumn" in his early poems, mid-term poems "The Faith of Red Leaves" and late poems "For Autumn", and had his own in-depth interpretation. Faith in Red Leaves is the best of the three autumn poems. It is not only a masterpiece of the poet Lin Chang's poems, but also one of the best autumn poems in modern poetry. I'm going to write an article to introduce it in the future. This paper mainly focuses on two poems: Autumn, This Autumn and For Autumn.

The most noteworthy thing about the poem Autumn is that Lin personified Autumn, just like Keats, but Keats turned Autumn into you and Lin turned Autumn into him. The "you" in Lin's poem refers to the poet Xu Zhimo, and the "I" in the poem is the poet himself. If we understand this point first, we can understand the essence of the whole poem, and also understand why in 1947' s poem "To Autumn", "He" and "You" in Autumn are combined into one, and "Autumn" and "Xu Zhimo" are exactly the same! The triangle relationship between "Autumn", "Xu Zhimo" and "Me" is their sad story. This sad story began in late autumn in London192019 and ended in 193 16548.

The whole poem "Autumn, This Autumn" is divided into a short section and a long section. The first verse of the poem is a short paragraph, describing Xu Zhimo's meeting with Lin in this beautiful late autumn in London 1920 1 19. From acquaintance to love, he became unable to sing all his enthusiasm through this poem. "At this time, his experience is like a song,/flashing in the water of the mountain spring. This can be proved by comparing Xu Zhimo's own words. In his essay "Self-anatomy", he said: "I used to be a flowing spring in front of people, but now there are water drops and flashes. "Xu Zhimo said in the preface of Tiger Collection:" We are all dominated and kind creatures. What can we do? "Ten years ago, I blew a strange wind, perhaps according to some strange moonlight. Since then, my thoughts have tended to be written with branches. " What kind of wind is blowing? What kind of moonlight is it Autumn wind? Huang Yue? Lin wrote a poem "In the Mountains" in the autumn of 1936, saying: "At that time, naive young people were sitting under the yellow moon, and I believe the length of those three sentences remained unchanged in the autumn wind." (Note 1) We have to ask: Why does a 24-year-old young man, whose father wants him to enter the financial sector in the future, suddenly become a poet who expresses his thoughts and feelings with branches? Why? Ouyang Yongshu, a great poet in the Northern Song Dynasty, said in his poem "Jade Louchun": "Life is infatuated, and this resentment has nothing to do with romance." There is no doubt that if Ouyang Xiu is not deeply in love with each other, then parting from sorrow and not hating is just a helpless daily phenomenon in life. Just because I love each other deeply, the present separation has caused me grief that I can't get rid of. What does this have to do with romance? Since Ouyang Xiu's eternal hatred has nothing to do with the affair, does Xu Zhimo later become a poet or even Lin later become a poet have anything to do with Autumn Wind and Yellow Moon? The answer is of course no! Didn't they become poets because 192 1 fell in love in Cambridge and swore water in front of Byron Lake? (Note 2) Isn't the sentence "the length of those three sentences" in the poem "In the Mountains" proof? We have to ask, what does the phrase "the length of those three sentences" mean? Except "I love you, love you. I love you, love you. " They often talk in English! ), what else can it be? Lin's poem "Memories" written at the end of 1933 has already revealed this point. She said, "It was you who looked up with a smile/how many brave words you said that day-like a kite/to the blue dome, relying on the power of a thread." It can be seen that those "brave words" are not monologues, but love words of young people in two of a kind! Their first love first turned Xu Zhimo into another person. He turned his "enthusiasm" into a poem of "branches", which was wild and colorful, and even there were flash floods rushing in different directions. However, Lin said in Autumn that this autumn: "Autumn knows,/autumn knows the wild,-/autumn loves to be casual/random!" "Introduction to Tiger Collection" said: "There was only one period when my poetry really surged in all directions like a flash flood. That is, in the first half of my poetry writing, my life was shocked by a huge force, and all half-mature and immature ideas were scattered through my fingers. I was helpless and didn't know what was on my mind, so I entrusted the bottom of my wrist to crawl and comb at random. I was as anxious as saving my life, and I couldn't care less about beauty and ugliness! " These words of Xu Zhimo are the source of the last lines of the first section of Lin's Autumn, This Autumn! However, we have to ask, why did Lin say "autumn knowledge …" and "autumn love …"? Isn't that what she knows? Does she love herself? When you were sixteen or seventeen, you kept receiving poems from your relatives from "half-mature and immature ideas". How would you react? Of course you understand his unrestrained feelings, and of course you love to listen and read, no matter how immature and careless his poems are! Didn't Lin know and love? Doing late autumn again? Lin wrote a letter to Mr. Shen Congwen on February 26th, 1936/KLOC-0, which said, "I just mentioned extreme happiness, spiritual, transparent and beautiful happiness. I don't know if everyone feels the same way. I did it. I won't forget my happiness. I think the most pleasant thing is that in an instant, generate performed magic in a short time-just like two people had a clear understanding: one sentence hit your heart and made your reason and feelings feel extremely satisfied; Like to fall in love: once, you and another person except yourself regarded each other's existence as extreme happiness; Just like love, at that moment, what the eyes see, what the ears hear and what the heart touches are all beautiful, and the emotions flow naturally like poetry, and I don't know why I like flowers. These are rare treasures of life. Not many people in the world have the opportunity, and not many people have the natural sensitivity and tenderness to taste that experience, so it is useless to have that opportunity. " People meet, know each other and even fall in love, and finally develop into this spiritual harmony, thus reaching an ideal realm of poetic life. Think about it, there is still a difference between you and me. Not only do you and I hit it off, but even autumn has melted into the pure world without me! In this way, in 192 1, it is self-evident that Lin knew and loved himself in autumn. (Note 3)

Third,

Bow tasted the sweetness of the first love of free love, kissed the enlightenment of Cambridge humanities, and experienced the enthusiasm of English romantic poetry, thus Xu Zhimo became a completely different person. He established the ideal pursuit of poetic life, he was obsessed with the ultimate yearning for pure beauty, and he established a "simple belief" for his life. This simple belief is exactly what Wordsworth, the founder of English romanticism, said in his poem Journey: "We live by acceptance, hope and love" ("We live by admiration, hope and love." ) and Coleridge's "poetic belief" in his literary biography (Note 4). Xu Zhimo mentioned it in his prose Autumn, but the order was reversed. He said, "We live not only by bread, but also by food. In the words of a poet, we live by love, admiration and hope. There is also a condition that human beings in the world can bear our love. Lin made it more clear in Passion. The poem reads: "Give my warmest tears,/My faith, sincerity, and the power of love,/Worship forever,/Worship in front of your beauty! "After a brief understanding of Xu Zhimo's Simple Faith, we can understand the second article of Lin's long poem Autumn, this autumn, which mainly expounds the huge gap between Xu Zhimo's real life and emotional life and his Simple Faith. First love is sweet, but what is hidden behind this sweetness is pain and sadness! 192 1 At the end, Lin's emotional changes after his return from England made Xu Zhimo, who was still studying in Cambridge, live in joy from 192 1 922, and at the same time really feel the pain and sorrow of life. Later, in his essay "Cambridge as I Know It", he recalled: "I have only spent that spring in my life, which is really pitiful. I have never wasted it. In that spring, my life was natural and I really enjoyed it! (although it happens to be the most painful period in my life). " This kind of pain and sadness became clearer in 1923 Xu Zhimo's diary "West Lake", and in 1924, Lin chose to go to the United States to study with Liang Sicheng, which was equivalent to ending their first love story. After a long time, Lin and Liang Sicheng got married in Canada, and Xu Zhimo's emotional world completely collapsed. It is the true portrayal of this kind of pain and sorrow! However, according to Lin's Autumn, this autumn, he held a dreamlike wedding banquet in autumn, not only for Xu Zhimo's joy, but also when he spread out his hands in autumn, he magically made a necklace full of pearls and jade, showing a dreamland that could not be captured by reason like rain. Why can't I open it? /I saw you for the first time that day./You shone like a star. The poem "Revelation of Love" said: "On that day, when the knot of love hit my heart, I saw death, that/beautiful eternal world; So Lin said, "It's still because of uncertainty/sadness. In the final analysis, it's stuck in the center of this life!" " Isn't this the magic of creation? Who made Xu Zhimo's heart tied tightly? Why can't this knot be opened any more? Xu Zhimo said in the preface of Tiger Collection: "A deep melancholy occupied me; This kind of melancholy, I believe, has gradually penetrated into my temperament. "This is exactly what Lin said in Autumn, This Autumn." Or is it for uncertainty/sadness? In the final analysis, it is at the center of this life! "It is because of this sadness that it was planted 192 1 years ago. 193 1 years ago, in the late autumn, an autumn wind started from the west window and blew last night. The rustle blew into the buttonwood tree with a sad cry. However, the two people involved were not alert! When Xu Zhimo wrote the essay "Self-anatomy", he expressed serious doubts about his "simple belief" and even thought it was just an "illusion" that he deceived himself. He said: "Because the greatest tragedy of an individual is to imagine an empty realm to deceive himself;" "When you can't cheat to the end, you have to endure the great pain of disillusionment. Instead of this, it is better to recognize your own depth as soon as possible and not to carry unnecessary burdens on your shoulders. If you crush yourself, it is inevitable that others will laugh! " In the preface of Tiger Collection, it is further said that "a decadent who once believed in purity and flowed into doubt". Doubt or even decadence about one's belief in life, doesn't that mean giving up? At the end of the article "Autopsy", he said: "Friend, don't get lost, calm down and enjoy your ready-made blessing! Thought is not your point, literary and artistic creation is not your point, and independent career is not your point! Born with a heavy burden, I dare not even think about it (that genius is not a living hell! ) You used to be very relaxed, which is an enviable and gratifying discovery! Forget it, friend! " The root of Xu Zhimo's frustration is actually the emotional change of Lin, which happened when he/KLOC-0 met Lin in Beiping in February, 1928. /kloc-in the autumn of 0/930, after Xu Zhimo returned to Peiping with Lin who was infected with tuberculosis in the northeast, he rekindled the torch of love for Lin Kangqiao (his poems). However, Lin just gave birth to his eldest daughter, and his life and feelings were in a state of high prosperity. She can no longer accept Xu Zhimo's feelings. She just imitates the Buddha and Xu Zhimo to "make friends" in her poems (please refer to the first nine poems 193 1! Among them, "that night" is the most explicit. She said, "On that day, I will set foot on an arrow with wings./I hope to shoot a string in your garden. /On that day, you will hear songs like birds. /This is the compliment I am waiting for. /On that day, you will see messy flowers and shadows. /That's when I broke into the border! " The meaning is clear, but their Covenant in front of Byron Lake has two points: first, to create romantic poems. Second, the implementation of love engagement. Lin can only do the former. Her poems ("singing" and "flowers" refer to poetry creation words) hope to gain Xu Zhimo's "appreciation", but emotionally, I can only try to "break into the frontier of that year"! On the first day of the 1932 Lunar New Year, Lin made this clear at the end of his letter to Mr. Wang. The letter said: "I miss him very much these days, but I'm afraid I can't change him if he is alive." In fact, it is impossible. Perhaps this is the reason why I don't love him enough, and this is the proof that I love my present home above all else. Zhimo also admitted this. " However, Xu Zhimo did not give up. He thought he could return to the innocence in 192 1. The poem Autumn, This Autumn, from You Doubted to The Craftsman whose Creation was Destroyed, is about Xu Zhimo's own "thought". He expects that "as long as the wind blows overnight, the illusion will change overnight". However, as far as Lin is concerned, "the cold fog fascinated my eyes." She won't and can't take another step. Then "Who are you fighting with in this late autumn?" 193116438+09 in the early morning, the higher existence of "destroyed craftsmen"-"creation" declared "cruel reality". Undoubtedly, this is the absurd reality, and this is the incredible illusion of life! Who caused this "bleeding sadness"? Why are her eyes fascinated by the cold fog? Lin's best poems "Autumn Poetry" and "The Faith of Red Leaves" write: "Every night/the wind is like a sharp blade cutting through the soil,/the lips are silent and anxious at dawn,/the patient is still crying to the sky blue,/the fruit is finished in the wind and frost, showing glory,/the mountain is bleeding and turning into a graveyard!" Every time I read this poem, I can't control my tears! I especially think of the poem in Xu Zhimo's long poem "Revelation of Love" from 1930 to February 25: "On that day, when the knot of love hit my heart, I saw death, that/beautiful eternal world".

18 19 September 19 Keats' beautiful autumn scenery, autumn harvest and autumn sound in his poem "For Autumn" became her elegy in the late autumn of 1933. Although, "autumn's favored son is the fruit", for Lin, doesn't autumn also bring a long winter night and point to death? Without Lin's full emotional recognition, how can the simple "faith" and bright thoughts in Zhimo's A wisp of fragrance stand up to the West Wind Blowing over the buttonwood? Didn't Xu Zhimo forget his first love when he quickly ended his 35-year-old short life in Cambridge 192 1? In picturesque Cambridge, "The birds I have heard are the flowers I have seen are good". Is it because of Xu Zhimo's Unforgettable that in the late autumn of 193 1, I planted the sadness that the machine crashed and people died in the mountains of Jinan? Why doesn't faith sleep in the middle of the past? Li Yishan said in the poem "He Luhan sent the imperial secretary to the Taoist Temple": "If you loved Han Gongzi at that time, you would bury your bones and hate it." We have to ask, why is the beauty in life always so short? Why do acquaintance, love and soul meet so much that they miss each other? Is this just a trick of creation? When Lin wrote this poem, Xu Zhimo had been dead for two years. Is it Xu Zhimo who can't forget the "heard birds" and "seen flowers" or others? There is no doubt that Lin himself can't forget it, so he wrote poems! If they have never had a love story of their first love, then the birds they have heard and the flowers they have seen are only the past 12 years ago (192 1 year! Why can't you forget? Isn't the sadness of life just living in a sense of guilt, remorse, regret and despair?

The pride of autumn is to harvest the fruits of the flowers that bloom in spring. What did Xu Can Shima do besides lighting himself to illuminate others? The sweetness and sadness of the first love of free love is a great shock to life itself, all of which are reflected in his colorful poems. However, for a while, as if the spring water had dried up, it was extremely difficult for him to write a poem with eight lines and twelve lines! This is what Xu Zhimo said in the preface of Tiger Collection. "There is nothing worse than writing poetry in the world; Not only miserable, but also cold. " Lin said in the poem "Autumn, this autumn": "The pride of autumn is a fruit,/not a bud,-life can't allow you/give you accumulated fragrance; /hand over the color of each layer that has been light and heat; /Drain your most embarrassing acid. " According to Lin's description of Xu Zhimo's life here, subjectively speaking, Xu Zhimo needs to express his life through the language of poetry besides "his life was shocked by a great power". Objectively speaking, Xu Zhimo has a conscious commitment to the literary creation of the May 4th New Literature Movement. Although he said it was "cold" or "sour", he really made his clothes wider and wider, and he did not regret pining for Iraq. It was because of his dedication that a book of poems was printed one after another at that time. Moreover, he influenced his friends and students to join the New Literature Movement, which was still in its infancy. Unfortunately, he died young! It seems to have fulfilled his last sentence in the preface to the tiger. He said, "I have nothing else to say. I just want you to remember that there is a bird that sings in heaven and can't stop vomiting blood. Its songs contain the joy of another world that it knows alone, as well as the distinct sadness and pain that it knows alone; A poet is also a crazy bird. He held the thorn of the rose with his soft heart and sang the glory of the stars and the moon and the hope of mankind until his painstaking efforts dripped out and dyed the white flowers red. His pain and happiness are intertwined. " It seems to have come true: "I bumped into my heart that day and I saw death." Xu zhimo said in the preface to the tiger collection: "we are all dominated and kind creatures." What can we do? " Is it that as a kind creature dominated, it can only passively accept the conclusion given to us by a more advanced existence-creation? Will crying, calling and even praying be in vain? Can we only bow our tired heads and silently bear the final judgment of this ruined craftsman without resisting? Is the rustling west wind just an elegy played by the poet himself in the autumn when the leaves are falling? Can't it have any variations and its main theme is only the alternation of night and death? Lin wrote at the end of the poem "Autumn, This Autumn": "At this time,/don't cry; Or make a phone call; /Don't close your eyes and pray; /(looking to the future); /As long as it's low, in silence, the low/sleepy head bears it,-bears it/The autumn leaves are pulled tight by the wind:/This autumn, this night, this tragic change! " We can't help asking loudly: Don't they have a choice?

Precautions:

Note 1: Lin said in her essay "What's the matter": "We only heard the poet himself say that a strange wind blew, or a bright moonlight, a surprise, a shock of the soul, and then he began to try to write poetry, fascinated by the struggle of artistic conception, words and music, but what is this strange wind and moon, the shock and surprise of the soul? Is it still an activity that can trace the inner intuition? Emotional image of miscommunication after subconsciousness; Conscious rational thinking; And instinctive desire for expression? Ghost romance refers to an external natural phenomenon, but it is also a fuse of internal activities. There is no poet who speaks without metaphor. "

Note 2: Please refer to the explanation of "Not a clear spring, but a rainbow in the sky" in the second section of Xu Zhimo's A Trial Interpretation of Farewell to Cambridge.

Note 3: According to Xu Zhimo's preface to Tiger Collection, his first book of poems, Poems of Zhimo, was written within two years after I returned to China in the eleventh year of the Republic of China (that is, 1922); Although the initial surge in this collection has been eliminated, most of it has nothing to do with the overflow of emotions, and the art or skill of any poem is out of the question. The first edition of Zhi Mo's Poems retains his early poems in the first stage in Cambridge, such as Farewell to Cambridge. I am curious about how his early poems "all refer to colorful flowers and rain scattered between his eyes" were "inadvertently messy" and made Lin "understand" and "like".

Note 4: Compare William Wordsworth, Hiking, 18 14, Volume IV and Samuel T. Coleridge, Biography, 18 17, Chapter 14.