In the early 1920s, driven by the literary revolution, foreign literary thoughts flooded into China. Many awakened young people and literary writers choose to pour out their inner anguish and desire with various western literary styles and creative techniques, and writers with different creative tendencies influenced by different literary ideas and artistic methods gather in literary societies. 1922, Lin Ruji initiated the establishment of Asakusa Society, and its key members formed Shen Chongshe on 1929 to introduce foreign literature. Feng Zhi wrote many poems during his communication.
"Snake" is a lyric poem written by Feng farthest 1926, which is included in the poetry collection "Song of Yesterday". Love is a popular theme in literary creation. Many poets write love poems, and Feng Zhi also writes them, but they don't follow the trend. Feng Zhi of 1926 was still a young man at that time, and both physically and psychologically longed for love, but where is love so easy to get? Warlords scuffle, social contradictions intensify, dark reality and beautiful ideal form a sharp conflict, and the poet's heart is bitter and stuffy.
The poem "snake" takes a unique image, and "snake" is a cold and horrible creature. My loneliness is a long snake/silence. The poet compares loneliness to a snake and has a strange imagination. Loneliness is as slender and silent as a snake. The first sentence at the beginning released the poet's inner sadness and loneliness.
"In case you dream, don't be afraid" is advice, and the object is "you", that is, the beloved, but after careful reading, you will find more monologues.
"It is my faithful companion/I have a warm homesickness in my heart/I miss the dense grassland/the thick black silk on your head." Poets are accompanied by loneliness. Here, only "homesickness" is homophonic, and "homesickness" is "acacia". Snakes prefer grass as their hometown, which is their "homesickness"; "I" love "you", just like a snake's attachment to grass. This is the poet's lovesickness.
"It is as soft as the moon/walks by you/it takes away your dreams/like a crimson flower." Comparing the shadow of the moon to a snake vividly describes the lightness and agility of the snake. The snake followed, and the scene was quiet and mysterious. The snake has a dream of "you", which is the poet's inner desire, but although the dream is beautiful, it is also fragile and illusory, which is the poet's anguish. Comparing a dream to a "crimson flower" is a stroke of genius. "Crimson" is blushing, and it is a youthful shyness left when dreaming of sweet love.
According to the poet, the poem Snake was written after he saw a woodcut of a snake with a red flower in its mouth. There are many romantic colors in the poem, full of the natural characteristics of snakes. At the same time, they regard "snake" as a symbol of loneliness, and use "snake" as a medium to send their inner declaration to their loved ones. I have to say that the poet's imagination is very strange. The poet hid his inner passion in the cold silence of the snake. The restrained emotion and restrained language make the overall tone of the poem gloomy, but he is not desperate. The poet described a kind of beauty of dark color, gray color and loneliness.
Rainy Night is another poem in Song of Yesterday. Compared with the silence and quietness of snakes, this rainy night is lively. Pedestrians lost their way in the forest, saw ghosts "singing and dancing", heard crickets "chirping", "wind and rain" and cicadas singing birds, and described the sound very richly. But what is hidden behind the excitement is noise, terror and doubt. Pedestrians get lost in the Woods, not only because of the storm, but also because of the singing and dancing of ghosts; Fortunately, the road illuminated by lightning found the direction for pedestrians, and cicadas and birds woke them up. "Lost" in poetry has double meanings. The "loss" in this poem "Rainy Night" is not only the loss of pedestrians in the forest, but also the poet's self-loss in social life. In this way, ghosts, crickets, cicadas, birds, storms and lightning in the poem are all symbolic. Ghosts are temptation, crickets are interference, cicadas, birds and lightning are reason, and they are a power to awaken the lost. This poem "Rainy Night" shows the poet's depressed mood because of the loss of life. What is more noteworthy is that the poet began to reflect on this "loss". "Are there any pedestrians/lost in the forest?" In poetry creation, poets began to look for philosophical artistic conception, adding metaphysical questions while expressing their inner feelings. This is also a trend of Feng Zhi's poetry towards philosophy.
From 65438 to 0930, Feng Zhi went to Germany to study literature, philosophy and art history, during which he was influenced by German poet Rilke. Influenced by existentialism, Feng Zhi in this period began to write poems with obvious philosophical color, and began to study and try sonnets.
Sonnet is a form of poetry in the west, which has fixed prosodic requirements. 1942, Feng Zhi published Sonnets, a set of 27 poems, written in Italian sonnets, which changed greatly in poetic style and completed the transformation from lyric poetry to philosophical poetry.
In Feng Zhi's sonnets, "life and death" is a major theme. Poets sing about life and death in their poems. Influenced by German classical philosophy, with the growth of age and experience, Feng Zhi was once lonely in Snake and lost in Rainy Night. Those sharp questions raised in repeated introspection and aftertaste began to be solved, and the poet's understanding of life and death reached a new height. The poet gradually realized that life and death are inseparable. They are equally solemn, equally sacred and equally inviolable.
In the first sonnet, the poet saw the end of life from two mating insects. "We praise those little insects/they passed a mating/or resisted a danger/ended their wonderful life/our life was suffering/the wind blew and comets appeared". There is no direct connection between life and death, and there is a supreme invisible existence in the blend of life and death, "copulation" or "resistance to danger", which is love. Love, from "self" love to "self" love, is short-lived, and the essence of love is a leap from short life to eternity. Insects may have died when mating or resisting danger, but their death gave birth to new life. They died to continue new life and sacrificed themselves to protect their own kind. This is great, and this kind of death is beyond everything. The limit of existence is death, so the existence of love gives death new life. Between life and death, the miracle of life appeared. They are as brief and beautiful as comets and as powerful as strong winds. The poet praised the little insects as well as the miracle of life.
In the second sonnet, the poet gives a clear attitude towards life and death.
The poem says, "This era has been arranged for us". When the poet wrote the sonnet, it was 1942. War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression entered a stalemate, and China was full of guns. At this time, some universities present a relatively quiet environment and become unique spiritual homes. At this time, National Southwest Associated University, as the highest institution in the rear area, gathered a large number of poets, young, old, formed and unformed. Under the gathering of heroes, they completed a life dive-experienced exile in war, had rich life experiences, meditated in front of reality and nature, and integrated the disasters and pains that China was experiencing into their hearts, thus forming a torture of the fate of the nation and mankind in the war years. This poem by Feng Zhi is a reflection on the essence of life produced by living in such an era.
"What can fall off us/we all turn it into dust/we arrange us in this era/like trees in autumn, one after another", in the poet's view, what falls off us is not all "waste", and "turning to dust" does not mean throwing it away, but "turning it into spring mud to protect flowers". Suffering from the war, the poet found that in this special era, "man is inherently mortal, or heavier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather", turning personal death into nourishment for the nation, continuing the destiny of the nation with limited life and sacrificing "self" to achieve "self", which is the poet's choice. Just like the insects praised by the poet in his first poem, "they passed a mating and/or resisted a danger", thus achieving the miracle of life.
"Give the leaves and some flowers that are too late to open to the autumn wind and let the trees open/extend to the severe winter; We arrange us/in nature, like cicada moths/throw all our shells into the mud. " Everything grows naturally, autumn is harvest, and winter is death. The poet picks the "leaves" and "flowers" in his life and gives them to the autumn wind. The poet's life has been decided to be dedicated to War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the motherland and the people. As for personal life and death, the poet saw through it, and decided to put his body into the severe winter, bury it behind him, let him turn into dust, take his life with him, endure and conform to natural development, which is the greatest respect for life and death.
Arranging "future death" for oneself is a rational cognition of the inevitable arrival of death, but in the poet's view of life and death, death is not a simple disappearance, and "future death" does not mean complete death. Just as "singing falls off from music, leaving the body of music/turning into a silent green hill", "singing" is limited and "music" is infinite. When the song "Death" falls off from music, music becomes an eternal castle peak. Poets feel the meaning of life through their understanding of death. They forget death at the cost of their lives, and a limited and impermanent life can only last forever when they strive for value.
Sonnets mostly take common things in daily life as images, and incorporate the thought of "letting nature take its course" in western existentialism philosophy and China's philosophy. It is the most critical and valuable achievement in Feng Zhi's poetry system, and it is the most concentrated and profound collection of poems expressing the theme of life in China's modern poetry.