In the history of modern poetry in my country, Xu Zhimo is indeed the most dazzling star and moon. Without Xu Zhimo, the traces of modern poetry would have been washed away by the torrent of history, leaving nothing behind. However, when we are intoxicated by the splendor and melodiousness of "Farewell Cambridge", "I Don't Know Which Direction the Wind Blows", "Sayang Nala" and "The Joy of Snowflakes" again and again, isn't it? What respect should be paid to him? Is Xu Zhimo a genius in poetry? Or is he just a passionate seed who often sings about the wind and the moon?
To measure whether a person is a literary genius, we can judge from his works. Those works that can still shine brightly after being tempered by time, shocking generations of readers, and nourishing and comforting the human soul, are the best basis for judging the historical value of a writer, and are also proof of his talent. Looking carefully at Xu Zhimo's poetry, we cannot say that it is not pure poetry, that it is not the fresh beating of the soul, and that it is not the breathing of the soul. However, we can only say that it is a pure poem about personal love, a heart that beats alive for the ideal love of the world, and a soul that lives and breathes for the ideal of love. Such a poem conceived by a heart and soul, a poetic heart and soul, will make everyone who has ever been in love or not been in love moved and excited. However, this kind of poetry is just a kind of low chanting, and its beauty is that of a trickle, not the torrent of the Yangtze River. As he himself said in "After Reading Shelley's Poems", "I like to read light poems; I really can't understand the poems that are too strong." "I really can't read Shelley because he is too strong and great." And he also commented on Shelley: "The reason why he became a great poet is because he has an extremely pure love for ideal beauty. Not only is it love, but he also regards beauty as a religious belief. What he calls beauty is not Specifically. He believes that food is the great spirit of the universe, and beauty is the spirit of the universe. All things in the universe are born from beauty. He also said that poets are priests who receive inspiration and are the legislators of the world. Therefore, he should add a Confucian exclamation at the end of the article: "What does it matter to me!" Hu Shi once said of him: "His outlook on life is really a kind of 'simple faith', with only three big words in it: a One is love, one is freedom, and the other is beauty." He is indeed worthy of these three words, but he is at another level different from Shelley, that is, the secular level. He pinned all these on his extraordinary desire and dream for ideal love. Lin Huiyin and Lu Xiaoman are their carriers, and his feelings for them are "Butterflies in Love with Flowers". And his own poems are the shocking traces of such emotions.
When interviewing Gu Cheng, someone asked him: "What conditions do you think a great poet needs to have?" Gu Cheng said: "I think the first condition a great poet must have is a soul, a person who is always awake and smiling but in pain. A soul that looks at the wine glass, the reflection of all things and itself, a soul that looks at blood, thoughts, and emotions on the river bank, a soul driven by love and light, in the phantom of layer after layer of objects. Move forward. He knows nothing but knows everything, he wants nothing but wants everything, he knows everything so he smiles, and he wants everything so he suffers. He...uses one word to release life from limitation and move toward infinity so that life can live freely forever. Among all things it rules, he has the power of creation. Apart from this most important condition...needs soil, music, history, roads, strong and pure national wines, none of which emanates from the Grand Canyon. With the language of many echoes, success is impossible." Maybe this is Gu Cheng's self-confidence, but it is indeed suitable for him. However, it seems that we cannot apply this standard to Xu Zhimo. We cannot say that his poetry has no soul. His poetry also has beautiful music - fresh and light lyricism. But it should be accurate to say that there is no "history, roads, strong and pure national wine" in his poetry, and his poetic language has not yet reached the level of "sending many echoes in the Grand Canyon."
Specifically speaking from his time, the artistry of his poetry reached the pinnacle of that time, and could not be matched by Dai Wangshu Wen Yiduo's generation. However, his poems failed to become the voice of the times and the lyrical expression of the national collective. This is why his "Farewell to Cambridge" is not as good as "Rain Alley".
His poetry does not point to ultimate meaning. Everything will be clearer when compared with Rabindranath Tagore, India's greatest poet who he most admired and had the closest relationship with.
What is the purpose of poetry? Tagore said: "We poets enable people to transcend desires."
Tagore said: "Poetry is the voice of a newborn child, which responds to the voice of the universe."
There is even more excess. As for Zhimo's evaluation - "Zhimo's emotional turmoil prevented him from being a poet, and his mixed thoughts prevented him from being a literati." After quoting these two sentences, Xu Zhimo admitted: "This is a comment given to me by a friend. It is embarrassing. Of course, my humor does not allow me to admit that he really saw through me." Xu Zhimo finally died. He had never really been fascinated or crazy about poetry itself in his life, so he did not have his own poetic path. The poetry in his heart was finally dispelled in the struggle with Lu Xiaoman's vulgarity and decadence.
Pushkin died in a duel to safeguard the dignity of love, Shelley died in the embrace of the sea, Byron became a national hero in Greece as a British citizen, and ended his life in a thunderstorm, Xu Zhimo Suddenly fell while flying in the air... However, Xu Zhimo's name is obviously not as brilliant as the others. Because any other one can represent a country and a great era, but what can Xu Zhimo represent?
So what is Xu Zhimo’s great contribution to poetry? Together with Wen Yiduo, Xu Zhimo advocated the three beauties of poetry, namely "metrical beauty", "architectural beauty" and "painting beauty", and became the most successful representative of the practice of the three beauties. Therefore, the standardized form of modern poetry was created in the history of new poetry, which is a bit like Wang, Yang, Lu, and Luo in the early Tang Dynasty. Unfortunately, Xu Zhimo's practice was greatly damaged by the poet's tragic love experience. The young poet passed away early, and his innovative new poetry almost became a dead ringer. When we are suffering today because we cannot read good poetry and cannot gain anything from modern poetry, we cannot help but think of Xu Zhimo. Thinking of his active pursuit of new poetry and creation of style.
But I want to mention one thing: Xu Zhimo is definitely a genius essayist.
Xu Zhimo is a willful child
Xu Zhimo’s life is a legendary life. He is never willing to be lonely and always pursues fresh hot spots and novel ways of living. In his poetic bones and in his life dictionary, the ordinary life of boredom, mediocrity and lack of vitality is forever removed. He is a bright red flame. Maybe we will think that his life is indeed gorgeous, colorful and thought-provoking, but his person, himself, is almost absolute simplicity. In "The Death of My Grandmother", he once quoted a section of Wordsworth's poem "We Were Seven" and gave a detailed explanation:
A simple child,< /p>
Live his happy time,
Hurrying, lively,
How can he distinguish between life and death?
This quatrain is the beginning of a famous
poem called "We are Seven" by the British poet William Wordsworth. That is the idea of ??his entire poem
. This poet who loved nature and children once met an eight-year-old girl with cute and fluffy hair. He asked her how many brothers and sisters she had, and she said we were Seven, two
in the city, two in foreign countries, and a sister and a brother, are buried in the cemetery of the church near her home. But her child's mentality did not distinguish between life and death. Every night, she took her dry snacks and small plates to the grass of the cemetery to eat alone. Sing, sing
to her brothers and sisters who were sleeping in the mound. Although they were silent and there was no echo, her brilliant childlike innocence never felt that there was a gap between life and death. Incredible barrier; so despite Hua Weng's many explanations, she just opened her smart little eyes and replied: "But, sir, we are still seven people." ”
To a certain extent, Xu Zhimo is like a child, facing the world with a child’s way of thinking and a child’s heart, and taking actions like a child. Therefore, sometimes he is as innocent and cute as a child, and sometimes he is more cruel than a devil. We cannot classify children's behavior as good or evil. Therefore, when Zhang Youyi rushed to Marseille Port after a long journey and vomited due to the bumpy journey, he shook his head and said in disgust: "You are really a country bumpkin." When Zhang Youyi told him that she was pregnant, he immediately said: "Put him in Kill it." Zhang Youyi said, it will kill people. He actually said: "There are still people who died because of taking the train. Have you seen that people don't take the train?" Such ridiculous and hateful logic is really hard to imagine coming from the mouth of a poet who has always been praised by his friends. Li? - Maybe, only an ignorant child can say such words! Therefore, Xu Zhimo's image is either cute or hateful in people's eyes. But in the end, people will forgive him for being hateful, because who would really care about a child's words and deeds? Later, Zhang Youyi not only did not hate him, but became his good friend and a good wife of the Xu family. Later, she said this: "You always ask me whether I love Xu Zhimo. You know, I can't answer this question. I am very confused about this question because everyone always tells me that I love Xu Zhimo." After doing so many things, I must love him. However, I can't say what love is. I have never said "I love you" to anyone in my life. If taking care of Xu Zhimo and his family is called love, Then I probably love him. Among the women he met in his life, maybe I loved him the most." However, the son who was born at an untimely time died of meningitis three years later. It had only been four months since Zhimo left him, but he hadn't been able to see him again since then. At this time, he found some feeling of being a father: "I am not heartless or ungrateful. Why am I so unkind and indifferent to my own flesh and blood?"
Reality Above all, every poet is close to children, either implicitly or explicitly.
The most famous one is none other than the "fairy tale poet" Gu Cheng. The poem by Tsedzworth just now allows us to appreciate his innocence. This is even more true for Xu Zhimo. He once wrote: "The truly pure world is the world of children, the world of children is paradise, and their life is a life of sympathy. The poet's life is like a child, pure and rich, and the poet's imagination is especially like Children. Poets are as cute as children." So he highly praised "New Moon Collection" because those poems are the most touching sounds of childlike nature! Therefore, his later traces are always inseparable from the word "Crescent Moon", so that their famous poetry school is also called "Crescent Moon School". This is probably not a coincidence. I firmly believe that in Xu Zhimo's heart, he did have a profound resonance with the natural sounds of "New Moon Collection", and it has become the main theme of the melody of his life.
Xu Zhimo’s character has been developed since he was a child. As the only son of the Xu family, he was pampered, tenderly cared for, and loved by everyone. Therefore, he has achieved his naughty and stubborn natural personality that has never been restrained or hindered by others. As an adult, he is more innocent because of this, but lacks a lot of maturity. The smooth sailing life experience made him not understand what it means to be human, so he maintained his cuteness and was not burned by the dangers of the world. His stubbornness and rebellion are also quietly lurking, always ready to burst out at some moment. Great sages and wise men such as Liang Qichao could not wake him up. He couldn't sense Lu Xiaoman's criticized qualities of smoking, being an actor, and being extravagant. Instead, he used the writing style that should have been used to write beautiful poems instead to write hopeless pleas, Keep eye-catching economic accounts!
His innocence also affects his poetry. When Liang Shiqiu commented on his prose, he said that Zhimo wrote about any topic with an "intimate" attitude, just like "talking" with friends, and his words had a "willful" color. Moreover, Xu Zhimo himself said that he writes like a "running wild horse". If you associate these words with children, no one should have any doubts! The same is true for his poems.
So, at this time, we finally understood the emotions of "Farewell Cambridge". A child-like poet, a child-like life has since been shadowed by the world, burned by the complexity of the world, and gradually began to transform into the vulgar and heavy adult world. That kind of farewell, the farewell is the gorgeous true love flying, what is ushered in is the sadness and loneliness that makes people feel sad!
Xu Zhimo used European romanticism tradition to transform China's classicism tradition, which made his poetry present two aspects of tradition. For example, his poems use many old words, as well as some allusions, or dilutions of classical verses. For another example, his poems pay attention to music, organized paragraphs, and smooth phonology, which are the unique characteristics of traditional Chinese and Western poetry.
The biggest symbol of the tradition of Xu Zhimo’s poetry is his lyrical centralism, which expresses romantic feelings, while modern poetry requires profound thoughts and complex techniques. He is known as a "poetic philosopher", but he basically does not have the thinking of a philosopher, and the thoughts in his poems are also very weak, simple, simple and superficial. There are more similes than metaphors, more straightforwardness than hints, and more emotions than reason. It is these factors within the scope of romantic lyricism that enable Xu Zhimo's poems to meet the common people's aesthetic expectations for the poet's image. Of course, the public recognizes Xu Zhimo, Also because of the stories about him, especially those romantic affairs in which he pursued the most beautiful women. Such imaginations and rumors not only distort Xu Zhimo, but even harm the image of the modern poet. As everyone knows, this look is not typical among modernist poets.