Basic Information
Chinese Name
Burnt Wasteland
Author
Ai Qing
Origin
Hymn of Light
Genre of the Work
Modern Poetry
Original Text
Burnt Wasteland
Ai Qing
The tiny A match,
cutting through a new realm--
What a fire,
The wilderness became a sea of fire!
Sparks flew and swirled,
and pillars of fire shot up to the sky!
Flames like golden deer,
running faster than the wind!
The smoke rose up in the sunlight,
like layers of brilliant clouds!
The flames laughed and ran wildly,
cloaking the thorns, how painful!
The fire marched on,
Jackals, wolves, foxes, and rabbits dodged away!
The wildfire is inexhaustible,
and the seedlings cannot rise!
Sharpen our plowshares,
and plow a new era!
Creative process
In 1957, the poet Ai Qing was wrongly criticized and wrongly categorized as a rightist.
In October 1957, the poet Ai Qing was removed from the editorial board of Poetry Magazine. He was expelled from the Party. Removed as a director of the Chinese Artists Association and a member of the Chinese Federation of Literary and Art Circles. In the poet Ai Qing in a difficult time, General Wang Zhen rescued him.
As early as in the Yan'an period, they have formed a friendship. In the fall of 1954, when Ai returned from a visit to South America, Wang Zhen invited him to talk to him. When they met, Wang Zhen said to Ai Qing, "The scenery I saw in Daxing'anling is beautiful, if you go to see it, you will surely write a lot of good poems! If you go to see it, you will surely write many good poems! You should come to the Railway Corps, and you can go to any place in the country where there is a train. I'll give you a secretary; how about it, will you go?" General Wang Zhen not only liked Ai Qing's poems himself, but also hoped that his children would like Ai Qing's poems, and drew many circles in the Selected Poems of Ai Qing, and wrote on the title page what he asked of his children, "Anyone who approves one circle should be familiar with the poems, and those who make two circles should be able to memorize them."
Ai Qing was branded as "rightist", the spirit of bitterness, often go to the park to watch chess or play go with people to relieve their worries. At this time, Wang Zhen once again found Ai Qing at home. He said to Ai Qing, "Old Ai, I love you and hate you! You are not against socialism; you are for the truth! You leave the literary world and come to us!" "Go to us" meant to mobilize Ai Qing to go to the farms belonging to the Reclamation Army, and Wang Zhen pointed to the map on the wall and said, "The North Great Wilderness is fertile and promising, and 100,000 rehabilitated soldiers are going to develop the ancient wilderness one after another, and I want you to go there, how's that? " Ai Qing accepted General Wang Zhen's mobilization to go to the North Great Wilderness.
In April 1958, Mr. and Mrs. Ai Qing and their children left Beijing by train and arrived in Mishan County, Heilongjiang Province. Mr. and Mrs. Ai Qing were placed in the 825 Farm under Wanda Mountain. Ai Qing served as the deputy director of the farm. After arriving at the farm, Ai Qing worked like an ordinary Nongken warrior, logging trees, raising seedlings, building houses, and organizing blackboard newspapers. He donated five thousand dollars of his own remuneration to Harbin to buy generators and lighting equipment. Ai Qing in the farm, also wrote some short poems, express his new feelings, but unfortunately most of them are lost, leaving only the "burning" one: "great fire ah, / wilderness into a sea of fire ...... wildfire inexhaustible, / seedlings can not get up! Quickly sharpen our plowshares,/plow a new era!"
About the Author
Ai Qing (1910-1996) graduated from the Hangzhou National West Lake Art Academy, where he studied fine arts, and then went to France to study oil painting. After returning to China, Ai Qing engaged in the left-wing art movement in Shanghai with Jiang Feng and others, and was inadvertently arrested and imprisoned. At that time, the policy on literature and art was too strict, and it should not be a big mistake for a young man who had just returned from France to think leftist. If he had been treated leniently, there would have been no big deal, but once he was imprisoned, Ai Qing would have become a staunch opponent, as evidenced by his pen name Ai Qing. Ai's real name was Jiang Haicheng, but when he was writing his own name, he suddenly remembered that Chiang Kai-shek's name was Jiang, so he put an "x" under the character "艹", and used it as his last name. So he took Ai as his surname. It became Ai Qing's life's ambition to give Chiang Kai-shek a fork. Ai Qing wrote a few poems in prison, which were well received, and after his release, he gradually gave up oil painting and became a poet instead. Just as the saying goes, "if the country is unfortunate, the poet is fortunate", the poet Ai Qing's energy comes from the war, he wrote poems about the hardships of the civilian population in wartime, sang the voices of the war generation, but also inspired the people's morale, and therefore caused **** song. For example, "Snow Falling on the Land of China" wrote about the situation of China at that time; "To the Sun" wrote about the hope of China.