The Complete Works of Xu Zhimo's Classical Prose

Chapter 24
The sunset glow in the autumn fields, the fragrant cheeks of the poetess floating on the sand, the breath of a sleeping child, the quicksand as time slows down, the stream in the forest, the death of the poet.His poems are full of quiet, perhaps fragrant, beautiful and quiet artistic conception, just as Shelley's poems are full of movement, the vibration of life, violent, colorful, and loud.We can compare Keats' "Autumn Song" with Shelley's "Song of the West Wind", Keats' "Nightingale" with Shelley's "Lark", and Keats' "Melancholy" with Shelley's "Cloud". Life, dance, life, essence, light, and pulsation, one is quiet, secluded, sweet, and gradual "luxury" death, and death that is deeper and more profound than life is eternal life.After understanding his concept of life and death, let's explain his poem: ([-]) "But while I was guessing about this and that in the green forest, the nightingale continued to sing, this time it was more intense and more intense. (Previously it was just like the sound of rain in a lotus pond, although the tune was urgent, the syllables were still very even; now it is like a large torrent of rain falling in a blooming lilac forest. Earth, a burst of fragrant rain in the rain, the tone is very urgent.) So he actually wanted to dissolve quietly in this bliss, and die peacefully, so I fell in love with the painless liberation, compose in a daze The beloved name sings her praises, and asks her to lead me away from the world of this life into the world of immortality. This death is not only pain, but the highest happiness, not only not misfortune, but a great luxury; not only is it not Negative extinction, this is the realization of real life. In this green forest, in this middle of the night, in this beautiful song, you gently burst the bubbles of life, ah, go! At the same time you are singing Pour out your inner spirituality, sing wildly with all your might, as if in this darkness you see a light brighter than light, and in the shade of your leaves realize a joy happier than joy; even if I die , you continued to sing until I couldn’t hear it and turned into dust, you still sang forever.”

This is the stanza with the fullest spirit and the most spiritual tone in the whole poem, and then the meaning of death and eternal life in the previous paragraph, he thought back to the bird from himself, he thought I could dissipate in this song, but the body of the song Woolen cloth?Those who listen to the song can go from life to death, and from death to life, so what about the singing bird?The previous six verses were all low-key, that is, although the key of the sixth verse has changed, the sound is still like a leaf floating and sinking in the waves. The climax is at the highest point, and the poet's emotion in the urgent tune, accompanied by the singing of the birds, pours out to his heart's content: his intoxicated poetic soul has reached the boundary between dream and waking.

Ruth’s ability in this section is in The Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. She married a guest. After her husband died, her aunt wanted to go back to her hometown and told her to go back to her own home to remarry. Ruth Certainly not, she would rather follow her aunt to a foreign country to be a widow. Later, when she was harvesting wheat in the wheat field, she often thought about her hometown, and Keats used this story.

([-]) "Just now I thought of death and perishing, but you, immortal bird, you will never perish, and your singing is a proof of your immortality. Times change and people change, your music Still never hurt, I am here tonight to listen to you, this song has been there thousands of years ago, rich and noble princes have heard you, and humble farmers have heard you: maybe the child of Ros Standing in a foreign country's field at dusk and harvesting wheat, when she missed her hometown with tears in her eyes, this same song once came out from the woods to comfort her spirit, perhaps in the middle ages illusionists were The fairy island of Penglai was conjured up in the sea, and a pavilion was built in the heart of the wave. The beautiful girls they took in lived here. When they looked at the sea from the window and missed their hometown, your singing touched their hearts and gave them peace and joy. joy."

([-]) This section is a summary of the whole poem, a summary of the nightingale singing, or a summary of the great dream of life.There are two opposing (motives) in his poem; one is this real world, and this hideous real life: this is what he longs to escape and forget, and the other is the surreal world, the immortal life in the sound of music , This is what he desires, what he wants to achieve, and he is willing to get rid of the incomplete and temporary life to transform into this complete and permanent life.How he goes, he can go with the power of wine, he can fly out of the world with the invisible wings of poetry, or he can completely forget all the troubles of this world when he listens to the constant singing of nightingales.He has gone, he has melted into the gentle night, into the song of the gods, he is the nightingale; the nightingale is him.When the nightingale sang low, he also sang low, and when he sang high, he also sang high. We can't tell who is who. The sixth and seventh paragraphs give full play to the motive of "perfect and eternal life". Therefore, the music turns back to that motive in the highest urgent tone at the end of the word forlorn, the real world he came from, and the same thread he wears to and fro, and the joining of tones and transitions are also very natural; An opposite motive, using waking (real world) and dream (imaginary world) to combine the full text, like throwing a stone into a deep pool in a mountain ravine, the sound is clear and harmonious, and the lingering sound is still in the ravine It reverberates, making you want to see the stone slowly sinking into the bottomless deep pool... The music is over, the dream is awakened, the blood is vomited, and the nightingale is dead!But his aftertaste echoes in the universe forever...

At midnight on December 13, [-]
Originally published in April 1925, "Novel Monthly", Volume 2, No. 16, included in "The Claws of Paris"

Madame Browning's Love Poems
一
"Great souls are always alone." Not because they would like to be alone, but because they cannot help being alone.Their wants and needs are not those of ordinary people; their standards of evaluation are not ordinary standards.When they come to the human world, they want to love, comfort, know and understand.But unfortunately their organization is sometimes too complicated, too deep, too tortuous, and this shallow life cannot guarantee their satisfaction.People who only have a biological life, for example, as long as they have food to eat, clothes to wear, and a suitable pairing of the opposite sex, they can pass by safely, without any complaints or melancholy.

A poet, an artist, is often not so easy to deal with.Genius is not easy to serve.There are other things that can be accommodated, but the matter of the spouse is the most problematic.Imagine you are the wife (or husband, when men and women enjoy equal rights!) of a great poet or painter. right.They don't necessarily want satisfaction in life, so they can be free sometimes, but they imagine a satisfaction beyond life, because their life is not rooted in this world of phenomena.You are busy patching socks and serving snacks for him, but he says you are busy for nothing, it is not his socks that are torn, and it is not his stomach that is hungry!Such a man (or woman) is really awkward enough that you can't touch his (or her) taste.

He goes crazy when he is happy, maybe he hugged you and kissed you in front of people, and he doesn't know why.When he was worried, his face was tense, he could not speak all day long, and he could not sleep all night, as if he had a hard time with someone, and he didn't know why.Ninety-nine out of a hundred women like their husbands who understand and understand first-class, what they say, care about their families, care about their wives, and snore sweetly with their mouths open when they fall asleep at night.Who can bear a poet who

“…Wants to know
What one has felt from earliest days,

Why one thought not in other ways,

And one's loves of long ago."

Therefore, the matter of the Shi family is not happy for talented people. "I cannot imagine a thinker with a wife," said Nietzsche.How come so many great artists, such as Da Wenjian and Michelangelo, never thought of starting a family?They live for art, and they have no spare energy to perfuse a family.It is in the middle of getting married, and in the entire history of thought, literature and art, you can name a few people who can say that they are consummated in the matter of marriage.With Byron's divorce, his life was in turmoil, and his wife only cared about mending socks and serving snacks for him.Goethe was just floating in the waves of uncertain love all his life, but his marriage was not very glorious.Mr. Lu Sao seized a servant girl who was sweeping the floor in the guest apartment, and the case was considered complete.Mathilde of Haene is another girl who cannot read, although her color is enough for us poets to fall in love with.Swinburne lived alone, and Keats vomited blood for a woman he couldn't marry.Carlisle has a good-looking and intelligent Jesse Welsh, but his eccentricities only lead to a historically unhappy family.It is rare for people in this area to know happiness.

two

Originally, falling in love is one thing, and being married is another.Napoleon said that marriage is the burial of love.What this means is that these two things are incompatible.This is not to say that there is no love between husband and wife.There are only couples who love each other very much.But "romantic love," whose heat is not measured by an unusual thermometer, is another matter.Like the story of Romeo and Juliet.Its moving, its beauty, its power, all in one tragic death.Death is gracious, it fulfills the eternity of a true lover's passion, if Juliet becomes Mrs Romeo, if she is blessed in the day, the aisles are cumbersome, and she brings a large group of children, then what's the point?Vigorous things cannot last: this is physics.Of course, there are many people who get married out of love, but who can maintain the passion of first love, which was fierce and rampant like a gust of wind and like a rainstorm?To get married is to start a family.Home itself has long-lasting, if not permanent, meaning.If there is a family, housework is inevitable, and the family is tired, especially the birth of little angels.So it all depends on how you look at it.As modern times are mostly newly invented outlooks on life, the types of outlooks on love cannot be simple.The one who expresses the view of love in the narrowest sense is Miss Ma Ban of Ge Di Ai. She only allows her lover to have a transparent and colorful happiness for a whole night. Her only reason for not allowing him to meet was to preserve the crystal clear impression of "romantic love".As soon as you drag it down, it will be destroyed!But having said that, although this kind of view is beautiful, it is of course narrow, and sometimes it is harmful. It is for the purpose of human reproduction and should not be allowed to spread.Love is indispensable, but not too hot.Emotion cannot be controlled and adjusted by reason.Romantic love is pure Luig, but married love is not necessarily loose prose.Leaning on the white stone railing flooded in the moonlight, with golden hair scattered, breathing in the lingering love in the singing of the nightingale is certainly fun, but it is fun to wear an old cotton cap and pajamas to see Mrs. The children's shoes and socks have to take care of the hot and cold of your breakfast at the same time, and there is no interesting humor from beginning to end.Dew is sweet, and rain is not necessarily sour.

If we go further, the union of a husband and wife is not only derived from pure love, not a superficial inversion, but a conscious mutual understanding of heart and nature, and can make this pure emotion a permanent basis for living together. The fact of a marriage expounds more than one beautiful and noble virtue, which couple is probably not a permanent model and inspiration for human society?
three

But unfortunately this kind of complete couple is really rare in human society, although love and marriage are both common and common things.Good couples, virtuous mengliang, gifted scholars and beautiful ladies, old couples with good fortune and longevity, of course there are, and there are many, but a pair of completely creative spouses is required to draw a higher level in the history of human evolution, and at the same time give the misanthropists a Positive reply, where is there?There are often great friendships between men, such as that of Goethe and Schiller. Their mutual inspiration and common cause are an indelible inspiration.What about couples?

If women have not been completely emancipated in education and have equal status with men in society, we cannot have a correct concept of couples.There was a time when women were booty.At another time women were playthings.At one time women were a decoration, a luxury.At another time women were domestic slaves.At all times the female is the "female animal", whose sole mission and use is to propagate the species for human beings.Therefore, the history of mankind is the glory of men, and its opportunities are the monopoly of men.Until the last hundred years ago, with the emancipation of general thought, the oppression of women began to be hoped to be relaxed, and with the feminist movement, the concept of marriage was fundamentally revised, and the original fallacies gradually disappeared in the light of the facts.

This is a big deal, because women's emancipation not only adds new strength to our cultural endeavors, it is a necessary condition for the realization of our ideals of reasonable living.

Husband and wife are the free union of two personalities; the closest companionship, the most creative adventure.

four

The combination of the poet Bai Langning and Yili Chabai Pered is a permanent commemoration of mankind; just as their history before marriage is a love story of incense leaves; their life after marriage is also worthy of our praise.Their respective patience and temperance are likewise a triumph of reason, as their intercourse of affection with one another is without compulsion.As this marriage brought them both to the full realization of this terrestrial possibility of happiness, they at the same time set a healthy example for the faltering human race.They make us envy, but also make us admire, they are not that wretched and cramped first-class.For example, Bai Langning's character in this love history is the nobility and luxury of men, while Mrs. Bai's is the steadfastness, grace and inspiration of women.They have fully realized the ideal of a spouse, they are an ideal couple.

Bai Langning was a relatively late poet. When his contemporary Tan Yisun was famous all over the country, only a few people knew his genius, such as John Muller and the poet and painter Luo Shadi. He copied Bai Langning's first long poem by himself.But although his poems are not fashionable, he has been lucky enough to get the understanding and sympathy of Yili Chabai Pered in the deep boudoir.At the same time, Bai Langning also saw Perede's poems, and found that she quoted his own poems, which gave him great pleasure.This is the first step.After being introduced by a father, Perede was his cousin, and Bai Langning began to correspond with her future wife.In her early years, Perede was a very lively girl, but unfortunately her spine was damaged by riding a horse, and she was trapped in her quiet room upstairs all year round, living on a sofa. Shakespeare and ancient Greek poets were her only solace.She had a strict business father, but her sisters sympathized with her and then helped her.She has a loyal maid named Wilson, and an even more loyal dog named Flush.She was six years older than Bai Langning, and she was already 39 years old when she began to correspond with him.

When you have seen her portrait, you cannot forget her focused and sad eyes, and her fluffy thick temples.Her life was originally a joyless life.A crippled person, a sick person, full of fiery emotions and rare genius, her days fade away sadly on the border of life and death.In the midst of these bleak times, fortune gave her another merciless blow. One of her beloved brothers became a water ghost for no reason. Son also has the same sadness.She is a poor person. Sorrow and despair are gifts from life.

But this sadness and despair is destined to last forever.One of her most admired contemporary poets began to pay her humble respects, and she could not but be moved by his sincerity.On the sickbed, read the vigorous and honest letters every day, and send solemn and graceful letters from the sickbed every day.Dedicate morning and evening inspiration to each other, and promise faithful criticism to each other.From literature to life, from interest to temperament, each other finds that each other is the same heart from the beginning.Before meeting each other, they had been familiar with each other's voice, the unmistakable spiritual voice.

(End of this chapter)