What about pessimistic idealists?

Taking Xu Zhimo's poems as an example, this paper analyzes the pessimism and world-weariness of idealists.

Originally, Xu Zhimo had nothing to do with poetry and had no personal hobbies. However, while studying at Cambridge University in England, he was uncharacteristically writing more than once, which led to the outbreak of his poetry creation. Although he wrote so many poems during this period, only twenty or thirty poems are scattered in some newspapers and magazines, and most of them have been lost. However, from the limited poems we can still see, we can also get a glimpse of Xu Zhimo's early poems and his thoughts.

At this time, why did Xu Zhimo write poems like he was possessed, and how did he write poems in generate?

First of all, it has something to do with his living environment at that time. It was the Cambridge environment in which he lived that aroused his interest in poetry and ignited his desire for creation. He said: "I am really happy in Cambridge, and I am afraid that I will never get such a sweet baptism in my life" (smoking and culture). So during this period, he created such works as Summer and Summer Field. At this time, his personal life "shines with strange moonlight."

In the autumn of 192 1, he met the forest of "beautiful women" and "talented women". Xu Zhimo had a close relationship with her, and then talked about love and marriage. Therefore, Xu Zhimo filed for divorce with Zhang Youyi in March 1922, arguing that the two should not continue their married life without love and freedom. Free divorce, stopping suffering and foretelling happiness is Xu Zhimo's simple idealism. He is pursuing an ideal life. He feels that life seems to be "shaken by great power", he wants to express, he wants to sing. So it's like Love to Death, Listening to the Piano on a Moonlit Night, Ode to Youth and Spring Breeze Breaking the Dream of Spring. In addition, he tends to write in different languages, because he is exposed to a lot of English literature and art, and the works of Byron, Shelley, Keats and Hardy fascinate him. He blew this "strange wind"-the European wind, and he followed their path, so with the help of poetry, his thoughts and feelings were "strange".

Therefore, Xu Zhimo especially misses this period of life in Cambridge, England. He is full of excitement and excitement. He wrote many poems, and his poetic situation is reflected in his long poem Dew on the Grass. This is his earliest poem that we have seen so far. This poem not only expresses his ambition and interest at that time, but also vividly conveys the turbulent state of his poetry. He opened the fountain of creation and sang with his throat. Therefore, he will become a poet. On the whole, these early poems are fresh in tone and lofty in artistic conception, which embodies "the call of youth and the bright hope" (Xu Zhimo: spring). At the same time, we began to explore the form of new poetry from many aspects. Poetry has various forms, but it has not yet been finalized. There are free poems, new metrical poems, western poems and even poems without punctuation. However, they emphasize the symmetry and neatness of rhyme, rhythm and format, and demand "smooth and pleasant tone and light and soft form", which is the consistent pursuit of Xu Zhimo's poems.

Although he was fascinated by life in Cambridge, England, his homesickness and homesickness haunted him, so he left Europe on August 1922 and set off for home. On the way home, I stopped in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan for two months, and arrived in Shanghai on June 65438+1October 65438+May.

After returning to China, Xu Zhimo started another life. The disturbance of the real society disturbs his inner balance, and sometimes he feels mentally bored and anxious. So he told his feelings and experiences and started his literary career.

Zhimo's poems

1922 After Xu Zhimo returned to China in the autumn, his poems continued to be written and published in various magazines. Poems of Zhimo is the first book of poems compiled by Xu Zhimo himself, most of which are works from 1922 to 1924. The publication of this collection of poems made him famous. In this collection of poems, we can see Xu Zhimo's life and thoughts in the early days of returning to China, as well as his "feelings beyond words". Roughly: expressing ideals and expressing love; Expose social darkness and express sympathy for working people; Explore the philosophy of life; And lyricism about the scenery.

He is full of Cambridge-style life ideals in England and hopes to realize his idealism in China. The Happiness of Snowflakes is the first collection of poems by Xu Zhimo, which can be regarded as one of the representative works of Xu Zhimo's early poems. The author described the beautiful image of snowflake, and vividly wrote the happiness of snowflake with handsome writing. This poem has a brisk rhythm, clear tone and beautiful artistic conception.

Others are looking for stars, this is a cowardly world, I have love, baby, thank you! My heart fluttered again, and other articles, like the happiness of snowflakes, expressed the author's pursuit of ideals. They are not only lyric poems, but also love poems, which show the longing for freedom of life and love. Demanding freedom of life and love is the content of his idealism, so the two are often inseparable. However, there is a distance and irreconcilable contradiction between his idealism and China's social reality. His love with Lin was shattered, and his ideal life and ideal society could not be realized, which made him depressed and demoralized. Therefore, these poems are also shrouded in a sad atmosphere to varying degrees and become "a torrent of irrelevant depression and anger" (Mao Dun: on Xu Zhimo). This negative and pessimistic mood is more obvious in those short poems, such as News, A Weak Star, Ask Who and so on.

1924 In April, the Indian poet Tagore came to China, which had a certain influence on Xu Zhimo's life and creation. He established a friendship with Tagore, who named him Susima. At the end of May, Tagore left Shanghai for Japan, and Xu Zhimo went with him. The poem "Poem Nala on the Shore" in the Collection of Shima Poems was written by him during his stay in Japan. Xu Zhimo is good at lyric poetry and likes to write philosophical poems like Tagore.

Some of Zhimo's poems describe the disparity between the rich and the poor and the miserable life of the poor. Although the number of such poems is small, their contents are relatively substantial, which reflects a certain aspect of social real life and has certain social significance. There are also some lyric poems about scenery in Zhimo's poems, such as cars in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Generally speaking, this book of poems is not life-oriented, its content is not profound enough, and its thoughts and feelings are not all so positive and healthy. However, judging from its performance skills, "almost all of them are systematic inputs and experiments" (Chen Xiying: Ten Works Since the New Literature Movement). There are various forms of poetry, including long poems, short sentences, free poems and prose poems, and more of them are experiments with western poetic styles. This period is the experimental period of Xu Zhimo's poetic style and the tempering period of his poetic skills. Through exploration and experiment, he showed the poet's talent and unique poetic style.

Xu Zhimo pays great attention to artistic conception when writing poems. Most of his poems in the Collection of Poems of Zhimo have formed their own artistic realm, such as Happiness of Snowflakes. The author combines the subjective feeling of pursuing ideal with the objective natural scenery, thus turning the real scenery into virtual scenery and creating a beautiful artistic realm.

In addition, his poems are vivid and emotional, which is due to his rich imagination. His imagination and figurative power are not only unique, but also can turn seemingly abstract things into vivid, tangible and visible concrete images, such as Poison, White Flag and Baby, three prose poems containing philosophy. He also used his artistic imagination to describe things through this special sensibility.

Zhimo's poems have their own characteristics, successes, shortcomings and failures. Regardless of the content, as far as the form of expression is concerned, some poems are rough and artificial, the rhyme is irregular, and the skills of poetry are not very mature.

Cold jade and tiger wandered in the clouds all night.

One Night Green is Xu Zhimo's second collection of poems and his 1925 to 1927 collections of poems. During this period, Xu Zhimo's thought and life had a great turning point. 1April, 924, I met Lu Xiaoman in Beijing and fell in love with her, which caused social criticism and family opposition. But they ignored all this, but it was difficult to solve at the moment. With very painful and contradictory feelings, Xu Zhimo set off for Europe on March 1925, 1 1, hoping to get rid of the distress and predicament in life for the time being. He lived in Florence, Italy for some time. He entrusted his sadness and feelings to paper and pen and wrote many poems. Therefore, this collection of poems was named One Night in the Green. Apart from the poems translated by British writers such as Hardy and Luo Saidi, this collection of poems also includes Siberia and In front of the church in Aikesha. He also wrote many love poems. The Night of Cold Jade can be regarded as a narrative of the emotional entanglement between him and Lu Xiaoman at that time, his warmth and the pain he couldn't get rid of.

1925 and 1926, the revolutionary movement in China flourished, and the May 30th incident was related to the March 30th incident. 18 massacre aroused his "indignation" and "sadness" to commemorate the "three? 18 ",he wrote" Xue Mei Wei Chun ",revealing that warlords slaughtered innocent people and even thirteen-year-old children were killed. In the poems "Marshal" and "Man Becomes a Beast", the bloody crimes of burying wounded soldiers alive and killing people were exposed. His thought experienced "twists and turns" and "doubt and decadence", which he thought was a period of suffering. Therefore, many poems have lost their optimistic tone, but they are infected with a decadent color of melancholy, disappointment and escapism. He cursed life, praised death, bid farewell to the world and fell in love. Imagination is strange and thoughts are gloomy. Of course, there are also several poems with positive and clear tone in this collection of poems.

This collection of poems, as Wen Yiduo said, "has really improved" in artistic skills. Pay more attention to the formal skills of poetry, except for more diversified poetic styles, such as dialogue style, rammed song style and dried tofu style; Whether it is narrative poetry or lyric poetry, he is fascinated by the syllables and rhythms of poetry.

After Frozen Jade for One Night, Xu Zhimo also published two poems, one is Tiger Collection edited by himself and published by 193 1, and the other is Cloud Travel edited by others and published by 1932. Most of the poems included in these two collections are Xu Zhimo's later works. After 1927, Xu Zhimo's thought experienced "twists and turns", and his political ideal of bourgeois democratic Republic was completely shattered. On the other hand, he felt fear and resistance to the workers' and peasants' revolution, and his thoughts fell into deep contradiction and despair. During this period, most of his poems were divorced from real life and expressed his own "subtle secrets of the soul". Some poems groan and are full of pessimism. Moreover, his ideological position is against the trend of progressive revolution. He ignored the basic requirements of poetic art and moved naked political concepts into poetry to attack Marxism and proletarian revolutionary literature movement. He relied on Nietzsche's philosophy to encourage himself when he was extremely disillusioned and desperate.

In Tiger and Clouds, the content and form are not unified. Most poems are so vague and lacking in content, but they are increasingly pursuing neatness and formal beauty. No matter in the arrangement of poems, the loud rhyme, the clear rhythm and the careful use of words, it has changed and developed compared with previous poems. In this regard, Mao Dun has a very apt comment: "The mellow appearance is accompanied by almost nothing to say, and this extremely light content is nothing more than sentimental emotions-sadness like smoke, mysterious symbolic attachment and pursuit: these are the characteristics of modern bourgeois poets in the final stage of development, and Zhimo is an outstanding representative of China's literary world" (on Xu Zhimo).

Prose "Running Wild Horse"

Xu Zhimo not only writes poetry, but also writes prose. Among all his creations, his achievements and influence are more remarkable. Besides poetry, prose probably counts. Some people even think that his prose "Running Wild Horse" is better than his poems.

Xu Zhimo has published three collections of essays, Leaves, Self-anatomy and Paris Scale, and a single essay, Autumn, with a total of 33 essays (there are still many in the collection). Except Autumn, which was written in 1929, most of the works in the other three episodes were completed between 1925 and 1926. His prose also covers a wide range, from comments on life ideals to comments on current politics. There are nostalgia and reminiscence for the past, as well as opinions and comments on art, sketches about one thing and one discussion, and book reviews that talk long and short. His prose shows a strong personality, the expression of his thoughts and feelings, the fusion of philosophy and poetry, and poetic prose, which are integrated into one, forming the "other world" of his prose.

The first collection of essays, Fallen Leaves, was completed in the flood period of his creation, with eight articles in all, with different contents and different ways of expressing ideas. Talk about life, society, politics, and art … without restraint. The first article, Fallen Leaves, was 1924. During his tenure as a professor in Peking University, he gave a speech at the invitation of Beijing Normal University. He tried to answer the questions raised by young students about how to solve the boring and depressing life. The word "love" runs through the whole story of falling leaves returning to their roots, and promotes the importance and function of human feelings and "true human feelings" In order to make life painless, we have to "arouse the slightest sympathy of mankind" to repair the big net of this poor society. It is based on this bourgeois humanitarianism that Xu Zhimo believes in the infinite role of human feelings in the ontology of life and nature. He believes that if people want to get rid of the distress and oppression of the world, they must strive for a "real and pure personality" that develops freely. The best way is to live and bathe in nature. Therefore, some people say that his poem "Fallen Leaves" is full of romantic confessions and full of expectations for the Cambridge era. (Mu: On Xu Zhimo)

After defoliation, in 1927 and 1928, Xu Zhimo published two collections of essays, The Scale of Paris and Self-anatomy. The contents of these two collections mainly focus on two aspects, writing what he saw and felt when he 1925 traveled abroad in Europe, dissecting and examining his own thoughts and soul. Therefore, both "self" and "feelings" are more prominent and exposed than Ye Ji. Scales and claws in Paris, gossip in Cuishanzhuang, notes on Cambridge and Tianmu Mountain as I know them, smoking and culture. , belongs to the category of lyrical prose writing scenery. Rich interest and fresh emotions gather at the end of the pen, which constitutes the lyrical characteristics of this kind of prose.

Yu Dafu once attributed the common features of Xu Zhimo's essays written by essayists all the way to "autobiographical biographical color" ("China New Literature Series? Introduction of two papers). The first series of Xu Zhimo's Autopsy consists of six articles, most of which can be classified into this category. In these self-analysis essays, the author is open-minded and vivid in writing. However, his tone is low and his understanding is illusory.

Some of Xu Zhimo's prose, like some of his philosophical poems, is full of philosophy and poetry, which makes philosophy and poetry blend together and constitutes another feature of his prose. While enjoying the beautiful scenery alone, the author has been promoting his own view that "human beings should return to nature and be integrated with nature". His class position and political views are obvious.

Another remarkable feature of Xu Zhimo's prose art is that it is difficult to strictly distinguish many of his essays from poems. He sticks poetry and prose together, and it is difficult to separate them. This is his "prose of another poem of his own" (Zhao Jiabi: Zhi Mo for Flying). It is a poetic prose, or poetic prose. This tendency of Xu Zhimo's prose poems reflects his impatience, which is caused by the vibration and stagnation of his thoughts in the process of contacting social reality.

Farewell to Cambridge

I left quietly, just as I came gently;

I waved my hand gently and bid farewell to the clouds in the western sky. Golden willow by the river,

Is the bride in the sunset; Beautiful shadows in the waves ripple in my heart.

Green grass on the soft mud, oily, swaying at the bottom of the water; In the soft waves of Cambridge,

I would like to be an aquatic plant! A pool in the shade of elm trees,

It's not a clear spring, but the rainbow in the sky is pressed in floating seaweed, precipitating a rainbow-like dream.

Looking for dreams? Holding a long wormwood, stroll back to the greener grass.

Full of starlight, singing in the splendor of starlight. But I can't play songs,

Quiet is a farewell flute; Summer insects are also silent for me, silence is Cambridge tonight!

I left quietly, just as I came quietly;

I waved my sleeve without taking away a cloud.