I. Poetic Style
(1) Writing the strongest voice of the times with fire-like passion
From the content of his poems, the vast majority of his works are written about the revolutionary passion of the time, with distinctive politics and strong spirit of the times. In his decades-long career, he has breathed with the people **** suffering, and answered many major questions of the times. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, and even during the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, a series of excellent poems by the poet, such as the group poem "To the Young Citizens", "Looking at the Starry Sky", "Sugar Cane Forest", "The Green Tent", "The Sugar Cane Forest", and "The Green Veil". --The Green Veil", "The Autumn of Tuanbo Wa", etc., all of which have left the footprints of the times more clearly. For example, his famous poem "March to Difficulty" is a political lyric and a propaganda and agitation poem. The poem was written in response to the psychology of some young people who were afraid of difficulties and retreated on the road of building the country. It used language full of revolutionary passion and rich in agitation to reveal the true meaning of the life of the times to the people, and to call upon and encourage young people to build the socialist motherland, to dare to "march against difficulties" and to be brave enough to "The poem uses simile and horsemanship. The poem adopts the forms of picaresque and Mayakovsky's ladder poem. Firstly, it introduces that "I" encountered difficulties and went to see the general, asking to go back to the rear to study for a few more years, but the general's reply was: "The problem is very simple.... -/Those who are not brave / learn to be brave in the struggle, and those who are afraid of difficulties / go and familiarize themselves with them tenaciously." These words made me go back to the army and move on immediately. These own experiences are the same as the mentality of the young people at that time, and they all come from the life of that era. The poet concludes his poem with the following words: "Let us / march against the odds / with a hundredfold courage and fortitude! / Not only with words / but with actions / that we are true citizens!" The verses resound with the voice of the times and embody the spirit of the times. Even during the unforgettable "Cultural Revolution", facing all kinds of persecution and false accusations, the author expressed the beliefs and vows of the revolutionary warriors who defied power and violence with uprightness and integrity. For example, in the poem "Autumn Song", he wrote: "A warrior must never put down his weapon, even for a minute; to be revolutionary, he must never stand still, even in the face of a bush of knives." This is what a heroic temperament ah, only the "warrior poet" has this kind of spirit!
(2) Philosophical, in the feelings of the light of truth
In his student days, he was actively involved in the anti-Japanese salvation movement, was an active member of the National Liberation Vanguard Literary and Artistic Youth Federation, and had already tried to carry out the struggle for national liberation in the form of literature and art. In the pre-anti-Japanese war period he wrote poems such as "Children's League Members on the Hutuo River", "We Sing of the Yellow River", "Straw Shoes", and "Old Hired Workers", but they were still very young and in the period of exploration, so it is not possible to talk about any maturity. Many of the poems in the early period also lacked a philosophical nature because of their combativeness. However, with the deepening of his knowledge and thinking about life, he gradually changed from encouraging readers with political language to infecting them with vivid and distinctive artistic images. This transformation is marked by "Stargazing", in which the lyricism of the poet's poems shifted from floating and stirring to grave and deep. The content of the poem is: one night, the poet stood in the streets of Beijing, looking out at the starry sky, in the face of the boundless universe, the mind surged with the association of the transient life, but when the poet turned his attention to the magnificent Tian'anmen Square, thought of our "boiling life of battle", thought of the human conquest of nature's boldness, he felt himself "overflowing with extraordinary power", "we want to turn the vast vault into the prosperous Tiananmen Square". In the poet's rational consciousness, "Stargazing" is a relatively twisted and graphic artistic approach to glorify the contemporary theme of "the great power of man's determination to triumph over the heavens, and the people's rise to the challenge of building a beautiful and happy paradise on earth under the leadership of the Party", but in the concrete unfolding of the poem, the contradiction between the feeling and the idea, between poetics and political demands, is clearly manifested. But in the concrete development of the poem, the contradiction between feelings and ideas, between poetics and political demands is obvious. In the poem, the author has less of his usual bright and bold poetic style, while the depth added to the verses brings a lot of thoughts to the people, and expresses the author's serious thinking and sensing of the historical setbacks in phrases very close to his personal emotional world. In the poem, the author leads the readers to rethink their own life, meaning, and destiny, making the poem philosophical and reflecting the author's maturity in poetic creation. Many of his poems after this one are also philosophical, like "Autumn in Tuanbo Wa", "Birthday Wishes", "Autumn Song" and so on all belong to this category.
(3) Novel Forms, Unique Poetic Creation
Guo Xiaochuan, in his decades-long career of poetry creation, has adopted many kinds of poetic forms, such as the staircase style, folk song style, free form, long lines and other forms of creation. However, among the many poetic forms, the long-sentence form is Guo Xiaochuan's unique creation in terms of poetic form. In many articles commenting on Guo Xiaochuan's poetic creations, some people call this unique poetic style "the new fugue style". In order to express more open thoughts and feelings, Guo Xiaochuan created this new style of poetry by borrowing the characteristics of the combination of words and phrases from China's ancient fugues and combining them with the laws of modern Chinese. The basic characteristics of the poetic style are: long lines, also known as the long-sentence style and the long corridor style. A line of poetry consists of at least two short stanzas, the combination of stanzas is relatively free, consisting of 2, 3, 4 lines of verse, stanza to stanza, the number of words, the number of lines, the general neatness, the pressure of the rhyme; with the use of laying out the technique of expression; capacity, suitable for the expression of unrestrained love poetry. Because of the short lines and long rows, the lines are generally neat, corresponding format, with the decoration, exaggeration, overlap, comparison, couplets and other expressive techniques used in large numbers, as well as the structure, diction, rhyme and rhythm and other aspects of the study, effectively enhance the emotional concentration of the poem and the strength of the language, resulting in a kind of grand and surging momentum, so that this style of poetry has produced a strong artistic expression. His major works include "Xiamen Style", "Country Avenue", "Sugar Cane Forest - Green Veil", "Green Veil - Sugar Cane Forest", "Engraved on the Land of the Northern Wilderness", "Climbing to Mount Tai", "Autumn in Tuanbowa", etc. Because of his great contribution to the creation of poetic styles, he was also called "the innovator". Feng Mu pointed out: "He drew nourishment from the excellent classical Chinese poetry and fugue, and created an eloquent and powerful poetic style. ...... This genre, after a long period of practice and use by the poet, gradually formed a style with its own distinctive features, which has had a wide influence on the creation of poetry in China." 1 But regrettably, due to the "Cultural Revolution", he suffered all kinds of persecution, resulting in his exploration of poetic style did not continue.
Personal reasons
1. Personal creative process
The formation of Guo Xiaochuan's poetic style is inseparable from his own experience. We can see it at a glance from the creative history of his poems.
1955 to 1956 was the first stage of Guo Xiaochuan's poetic creation. He wrote a group of poems called "To the Young Citizens", including "Into the Fiery Struggle" and "Marching Against Difficulties". These poems were passionate and heroic, expressing the themes of struggle, construction, and advancement in the form of "laddering", pouring out his surging passion, and inspiring the people to devote themselves to the fiery struggle with the mind of a political theorist and the stance of a war hero. However, the artistic aspect is still young, and the creation of artistic images is often replaced by political discourse.
1957 to 1960 was a period of exploration for Guo Xiaochuan. While endeavoring to overcome the defect of having more polemics than images, he began to push forward to complex life contents and new subjects, and was no longer satisfied with the superficial agitation of the poems, but pursued the deep emotional connotations. There are three types of poems that represent the achievements of this period: one is the "political lyric poems" created to match the political work, including the "To the Young Citizens" group of poems (including "Into the Fiery Struggle", "Marching Against the Difficulties" and seven other poems) and the "Romanticism of the Secretary of the County Party Committee", which stood on the political height of the times and the "big self" of the times. These poems, which stood on the political height of the times and the position of the "big I", expressed the romantic feelings of ****productivism, and were written in the Mayakovsky-style "staircase style", produced great social repercussions, and at the same time, made Guo Xiaochuan's name famous. The other type of poems that were criticized for showing more of the poet's personalized emotions were "In the Mountains," "To the Sea," and "Looking at the Stars," a handful of works. When these works were published, they immediately attracted fierce political censure, and "Stargazing" was even accused of being "the dominant thing, something individualistic and nihilistic". In another category are the four narrative poems that also attracted controversy and criticism, including Hymn to the Snow, The Deep Valley, Tough Love (sometimes called the "Love Trilogy"), and One and Eight. These narrative poems not only reflect y on life in terms of content, but also show a deliberate effort to explore form. In the syntax of the poem, the long lines of the later type were formed, and the stanzas were unified in the same poem.
The pre-1960s was the third stage of Guo Xiaochuan's poetic creation, and it was the period of Guo Xiaochuan's exploration of the art of poetry, in which he created two lyrical styles harmonized with the spirit of the times, "New Rhetoric Fugue" and "New Prose Song", and his representative works include "Xiamen Style", "Xiamen Style", "Xiamen Style", and "New Prose Song", and he also created the "Xiamen Style". His representative works include "Xiamen Style", "Country Road", "Sugar Cane Forest - Green Veil", "Green Veil - Sugar Cane Forest", "Toast", "Kunlun Xing", etc. At this time, lyric poems seem to be in harmony with the spirit of the times. At this time, the lyric poetry, seems to have returned to the unity of the "era of the big I" in the emotional mode, but because of the artistic maturity, the era of the great feelings through a more personalized and restrained expression, seems to be meaningful.
The fourth stage of Guo Xiaochuan's poetry came after the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. At this time, the poet was severely brutalized and persecuted, and deprived of the right to write and publish, but he still wrote works such as The Crossing of the Miles Yangtze River and Three Songs from the Forested Areas of Jiangnan. In particular, "Autumn in Tuanbo Wa" and "Autumn Song", written in 1975, express the poet's serious thinking about the social conflicts at that time and his passion for fighting, marking the height of his creativity in this period.
2. The poet's patriotic feelings
Guo Xiaochuan, since his student days, has enthusiastically devoted himself to the wave of anti-Japanese salvation of the country and expressed it with his own practical actions. At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, with full of patriotic passion, he left Beiping, and after several twists and turns, he finally arrived in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, and joined the army, becoming a member of General Wang Zhen's 359th Brigade, and later serving as Wang Zhen's confidential secretary. In the hot revolutionary era, he held a gun in one hand and fought in the smoke-filled battlefield; in the other hand, he held a pen and wrote many poems full of revolutionary passion to inspire the troops to run to the battlefield and kill the enemy. People praised him as a warrior poet. Because he was gifted, talented, young and energetic, he was highly valued by Wang Zhen, Hu Qiaomu, Lu Dingyi and others. After the birth of *** and the country, he lived up to the expectations and continued to write poems, enthusiastically glorifying the glorious achievements of the socialist revolution and construction, and once became a shining poet in the literary world. His poems are full of political enthusiasm, a sincere and loving feeling for the great Party and motherland, the great revolutionary cause and the great people's army. In his poems, it is not difficult to see the passionate, gushing emotional outpouring contained in the verses. For example, in his famous poem "Sugar Cane Forest - Green Tent", he wrote: "Remember? We once had an interesting dream: / After the victory of the revolution, we shook our white beards and traveled all over Jiangnan together; / Do you remember? We once had a small wish: / In the socialist era, we will smoke three cigarettes a day. /Do you remember? We once had a firm belief: / Even if we die and turn into dung, we can still make sorghum grow into thick stalks and round grains; / Can you remember? We once made a careful calculation: / As long as the green net does not fall, ****productivism will surely be realized in the next generation. /Remember? At the time of parting, we made this program:/ In the future, wherever there are serious difficulties, we will meet;/ Can you remember? At the time of victory, we made this vow:/ In the future, life, sweet or bitter, will never forget yesterday and tomorrow. "
Reading these lines, we seem to see a poet with a resolute, bold and confident face standing in front of us, who has a big heart and deep emotions of immense love for the country ......
In a word, Guo Xiaochuan's political Lyric poetry, not only reached its peak artistically, but also set an example for those who came after it, as someone pointed out: "As the new poetry of socialism, Guo Xiaochuan offered to it enough to indicate its fundamental characteristics of those of essential significance, which is: poetry, must belong to the people, to the cause of socialism. Writing according to the laws of poetry and writing in the interests of the people are consistent. The poet's 'ego' combines with the class and the people's 'greater self'. The unity of 'poetics' and 'politics'. The unity of the poet and the warrior."