The most beautiful April day on earth, the full text of the poem is as follows:
You are the April day on earth A praise of love
I say you are the April day on earth;
Laughing sound lights up the four winds;
Lightness of spirit in the light of spring colorful cross-dancing change.
You are the cloudy smoke in the early April day;
The dusk blows with the softness of the wind;
The stars flash unintentionally;
The fine drizzle is sprinkled in front of the flowers.
That light, that graceful, you are,
The crown of the fresh and beautiful hundreds of flowers you wear,
You are innocent, solemn,
You are the full moon night after night.
After the snow melted that piece of goose yellow, you like;
Fresh first buds of green, you are;
Tender joy,
Water light floating in your dream expectation of white lotus.
You are the blossom of a tree,
The swallow murmuring between the beams,
--You are love, warmth, and hope,
You are the April day on earth!
Works Notes
(1) Pingting (pīngtíng): a woman's appearance with a delicate posture.
(2) yán (鲜妍): the colorful and beautiful appearance.
(3) guān miǎn (冠冕): an ancient crown or official's hat, a metaphor for first, decent and honorable.
(4) ní nán (呢喃): an onomatopoeic word describing the cries of swallows.
Background of Composition
This poem was published in the April 1934 issue of Xue Wen (学文), Vol. 1, No. 1 issue. There are two theories about this poem: one is composed in memory of Xu Zhimo, and the other is composed for the birth of his son to express the hope in his heart for his son and the joy brought by his son's birth.
Mr. Liang Congzhu said in "Suddenly the April Sky on Earth", "My father once told me that 'You are the April Sky on Earth' was composed by my mother for me in the joy of my birth, but my mother herself never told me about it." As for the intention of this poem, Mr. Liang was very objective. Therefore, on the one hand, this poem is a love poem, composed for Xu Zhimo, who is already in heaven. On the other hand, Lin Huiyin was a mother with a strong maternal love for her child, and it was absolutely possible for her to write such a light and spiritual poem for her child.
Works Appreciation
You are the April Day on earth" of the first to four stanzas of the sentence structure is basically the same, the formation of repetitions, forming a symmetrical movement, will be the love of the heart to a picture of the April Day of the abundance of beautiful pictures as a comparison, fast-paced, "the prose of the sentence will be connected to the picture, the emotions such as the water surface ripples cascading ripple, not only is the beauty of works The fifth stanza of the poem, "You are love, warmth, and hope, / You are the April day on earth!" is the closing movement. is the closing movement, the abstract love, warmth, hope to the heart of the metaphor of you, a great praise, beautiful "you are the April day on earth" and the poem echoed the opening, repetition in the change, the poem back and forth flow, no sense of stagnation.
As the most formalized expression of poetry, the poem's rhythm, rhyme and choice of words are in the neutral state of the word, no big red and purple, pure black and white vulgarity and sharpness, in the voice, but also gentle, quiet elegance, and even to the charming and lethargic; eleven "you" word, both highlighting the theme, but also play a role in the "rhyme" role in the running of the poem, the "you" word every time it appears, like an orchestra. In the process of the poem, every appearance of the word "you" is like a node in the orchestra, highlighting the point of "I" in the way of "frequency", which is a deep-level combination of beauty of form and beauty of content, and a kind of subtlety yet to be researched and recognized by people. In fact, all the praises of April Day are confided to "you", and there is only one dash in the whole poem, which reads: "You are love, warmth, and hope", what kind of hope? In connection with Lin Huiyin's intellectual background, we will be more clear that behind the colorful picture of this poem, there is the restraint of rationalist expression and elegance of writing, which can fully reflect the noble weather of classical English poetry.
Language Art of the Work
The language of the poem "You are the April Day on Earth" is highly graphic. Unlike some of today's poetry, which focuses on the expression of ideas, it retains the characteristics of classical poetry with images adjacent to the class of emotions, that is to say, between poetic imagery, ideas and language, this poem pursues a sense of unity, not ideas over the picture, imagery and sound, but the main focus is on the narrative, the reader to participate in the creation of the process of recitation, *** with the "presentation" of the meaning of the face, where there is no abstract ideas, only open to the world of the world, the world of the world of the world of the world. Here, there is no abstract thought, only open images, waiting to be understood in figurative language. The author has skillfully used the symbolism of colors and warm combinations to display a warm and tender mood.
In this poem, the words directly displaying the colors are "bright yellows, goose yellows, greens, and white lilies", and a spectral analysis of these colors reveals that the impression they make on human vision is bright, and all of them are related to the warmth of the psychological feeling of human beings, bringing people a stable, even lazy feeling, which, according to the psychoanalysis, is a kind of warmth and beauty. Moreover, when the author describes these beauties, he adopts the technique of jumping, that is to say, showing the colors in changes and movements, which can be seen from the words showing the colors indirectly, such words are "lighting, spring's light, cloud smoke, dusk, stars flashing unintentionally, the full moon of night and night, the floating light of the water," and we will find that it is not a static description but a dynamic and changing background. In these words, if we take a closer look, we will find that it is not a static depiction, but a dynamic and changing background to splash, somewhat like the halo in painting, diffusing the boundary of pure color, it is in the blurring place that the sense of beauty emerges; from the human acceptance of the psychology, this kind of ignition of the color is exactly to seize certain characteristics of human attention: then seemingly inattentive place to write down the dynamic landscape, a little attention, it will be clear, which is precisely the aesthetic appreciation of the sudden enlightenment. Moreover, in such two groups of words, there is a relationship of succession, the first group of pure color only to the second group of jumping combination of more vivid, try to look at these words: "light" highlights the "point" of the action, "spring light" shows the "spring" of the brilliant and enchanting, "smoke" is directly the state of the description, hidden and indistinct indistinct, "twilight" seems to be a metaphor for the warmth of the darkness because it Followed by the "wind's soft", and "stars in the unintentional flash" to continue the "dusk" this imagery, highlighting the "flash" of the sense of dynamism, giving us a dynamic aesthetic experience, in the "night and night of the full moon" and "water floating" to "dark" and "soft" to further accentuate the warmth of that kind of slightly drunken feeling. Therefore, in this kind of close reading of the text, we will find that when the simple words are combined in some kind of coherent emotional pulse, those words will break through their single meaning and gain an overall aesthetic feeling.
Picture and sound are intertwined, between the goose and white lotus there are the sound of people laughing, the sound of the wind dancing, the sound of raindrops spilling, the sound of flowers blossoming, the sound of running water floating with the sunshine, the sound of trees blossoming, and the sound of swallows which is the most indispensable part of the spring, and in the white warmth of the picture, these sounds are noisy, but they don't feel cluttered, and the bustling, but not cluttered, must be the same as the lyrical protagonist's.
This is the first time that I have ever seen a picture of the world in which I have been a writer. It must have something to do with the mood of the lyrical protagonist. Therefore, through these words expressing the sounds, we can see the complete emotional flow of the whole poem, which is a joyful sound, similar to the flow of a stream---as in a scene in which spring blossoms, but the snow and ice have not yet completely melted, and the stream is flowing under the snow, and a line of the stream leaking out of the place where the sunlight shines is icy-clear and cool, and in the junction between the cold and the warmth, these words are throbbing Laughing, dancing, blowing softly in the wind, stars flashing unintentionally, drizzle sprinkled in front of the flowers, after the snow melts, the water floating, a tree after a tree blossoms, swallows murmuring between the beams", each group of words here consists of two parts: one is the picture, the other is the flow of the picture, laughter is a form, someone has to be constituted, we can imagine that the main character of the lyric is a girl in white, the voice can "light up"! Around the "wind", and "lightness" is by the sound of the "brittle" oriented to the picture of the "light", in the sense of the "dance with the change" is the face of spring, this group of words, by the nostalgia for people lead to the sound, but also with the help of the sound lead to the light of spring, the change of the dance is to write the scene, constituting a lively beginning. Then there is a change of scene, in fact, it is a dusk, but not a cold dusk, but a warm and slightly drunken dusk, here, wrote "wind blowing", "stars flashing" and "rain sprinkling", these dynamic words cause the reader to identify with the imagery, that is a wet feeling, is the feeling of early spring, from the perspective of aesthetics, this stanza is an easy to overlook the turn, but it is also in the turn, the poem's imagery is composed of in which the poem's imagery constitutes a tumble, a less singular splendor, like a painting that is a swoon of azure undertones amidst a flutter of goose yellows, and is so dynamic and so light that it seems to be missing.
The following two stanzas turn into a double praise of spring and people, which is actually the theme of the poem is presented, that is, to celebrate the heart of the "you", the joy of "you" and the spring of the "light, graceful; goose yellow, fresh, the first buds of green" together, that the qualities of the spring is the face of the "you", and so the "you" get the "fresh, innocent, solemn, tender joy" of the praise of the most critical two sets of imagery! The most crucial two sets of imagery appear here: "You are the full moon of the night" and "the white lotus of your dreams." To be honest, these two images are in conflict with "goose yellow", one is solemn and the other is warm in style, the difference between them has not been noticed in the past reviews of this poem, and the only reasonable explanation is that these are two presentations of anticipation, and a Freudian psychoanalysis would reveal that in the complex emotional relationship between Xu Zhimo, Liang Sicheng, Jin Yuelin, and Lin Huiyin, the twists and turns were originally due to the stylistic changes between the various styles of the two. The changes were originally due to the differences, dialogues and compromises between the various styles, and in the depths of the poetic text, this hidden psychology cannot be said to be an angle of interpretation. Therefore, the third and fourth stanzas of the poem imply a voice that is far more secretive and difficult to guess than the first and second stanzas.
The voice of the fifth stanza is clear and lucid, "You are the blossom of a tree, the swallow / murmuring between the beams, --- you are love, warmth, / hope, you are the April day on earth!" We will notice that in this stanza, different images are united, "the blossoms of the trees", "you", and "April day", they are united in the words "love", "warmth", and "hope", and the image of the "swallow" appears, and it may be a bit far-fetched to compare it to the "nostalgia for home", due to the nesting instinct of the "swallows", but the other classic imagery of the swallows can achieve the same purpose as this one, "The swallows are the flowers in the trees, the swallow / murmuring between the beams. However, another classic imagery of swallows can also achieve the same purpose as this one. "Two Flying Swallows" and "Spring Swallows" are both imagery related to love. The "murmur between the beams" is the "eye of the poem", and the secret of the sound is hidden in this phrase. The poem is a perfect combination of content and form, combining the sense of music and painting in Chinese poetry tradition with the pursuit of rhyme in classical English commercial music poetry, a heavenly piece that can be recited again and again, and can constantly grow with new ideas.
Reviews
Jin Yuelin commented, "A poetic thousand waterfalls, ten thousand April days on earth"
Influence of the work
From You Are the April Days on Earth, it can be seen that Lin Huiyin contributed to the opening up of the poetic form of the new poem. As an architect, Lin Huiyin combined the art of architecture with poetry, and her poems fully embodied the artistic characteristics of architectural beauty. Her poetry fully embodies the artistic characteristics of architectural beauty. The delicacy of women in her poems and her mastery of language make Lin Huiyin's poems unique in terms of language form. The architectural beauty in her poems is an important expression of her poetic form, which is not found in traditional metered poems. As Mr. Liang said, "In the garden of vernacular poetry in China, Lin Huiyin has walked a path that no one has walked before." Poems like "You are the April Day on Earth" fully reflect the inheritance and development of traditional metered poems in terms of sentence and rhyme patterns, word count and sentence structure. They are influenced by the New Moon School of Poetry, but at the same time, they have surpassed it, and their forms are varied without losing uniformity and harmony. As represented by "You are the April Sky on Earth", the poet's aesthetic concepts of architectural beauty, musical beauty and pictorial beauty are manifested in the process of poetic creation, which is of unique significance to the development of Chinese new poetry. Even after the emergence of the staircase, symmetrical and patterned poetic styles focusing on architectural beauty in the 1980s, these poetic lines of architectural beauty still reached a high level that is difficult to be surpassed by later generations.
About the Author
Lin Huiyin (1904-1955), originally known as Huiyin, was a native of Minhou, Fujian Province, and was an architect, writer, and one of the poets of the New Moon School. She was the first female architect in China, and was also praised by Hu Shih as one of the most talented women in China. 1904, she was born in Minhou, Fujian Province, to a family of bureaucratic intellectuals, and her father, Lin Changmin, studied in Japan in his early years as a neo-conservative. 1916, she was enrolled in Peihua Girls' High School in Beijing, and traveled with her father, Lin Changmin, to Europe from April to September 1920 to study in London, Paris, Geneva, Rome, Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, and other places, and in the same year, she was enrolled in St. John's College in London. In the same year, she enrolled in St. Mary's Girls' School in London and met Xu Zhimo, who was studying at the London School of Economics. 1921, she returned to China and resumed her studies at Peihua Girls' High School, and in 1923, she participated in the activities of the Crescent Society. 1924, she studied abroad in the United States and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania, where she took courses in the Department of Architecture, and graduated from the school with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts in 1927. In the same year, she entered the Yale School of Drama, where she studied stage art design in the studio of Prof. G.P. Parker. she married Liang Sicheng in March 1928 in Ottawa, Canada, and after her marriage, she went to Europe to study architecture, and returned to China in August of the same year. in the early morning of April 1, 1955, she passed away at the age of 51, after a 15-year-long and tenacious battle with illness.
Lin Huiyin wrote many works in her life, including essays, poems, novels, plays, translations and letters, all of which are masterpieces, among which the representative works are You are the April Sky on Earth and the novel Ninety-Nine Degrees of Midnight, etc. She published poems, including You are the April Sky on Earth and the novel Ninety-Nine Degrees of Midnight. She has published poetry collections such as The Collected Poems of Lin Huiyin (1985).