[转载]Criticizing Goldenhair's The Abandoned Wife

Criticizing Goldenhair's The Abandoned Wife 

The long hair falls, a cataract before my eyes,　　

Blocking all the eyesores of shame and sin,
With the surge of fresh blood and the sleep of rotten bones. 

Night and mosquitos come along at the same pace,

Over the corner of this short wall,

Shouting behind my innocent ears,

Like a high wind roaring in the wilderness

That gives the shudders to countless nomads.

By a blade of grass, I float to and fro with God's spirit in the empty vale. 

My sadness can only be impressed on the brain of a wasp

Or rush down a cliff with a mountain spring, 
Then go away with red maple leaves.

The abandoned wife's grief is piled on her move, 

The fire of the setting sun cannot turn the gloom of the time

Into ember so that it can fly out of the chimney 

To dye the wings of vagrant crows

So that they can roost on the reef amid bellows
Listening to a boatman's song quietly.

The aged train of her skirt gives out a sad cry,

That lingers beside the tomb

Ever devoid of hot tears

Dripping to the grassland

For the decoration of the world.

Goldenhair's poems, influenced by arts for arts' sake prevalent then in the west, are interwoven with decadence and mystery, opaqueness and fuzziness,  pathos and lamentations. Sometimes, probably due to his indigestion of the wetsern vogue, some of his poems are so hard to understand that he has been nicnamed Poetic Weirdo and accused of unintelligable blabberings.

     Goldenhair was well aware of this, as he  said in his preface of Drizzle: "It is quite unnecessary for me like all others to proclaim what isms or skills I use in my compositions. Readers, I suppose, can have a different sense from this collection, or a negative sense most probably--I expect a severe criticism. After its innovations, Chinese poetry has been in a chaotic state, so the genres of the poems may dissatisfy many, though they express all I feel. "
He met his expectation.The Abandoned Wife, deemed as his representative, has been much dispraised. Now nearly a century has passed, we can ask: Is this a word play over the top? Isn't its obscurity determined by the mystic, uncontrollable fate itself? A good poem is the proof of existence, it is a spontaneous unrolling of experience and consciousness. The Abandoned Wife is such a piece, in which the poet sees himself as the abandoned wife and then draws himself away from her and turns his eyes to the setting.    

    The meaning of The Abandoned Wife is twofold: one is the literal meaning of a downtrodden woman; the other is the reality of tragic life symbolized by the abandoned wife.

 　The first stanza makes a gruesome picture, a picture painted with the despondence, decadence, hatred, and cruelty of the doomsday. The poet would block all the eyesores of shame and sin with the cataract of his long hair together with "the surge of fresh blood and the sleep of rotten bones". But it was a futile attempt because no one could change the reality--"night and mosquitos come along at the same pace over the corner of this short wall" and they shouted behind his innocent ears,"like a high wind roaring in the wilderness that gives the shudders to countless nomads". So, he was in a worse situation, lonely, frightened and helpless! If we consider that age, it is understandable. What a good-natured weak young man could do but feel deserted by the world?

　The second stanza seems to offer some consolance; it makes one feel that only art can comfort a care-worn soul in a helpless age.  According to symbolism, all things in the nature are symbols of life, making a system of langue. Therefore the poet says, "By a blade of grass, I float to and fro with God's spirit in the empty vale". The poet feels that his  sadness can only be impressed on the brain of a wasp. The poet finds his sadness congenial with the sad buzz of the homeless wasp, and the falling mountain spring and the fallen maple leaves. It is art that gives the poet the sense of living, just as Baudelaire said "I can hardly imagine of any beauty that has no misfortune in."

　　The wife's melancholy is unlimited and unavoidable. The  sun may rise and fall, but it cannot dispel her gloom which  permeates every instant of her life.  The poet gives rein to his wild imagination: "The fire of the setting sun cannot turn the gloom of the time into ember, so that it can fly out of the chimney". And his imagination is strange,as he strings many images together. He expects the gloom of time under the setting sun to turn into ember so as  "To dye the wings of vagrant crows so that they can roost on the reef amid bellows listening to a boatman's song quietly."  

    This scene may move the reader to tears. However, it is even devoid of tears. Now the poet hear the sad cry from the aged train of the wife's skirt and faces a bleak tomb without even hot tears dripping to the grassland to decorate the world.  

　　As a representative of symbolism, this poem may be analyzed into symbolism of the whole and symbolism of parts. The former refers to the abandoned wife, which symbolizes human existence and fate; the latter refers to the images in  the poem. The poet often accused of his obscurity of wordplay. But if one has no experience of his feeling of life, how can he undwertand and accept his poems? The obscurity of the poem is  determined by the uncontrollable mysterious fate. A good poet is the proof of his existence, the spontaneous flow of his life and feeling.