[转载]Criticizing Goldenhair's Affected

Criticizing Goldenhair's Affected

like a dead leaf

spilling blood on

our feet

life is a smile

on a lip 

of death 

under the moon half dead

drinking and singing 

 the hoarse voice is gone with the north wind

gee,

to comfort whom you love

open your door

to make her shy

dust falls on her lovely eyes

is this the shyness

and anger

of life?

like a dead leaf

spilling blood on

our feet

life is a smile

on a lip 

of death 

    In the evolution of Chinese poetry, this modernist  Goldenhair is, as ever, like a puzzle that one can never solve and has been despised and misunderstood for long. As a matter of fact, he is a turning point, counterballancing the innovations of the New Poetry pioneers like Who-shee's "transparent clarity" and Guo Moro's "plain ardour". 

    He introduces to China an artistic freshness of modernism, imbuing New Poetry with an exotic aroma  he has brought back home from Paris, the capital of arts. He takes us aback and has enriched the connotations of Chinese Poetry.

    When Chinese poets like Wen Yiduo were experimenting new techniques in an atomsphere of romanticism, Goldenhair took the world by surprise with this shrill piece of art. 

     Affected, is like an unsolvable puzzle, full of absurd images with no discernable clues between.

    Of his most chastised are the first lines: "like a dead leaf/spilling blood on/our feet/life is a smile/on a lip/of death." The expression "dead leaf" may remind one of similar images in traditional Chinese poetry, but the combination of words is revolutionary and striking. The diction of "spilling blood on our feet" is thrilling, and when it is predicated of "a dead leaf", is metaphorically significant though it is open to wild imagination of what the significance is.

    The following lines: "life is a smile/on a lip/of death", which can be seen as one sentence though arranged as three lines. This sentence, in the form of definition, creates a meaningful world by breaching the law of identity, though the meaning is as ever, indefinite. One thing is definite, that is, he blurs the boundary of life and death--life is death and death is life. To Goldenhair, death is the destination, which is not fearsome at all. "Death! like the beauty of a sunny spring, as faithful as the coming of seasons. If you cannot escape it, ah, you don't have to fear or cry. Eventually, it keeps us warm." (Death) What is fearsome is reality. Death is the liberator, freeing one of anxiety and despression.

      Goldenhair's view of life and death is modernistic; life and death are togehter, indivisible or more specifically,  life is only part of death. Life is like a dead leaf, which is dead but is spilling blood on our feet. It is transient; it is a smile on the lip of death; It will soon vanish into the endless nothing. Now a picture of life occurs to the poet, under the moon half dead, a soul is drinking and singing, however, his hoarse voice is gone with the north wind. Love seems to be the best thing in the continuum of life and death. That is why the poet says the voice is gone with the wind to comfort whom you love.    

   Another feature of this poem is the arrangemnt of lines. We can hardly analyze the lines into definte sentences. For example, the first three lines can be seen as one sentence or two sentences. If it is  one sentence, we don't know t what it means although it may mean a lot. Indeed, we don't know the implication of "her shy dust falls on her lovely eyes", though it is a vivid image.  If it is analyzed into two sentences,  it is easier to understand,  but we don't know the logical relation between the two sentences. Probably, the poet longs for understanding and love, but at the same time, he is incredulous and timid, so he remains in solitude wrung with contradictions.  To him, love is interwoven with life-death, hence his question: "is this the shyness/and anger/of life?"

    The last stanza is the repetition of the first stanza, making the poem a circle, which may correspond to the circle of life-death. So such a repetition should not be regarded as redundant. It symbolizes the the nature of life and death with all love, solitude, helplessness and all those haphazards between.

    Goldenhair's poems do not try to present the outer world as it is but try to represent the inner world as it may be, exploring into such abstract matters as life and death, which is what logical language may fail to do. In this poem, his peculiar cognition of love, life and death, while smelling of decadence, reveals his awareness as a savant, and his use of novel images such as dead leaf, a smile on the lip of death, the moon half dead and his unique insight pave a new way for New Poetry.