In illness, there is always a wish, that is, I hope that I can shed the scarred shell like a snake and emerge as a new me. Even after passing through the legendary Nirvana of Fire, the purgatory-like suffering is still worth it. This thought was so extreme that I actually had a dream in which I saw something falling off my body, making a sound in the sun, like a falling mosaic, and even I was surprised. When I wake up, I feel relaxed, like the eternal young Nezha walking in spring.
In life, we often have the desire to be a loser. Life can only be shed, and then there will be a different transformation and a new turning point. The Japanese writer Yasushi Inoue considers himself a dropout, that is, the image of someone who has given up, abandoned or abandoned in life. The historical figures represented in his works are often detached, and they are inevitably accompanied by loneliness. In order to get rid of loneliness, they can only find a new place to belong. So, sometimes, giving up is another kind of gain, a new kind of refuge.
The modern poet Feng Zhi has a sonnet called "What Can Fall From Us?" 》, I like it. The poem says, We all let it turn into dust: We arrange our time in this era to be like the trees in autumn, one by one; we leave the leaves and some late flowers to the autumn wind, so that the tree body can relax and stretch out. In the harsh winter, we arrange ourselves in nature, like a cicada moth that sheds its shell, leaving its shell in the mud; we arrange ourselves for that future death, like a song, the song falls off the body of the music.
In the end, only the body of music is left, turning into a line of green mountains and silence. This poem was written by Feng Zhi in 1941. It is the second of 27 sonnets and is called a contemplative poem. The poem uses the shedding of dust, trees, and songs to express thoughts on the eternal law of human death and change. This is a comprehensive understanding of human death and an expression of human true existence. Only through shedding and transformation can life reach a higher realm, just as Feng Zhi said, turning into a green mountain of silence.
When talking about the writing of these poems, Feng Zhi once said that during the most depressing years during the Anti-Japanese War, I relied on the simple wilderness to provide me with unlimited spiritual food. When the general phenomenon in society is becoming more and more rotten day by day, any grass on the field and any tree on the hillside have given me a lot of inspiration. Feng Zhi was once praised by Lu Xun as China's most outstanding lyric poet. On the artistic path of seeking truth and faith, Feng Zhi and Mu Dan wrote the best poems they could write in their time.
However, I pay more attention to the spirit expressed in poetry and the ideological height it reaches. The theme expressed in his historical novel "Wu Zixu" can be used as an extension of the theme of his poem. Wu Zixu's life is like the throwing away of objects, with moments of pause and fall in between. Life is the chain of stay and fall, because a beautiful life, whether it is for love or hate, whether it is for life or for death, is nothing more than a throw away: there is persistence in staying, In the fall there is overcoming. We saw the ancients Wu Zixu, the father and brother were killed, and they were also forced to wander. We wandered all the way. When they encountered many people, they had a different impact on his revenge, causing his different feelings and experiences. This is a theme of revenge choice, being tested in a series of situations, and constantly making corrective choices. In Feng Zhi's writing, Wu Zixu is portrayed as an existential hero under the selective philosophical proposition. Perhaps, this is also the constant confusion in Feng Zhi's own life and the process of solving it.
Only by falling off in life can you deny yourself and be promoted in denial. In his later years, Feng Zhi wrote a poem "Autobiography": In the 1930s, I denied my poetry of the 20s; in the 1950s, I denied my creations in the 1940s; in the 1960s and 1970s , I said everything in the past was wrong; in the 1980s, I regretted denying so many things, so I denied those negations in the past. My whole life, I seem to be living in negation, even though there is also affirmation within the negation.
What should be affirmed and what should be denied? After entering the 1990s, I had to wake up a little, and then I realized that the most difficult thing in life is self-knowledge. Of course, Feng Zhi himself could not transcend his times. During the desolate years, he was also deeply hurt internally. He once criticized Ai Qing against his will and felt deeply guilty. After the Cultural Revolution, he said with deep emotion that the Gang of Four could not simply be blamed for the ten years of catastrophe. Every Chinese person was responsible. He felt that his rough life was his unfinished self.
Therefore, his spiritual journey is undoubtedly a rare revelation for us to reflect on the modern characteristics of human beings, especially to understand ourselves deeply. In 1980, the painter Gao Mang painted a large portrait for Feng Zhi's 75th birthday. He wrote a poem on the painting, saying, "The years make people feel heavier in the evening, and the old skin peels off, and the body feels lighter." Even in his later years, he continued to shed himself, and what he pursued was still the feeling of being light after the old skin fell off. Therefore, I believe that his spiritual pursuit represents the height that modern Chinese intellectuals can achieve.
Among the sonnets, there is a poem in praise of Goethe. Goethe was the soul mentor of Feng Zhi's poetry and the person he admired and studied the most in his life.
In this poem, Goethe's life is also constantly sublimated through shedding and transformation. Feng Zhi wrote that it seems that the universe is running lonely there, but it never stops for a minute or a second, and new vitality evolves at any time and everywhere, regardless of wind and rain or sunny weather; in exchange for heavy illness New health, new nourishment from hopeless love.
The poem ends by saying, Do you know why moths throw themselves into the flames, and why snakes shed their old skin to grow? Everything is enjoying your famous saying, which reveals the meaning of all life: death and change. Yes, death and transformation are inescapable laws of everything in the world, and this is especially true in life.
Feng Zhi wrote in another poem that there are so many things around us that require us to make new discoveries: Don’t feel that everything is familiar. When you die, stroking your hair and skin, you have questions: Who is this? body?