In the aesthetic practice of human beings, the melancholy experience was once very eye-catching. Especially in the19th century, it was under the banner of melancholy that the romantic movement for the sake of beauty gathered together and formed a huge aesthetic tide. Nowadays, those sentimental stories have long since become a thing of the past. A century of singing and dancing has come, and an unprecedented view of happiness has been deeply rooted in people's hearts. But has the melancholy experience that was so touching left us? Many years have passed, and all the friends who once made us laugh like that have gone. Noan, The History of Laughter, Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore1987,5. When we encounter these familiar and unfamiliar sounds in reading, we will find that the unspeakable experience is still around us. The melancholy consciousness has never left us, nor will it leave us completely. How to truly and deeply study the relationship between "melancholy" and beauty is still a problem that modern aesthetics must face.

Melancholy consciousness was once the source of human poetic culture and an indispensable spiritual nutrient for creating great artists. Chekhov, a Russian writer, once said, "My sadness is a special feeling when one observes real beauty." Quoted from El Milov's On Chekhov's Dramatic Creation, Beijing: China Dramatic Publishing House 1985, 179. Russian writer Zochenko, known as the "master of humor", wrote: "I am surprised to think of my youth. How could I be so sad then? Everything is eclipsed in my hands, and melancholy follows me everywhere. Great changes have taken place in my life since I became a writer, but my melancholy remains the same. No, it patronizes me more and more frequently. " Left, before sunrise, Tianjin: Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House 1997, 7- 1 1. According to Claude, a French poet, "creative behavior" is "a mixture of real happiness and pain". He said in an essay: "To make you understand, my friend, when a gloomy season comes, I will explain to you the sadness of water." Claudel, Understanding the East, Tianjin: Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House1997,86. Boodell, a master of modern sculpture, seems to have a stronger sense of melancholy. He once frankly admitted that "I feel gentle and melancholy feelings in the gentle breeze", and in this breeze, "beauty is diffuse and elegant, beauty is spreading and spreading, and beauty is also sad and melancholy". Boodell, The World in the Artist's Eyes, Shenyang: Liaoning Fine Arts Publishing House 1990, 19-94. But melancholy consciousness can not only make poets, but also destroy them. It is said that the last poet in history died in Alfonso Palace in Spain on 1294. His last words were: "Poetry should show joy, but I can't sing under the pressure of my heart." Long Fang, On Human Art, Beijing: China Peace Publishing House 1996228. Xin Qiji, a poet in China, also said: "Teenagers don't know the taste of sorrow/fall in love with buildings/say sorrow for adding new words ‖ now they know the taste of sorrow/want to say/want to say/say good autumn." (ugly slave)

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In a sense, the way of art lies in how to successfully transform melancholy experience into aesthetic form. Facts show that melancholy beauty has always been the common feature of those extraordinary works. In these masterpieces, we can feel what Rilke called "the sadness of refreshing beauty" everywhere. Rilke and Rilke said, Beijing: China Friendship Publishing Company 1993, 19. For example, China's first collection of ancient poems, The Book of Songs. In a sense, it is the melancholy consciousness that constitutes the aesthetic characteristics of this collection of poems. The so-called "I worry about my heart, I sing and gossip" ("The Book of Songs Feng Weiyuan has peaches"). For example, "Mi Li" in The Book of Songs Feng Wang: "He Mi Li/He Jimiao/Walking on the decadent road/The center is shaken/People who know me/People who worry me/Don't know me/What do you want/Who is this?" As we all know, according to the authoritative explanation in Preface to Shi Mao, this is a sigh from a doctor of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty hanging on the ruins of the old country of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The distinct melancholy consciousness revealed in poetry is the first in Chinese poetry culture. Although some scholars think that there is no obvious mourning in poetry, they disagree with this traditional view. Cheng Junying, The Book of Songs, Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House 1985, 122. But there is no doubt that the success of this poem lies in highlighting the behavior of "worry" itself and blurring the specific content of worry. In other words, this is actually a "melancholy aria", so in a sense, the success of this poem means the affirmation of the unique meaning of melancholy beauty. The charm of Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata's novels can also be obliterated by the "melancholy beauty". A China reader once described it this way: "There are a few strands of desolation in his works, which constitute implicit tragic beauty." Ye, Significance and Value of Chuanduan Literature, Snow Country Ancient Capital Thousand Crane, Preface, Shanghai: Yilin Press 1996. This is undoubtedly a pertinent opinion. Read those beautiful words and savor the beautiful stories of destruction they repeatedly express, and you will understand the appropriateness and profundity of the great Kafka's sentence: If art is the most basic recollection of the past years, then "good memories mixed with sadness taste better". Janusch, Kafka told me, Changchun: Times Literature and Art Publishing House 199 1, 154. Milan Kundera's masterpiece The Unbearable Lightness of Life has become one of the best novels in the 20th century, and it is a work that wins with melancholy beauty. As described at the end of the novel, when Teresa, the kind and beautiful heroine, finally got her wish through hardships, she leaned her head on her beloved Thomas's shoulder in a country bar. "She experienced strange happiness and the same strange sadness. Sadness means: we have reached the last stop. Happiness is: we are together. "

The artistic achievements of Shen Congwen's novels obviously benefit from the expression of "melancholy beauty". As Professor Jin, an American scholar, thinks, if "Shen Congwen may imitate the sentences describing distress from Yu Dafu's novels in the early days, his completely different personality is still stubbornly reflected in his autobiographical works with melancholy emotions". Jin, Shen Congwen, China Society and Culture, Shanghai: East China Normal University Press1994,64. Today, the reason why Shen Congwen's works, represented by Border Town, stand out in the history of modern novels in China is undoubtedly because they have long known that "beauty is always sad". Shen Congwen's prose is selected from 77 pages, Changsha Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House 198 1 edition. This principle is very successful. For this, the charm of the late famous movie star greta garbo can also explain the problem. Once upon a time, this woman from Sweden became the greatest movie queen of that era. As many film critics have pointed out, although Garbo's acting skills are good, "her fame is achieved by her beauty." However, as the Hungarian scholar balaz, the pioneer of film aesthetics, said, beauty alone cannot have such a great influence on thousands of people in the world. There are many beautiful women in the world, and Garbo's own conditions can't make her reach such a top position. In his view, "the beauty of Garbo is not only the symmetry of lines, but also a decorative beauty. Her beauty also contains a kind of external beauty that clearly shows her inner state. This external beauty shows something special enough to catch people's hearts. " What the hell is this? Melancholy! Balaz pointed out: "Garbo is sad. Not only in some cases, she will look sad for some reason. The beauty of Garbo is the beauty of suffering, and the essence of this sadness is very clear: this is a lonely sadness, this is a noble sadness in the heart of an unsmiling virgin. Even when she plays the woman of easy virtue: she casts melancholy eyes from a distance and looks at the endless distance. " Therefore, people praise Garbo's beauty just because "what she has is the best in America"; Although there are countless beautiful women in the world, "in our feelings, the beauty of Garbo is a more elegant and noble beauty, precisely because it has traces of sadness and loneliness." Balaz, Film Aesthetics, Beijing: China Film Publishing House1979,306-307.

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Because the unified social ideal can only be a beautiful utopian idea forever. "In this world, there is only one honest man in ten thousand people." This sentence in Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act II, Scene II) once shocked everyone and told a truth that only God can decipher. As Mao Mu said, "As long as a man is a man, he must be prepared to face all the evils and disasters he can endure", because "the existence of evil cannot be explained, and it can only be regarded as an indispensable part of the cosmic order. It is naive to ignore it, and it is futile to lament. " Random thoughts of Mao Mu and Mao Mu, Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House1992,50. There is a saying that "the Tao is one foot high and the devil is one foot high". It is also true that evil does not suppress right since ancient times. American scholar MacDonald summed up from modern economic activities: "Like money, there seems to be Gresham's law in cultural circulation: inferior things drive out excellent things, because the former is easier to understand and more pleasant." Cited in Literature Review, Beijing: Institute of Literature, China Academy of Social Sciences,1995,2, 10 1. In this regard, we can only understand the ecological balance in the spiritual field, just as there must be garbage in beautiful scenery and excretion in food; "In nature, winners are always rough biological tissues. Rough feelings and superficial ideas are always unfavorable. Everything subtle ends in destruction. " Left, before sunrise, Tianjin: Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House1997,9. Kant said: "when we see what human beings are doing on the world stage, we can't restrain some kind of disgust;" Although wisdom shines everywhere on individuals, we find that, as a whole, everything is finally intertwined with stupid, naive vanity, and often even naive sin and desire for destruction. Kant, Critique of Historical Rationality, Beijing: The Commercial Press1990,6. Marcuse put it in a nutshell: "If art promises that a good ending will defeat evil, then this promise will be rejected by historical truth." Because in fact, "the winner in reality is evil, and kindness is just an island where people may find temporary shelter." Marcuse, Aesthetic Dimension, Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore 1989239.

From the perspective of nature and life, the existence of things always tends to decrease in order and organization. Life phenomenon has its development cycle from prosperity to decline. The more advanced the organizational structure, the more energy it consumes, so it is more difficult to maintain it. Only in this way, the famous futurist toffler pointed out: "The second law points to a gradually consistent future, which is a pessimistic future from the perspective of human beings." Toffler. Changes of Science. I.llyaPrigogine. From Chaos to Order. Preface. Shanghai: Translation Publishing House. 1987, 16. This is manifested in the finiteness of individual life. Jaspers put it well: "Life will rot. Realizing that this is a tragedy in itself: every destruction and the pain that leads to it comes from a basic reality under control. " Jaspers, Transcendence of Tragedy, Beijing: Workers Publishing House 1988, 10 1. The famous Polish humanist Kolakovsky once said: "Death is everything. The inevitable demise of human individuals seems to us to be the ultimate failure of survival. " Kolakovsky, Religion: Without God, Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore 1997, 147. From this point of view, life consciousness is also a kind of death consciousness, that is, sadness about the fleeting life and the various life experiences that come from it. British essayist Herzley once made a good statement about this, as he said: "We read history and the dynasty overthrew and changed in front of us;" We lament the vicissitudes of the world, and the past is like smoke; We think about the time and place of our lives. On the stage of life, we are both spectators and actors. Seeing the four seasons change, spring goes to Qiu Lai, and cold comes to summer; We have experienced the indifference, happiness and sadness, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong of the world; We feel the ups and downs of nature, and we remember the strange joys and sorrows of the world; We listened to the singing of wild pigeons in the dense forest and visited the scenery of mountains and valleys; We listen to midnight hymns and visit brightly lit halls or dark classrooms; We are still in a crowded theater, watching life itself being imitated; We delve into works of art and sublimate our aesthetic feeling to the peak; We worship fame and dream of immortality; We look at the Vatican and read Shakespeare; We condensed the wisdom of the ancients and thought about the future time; We look at the pride of war and listen to their cries of victory; We delve into history and examine the movement of people's hearts; We pursue the truth and defend the cause of mankind; We are proud of the world, as if time and nature piled all the wealth under our feet. We are alive and experiencing all this, but in a blink of an eye, we have nothing. Hertzmann, Selected Works of Hertzmann, Beijing: People's Daily Press1999,65.

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Transience is the similarity between human beings and everything on the ground, and it is the "sadness of existence" caused by the conflict between self-consciousness and the unsustainable individual life, which constitutes the most basic life experience of human life. Budel put it well: "As a person, no matter who you are, your life is fleeting. For this short-lived existence, you are always running around, and everything around you is changing. Everything in the universe is spinning in a dazzling way. In contrast, your life is just a whirlwind. " Boodell, The World in the Artist's Eyes, Shenyang: Liaoning Fine Arts Publishing House1990,20-94. At this point, the artist's sensitivity enables poets at all times and all over the world to achieve the same goal through different routes: as Qu Yuan said in Lisao, "If I die, it is not as good as me/I am afraid of my age/I am afraid of my beauty/I am afraid of my beauty's death." Lamartin also lamented in his poem Baya Bay: "Everything is changing, everything is in the past/Similarly, we will pass/leave no trace/just like our ship will erase all traces/the sea when it slides on the sea." It can be seen that if the sense of comedy means reveling in victory and tragedy means facing up to failure, then the aesthetic quality of tragedy will usually exceed that of ordinary comedy, and those excellent comedies can not be separated from the sponsorship of tragedy. As Goethe said: Moliere was great, and his comedies crossed the boundary of tragedy. His Miser made the greed for profit destroy the love between father and son, which was particularly great and tragic.

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People often confuse melancholy with so-called sadness and sentimentality, but in fact they can't be compared. For example, "I miss the bustling competition in the past/sigh outside the building/lament and hate/honor and disgrace forever/the past of the Six Dynasties flows with the water/but the cold smoke disappears the grass" (Wang Anshi's Gui Zhixiang). For example, "singing and dancing before the statue/in the bustling mirror/in the dark for the youth/eternal sorrow/a bright moon near Qinhuai" (Sa Duzi's Nian Nujiao). For example, "Wan Li is a long-term visitor in autumn/a hundred years of sorrow, climbing this high alone/bad luck, frosty temples/heartache, tired wine and thick dust" (Du Fu's Ascending the Mountain). For example, Affectionate Ying Xiao Wo/Early Birth and Fahua/Life is Like a Dream/A Bottle of Wine Returns to the Moon (Su Shi's Nian Nujiao) and The World's Big Dream/Life is Desolate Several Times (Su Shi's Dream). And "where is a beautiful day/happiness?" (Du Liniang) And "Who has pity when flowers bloom all over the sky/fragrance disappears and jade dies?" (Lin Daiyu) and so on. In terms of connotation and aesthetic realm, these can actually be summarized by two poems in Yan Shu's Huanxisha: "Flowers are helpless/I feel deja vu". The similarity between these poems and tragedies in the general sense is that their hearts are still unwilling. The difference is that although they disagree, they end up "helpless" because they are unable to resist. Therefore, as a single work, Cao Xueqin used Jia Baoyu's poem A Dream of Red Mansions to praise Lin Daiyu's works: "Endless lovesickness tears can throw red beans, but spring flowers can't bloom all over the place. After the wind and rain on the screen window, the new worries and old worries can't be forgotten, the jade grains can't swallow their throats, and the eyebrows that are described in detail and fluttered in the wind can't be seen in the rhombic mirror, which is even more leaking. Ah! It' s just that the green hills that can' t be covered are faint, and the endless green waters are long. " If the best poet is concerned, it may be Li Houzhu, the king of national subjugation. For example, "It's easy to see that time is hard/water is gone and spring comes" ("Langtaosha"), "How much sorrow can there be/like a river flowing" ("Yu Meiren"); For example, "Flowers bloom in the forest in spring, but it's too urgent/helpless to come to the cold rain, wind/tears at night, staying drunk, gaining weight/naturally hating the water growing in the east", "It's sad to go to the West Building alone without words, and the moon is like a hook/a lonely phoenix tree deep courtyard, locking up the autumn/cutting constantly, and the reason is still chaotic."

However, this is only an indulgence of sadness, without any form of transcendence: whether it is the sadness of nature in spring or the joys and sorrows of the world, the poet mainly expresses only a simple sense of regret and sadness. As Biography said: "Spring is sad for women, autumn is sad for scholars; Feel its materialization. " For example, "Try to listen to Yingying carefully/make it clear that people are sad/afraid of coming to spring" (Yuan Quhua's sword is near) and "flying freely is as light as a dream/endless rain is as thin as sorrow" (Qin Guan). And "Affectionate parting/more comparable since ancient times, cold and clear autumn?" Festival/? Where the wine wakes up tonight/where the breeze fades in Yang Liuan (Lin Yuling by Liu Yong), Looking back on Penglai's past, it is full of haze (Man Ting Fang by Qin Guan), Where the sunset sails alone/where the horizon sees people's intestines (Looking at Du Fourteen Jiangnan by Meng Haoran). As its emotional background, it is the yearning for a superman wonderland with boundless merits and boundless longevity. This irrational confrontation with the way of heaven and earth is undoubtedly a dead end, so it is extremely depressing; Although its sadness, sadness, sorrow and sorrow can give people a certain feminine beauty, it will be unbearable after too much experience for too long, so it is necessary not only to digest it, but also to be digested. This is to completely eliminate the emotional world and let your life have no worries. As the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei said, "How many sad things have I had in my life? "("Sighing White Hair "). But the problem is, just as the real tragic beauty lies in facing misfortune calmly rather than escaping, the real tragic enjoyment lies in enduring pain rather than dissolving it. Therefore, when that kind of helpless sadness makes us move from misery to death, the aesthetic significance also exists in name only with the complete ebb of our painful feelings. This contradiction can't be reconciled by the poet's life subject, just like in the past, while masturbating Bai Juyi, he said that "life and death are indispensable/Bai Letian is great" and at the same time admitted that "the leisure center outside is bitter/specious." In fact, the poet's plight has revealed to us that the sad songs that the ancient people of China have been singing for thousands of years contain anti-aesthetic things. At best, it is inferior in the form of tragic beauty.

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As an aesthetic phenomenon, the form of tragedy is bound to give people a beautiful experience. For this reason, how to make the audience suffer grief and grief is the key. All thoughts that lead people to relativism and skepticism are not real thoughts, but only pseudo-thoughts in ideological form; Any emotion that can't give people hope is a repression of life, so it doesn't have real aesthetic quality. Only in this way, just as Lu Xun laid a wreath at the tomb of Yu Xia martyr in The End of Medicine, some kind of utopian scene is an indispensable factor in the aesthetic world. Because this is exactly the case: no matter how the scientific world outlook is decided, it can't change the fact that "we won't give in to the idea that one day we will all disappear." This anthropological position is not only the basis of our life value, but also the base camp of human aesthetic cause. Because only this utopian pursuit can give us real human warmth and enrich the meaningless life process. So unamuno pointed out: "Beauty comes from sympathy." Unamuno, Tragic Consciousness of Life, Harbin: North Literature and Art Publishing House 1987,147-149. Undoubtedly, the greatest sympathy is to give people the courage to survive, so aesthetic experience cannot be a negative escape from real life, but must be a positive transcendence of the negative forces that actually exist. If the general tragic works take the form of "negation of negation", that is, by stimulating our vitality to enhance the corresponding tolerance, in order to obtain a masculine beauty experience; Then, the melancholy beauty is produced by alleviating rather than dissolving the pain, so that the audience can easily bear the sadness, thus obtaining a kind of aesthetic feeling of combining rigidity with softness. This is the aesthetic value of Calvino's lightness, but this lightness, as the symbolic poet Valerie said, does not mean that there is no real weight worth mentioning like a feather, but that there is a freedom and lightness of life like a bird.

Therefore, true melancholy always forms some kind of alliance with sense of humor, which is nothing more than "melancholy is sadness with a sense of lightness, and humor is comedy without a sense of entity weight". Calvino, Memorandum of Literature in the Next Millennium, Shenyang: Liaoning Education Press1997,5-14. The substantial difference between the real melancholy consciousness and the usual sentimental and sad feelings is that the latter comes from the original lingering sadness of life and the unbearable pain of reality, while the former, as Pushkin said, is a kind of "bright sadness" with "warm colors", so it is not only tolerable, because it embodies the sadness that is warmer than usual, but also has real aesthetic taste. Obviously, if "sadness" in melancholy refers to its psychological rejection of the destruction of beauty, then its "bright" tone shows the contradiction of this rejection, in other words, there is still some positive recognition in the rejection as a negative. (7)

Melancholy consciousness is a more mature life experience. The orthodox tragedy with the attitude of "negation of negation" is a complete confrontation with the negative forces of life and shows firm confidence in the ultimate victory. This is what melancholy consciousness does not have. When Calvino pointed out: "Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness in Life is actually a bitter recognition of the inescapable heaviness in life. This heaviness exists not only in the extreme oppression that his motherland is destined to suffer, but also in the human destiny in which we all live, although we may be ten times or a hundred times luckier than them ... Everything we choose and cherish in our life is because of its lightness. Calvino, Memorandum of Literature in the Next Millennium, Shenyang: Liaoning Education Press1997,4. In contrast, any simple confidence in "ultimate victory" belongs to a kind of adolescent phenomenon. Goethe has a famous saying: A rainbow that lasts for a quarter of an hour will no longer be watched. The profundity of the polyphony of sadness and joy in melancholy consciousness lies in that it mourns not the passing of life in a general sense, but that life must (should) pass like this. Because it clearly realizes that only in this way can life truly have value and realize its meaning. While mourning for the death of life, it is also happy that it has finally completed its historical mission. As Hegel said, the motive force of human civilization is not good, but evil; Kant also pointed out that when we are troubled by various destructive forces in modern society, we should see that "without this non-social and unlovable nature, all human talents will be buried in their embryos forever in a happy, harmonious, comfortable and loving Agadia pastoral life." "Therefore, let us thank nature for its unsociable, jealous vanity and insatiable possessiveness and dominance. Without this kind of thing, all the superior natural endowments in human beings will never sleep and develop. All the culture and art that add luster to mankind and the best social order are the result of this non-sociality. " Kant. Essays on Criticism of Historical Rationality. Beijing: The Commercial Press1990,7-9.

This is also reflected in human love life. Throughout the ages, although those unfortunate love stories have always been favored by literati, in retrospect, it is not difficult to find that there are not many works with truly thrilling aesthetic charm. Relatively speaking, the unfortunate experience of Liang Zhu's "All shall be well, jack shall have Jill" certainly makes people cry, but the Bridges of Madison County, which ends with a sad melody, seems to be more memorable. Because compared with the former, the latter undoubtedly reveals human nature more profoundly. Mao Mu put it well: "The greatest sorrow in life is not that people will die, but that love will end." Random thoughts of Mao Mu and Mao Mu, Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House1992,68. Picasso, the master of art, also said: in love, it is difficult to break up a pair of lovers, but it is even harder for the happiest couples to stay together all the time. This is exactly what happened: "No matter for social, moral, aesthetic, parent-child, religious or even mysterious reasons, we may choose to spend the whole life with the same partner, but our instinct will keep nagging us. Nothing is more exciting than finding a new lover." Ai Dai, The Beauty of Feeling, Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House1999,311. For example, Hiroshi, the hero of the Japanese literary masterpiece The Tale of Genji, said: "For a woman, once she is close, love will come." . Although he is uneasy about his disorientation after every unexpected marriage, it does not prevent him from doing those "improper behaviors" as usual and continuing his "boring pastime" as time goes by. Just like Yuan Zhen, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, although he wrote a touching poem "Mourning is greater than dying in the heart" in memory of his dead wife, this does not prevent him from still practicing "boundless romance" and being happy with those famous prostitutes in the romantic field. It is meaningless to make false accusations against these phenomena, and it is not a problem to blame people's inferiority in an empty way. To sum up, this just shows the characteristic that human life never stops pursuing, as Rilke said in a poem: Trying may be the meaning of human existence, but it is more sad and glorious for human beings to stay away from the real scope. In a sense, "liking the new and hating the old" is the basic motive force of human civilization.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Life, Thomas loves sabina and Teresa so much because of his active vitality that he can't concentrate on either of them. Sabina accepted the principle that "beauty is a rebellious world", but she didn't realize that this principle could not only bring her happiness, but also hurt her. Teresa doesn't recognize this principle, and she is eager to be with Thomas all her life. To this end, she is even willing to be Thomas' "another self in polygamous life"; But she knows that the day this wish comes true is also the time when it is shattered, because truly sweet love and mediocre happiness can never have both. So when all this ended in an unexpected car accident, although it seemed so cruel, it was so happy. We are deeply shocked by such a beautiful fate that only death can bless it. Love is so, so is life. God never pays attention to the eternal desire of human beings, which has anthropological reasons. For example, in the novel Everyone is Dying, the author Beauvoir shows us that this ultimate ideal of Christians is not only a real blessing, but also a stupid thing that makes life worthless through the experience that the protagonist Raymond Fosca is immortal because of drinking mysterious water.

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In the melancholy experience, we realize the positive significance of negative phenomena such as pain and misfortune. Only after Guangyuan died of heartbreaking purple, could she really realize her missing. Beauty is due to its brief and beautiful, as unamuno said, "The beauty so displayed is eternal in an instant." Unamuno, Tragic Consciousness of Life, Harbin: North Literature and Art Publishing House 1987,119-123. But just as we rationally admit that immortality is not happy, we still can't stop the pursuit of longevity, and realizing the value of pain can't eliminate our pain: the final departure of relatives who have lived together day and night will always make us miss and agree that "beauty can only be destroyed" does not mean that we will be willing to hold a funeral for them. Not drifting away is "helpless" here, but he is not as difficult to extricate himself as when he is sad. Just like "picking Wei" in The Book of Songs Xiaoya. According to the usual explanation, this is an "inner monologue" produced by what he saw and heard on his way home when he finally came home. Although the poem consists of six sections, only the last section focuses on expressing melancholy, that is, "I went/Liu Yiyi/I want to/it's raining now/I walk slowly/I'm hungry/I'm sad/I didn't know I was sad." Without this poem, Xiaoya is just a work reflecting the sufferings of people's livelihood, and its artistic realm and aesthetic quality will be greatly reduced. But what is intriguing is, why did the veteran feel so sad on his way home? Why doesn't he feel happy that he has finally set foot on the road home? There has never been pure sadness and happiness in the world. Although marginal life is not easy, it is not all painful memories. It feels good to go home, but where do you live and work?

So Shelley said, "The sweetest poem is the poem that tells the saddest thoughts, and the most beautiful tune always has some melancholy." Shelley, Defending Poetry, On Poetry of English Poets in the 19th Century, Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House 1984, 150. This explains the paradox of life in aesthetic activities: on the one hand, the phenomenon of beauty does not belong to "perfection", because "everything that is perfect in all aspects is completely terminated without any shortcomings, so it leaves nothing for desire". Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore 199 1, 140. But on the other hand, this can't stop people from still working hard to realize the ideal of perfection, as Berdyaev said: "If people really want to pursue perfection, they want to yearn for the kingdom of God." Berdyayev, Human Slavery and Freedom, Guiyang: Guizhou People's Publishing House 1994, 182. Therefore, relying on despair to keep faith is the strength and profundity of melancholy, which is brought by this opportunity.