Chapter 18 tiger and rose

The contemporary British poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) once wrote an immortal aphorism: "In me the tiger sniffs the rose." Translated into Chinese with difficulty, it is: "I have a tiger sniffs the rose." Sniffing the roses." If a line of poetry can represent a school of poetry (a history of English literature once cited three lines of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan": "What a wild place! So holy, so ghostly, / As in Under the waning moon,/There is a woman crying her ghostly love!" As a representative of Romantic Poetry), I would like to take this line of poem as a representative of the art of Symbolic Poetry.Every time I think of it, I can't help but think of the masterpiece "The Sleeping Gypsy" by modern French painter Henri Rousseau (1844-1910).If what Rousseau painted that day was not a lion staring at the prodigal son in his dream, but a tiger sniffing a budding rose, I believe this painting would also be a masterpiece.It is a pity that Rousseau died, and Sassoon has not yet become famous.

I say this line of poetry is representative of the symbolic school of poetry, because it expresses in concrete and subtle ways what many philosophers cannot articulate. the harmony of nature.If he had written the original poem as "I have a tiger sitting beside the flowers in my heart", it would appear dull and rigid, and it would in vain strengthen the inner contradictions of human nature.Only the original poem is just right, because the tiger symbolizes one side of human nature, the rose symbolizes the other side of human nature, and "Xin Sniff" just symbolizes the relationship between the two, the harmony and unity of the two.

It turns out that human nature has two sides: one is male, the other is female; one is like a goshawk, like a waterfall, like an angry horse; the other is like a nightingale, like a quiet pool, like taming sheep.The so-called majestic and beautiful, the so-called extroversion and introversion, the so-called dramatic and pictorial, the so-called Dionysus art and Apollo art, the so-called "vajra glaring, Bodhisattva lowering his eyebrows", the so-called "quiet as a virgin, moving like a rabbit." ", the so-called "horse horses in the autumn wind in the north, apricot blossoms in the spring and rain in the south of the Yangtze River", the so-called "willow bank, the dawn wind and the moon" and "the great river goes east", in a word, the so-called masculinity and femininity in Yao Ji's biography are nothing more than these two temperaments footnotes.The two seem to be opposite at first glance, but in fact they complement each other.In fact, everyone has these two temperaments more or less, but the proportion is different.

There is a priest in Dongpo, and it is said that Liu Yong's Ci is only suitable for seventeen or eighteen girls, holding a red tooth board, and singing "Yang Liu'an, the dawn wind and the moon"; The great river is going east."Dongpo was "absolutely overwhelmed".He was clearly proud of this distinction between masculinity and femininity.In fact, Dongpo's words are all "the great river goes east"? "Laughter gradually fades away, but passion is irritated by ruthlessness"; "The embroidered curtain opens, and a little moon peeks at people", these words and phrases are probably only suitable for the low voices of seventeen or eighteen girls, right?And Liu Yong's words: "The horses on the ancient road in Chang'an are slow, the high willows are chaotic and the cicadas are neighing", and "Crossing thousands of ravines and thousands of rocks, crossing the depths of the stream. The raging waves subside, and the firewood wind suddenly rises; moreover, business travelers call each other, and the sails are raised high." .What a state!It is the sentence "The evening mist is heavy and the sky is wide" in the first half of the Xiaofeng Wanyue. Who can say that it is actually feminine?He is like Wang Wei who wins with simplicity, but wrote the poem "one body fought for three thousand miles, and one sword once became a million master"; .The romantic poets Keats and Shelley are undoubtedly feminine, but the twittering nightingale once sang: "Or like the strong Cordez, with angry eagle eyes, staring at the Pacific Ocean." In the most feminine "Nightingale", there is also such a sentence: "The same song is often-the long window that fascinated the gods-the long window of the lonely and enchanted land-overlooking the dangerous sea "As for that skylark, the power contained in his "Song of the West Wind" is simply overwhelming and thunderous!There is also the sonnet "Ozymandias" (Ozymandias), in addition to expressing the idea of ​​artistic immortality, its grandeur and vigor are comparable to Taibai's "Western wind shines, Han Jialing Que".

It is because human nature contains more or less these two opposing temperaments, so many people can appreciate people who are not the same as their own temperaments, or even very different.For example, in England, Wordsworth appreciates Milton, Byron appreciates Pope, Charlotte Bronte appreciates Thackeray, Scotch appreciates Jane Austen, Swinburne appreciates Landau, and Landau appreciates Burton. ronning.In our country, Xin Qiji's appreciation of Li Qingzhao is also the best example. But why do we usually think of one person as masculine and another person as feminine?This is because the situation formed by the tiger and the rose in each person's heart is different.Some people's heart is originally a tiger's lair, and the few roses at the mouth of the lair will inevitably be trampled by the tiger; some people's heart is originally a garden, and the tigers in the garden will inevitably be drunk by the fragrance.Therefore, the former temperament is close to masculinity, while the latter temperament is close to femininity.However, the crushed rose can still bloom, and the drunken tiger sometimes wakes up.So the overlord sometimes sings elegy, the weak girl sometimes kills the thief, Plum Village and Zishan play sad at night, and Sassoon published the low-key "The Heart's Journey" (The Heart's Journey) after the First World War.

"There is a tiger in my heart that is sniffing the roses." Life is a battlefield. Only a tiger can gain a foothold in the adverse current, grasp the direction in the adverse wind, be a petrel in the storm, and be a lone star that never changes its color.Only when there are fierce tigers can we create a heroic cause of generosity and tragedy; only when we have the mind of a man of lofty ideals, can we achieve what Meng Jiao called "the light will not be changed when the mirror is broken, and the fragrance will not be changed when the orchid dies"!At the same time, life is a deep valley, only with roses can candles be hidden and secluded, and considerate; only with roses can we see flies rubbing their feet, spiders spin silk, and only then can we hear the twilight creeping and spring grass sprouting, and only then can we achieve "one sand, one world, one world". Spend a day in the country".In the realm of humanity, a real tiger should appreciate the rose fully, and a real rose should fully respect the tiger; the micro-rose, the tiger becomes Philistine: the micro-tiger, Qiangwei became a coward.Han Li's poem: "After being beaten by the great club of fate, my head is bleeding, but it never hangs down!" Wordsworth's poem: "The tiniest flower can inspire me to think more than tears can express." A complete life should have both these two supreme realms.When a person reaches this state, he can move and still, bend and stretch, smile and cry, can be as complicated as people in the 20th century, and can be as innocent as Adam and Eve. The tiger is sniffing the roses.