Chapter 45 Chapter 9 When the Flame of War Approaches——A First Reading of Keats

What I look forward to most when I go back to school is to return to English poetry class. During the winter vacation, I asked Mr. Sun Jinsan about the poetry of the romantic period in English literature, mainly Shelley (I didn’t know Keats at that time), and I also copied some in-depth data from the book he lent me.Things like this got me so preoccupied that I forgot about the threat of war. The Anglo-American allied forces in the Pacific had gradually gained the upper hand and turned from defense to offense. After the U.S. military recovered the Philippines (when MacArthur retreated that year, he once said: "I will come back...") and landed on Iwo Jima, the bloody island-by-island battle began.But the domestic front is worrisome. The Japanese with nowhere to go back opened up our Guangdong-Han Railway. The educated youth across the country responded to Generalissimo Chiang’s call for “one hundred thousand young people and one hundred thousand troops.” Two hundred thousand students joined the army. Wang Shirui, a Nankai alumnus of Wuhan University's Institute of Technology, has already applied for the Air Force Academy before the winter vacation.At the critical moment when the army lost the battle and was gradually advancing from Guizhou to Sichuan, only the air force had brilliant records in every attack. It is a pity that the number of troops was too small and the casualties were heavy.

I haven't received a letter from Zhang Dafei for a long time, and I can't tell anyone that the letter sent on light blue stationery with a strange place name disappeared like a miracle.In the world beyond Sanjiang, there are only war news in old newspapers. Returning to the English poetry class, Mr. Zhu first talked about the characteristics of British romantic poetry, and taught us to copy eight poems by Shelley.All young people who read Shelley's poems for the first time will be "shocked" by his unrestrained enthusiasm. The premonition of love and death often appears in the form of three exclamation points in a line of poetry. Those that have not been read in the poems, such as "Indian Serenade", I die! I faint! I failed", (I died...I fainted! I lost!) And the highest resonance of my youthful depression is the first line of his poem "Elegy):, O World! O Life! O time!", ("Ah, the world... ah, life! Ah, time!" The exclamation mark was deleted in the later version) It's just that I can't say it

Come depressed.What I think about is not only a person's life and death, but the feeling that his life and death are related to the world, life, day and night. The running time is closely related.We are so young, and yet we are deeply involved in such a vast and seemingly endless war. Controversy! Teacher Zhu said that this poem is not a very good poem, but it has Shelley's true qualities.Young people are trapped by love, and they want to break out of the cage like shouting.Purely cathartic poems are always a bit shallow and cannot withstand the scouring of years.Since I read this poem in February 1945, both the country and my personal life have been in constant upheaval. For decades, "O World! O Life! O time!" There is no more appropriate and simpler language to express the confusion so directly.

The British philosopher Russell finished his "Fact and Fiction" when he was seventy-five years old. It tells the story of the book that influenced him the most during his intellectual growth from fifteen to twenty-one years old.One of them is (Shelley's Importance), saying that when he was a teenager, he was fascinated by the realistic and unreal situations in Shelley's poems.In adulthood, knowledge increases and encounters some deep and peaceful realms.There will be a feeling of deja vu.Shelley's short love poem.He has read them all by heart, and he also longs for such obsessive, albeit bitter, love. "I love the despair, isolation, and beauty of fantasy scenery in his poems..." became the light source of his imagination and emotion.It is said that Marx and Engels loved to talk about Shelley when they chatted back then, and they admired the anti-traditional spirit of this noble and talented poet very much.

Teacher Zhu firmly believes that good articles should be recited, and every poem we read to him must be recited.There are less than 20 people in the English poetry class, and the endorsement is like a private mat, and no one can escape. At the time of "teaching" and "reciting", each poem changes from raw to familiar, with a few words of guidance from the teacher, you can really get its true meaning.After a few short poems, I learned Shelley's "Stanzas Written in Dejection-December" near naples ("Stanzas Written in Dejection-December" near naples), which is full of self-pity and regret. And let future generations cherish it.

In 1945, on an extremely cold February morning, four of us classmates came out of the dormitory, walked down Baita Street, and passed the wet Shuixi Gate. There was thin ice on the ground, and each of us held a handwritten English poem. In the textbook, I am still reciting the song "Love Words Are Often Desecrated) ("One WOrdIs TOO Often PrOfaned,) and this song "Depression), there is a line in the third stanza that aptly expresses my feelings that I can't express at that time:" There is no inner peace.There is no peace within nor calm around The four of them recited to themselves, sometimes following each other, and turned from the county town to the Confucian Temple Square.Entering the temple gate through the wide stone steps, I saw a large brush notice pasted on the stone pillar beside the Baxing Gate. The ink seemed to be wet:

On the morning of February 25, 1,800 American giant planes bombed Cambodia, and the urban area became a sea of ​​flames. The Japanese panicked and entered the palace to apologize. The hundreds of Chinese college students standing in front of this notice, after eight years of war, most of them rely on the government’s public funds to survive; their clothes are ragged, their faces are yellow and thin, and they stand silently in the main courtyard of the Confucian Temple paved with large stone slabs, When I read such news of revenge, I felt mixed joy in my heart. Finally, these Japanese who bombarded us for eight years have tasted the pain of their own homes being destroyed by others, and they also know the horror of disasters in the sky.Since they invaded the Northeast, they have been proud of conquering others, and they are self-satisfied. The cherry blossoms and autumn leaves in their hometown are always brilliant, but they drive other ethnic groups to go to the ditch to cultivate, and they have been wandering for many years...

I was also speechless, standing in front of the stone pillar with pain and joy, imagining the scene of 1,800 bombers covering the sun when they were in the air, as if I heard the sharp whistling of thousands of bombs before they landed, the scorching strong wind before the explosion, The collapse and burning of houses, the damage caused by earth and rocks splashing on the ground... Ah, the unforgettable years of youth! Death hovers and descends in the clear sky of sun and moon, and there is nowhere to hide,... How do those men who are arrogant and confident because of chrysanthemums and swords protect those neatly combed high buns, with thick white powder on their faces, big flower kimonos with more flowery belts, and those who wear the kind of big toes that cover their big toes? Woman on stilts.What about kicking and running? Some women tie the ashes of their lover or Zhang Yao who died in the Chinese battlefield into their backpacks, in the sea of ​​fire.These ashes will be burned a second time...

The class bell brings us back to real life, from the stone pillar to the second classroom in the side hall on the right, and then continues to recite Shelley's beautiful "Depression" in a peaceful world completely different from ours.All of us know how beautiful it is to die as he did to the sound of the waves going back and forth. Teacher Zhu was quite punctual in class. He stood in front of the small podium, only two feet away from us in the first row.After he came in, this small stone side room was no longer a classroom, but a secret room between me and the blue sky.Apart from the unpainted wooden tables and chairs, there is only a small blackboard, and the walls are empty to a solemn state, like some modern or post-modern stUdiO.The soul reverberates, and there seems to be music coming out of the four walls. Following Mr. Zhu's British English with an Anhui accent, we are led into the magical world.Maybe it was the ears of my imagination that started, with my eyes looking at the vision of floating clouds outside the window. Since then, I have loved the sound and rhyme of English poetry all my life, like the undulating mountains or the endless waves of the sea.English poetry and Chinese poetry.To me, it is an emotional utopia, and even the most desperate poems seem to have a strong vitality.

This is also a kind of fate. In a certain floating year of life, I heard some voices, saw its image, and tied my heart to it. Of course, the strongest reason is that I read Shelley's "Song of the Lark" first, and then read Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale".Over the years, I re-read it again and again, taught on the podium by myself, and read all the responses I could read. I deeply feel that all the "different" in life can be found in the joy of (Song of the Skylark) and the depression of "Ode to a Nightingale".Destiny, character, talent.The realities of life are also intertwined. Shelley's unruly soul is flying high and singing at the same time, like the silver light of the stars and the brilliance of the bright moon, like the rain, like the fireflies, like the torrential rain in spring raining on the earth, and we are in the world, Always look forward and backward.There is also some kind of pain implied in genuine laughter.The poet said, "If I can get half the joy of your song, it will make the world listen!"