On September 28, 1937, before Xiao Hongxiaojun left Shanghai to Wuhan, he entrusted xu Guangping with some important items of his own, including a small pink notebook with the Japanese character "Private Collection of Essays" printed on the cover, painted with teapots and apples. This is a book that Xiao Hong bought during her time in Japan, which compiles and transcribes sixty poems she has written before, some of which have been published and some of which have never been published. Xiao Hong never returned to Shanghai until her death in Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, in 1942. In 1956, Xu Guangping donated the relics entrusted to custody to the Lu Xun Museum under construction, and it was not until 1980 that this special Xiao Hong self-collected poem was first disclosed.
Everyone's handwriting "Xiao Hong's Self-Collected Poems" Beijing Publishing House
Although more than 80 years have passed, tasting the handwriting of Xiao Hong's poems photocopied and published by the Beijing Publishing House can still occasionally be considerate of her state of mind at that time. According to Lü Futang, these poems were re-transcribed between 1932 and 1937 during the six months of returning from Japan to Wuhan in February 1937. At that time, Xiao Hong's mood was quite restless, and the rift between the two Xiao Xiao was not bridged by Xiao Hong's temporary avoidance in Japan, and it also produced waves in Xiao Jun's new scandal. Sitting at the desk to copy poems, presumably When Xiao Hong rarely precipitated distractions and her heart was slightly quiet, she re-examined the small poems that had been written in the blazing heat of love or the pain of lost love, and copied them on green checked paper with beautiful and slightly childish handwriting, for a female writer with a sensitive and delicate heart, perhaps accompanied by a cooling of transpiring emotions, but it was obviously an active inward self-discovery - as a poet.
In the history of modern literature, Xiao Hong is not known as a poet, but no one denies her innate poetry and poetic heart, which can be read from her masterpiece of fiction, "The Legend of Hulan River", or just a "Memory of Mr. Lu Xun". However, the first work she published was indeed poetry, that is, the "Spring Song" that Xiao Jun saw when he went to the Dongxingshun Hotel in Harbin to rescue her:
Over there Clear Creek sang,
The leaves here are green,
Oh girl!
Spring has arrived.
Everyone handwritten "Xiao Hong's Self-Collected Poetry Manuscript"
Xiao Hong, who is pregnant, abandoned in a hotel by her fiancé Wang Enjia, and threatened to be sold into a brothel by the boss, is almost a desperate life, she can still chant the verse "Spring has arrived", let people read it, just like Xiao Jun in that scene. It is also reminiscent of "Remembering Mr. Lu Xun", as soon as the rainy day cleared, Xiao Hong rushed to the new village on the mainland and said to Lu Xun and Xu Guangping, "The sky is clear, the sun is out!" These verses and phrases seem so simple that they seem powerless to interpret them from a poetic point of view, but we will confirm at the first moment of reading that they are naturally moving and poetic. Xiao Hong's unusually keen attention and capture of details and emotions, as well as an unwashed innocence, constitute a unique aesthetic taste of her poetry— or rather, the outward appearance of her nature, which is interlinked with her novels and essays.
There are six "Spring Songs", which are poems of love, written to "Sanlang", that is, Xiao Jun. The lyrical subject in the poem seems to be a girl in intoxicated love, love is both frank and subtle, "only like to see you stand up and sit down, / sit down and stand up, / In the meantime, / There is an unspeakable wind and moon", is the cunning and cunning of the girl, but also a deep obsession and obsession with the lover. The two Xiao meet, dramatized like a dream plot, but at that time, the transition, this love diluted the color of the dream, and we can clearly see the idealized factors in it. In this group of poems, Xiao Hong refers to Xiao Jun as a "beautiful virgin poet" and this rapidly burning love as "first love", which is contrary to the facts of the two people, from which we can see how Xiao Hong observed this trek on the long road of love. This romanticized contemplation conveys a kind of imagination and hope for love, but also buries hidden hidden dangers.
From "Spring Song" to "Bitter Cup", there are intervals in writing, but juxtaposed on this small checked book, turning the page is from "Ah! But the precious heart of first love "jumped to" Last night he wrote another poem, / I also wrote a poem, / He wrote to his new lover, / I wrote to my sad heart", which made people suddenly shocked and sighed. There are 11 poems in "Bitter Cup", which are poems of lost love, Xiao Jun's empathy makes Xiao Hong fall into pain, she cuts out her melancholy intestines on paper, but she is not temperamental, like salt extracted from a long-soaked bitter sea, simple and plain and real bitter - "He walked alone, / He went alone to enjoy the beautiful time in the park at dusk." / I waited at home, waiting for the Ming Dynasty to cook rice soup again. Waiting for lost love is painful, but for Xiao Hong in this helpless situation, what is even more painful is that there is no choice but to "wait". This is a rather tangled state of mind:
Former lovers,
Shelter me from the storm,
And now he's a storm!
How can I resist?
enemy attacks,
The grief of a loved one. (5)
I don't have a home,
I don't even have my hometown.
More lost friends,
There's only one of him,
And now he has taken that attitude toward me again. (part 8)
Xiao Hong escaped from her home in a rebellious posture, and after the "918" the whole northeast fell, and there was no place to go in her life. Whether from the practical distress or the spiritual level, Xiao Jun's saving significance to her is irreplaceable, but when all this falls into the void, the rebellion has no way to find meaning, and the extension of the "bitterness" that Xiao Hong feels crosses the ordinary story of lost love and becomes a life situation that hovers in a lonely proposition. If "Spring Song" is a sweet dream of love, "Bitter Cup" is "waking up from a dream and having nowhere to go", or a kind of Nala who is in trouble after running away or simply the confession of Lu Xun's "Zijun" - "What love!" / Say what the victims have walked together to the end of the tribulation! / All became last night's dream, / Last night's bright light. ”
Readers who are interested in the mystery of Erxiao's feelings can find subtle variations of Xiao Hong's inner emotional world at that time from these poems, but the commemoration of love is not the whole content of his poetry manuscript. The group poem "Grain of Sand" (a total of 36 poems) and the two long poems written at the end of the volume to commemorate Lu Xun and his deceased friend Jin Jianxiao respectively opened up a broader space for this collection of poems and for Xiao Hong's identity as a poet. Written during his stay in Japan, the Grain of Sand may have been influenced by haiku, and there is a certain lightness or even philosophy in eternity, which is a kind of writing that is closer to the essence of life, such as:
There were two cobwebs in front of my window.
At the time of spider dinner,
It was also my dinner time. (3)
Let's go!
Or go,
If you have a fate like flowing water,
Why pray for rest! (part 15)
Why doesn't life hang on the bell?
Otherwise lose you,
How can you feel lost? (Part 20)
Alone in a foreign country, Xiao Hong's loneliness can be imagined. When she was in Japan, she wrote a meaningful letter to Xiao Jun: "When the window is sprinkled with white moon, I am willing to turn off the lights and sit down and be silent for a while, and in this silence, suddenly like an alarm bell, it comes to my heart: Isn't this my golden age?" now. This has also become the source of the title of Xiao Hong's biopic made by Xu Anhua. This short half year is a rare period of freedom and leisure in Xiao Hong's wandering life, although it is "in a cage", but it probably allows her to briefly float out of the whirlpool of the outside world in this loneliness, and have time to be aware and reflect on herself. So there are cobwebs in front of the window, raindrops, a full moon on the eaves, and snow falling, which are isomorphic images with the soul, which trigger a dialogue with the self: "The world is so vast, / but I have arranged my own world so narrowly!" "If you ask me what is the most terrible thing at this moment, / I say: / Flooded emotions are the most terrible." Reading it today, it is not limited to a specific "emotion", but also breaks through Xiao Hong's individual self-pity, and is more like an examination of the overall plight of intellectual women in the post-May Fourth era. As Xiao Hong once famously said: "The sky of women is low, the wings are thin, and the burdens around them are bulky." After Xiao Hong returned from Japan, she received a life that was still difficult for her in the double exile of war and emotion, but it was no longer Xiao Hong who could only be attached to her lover. This is, of course, an afterthought.
During his time in Japan, two unexpected events occurred, one was the death of Lu Xun, and the other was the death of his friend Jin Jianxiao. After Xiao Hong returned to Shanghai, he visited Lu Xun's tomb and wrote "Tomb Poems", the relationship between Erxiao and Lu Xun is well known, and Huang Qiaosheng, executive deputy director of the Lu Xun Museum, wrote a detailed description of his skills and this poem. He also believes that Xiao Hong's "A Grain of Soil" written for Jin Jianxiao also has the shadow of Lu Xun's close friend Qu Qiubai. Jin Jianxiao, Erxiao's former friend in Harbin and an underground member of the Communist Party of China, was arrested and killed for propaganda against Japan. Just as Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai, Xiao Hong wrote this poem not from the perspective of comrades but from the perspective of friends, and sadly remembered that the deceased friends were still "walking and dancing alive" in everyone's hearts. This mourning is finally symbolically sublimated, in the colors of all mankind- "In the future, when the land of the whole world is full of flowers, / At that time, / We must all remember, / The sword roar of the dead friend, / It is this flowering grain of earth." If the previous group of poems is Xiao Ling, the last two long poems are long tones, let us see that as a woman, Xiao Hong is always trying to break through the "low sky", as a natural writer and poet, she is not narrow, but has an incomparably deep and vast concern.
This article was first published on December 9, 2021 "Rule of Law Weekend"
Source: Reprinted from Shangshu public account