In the 1860s, there was an unprecedented natural disaster on the Korean Peninsula, and in order to make a living, some Koreans migrated to Majima Island, which is now the Yanbian region of China. On the island, which is suitable for farming, these North Korean immigrants lived a relatively comfortable life.
By the beginning of the 20th century, with the signing of the Japan-Korea Treaty of Annexation and the Treaty of Sino-Japanese Island, and the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1931, these emigrant Korean people gradually became involved in the oppression of Japanese imperialist aggressors and warlords. In the midst of the heat and cold, they resonated with the Chinese people and made positive contributions to China's War of Resistance Against Japan. Among them was a young poet who was arrested for the anti-Japanese independence movement and died in Fukuoka Prison in Japan.
The young poet's name was Yin Dongzhu.
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Yin Dongzhu was born on December 30, 1917 in Mingdong Village, Yanbian District and Long County, China. At the age of 14, Yin Dongzhu moved with his family to Longjing, a small city 10 kilometers west of Mingdong Village, where he completed secondary school.
In 1938, after graduating from high school, Yoon Dong-joo went to Seoul to study for a while and then went to Japan to study. In July 1943, Yin Dongzhu, who was preparing to return to his hometown in Longjing during the summer vacation, was suddenly arrested by the Japanese police on the charge of political prisoner, and on February 16, 1945, Yin Dongzhu was killed in Fukuoka Prison in Japan. His father took his ashes back to his hometown of Longjing, buried them on the East Mountain of Longjing, and erected the tombstone of "The Tomb of the Poet Yin Dongzhu".
Three years later, Yin Dongzhu's posthumous manuscript "Heaven, Wind, Stars and Poems" was published, and people gradually became aware of this talented young man.
On December 24, 1934, Yin Dongzhu published three works, including "Life and Death", "A Candle", and "No Tomorrow", which are the earliest poems of Yin Dongzhu that can be found so far. Since then, Yin Dongzhu has created 125 works in his lifetime, of which 73 were created during the Longjing period.
It can be said that Longjing is the place where Yin Dongzhu's poetry creation pioneered, and it is also the place where he found himself and awakened his national consciousness. In Longjing, most of his poems look at innocent and harmonious life with an innocent attitude, but there are also national sentiments dissatisfied with the dark rule of Japanese imperialism. In the book "Crying Like a Song", yin Dongzhu's inner world can be clearly insightful.
The movie "Dongzhu" based on the life of Yin Dongzhu
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Yin Dongzhu likes to share the quiet and peaceful of daily life in his poems, including sharing between families, animals and nature. For example, the poem "Chimney":
How can a cloud of cooking smoke in the low chimney of a mountain shack come out in broad daylight? / Is it baking potatoes, right? The lads / Fluttering black eyes sat together / Lips as black as charcoal smeared / An old story for a potato / In the low chimney of the mountain shack / Gently emitted the smell of baked potatoes
The narrative poem presents a picture of a group of young men sitting around baking potatoes in a shack in the mountains. They may not be family, but they are harmonious. Their mouths were stained with black charcoal ash, and the environment was not very comfortable, but they ate potatoes with great interest, and told stories as they ate. This harmonious atmosphere of sharing food and exchanging emotions together is very touching.
Another example is the poem "Night":
The donkey in the livestock shed / Suddenly a cry of sorrow / The sound of the donkey / Wake the baby up / Light the lamp / Dad added to the donkey / A dustpan of hay / Mother fed the baby / A sip of milk / The night was quiet again And fell into a deep sleep
Also a narrative poem, the mood expressed in this "Night" is more warm and tranquil. In the quiet of the country night, the donkey was hungry, and the cry woke the baby, and the baby also cried. Dad hurried to feed the donkey, and Mom got up to feed the baby. This brief noise was just a small episode in the quiet night, and after a while, everything returned to tranquility. It was a living night, donkeys barking, children crying, but no one complained, no one scolded, and there was harmony between families, humans and animals, and you can imagine how gentle and happy life here is.
In Yin Dongzhu's poems, the most popular one is "The Night of Counting Stars":
The sky where the seasons pass / Filled with autumn / I am carefree / As if I can count / All the stars in autumn / But the stars that are engraved in the heart / Why can't I count them to this day / Because the morning always comes quickly / Because tomorrow there is still night / Because my youth is not exhausted / A star about remembrance / A star about love / A star about desertion / A star about longing / A star about poetry / A star about mother
This is the first third of the poem, expressing the poet's nostalgia for the good life of the past, as well as the longing for his mother. Like the poem "They're all too far away from me now / Like the stars in the sky"
After recounting the feelings of longing, at the end of the poem, the poet writes:
But winter has passed / Spring has come on my stars / Like turquoise grass will grow in the cemetery / On the hillside where my name is buried / The grass that spreads over the mountains / Grows proudly
The poem is full of metaphors, the poet is far away from his hometown, looking at the autumn sky and counting the stars, a metaphor for the poet who is full of nostalgia for all that has been lost; but those things have long gone, a metaphor for the dark society that makes people powerless, he cannot have the life he yearns for; winter and spring, metaphors that the poet still has hope, he looks forward to the day when the world will be peaceful and stable again, and he himself will shine like stars.
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From "The Night of Counting Stars", Yin Dongzhu has a sense of national distress.
At that time, Japanese imperialism first occupied the Korean Peninsula and carried out 36 years of colonial rule, which greatly hurt the national self-esteem of the Korean people, destroyed the Korean national culture, and brought great harm to the Korean people. In those dark years, Yin Dongzhu still maintained hope, looking forward to one day being able to break the darkness and regain the light. In Until the Dawn comes, he writes:
Please give to all the dying / Put on black / Please give all the living / Put on white / In the same bed / Let them lie side by side / Please let them sleep peacefully / If they cry / Please give them milk / Wait until dawn comes / The trumpet will surely come
In this poem, the poet describes the social state of the people at that time, whether it is the dying or the living, but the poet has a firm belief in his heart, believing that the trumpet of the dawn will always blow, and the day of victory will come sooner or later.
In the poem "Life and Death", the poet also uses "death" to represent resistance to Japanese rule, and "life" to convey the hope of the soul of the nation's survival. In the poem, Yin Dongzhu believes that "before the sun sets / there is no time to think / The terror at the end of the song", in the poet's heart, the fear of death has long been transformed into a belief beyond death, and the "life" of the nation is like the final sunshine after the storm, leaving "the great people who defeated death".
Yin Dongzhu's poetry often shows a kind of spiritual bitterness. And this kind of bitterness is a true portrayal of the situation of the times in which he lived. 1941 was a year of great influence for Yin Dongzhu. Due to the shortening of the school system during the war, he graduated three months early, and he was unable to continue his studies and did not know where to go next. The war of the Second World War became more and more prosperous, the European battlefield continued to expand, the German-Soviet War broke out in June, and on December 8, the Japanese army secretly attacked pearl harbor in Hawaii in the United States, provoked the Pacific War, forced itself to the end of the road, turned everything into the battle system and the decisive battle system, and more viciously sucked the bones of the people. Everything is suffocating, collapsing and perishing. In the face of all this, Yin Dongzhu was bitter and wrote a series of poems showing fierce inner contradictions.
For example, "Liver":
On the beach On the reef toward the sun / Spread out to dry / Like a rabbit from the Caucasus Mountains / Circle over and over / Guard it / I've been dead for many years / Emaciated eagle / Fly over and at ease / Eat it / You're going to get fat / And I should be thin / But the turtle / Never again fall by the temptation of your dragon palace / Prometheus Poor Prometheus / Guilty of fire With a millstone hanging around his neck / Keep falling into the bottomless abyss / Prometheus
The poem embodies Yin Dongzhu's strong will to try to change the status quo. The "liver" written in the poem is not only the liver of the rabbit, but also the liver of Prometheus, and it is also a symbol of all the suffering suffered by the Korean people who suffered from the brutal aggression of the Japanese Kou.
The last two couplets of the poem quote the story of Prometheus and the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 18 of the Bible. Jesus had a millstone hanging from the neck of a guy who had lost his foot, sinking the guy into the deep sea. What Yoon Dong-joo wants to express is that in the face of the painful status quo, the Korean nation should endure as tenaciously as Prometheus, waiting for the situation to change.
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In Yin Dongzhu's poems, the word "shame" often appears, which is the product of his self-reflection and annoyance. For example, in the Prologue, there is a self-choice after reflection, that is, "until the moment of death / Let me look up at the sky / There is no shame in my heart."
As an intellectual who constantly resisted under the rule of the Japanese Kou, Yin Dongzhu contributed to that era with firm faith and determination to die, and issued a spiritual cry of "to love everything that is dying / to follow the path assigned to me". Be prepared to sacrifice yourself in order to achieve not being "ashamed".
This belief can also be seen everywhere in poems such as "Night of Counting stars", "Self-Portrait", "Another Hometown", etc., and he expresses the fighting spirit of "being born" without "shame" through the shame and annoyance of self-reflection.
Recently, Phoenix Linkage Publishing Company published Yin Dongzhu's selected poems "Crying Like Songs", which in addition to the several popular poems listed above, also includes dozens of poems by Yin Dongzhu in different periods, including missing his hometown, singing praises for love, and more yearning for a bright future.
After reading these poems, you will find that Yin Dongzhu has always endured loneliness and emptiness, living a life of turbulence and displacement, and all this is to save the nation in crisis, but also to light up the lights in the dark ages and illuminate the bright road of the future.
Yin Dongzhu's poems have never directly criticized the real society, nor have they shown a trace of dissatisfaction with reality, he has only constantly carried out self-reflection in the chaotic real society, waiting for a new era that will come like morning.