facing the sea with spring flowers blossoming

The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

Facing the sea, the flowers bloom in spring is a lyric poem written by Haizi in 1989. The whole poem consists of three sections. The first section shows the poet's longing for a simple, simple and free life realm, and his spirit of exploring the "eternal" and unknown world. The second section describes the poet's uncontrollable joy after finding happiness. The third section is about the poet's blessing to the world. The poet combined the direct expression of his mind with hints and symbolism, making the whole poem clear and profound, clear and implicit, cheerful and incisive, dignified and rich, expressing the poet's longing for happiness and loneliness. The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

English translation

Facing the Sea With Spring Blossoms
From tomorrow on, I will be a happy man.
Grooming, chopping and traveling all over the world.
From tomorrow on, I will care foodstuff and vegetable.
Living in a house towards the sea, with spring blossoms.
From tomorrow on, write to each of my dear ones.
Telling them of my happiness.
What the lightening of happiness has told me.
I will spread it to each of them.
Give a warm name for every river and every mountain.
Strangers, I will also wish you happy.
May you have a brilliant future!
May you lovers eventually become spouses!
May you enjoy happiness in this earthly world!
I only wish to face the sea, with spring blossoms. The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

Creation background

This poem was written on January 13, 1989, more than two months after the poet committed suicide by lying on the rail in March of the same year. The author belongs to the "generation" of people who "the dark night gave me black eyes, but I used it to look for light", and has personally experienced the social transformation process from strangling material desire and focusing only on spirit in the 1960s and 1970s to abandoning spirit and crossing material desire in the late 1980s. In the face of reality, the idealist writer was confused, his hope was dashed, and he felt that he could not "live in the world poetically". Compared with the happiness of others blindly indulging in material life, he felt more pain from internal division and contradiction. This poem is the crystallization of his painful experience in life.
The creation opportunity of this poem may also contain the element of "love poem", and the "sea" may also have a specific reference. For some time before his death, Haizi kept a friendly communication with his first girlfriend who had broken up and moved to Shenzhen and planned to emigrate overseas. It is speculated that this "sea" image should be related to the imagination of the first girlfriend on the other side of the Pacific Ocean or Shenzhen. The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

Appreciation of works

This poem expresses the sincerity and kindness of a poet with simple, clear, meaningful and fresh language. The lyric hero wants to be "a happy person" and is willing to tell everyone about the "happy lightning". Even strangers will sincerely wish him "happiness on earth". Everything in the world in the poet's imagination is so fresh and lovely, full of vitality and vigor, with positive and uplifting feelings between the lines. At first sight, the whole poem sends out sincere wishes to people in a simple and cheerful way.
The sea is the core image in the author's poems. It is vast, relaxed, and energetic. It is a land of peace, a land of struggle, an ideal land, a spiritual home for the author as the "son of the sea", and a place where he can find true happiness. Facing the sea, spring is a mirage, but this is a bright and happy feeling that the author can feel. The implication and tension of this topic lies in that it pulls people's thinking patterns in reality to pieces, and then reorganizes them in a kaleidoscope, making them bright and beautiful with their strong dominant ideas. Of course, flowers should blossom on hot land, but the author let him stubbornly ("I only wish") open on his own sea of happiness, in the pursuit of his own ideals. Everything in reality ("feeding horses, chopping firewood, caring about food and vegetables") is just to feed his body, so that his heart can beat, so that his imagination can fly.
The whole poem has two systems. A system starts with "feeding horses and chopping firewood", and ends with "caring about food and vegetables from tomorrow" and "I have a house facing the sea, and spring is blooming". Through his own description, the author reduced the happy life of tomorrow to the lowest limit of the secular life, and pointed out that today's life is too mundane and cumbersome, mainly focusing on the material aspects of building a happy life. At the end of the whole poem, the sentence "I just want to face the sea, and the flowers will bloom in spring" is a distant echo of this rhyme system. Facing the sea, the spring is warm and the flowers are blooming "This poem can be regarded as an important part of the rhyme system in terms of external meaning; However, if we take it as a whole and explore and analyze its internal meaning, it is obvious that there is a rhyming relationship between the two phrases "facing the sea" and "spring flowers blooming". This rhyme system reveals a simple desire and sincere emotion by elaborately depicting the pictures of daily life. The other system starts with "Strangers, I also wish you well" and ends with "May all lovers be married". This system serves as a link between the past and the future. It is not only a continuation of the "tell them my happiness" in the second section, but also a prelude to the penultimate sentence of the third section, "May you be happy on earth". It expresses the good wishes and fraternity of the lyric hero.
The first paragraph of this poem is all about "I"; The second and third paragraphs, the second part, are all about "me and others". The first sentence of the second part is "From tomorrow, I will communicate with every family member". From here, the communication scope of "I" continues to expand, from family members to everyone, to every river and mountain, and finally to strangers. With the expansion of the scope, negativity and contradiction gradually permeate into the poetry, until the final formation of the opposition between "wish" and "wish only". He wrote letters to acquaintances and wished strangers happiness, hoping that they would be as happy as themselves. If the form of happiness is different, the experience of happiness should be the same. So in the last sentence, Haizi expressed his absolute confidence in the happiness he felt. "Facing the sea, spring blossoms" is a summary of two parts, one is a summary of "my" life and hope, the other is a summary of the relationship between "I" and others. At the end of the first paragraph, "I have a house facing the sea, with spring flowers blooming" appears positive and optimistic. There is no negative factor in the whole poem. This house is intoxicating, full of happiness, facing the vast sea, her temperature is spring, and her face is flowers. As a summary of the first part, this sentence outlines the "my happiness" of tomorrow. When it comes to "me", "facing the sea, spring flowers" and secular life are harmonious and intimate, and they together constitute my happiness. My happiness includes feeding horses, chopping firewood, caring for food and vegetables, and "facing the sea, spring flowers". In the second part, when it comes to my relationship with others in the "world", there is a certain split, and others form a certain opposition with me. In this opposition, "facing the sea, spring blossoms" cannot be in harmony with the secular life, but becomes the shelter of "I" after leaving the secular life, and is the final foothold of "I", The last warmth, the last comfort. Therefore, the contradiction of "I" is because of the appearance of the other. Before the appearance of the other, tomorrow will be harmonious and beautiful.
The subject of all the sentences in the whole poem is "I", and there are five in total, and each ending poem begins with "I": "I have a house facing the sea, and the flowers are blooming in spring", "I will tell everyone", "I only want to face the sea, and the flowers are blooming in spring". These three lines of poetry represent three different states. I went from having, to telling, and then to returning. The last paragraph of "spring blossoms" and the first paragraph form a cycle. Happiness starts from my world and gradually embraces people and the world outside. However, it finally returns to my "sea and spring". In the first paragraph, "Facing the sea, spring blossoms" is the state of my world, a happy summary, and at the end, it becomes my last piece of sky and foothold. When I tried to spread the warmth of spring to the world, I suddenly found that my sunshine was really needed only by myself. In the whole poem, the subject is all "I", and the communication between the subjects is missing. I pass, shine, and withdraw. All these are my own imagination, action and expression. From the second paragraph of the poem, the theme of the poem is communication, from telling to blessing. However, everything is one-way, only "I", without dialogue between subjects, or even imagination of other subjects, so the world is strange.
In the last paragraph of the poem, "stranger" is an interesting title. Strangers originally belong to "everyone" in the second paragraph. From the semantic point of view, they are the same people, but they form two different relationships with "I": one is to convey happiness to everyone, and the other is to "bless you" strangers. They both belong to my circle, but also outside the circle, forming a certain ambiguity. I tried to tell them my happiness and let them enter my circle, but in the end, in my heart, they still belong outside the circle. Strangers, I also wish you well. According to Ben Forrester's linguistic theory, "I/you" is the basic structure of communication, where there is me and you, there is communication. However, in poetry, this communication is destroyed by the name of "stranger". In daily life, I am no longer a stranger after communicating with you. Here, "I/You" always keeps the identity of a stranger, which means that the communication is incomplete. Moreover, everyone who faces poetry is immediately included in the title of "stranger" and becomes "you" blessed by Haizi. Just like the word "you", strangers are also words expressing "mutuality". When Haizi calls "you" a stranger, he actually regards himself as a "stranger" to "you" and a "stranger" to everyone. Strangeness is highlighted in communication and blessing. It is not a blessing to get closer in daily life, but it shows different wishes and values.
In terms of time, this is a poem that starts from tomorrow. The first sentence of the three verses is an imperative sentence. The object of the imperative is not others but oneself. It is a call to oneself. The beginning of the poem is to call one's own actions from the perspective of tomorrow, calling one's own happiness and the happiness of the world. The actions in the first two paragraphs of this poem belong to the future time, while in the third paragraph, they enter the time. The imperative sentences in the first two paragraphs are concrete actions, "to be a happy person", "to feed horses, chop firewood, travel around the world", and "to communicate with every family member". These are all actions in the "I" plan. The imperative sentence in the third paragraph makes the poem into an imaginative act, naming mountains and rivers. This is not an action that needs to be completed "tomorrow" When I write this poem, I have already finished with a warm name. In the same way, blessings and wishes are achieved when you think about them, and they are completed when you imagine them, instead of "tomorrow". Poetry starts from tomorrow, but goes to today. When I finally said, "I only want to face the sea, and the spring flowers bloom", I returned to the reality of my heart. I can really hope that all I can get is the house "facing the sea and blooming in spring", which is a house only for me. Poetry has completed a cycle in space and time, moving towards the outside world in space, and finally returning to its own small world; Time from tomorrow to today. In the process of space diffusion, the time in poetry is lost helplessly, and the world originally belonging to tomorrow is transformed into a world inaccessible in space, an impossible world. Time was abandoned. The transformation from time to space is also shown in the most important sentence of this poem. "I have a house facing the sea, with spring flowers blooming". From the perspective of structure and semantics, "facing the sea" and "spring flowers blooming" are both descriptions of houses. It is very common to decorate houses facing the sea, but spring flowers blooming is very strange, because it is a description of time, not space, The blooming of spring flowers is a process in time rather than seeing things in space. Therefore, when people say that the blooming of spring flowers does not mean the flowers and trees they see, but the arrival of the season. In Chinese, the common saying is "when the flowers bloom in spring", which is a description of time, but the poet uses season to describe a house, so that this time is frozen in space and time is spatialized.
The verb in the first paragraph of the poem is action, the verb in the second paragraph is telling, and the verb in the third paragraph is blessing (wish). The beginning of the three verses is an imperative sentence, which is the combination of desire and action. However, at the end of the poem, there is only a desire: facing the sea, spring blossoms. From the perspective of verbs, "I" returns from action to desire, from "being a happy person" to confirming the state at that time - only willing to face the sea and spring flowers. At the end, I gave up my action. As today, I have the beauty of my heart, but no happy life on earth. The poet gave up "tomorrow". Many critics have emphasized in their comments that "happiness of tomorrow" means unhappiness of today. For example, Yang Wenjun wrote in "Melancholy Haizi, Melancholy Poetry" that "the so-called 'be a happy person from tomorrow' is an ironic statement, meaning that now is not happy, and 'tomorrow' is just a vague time point." These comments are reasonable, However, poetry is more complex and secretive. In fact, whether today's spring flowers bloom or tomorrow's travel around the world is a realm of spiritual imagination, and human happiness is not always a continuous state, always in the memories of yesterday, feelings of today and expectations of tomorrow. The longing for tomorrow certainly means the negation of some reality, but it also flashes the hope of happiness. The real sadness of this poem is not about the unhappiness of the present and the hope for tomorrow, but about the abandonment of tomorrow. "I" finally felt that the actions I imagined had no value to the world, and even in my imagination there was no place for my actions. "Only wish" is an affirmation, an affirmation of the present, but this affirmation is at the cost of negating tomorrow. The first paragraph of the poem is the affirmation of tomorrow. "From tomorrow, be a happy person" - implies the negation of today. At the end of the poem, "only wish" is the affirmation of reality - implies the negation of tomorrow. If today's unhappiness is regrettable, then the denial of tomorrow is the real tragedy. Tomorrow, as a beam of light illuminating today, passes away like lightning in poetry. It cannot warm the world, warm strangers, or illuminate my future. The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

Comments of famous experts

"Misery in March - A Short Poem on Haizi": "People say that this poem" Facing the Sea, Spring Flowers Bloom "is the clearest and warmest one of Haizi's poems. There are many words full of hope in the poem... But in the warm spring, there is a hidden message of winter - a kind of insidious danger and sadness. It turns out that all this starts from tomorrow, and tomorrow, where is the poet? He blessed every stranger but took himself away. The happiness of this world has nothing to do with Haizi. 'Spring is warm and flowers are blooming' is just a gift for the poet before he leaves. "
Liu Zhenfu's Appreciation of "Facing the Sea in Spring": someone analyzed Haizi and said: "The long conflict between the weak first self and the strong second self made his poems appear again and again what Jacobson called 'symmetry'." The so-called "symmetry" is nothing but a dual personality. That is to say, it reflects the characteristics of being weak from the outside but strong from the inside: the appearance of the poem is weak from the outside, "feeding horses, chopping firewood, traveling around the world", "facing the sea, flowers in spring", and the sentiment of the poem is gentle and light, which is also the graceful style of the poem; However, the heart of poetry also has a strong nature. Behind the words, there is a noble and proud heart. "Just want to face the sea", so that people can see the image of an independent poet standing on the beach, which is the image of a self styled king. This dual personality can also be subdivided into: closeness to and rejection of people and secular life, joy and sorrow of real life experience, directness and implicit expression of literary feelings... Further refining, there are about three kinds of consciousness: secular consciousness, lofty consciousness, escape consciousness. These three senses are not "harmonious", which just shows that Haizi's poem contains something complex and contradictory behind the pure, clear and secularized feelings. The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

About the author

Haizi, formerly known as Zha Haisheng, was born in Chawan Village, Gaohe Town, Huaining County, Anhui Province on March 24, 1964. He grew up in the countryside. He was admitted to the Law Department of Peking University when he was 15 years old in 1979. He began to write poetry in 1982 and later became one of the "three poets of Peking University". On March 26, 1989, he committed suicide by lying on the track at Shanhaiguan. He was only 25 years old. In his short life as a poet, Haizi kept a holy heart. He was not understood by the world for a long time, but he was a poet who strove for the limit of literature and life in the new literature history of China in the 1980s. The article originates from a two-day blog- https://2days.org/84741.html

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