The Pain Of Wisdom

In this paper, the author interprets Song of Wisdom by poet Mu Dan through an extensive reading of the poem. Since Song of Wisdom is a work of the poet's recollection of the past, the paper presents its exposition along the narrative sequence of such a recollection.Firstly, the paper discusses the "love" theme represented in the 2^nd stanza. Although we know that Mu Dan left not too many love poems, we could find behind the lines of this stanza a suffering complex, which stands as a symbol of loneliness of an individual life, as we may also see in some other love poems.Secondly, the author turns to the "friendship" theme represented in the 3^rd stanza. As an intimate emotion arise from social relationships, the theme is the poet's conscientious reflection over rational order and, it also expresses the strained relation between his internal world and the surrounding world.Then comes another theme of "ideal" embodied in the 4^th stanza. The author expounds the change of meaning of keywords like "hope", "dream" in Mu Dan's poetry, In the author's opinion, "temptation" and "loss" are the two sides of ideal, which combined to bring a sense of absurdness in times and history to the poet at last.These personal reflections witnesses Mu Dan, an idealist poet's painful mental experience. On such a basis, the paper presents its interpretation on "Pains of wisdom" of the poet."Pains of wisdom" comes from his contradictory poetic concepts. The author explains this subject within three parts:The 1^st part gives a general analysis on negative criticisms on Mu Dan's poetry, indicating that such criticism should attribute to the poet's forerun and complicated poetic art.The 2^nd part states that one of the contradictions in Mu Dan's poetry is that his solicitude for reality has always been covered by a expression of subjective passion, which explains why his poetry was criticized as "anti-people" poetry.The 3^rd part deals with the preeminence and contradiction within "Neolyric ". The author finds that by applying modern poetic techniques, Mu Dan tries to integrate both sensitivity and romance in his poetry that is driven to be concerned with reality.In the extended study of "Pains of wisdom", the author penetrates Mu Dan's internal world through the bridge of his poetry, and analyzes the poet's introspective, suspicious and despairing nature.