A Study On Wen Yiduo's Poetry Concerned With Death

In creating, every poet has his habitual image or method which gains different meanings as context changes. However different the contexts become, the meanings are always connected to each other through some way, obscure or obvious. Such a connection usually plays the role of a secret key which leads to the deeply hided complex in the poet's soul. Death is such a key in Wen Yiduo's poetry creating. Through the pursuit of it, the inner minds of the passionate sage can be unraveled bit by bit.The complete poems of Wen Yiduo contains up to 33 poems referred to death. The contents of these works can be generally concluded as follows: expression of ideal, accusation against iniquities, mourning to the dead folks, sigh for the hard life, love for the wife, love for life, attitude to death and aesthetic description about death. Three topics can be further generated from the above-mentioned: pursuit of ideal, criticism and love for the real-life.These three topics have demonstrated the typical character of a poet who lives in an unusual time. Both praise and criticism show the poet's fiery love for art, life and the nation. The writing concerned with death in Wen Yiduo's poems clearly reveals such a strong but deeply hided complex: he pursues the ideal in art with heart and soul, expects the nation to wake up and loves the real-life with a sage's mind. He is pious to art like a pilgrim; he owns true love to the nation with utter innocence; he bears both joys and sorrows of life without complaints yet withholding a sober mind. The ghost image in the poem Yege can be reasonably considered as the artistic incarnation of the poet. Though dead, the ghost still harbours strong feelings for the real world. That is all because of the unstoppable love.