Appreciation of Ye Zhi's The Island of Innasfri

Appreciation of the classic poem "Ye Zhi Innasfri Island"

I'm leaving for Innasfri Island,

I'm going to set up a small house and a mud hut;

Set up nine rows of bean stands and a row of bee nests,

Living alone, listening to the bees singing in the shadow.

I will get peace, and it will slowly descend,

from the morning mist to the place where crickets sing;

Midnight is shining, noon is purple,

In the evening, cardinals are flying everywhere.

I'm about to leave, because I hear

the sound of water patting the lakeside day and night;

whether I stand on the driveway or the gloomy sidewalk,

I hear this sound in the depths of my heart.

(translated by Yuan Kejia)

Goethe once said, "There is no better way to escape from the world than literature." Ye Zhi also chose literature to escape from the world. He has been making such efforts all his life, but he has not found peace.

Innasfri Island, written in 1892, is a famous representative work of Ye Zhi's escapist tendency. It is said that Yeats passed by a shop window one day on the street in London, and there was a small fountain in the window, which aroused his homesickness and wrote this poem. Ye Zhi's early creation was influenced by Victorian romanticism, which ruled the English poetry circle at that time. His poems were based on the life experience in the Irish countryside, showing a fresh, concrete and vivid color. However, he was extremely dissatisfied with the turbulent and backward reality in Ireland, and he was frustrated in love, so he looked forward to finding an imaginary hometown far away from the hubbub. This poem is based on a small island in the lake in Irish folklore, Innasfri Island, as the sustenance of his "Taoyuan Dream". The poet began to imitate the syntax of the Bible (the second section of the third chapter of the Bible: "I will arise now, and go about the city in the streets ..." translated as: I should get up and leave for the streets of the city), and described in detail his imaginary lake island: a small house, mud huts, nine rows of cloud bean racks, a row of bee nests, although eating and living are simple. In the poet's mind, Innasfri Island is an ideal kingdom and a naive paradise. Since the real world can't satisfy him, in order to get rid of the torture of frustration and despair, the poet should look for it in his dreams, deny reality with his ideals and recreate it.

The unrest in reality makes the poet yearn for peace. Therefore, in the second section of the poem, the poet shows an illusory and peaceful world with his ingenious pen. Quiet and tranquil filled the "place where crickets sing", which is too general to say. Then the poet used three color words to contrast the quiet environment and the peace of mind. Between the lines, there is a purple light of dreams. Criticize reality with ideals, and contrast the filth of this world with the purity of the other world. At the end of 19th century, one of the themes of French symbolist poets was their longing for the other side of the world, and so was Ye Zhi. Returning to nature is an easy way to get rid of a turbulent and sensitive mind, so the poet once again declared "I'm leaving", which seems to be a difficult tug-of-war with the painful reality. Because the poet heard "the sound of water patting the lakeside day and night", the sound stirred up waves in the poet's heart, and he wanted to find the sound and go away. This is the voice in the poet's heart, which also causes the reader's heart to tremble. According to the corresponding principle of symbolism, the "gloomy sidewalk" can be understood as the gloomy and ugly reality and the lack of nostalgia in the real world.

In the desert, ostriches bury their heads in the sand and can't see the world, but the world remains the same, and the behavior of ostriches doesn't change. Artists know this. Life is varied, people's attitudes towards life are different, or they are insensitive or degenerate. Only sincerity is more painful. "The artist is the son of the times" (Hegel), and Ye Zhi's pain stems from the great pain of the times. Facts have proved that there is no poet without pain, and the poet's pain is the quenching of steel, as evidenced by Ye Zhi's later involvement in the Irish national autonomy movement.

This poem skillfully mixes reality with fantasy. The island of Innasfri is a virtual place, but the huts, mud huts, bean stands, beehives and crickets on the island are concrete and real. The works tend to escape from reality, but the historical legends of Ireland are the background of the poet's dreams, which adds historical solemnity to this poem. Interestingly, after this poem came out, it was quite popular. Ye Zhi himself felt guilty because the poetic scene was too romantic.

(Yu changxin)