What is relevant to the word is people and I. Sacrifice does not mean not cherishing life. Life is me; life is a person; life is dignity and the center of the world. Understanding and solicitude of a person begins from the concern and respect of life. But in the past years, some life has been pressed into a specimen, a mould, even the stone in a river, and the wormwood by the river. Therefore, Mr. Yiren shouts: “Thousands of people are life-oriented / Freedom as dancing”. And he calls with deep emotion: “O the life which exhibits life / Your benevolent love incomparably huge / Makes me think of you in candlelight from time to time”. To respect life, to give it freedom, to give it love, and let it love freely. This is, actually, the purpose and meaning of our life. For all lives (not limited to human beings), is there anything more sublime than freedom and love? Freedom and love is the realm to be reached by all the beliefs and religions. This is the thorough liberation of lives, and the real life of human beings. But the problem is to this day, people have lost the aptitude inherent to human beings: human beings are no more “human beings”. This is the theme haunting the long poem. Then, what on earth has happened to human beings? —
[Existence]
This is the center of thinking and questioning in the long poem. What is relevant to the word is now and the present status. This is the proposition for the food of thinking of a poet and philosopher. Here I would like to talk about the existence and present status of human beings. According to the above-mentioned dictionary, people take freedom as the basic status, then people have already lost the feature of human beings. People are being alienated. The by-product of modernization is routinization of people, where people copy each other in their behavior. Human brain is withering; the feeling is being blunted; and human soul is gradually losing. In this way, people will think no more, will be unable to love. And people are human beings no more. Thus, the ship of human beings is going to sink down, which worries Yiren the most. Therefore, in this long poem, he calls people to live the life of human beings: to feel, to think, to find self, to love, and to create. A life without thinking is not different from that of a pig or a robot. Therefore, people shall know themselves, shall continue to pursue the meaning and value of life. Schlegel, a philosopher says, “people should carry out an evolution by force of their own strength and freedom, and the most important thing is to squeeze out all their effort to find their center. People either destroy themselves, or they renew themselves: there is no third way out.” To renew themselves means to restore people as human beings, for the world to return to their original state.
[Time]
It is a word that worries the reader in this long poem. What corresponds with it is something
definite and indefinite. Life is definite and time is indefinite, which leads to the tragedy of people.
In a direct way Yiren writes about time’s destruction of people and life: “I am still I how can I box myself in / Perhaps the end of time / Is unimaginable / Overnight / The soaring wings are bloody”; “Time leaves our mind so hastily / Sliding to some place out of the line of sight”. How fragile human beings are: they are powerless before existence, and at a loss what to do before time. Then, how to
make the definite life more active? Just give time life and beauty. Though time is indefinite, most of it is useless like trash; then we shall fill effective time with creation and beauty and love. Thus, time has
content, and time has life. Schelling, a philosopher, says: “when art gets hold of people’s years which are elapsing, when art is to express with perfect beauty a mother who has raised her daughter into an adult, isn’t that art has cancelled something non-essential — time? Perfect existence — only an
instant.” This is an instant into eternity. Owing to art and significance, an instant of time is better than infinitude.”
[Home]
Home is the harbor of which Yiren has been in search, and is also the place for the ship to arrive at and the reason why the ship leaves it. Because the home is broken, we have to wander from place to place; because we cannot find a new home, the ship is going to sink down. Home is the beginning and the ending of the long poem. Here it is not to find something to lean onto for a concrete life, but for a “category”, namely, for tribes and nationality. “May I ask where is my beautiful homeland / Where is my fertile land / With pangs and the broken dream of rare metals / Jumping over the head of the giant / Recalling the golden wheat ears at the end of the century”. This is the puzzlement and bitterness when wandering away from home. Then, where is the direction? Holderlin,
