Mao Zedong's Poetry and Chinese Spirit

The Chinese spirit is the essence of Mao Zedong's poetry, like a red line running through it. Mao Zedong's poems reflect the rationality, emotion, thinking, behavior and value orientation of the Chinese nation in a specific period. They have been transformed into cultural symbols endowed with valuable forms and merged into the spiritual river of the Chinese nation.

Mao Zedong has a famous saying: "people should have a little spirit." A country must have spirit, which is the foundation of the country; a nation must have spirit, which is the backbone. What is the Chinese spirit? At the closing session of the first session of the 12th National People's Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping highly summarized the essential connotation of the Chinese spirit: "To realize the Chinese dream, we must carry forward the Chinese spirit. This is the national spirit with patriotism at its core and the spirit of the times with reform and innovation at its core. This spirit is the soul of rejuvenating the country and the soul of strengthening the country with cohesion."

The Chinese spirit is the essence of Mao Zedong's poetry, like a red line running through it. Mao Zedong's poems reflect the rationality, emotion, thinking, behavior and value orientation of the Chinese nation in a specific period. They have been transformed into cultural symbols endowed with valuable forms and merged into the spiritual river of the Chinese nation. The Chinese spirit permeated between the lines of Mao Zedong's poems is gripping and inspiring.

　　Deep patriotic feelings

Looking at Mao Zedong's life, everything he did was for the motherland and people he deeply loved. The most powerful spiritual force supporting him is the deep patriotism accumulated in his chest. Mao Zedong's poems highlight the national spirit with patriotism as the core in the cultural orientation, which is a true portrayal of the great course of the Chinese nation in safeguarding dignity, pursuing independence, seeking liberation and seeking happiness.

Mao Zedong's poems inherit the excellent tradition of patriotic literary works in Chinese history, and endow them with the spiritual connotation of the times. In Mao Zedong's poems chanting the rivers and mountains of the motherland, this patriotic sentiment is both direct and vivid. "People who have traveled all over Qingshan are not old" and "I want to be a Jianghai guest". He is both Leshan and Happy Water. The mountains described by Mao Zedong are full of manners and magnificent. Huichang Mountain "connects directly to Dongming", Kunlun Mountain "is born out of the sky", Lushan Mountain "flies across the river", and Jinggang Mountain "everywhere, singing and dancing, and even gurgling water". Mao Zedong's water is magical and changeable. He was intoxicated by the purity and vitality of "the river is clear, the hundred boats compete for the flow", and was shocked by the quietness and solemnity of "the river goes up and down, suddenly surging. He admired the natural elegance of "the wind blows the oasis and the rain comes up the mountain from the green fields", praised the vast smoke of "the nine schools of clouds and the nine schools of yellow cranes, and the three Wu clouds of white smoke under the waves", and yearned for "the waves of Dongting are surging with snow in the sky, and the poems of Long Island people are singing and moving". "There are so many beautiful rivers and mountains, attracting countless heroes to bend their waists." The magnificent poem makes people respect the great motherland and feel proud that they are Chinese.

　a deep sense of worry

The Chinese nation has experienced many vicissitudes of life, and since ancient times there has been an immortal spirit of "born in sorrow and died in peace and happiness. After modern times, the invasion of Western powers, feudal rule corruption, the Chinese nation suffered unprecedented suffering. "On May 7, the Republic of China was disgraced." "There were islands in the East China Sea and enmity in the North Mountain." "The landlords oppressed heavily." "The city was full of blood." "The sky in Chixian County was a long night of difficulty. The people were dancing for a hundred years. The people were not reunited 0.5 billion". Mao Zedong always worried about the future of the nation and the fate of the people, and the sense of hardship is the inexhaustible driving force of Mao Zedong's spirit of struggle.

The young Mao Zedong read the book "The Destiny of China", which began with the sentence "Alas, China is going to die!" It made him realize that every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the country. In the face of the Western powers' attempts to carve up China, Mao Zedong was "I am burning with depression, singing songs and leaning on the mountains". In 1915, his classmate Yi Changtao died of illness. Mao Zedong wrote an elegiac couplet for him: "Hu Lu repeated many times, thousands of miles of Longshan, filthy treatment, only made me come to He Jishi; On the theory of life and death, there will be a battle in a hundred years, and strange flowers will flourish at the beginning. It is not yet time for you to go." By mourning his death, Mao Zedong strongly expressed a warm-blooded man's concern for the country and the people. In 1925, Mao Zedong, in the "independent cold autumn", was in the vibrant mountains and rivers, and then looked back at the warlordism, the crisis, and the difficulties of the people's livelihood, and the sense of hardship prompted him to ask from the bottom of his heart a deafening question: "Who is in charge of the ups and downs of the vast land?" It revealed his heroic mission and grand ambition to link the pursuit of life with the destiny of the country, the nation and mankind. In the spring of 1927, the land of China was full of white terror. Mao Zedong chanted the desolate and gloomy "Bodhisattva Barbarian · Yellow Crane Tower": "The vast expanse of nine factions flows through China, the heavy line runs through the north and south, the misty rain is wild, and the turtles and snakes lock the river." The depressing tone expresses the desolate mood of "I don't know what to do for a while.

In the summer of 1934, the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaign failed seriously. At a critical juncture concerning the future and destiny of the Red Army and the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong wrote "Qingpingle Huichang", expressing his inner depression and anxiety. As he later explained in the poem "People who have traveled all over the Qingshan Mountains are not old": "In 1934, the situation was critical, and I was preparing for the Long March, and I was depressed." In February 1935, "Remembering Qin E Loushan Pass" was Mao Zedong's first work on the Long March. The Zunyi Conference reversed Mao Zedong's personal life situation, but this work seemed extremely desolate and dignified, because he knew that "the long march, thousands of twists and turns, how many times less than the difficulties, the mood is depressed".

　　persistent revolutionary spirit

The deep patriotism and deep sense of hardship inspired Mao Zedong's high-spirited ambition to serve the country. In the article "The Great Union of the People" in the "Xiangjiang Review" in July 1919, Mao Zedong believed that in modern times, "the union of the powerful, the aristocracy, and the capitalists has reached the extreme." To the extreme, the society is also dark to the extreme ". In the face of the social reality of "the long night is difficult to see the sky in Chixian County, the magic and monster dance for a hundred years, and the people's 0.5 billion are not reunited", he actively participated in the Chinese revolution and was determined to liberate China from the enslavement of imperialism and feudalism. In April 1918, when the Xinmin Society was founded, its purpose was to "innovate academics, sharpen character, and improve people's hearts and customs". At the beginning of 1921, Mao Zedong turned it into "transforming China and the world", which not only became the purpose of Xinmin society, but also became Mao Zedong's lifelong pursuit.

"In order to have more ambition to sacrifice, dare to teach the sun and moon to change the new sky". In order to realize the ambition of transforming China and the world, Mao Zedong pursued the truth all his life and explored the way to save the country and the people. He constantly from a "why revenge? In my students!" The warm-blooded young people who "pointed out the country, inspired the words, and became the proletarian revolutionaries who" aroused millions of workers and peasants "," thunderbolt a riot "," swept the army like a roll "and" turned upside down and generous. In the revolutionary practice of creating and building a new China, Mao Zedong achieved great achievements for thousands of years, fundamentally changed the future and destiny of the Chinese nation, and thus changed the pattern of the world. This great practice also gave birth to Mao Zedong's magnificent epic.

　　Broad world mind

"The Book of Rites Confucius Living in Leisure" says: "The sky is selfless, the earth is selfless, and the sun and the moon are selfless." "The world is for the public" is one of the important contents of the Chinese national spirit. Mao Zedong had lofty aspirations, had the world in mind, and had the extraordinary courage to plan, create and control the overall situation. Mao Zedong's poems always give people the impression of being manoeuvring and magnificent. Whether it is writing about natural landscapes, animal gestures, or social practices, they fully demonstrate Mao Zedong's grandeur and masculinity. In "Qinyuan Spring Snow", thousands of miles of ice, thousands of miles of snow, inside and outside the Great Wall, up and down the river, a few words, you can have a panoramic view of the vast and beautiful rivers and mountains; Qin Emperor Hanwu, Tang Zong Song Zu, Genghis Khan, a few characters, just talk about the complicated Chinese history.

Mao Zedong never indulged in purely personal love and hatred to seek creative inspiration, but always looked at and watched everything as a reformer of the old world and creator of the new world. Many of Mao Zedong's poems contain the word "I", such as "when spring comes, I will not speak first", "I will go back to the cliff king" and "I am my bosom friend and you". Here "I" means himself. But in many verses, such as "now I call Kunlun", "only I, General Peng", "I lose pride and Yang Jun lose willow", "I" is not only the author himself, "I" is not only an individual, but also a group. In the poems of "now stride forward from the beginning", "the Red Army is not afraid of the difficulty of the expedition", "if you don't reach the Great Wall, you are not a hero", and "0.6 billion the whole of China", the "ego" has been integrated into the "big self" of the revolutionary torrent. The Chinese poetic tradition of poetry and ambition was sublimated by Mao Zedong into a new realm of ego and big ego, me and no ego.

In "Niannu Jiao Kunlun", Mao Zedong relied on heaven to draw a sword to split the Kunlun Mountains into three sections. Originally, it was "a piece of Europe, a piece of beauty, and a piece of China". Later Mao Zedong said: "Change the sentence: once China is intercepted, it is changed to return the east country. It is wrong to forget the Japanese. In this way, Britain, the United States and Japan are all involved." "Peaceful world, global with this cool and hot." Mao Zedong was concerned not only with the fate of the Chinese people, but also with the future of all mankind. He developed the patriotism of the Chinese nation to a new stage, soaked the revolutionary spirit with a profound national heritage, and filled the national spirit with broad world feelings.

　　positive and optimistic attitude

The overall characteristic of the Chinese revolution is that the enemy is strong and we are weak. In the practice of arduous struggle, Mao Zedong was never pessimistic or discouraged. In "A single spark can start a prairie fire", he described the revolutionary victory that was bound to come in this way: "It is a ship standing on the coast and looking into the sea, and the tip of the mast can already be seen. It is a round of rising sun standing on the top of a mountain and looking at the east from afar. It is a baby who is about to mature in her mother's womb." This is how heroic! What optimism! "Confident in life for two hundred years, you will be hit by water for three thousand miles" is a remnant of a poem written by Mao Zedong when he was young. He later mentioned this poem many times to express his optimism and firmness.

"What is the matter with the husband? He wants to see the universe as rice." "The five ridges are winding and fine waves, and Wumeng is majestic and walking mud pills." "A few flies hit a wall in the small world." In the face of hardships, Mao Zedong despised all things and looked at the world. "The enemy is besieged by thousands of heavy forces, and I stand firm." "Looking at the world from the ocean with cold eyes, hot wind and rain sprinkling the river and sky." "Looking at the pine in the twilight, the chaotic clouds are still calm." In the face of various challenges, Mao Zedong was calm, unhurried, and calm. "Go straight to Xiaoxiang", "Go straight down to Longyan and go to Hangzhou", "Go straight to the foot of Wuyi Mountain", "You are not a hero until you reach the Great Wall", "Soldiers and civilians are united as one person, let's see who can be the enemy in the world?" The optimistic attitude and the belief in victory inspired infinite strength, which made Mao Zedong firm, persistent and courageous. Mao Zedong's self-confidence is by no means blindly optimistic, but stems from his deep grasp and positive response to the historical trend, from his in-depth analysis and accurate judgment of social contradictions, from his high attention to and resolute maintenance of the interests of the people, and from his firm belief and unremitting pursuit of lofty ideals. His sentence "when dark clouds appear in the sky, we point out that this is only a temporary phenomenon, the darkness is about to pass, and the dawn is ahead", which still deeply inspires us.

When Mao Zedong took the transformation of China and the world as his life goal, reform and innovation became the main theme of his life. Mao Zedong's historical achievement lies in his leadership of the party and the people to carry out the new democratic revolution, the socialist revolution and the great cause of construction, which has brought about unprecedented profound changes in Chinese society. Mao Zedong's poetry is a magnificent epic of this great historical process, and Mao Zedong's poetry itself is a direct product of reform and innovation.

Mao Zedong's poetry reviews history with new views on history, discusses people with new insights on characters, writes with new meanings on objects and images, and notes with new perspectives on events. It is a wonderful work of art that perfectly combines traditional Chinese cultural forms with modern life content.

August 20, 2017 Source: Learning Times