Night Is

Dai WangshuMay 2017

3.7

Word count: 2.9K words
Chapters: 11

Summary

Night is a cool, warm drifting wind carrying the scent of youth and love. My head rests on your bare knees. You want to smile, while I want to sob. Tender is the strangling in your hair.

Editor's review

Dai Wangshu's "Night Is" is a typical short lyric of the modern school, layering soft images of night, wind, youth, and love while letting emotion swing between tenderness and sobbing. Lines such as "a cool, warm drifting wind" and "carrying the scent of youth and love" use synesthesia to blend smell and touch into the night, while embodied details like "my head rests on your bare knees" ground intimacy in something concrete rather than vague romance. The closing line, "Tender is the strangling in your hair," is steeply worded, setting tenderness beside suffocation—precisely the ambiguous technique Dai Wangshu mastered after coming under the influence of French Symbolism, in which sweetness and bitterness, warmth and cold, tangle within a single sentence. Short in length, it works well as an introductory sample for close reading of modern poetry, and also for slow reading at night or in solitude, to feel the 1930s pursuit of emotional precision in Chinese new poetry. In class, focus on the sensory shifts in imagery and the tension of the ending.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers interested in modernist poetry
Chinese teachers and students needing short poetry material
Solitary readers who enjoy quiet nighttime reading of poetry
Literature enthusiasts studying Dai Wangshu's early style and the language of new poetry

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer complete narratives and clear plots
Beginners impatient with ambiguous lyricism and symbolism
Readers expecting a long systematic poetics or author biography

Reading tips

Read through once to feel the overall mood, then circle sensory images line by line, noting shifts among touch, smell, and sight.
Savor the impact of the word "strangling" at the end and consider how it alters the tender tone before it.
Read alongside other short poems by Dai Wangshu to observe the continuity and variation of his symbolist technique.
Read aloud, attending to pauses and breath, to feel the rhythm of the short lines in sound.

版权信息
断指
古神祠前
我底记忆
路上的小语
林下的小语
夜是
独自的时候
秋天
对于天的怀乡病
印象

FAQ

Is this poem suitable for readers with no poetry background at all?

It can be read, but needs a little patience. It is only a few lines, with imagery centered on night and intimacy, so the barrier is not high; the ending is rather steeply worded, however, and may feel abrupt on first reading. Feel the overall mood first, then go back and ponder line by line—there is no need to grasp the symbolic meaning all at once.

How should "strangling in your hair" be understood?

This is typical symbolist rhetoric, setting "tenderness" beside "suffocation" to create a feeling of sweetness intertwined with danger. It need not be taken as a concrete event; it can be understood as that intoxicating yet unsettling power in intimate relationships—an ambiguous technique common in Dai Wangshu after he came under the influence of French Symbolism.

Do I need to know Dai Wangshu's biography to read this poem?

No biography is necessary first. The poem itself is short with concentrated imagery and can be entered directly. For deeper understanding, a brief acquaintance with his background—influenced by French Symbolism and skilled at writing emotion through sensory imagery—helps, but biographical details are not essential for this short poem.

Related on WeRead

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Dai Wangshu Author · China · 1905–1950

Dai Wangshu (1905–1950) was a Chinese symbolist poet of the modern school and a translator, born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. His signature poem "Rain Alley" earned him the title of "Rain Alley Poet"; his work is known for its hazy imagery and musicality and has had a lasting influence on modern Chinese poetry. He studied in France and Spain, and during the War of Resistance against Japan he engaged in anti-Japanese literary activities in Hong Kong before being arrested and imprisoned by the Japanese army, writing poems such as "Inscribed on the Prison Wall" and "I Use My Maimed Hand." His writings span modern poetry, essays, and translations of foreign literature, including a translation of Lorca's poetry. He died in Beijing in 1950 at the age of forty-five, leaving works such as Wangshu's Grass, My Memory, and Years of Disaster that are still read today.