Xu Zhimo opened the poetry collection and saw the first poem, and confirmed that this was Lin Zixuan's poetry collection.

"The night gave me black eyes, but I used them to find the light."

Although the poem is short, it is meaningful and widely circulated in the country.

Lu Xun once interpreted this poem, which is a generation of tenacious trekking forward in the dark, persistently pursuing the future destiny of the country.

Many young people in China regard this poem as their own pursuit, to break the dark world and let the light project in.

Even in London, England, Xu Zhimo has heard this poem, not to mention that he is no stranger to Lin Zixuan.

Not to mention the two years they spent roommate time at Columbia University in New York, it was in London, whenever domestic international students came to London and everyone talked about the current situation of domestic literature, Lin Zixuan was always a name that could not be bypassed.

There are a lot of rumors about Lin Zixuan.

Some admirers believe that he represents a direction of new literature, different from Lu Xun and Hu Shi, but has a different path, has his own path and style, and is worthy of the name of the "Three Masters of New Literature".

Some people despise him as a representative of the bourgeois reformists, a moth in the ranks of the new literature, a defender of the old school of literature in Shanghai, and a person who completely deceives the world and steals his name.

Whether it is admiration or contempt, it shows Lin Zixuan's influence in the domestic literary circle.

This was Xu Zhimo's previous view.

When he saw this collection of poems today, he suddenly found that Lin Zixuan's influence had broken through the country and become a world-renowned writer, and he also heard that Lin Zixuan was more influential in the United States.

It's just happened in two years, it's incredible.

What was Lin Zixuan like two years ago? No one knows better than Xu Zhimo.

At that time, Lin Zixuan was tired of studying economics, advocating American liberalism, playing around all day, and living a chaotic life of drinking and getting drunk today, just like those depraved international students.

However, since Lin Zixuan returned to China, everything has suddenly changed.

Perhaps, it changed when he left the United States, Xu Zhimo still remembers the meeting with Lin Zixuan in London, Lin Zixuan wrote a poem at Cambridge University, which is extremely beautiful.

Xu Zhimo sighed in his heart, he understood that the reason why he was able to receive this invitation was because of Lin Zixuan.

This inevitably made him a little disappointed.

Back then, he didn't look down on Lin Zixuan, but now he has to use Lin Zixuan's reputation to blend in the inner circle of the London literary world, which has to be said to be a kind of irony.

In fact, this is his self-indulgence.

The reason why Xu Zhimo received the invitation was also because he was a student at King's College, Cambridge University, and he had a certain reputation in British high society, otherwise he would not have received an invitation at all.

Most of the members of the Bloomsbury Group come from the Apostolic Society of Cambridge University, which is world-renowned.

Founded in 1820 by Morris, Tennyson and Haarlem, the Cambridge Apostolic Society is a secret society composed of 12 of the best members of Trinity College and King's College, Cambridge University, with members ranging from current undergraduates to former Cambridge students who have graduated.

The members of the apostles were selected very rigorously and were generally the most brilliant and intelligent of Cambridge students.

Its purpose is to pursue the truth wholeheartedly and unreservedly with a group of like-minded and close friends.

The group has a formal meeting every Saturday night and is actually a small "Royal Society".

"The most important event in my Cambridge life was being chosen as an apostle." Julian Bell, Virginia Woolf's nephew, wrote in 1930: "I really felt that I was sitting on the spire of Cambridge rationalism." ”

By the way, this guy named Julian Bell was an extremist who came to China in 1935 with the dream of changing the world and was hired as a professor of English literature at Wuhan University.

In the end, he failed to change China, but fell in love with a Chinese woman named Ling Shuhua.

Ling Shuhua was born in 1900 and came from a famous family.

Her literature teacher is called Gu Hongming, a master who really learns both Chinese and Western, and her painting teacher is Miao Jiahui, who is the painter used by the Empress Dowager Cixi.

Therefore, she has a high talent in literature and painting, and she has outstanding appearance.

When Julian Bell met Ling Shuhua, she was already married, and her husband Chen Yuan was also a social celebrity.

As for the result, don't talk about it, it's more embarrassing, anyway, it's those things between men and women.

That is, if you are not a student of Trinity College and King's College, you are not eligible to join this circle.

Xu Zhimo used to only wander around the periphery of this circle, but now he has finally entered the core.

He cleaned up his mood, talked with Thomas Eliot, and told Eliot about Lin Zixuan's deeds in China, mainly Lin Zixuan's literary achievements.

On this occasion, also as a Chinese, Xu Zhimo naturally wants to say good things for Lin Zixuan, and this kind of demeanor is still there.

But when he heard that Eliot's inspiration for writing "The Waste Land" was "Dead Water" written by Lin Zixuan, he couldn't help but be dumbfounded, and really wanted to tell the American living in Britain that the two poems were not connected at all.

"Dead Water" is a satire and indictment of the domestic political environment during the Beiyang government, with political metaphors.

"The Wasteland" expresses the spiritual disillusionment of Western civilization.

If there is one thing they have in common, it is that they are both symbolist poems.

Vaguely, Xu Zhimo seemed to have grasped something.

It turns out that the poetry of the Eastern and Western worlds can be connected, and it turns out that poetry can be written in this way, using the language of the East to describe the spiritual core of the West, or the spiritual core of the East being expressed in the language of the West.

Borrow from each other and learn from each other.

As a result, a poetic path slowly unfolded in front of Xu Zhimo.

Unbeknownst to Eliot, the Oriental had an epiphany about poetry, and he heard that Lin Zixuan had also written "Gone with the Wind" set in the American Civil War, and he was quite interested as an American.

He loved poetry, had little passion for fiction, and Gone with the Wind was not as popular in England as it was in the United States.

"What is the personality of this Mr. Lin?" Elliot asked curiously.

"He thinks more freely." Xu Zhimo replied.

Xu Zhimo still understands Lin Zixuan two years ago, he can't say that Lin Zixuan is a funist, he can only be vague.

In his communication with these British elites, he felt that these people admired Lin Zixuan's poetry collections, which was of course highly recommended by Eliot, but also because poetry is a universal language.

Lin Zixuan's "Generation" is a collection of poems by famous Chinese poets over the decades, each of which is a classic.

Such poems naturally resonate with these English poets.