我用残损的手掌

Meaning

Written in a Hong Kong prison cell in July 1942, the poem takes one physical act — a wounded hand, the hand of a man who was tortured, moving across a map of China — and makes it the whole poem. Where the hand touches, the country answers: a corner is ash, another is blood and mud, and one stretch of water is recognized, with a catch in the throat, as the speaker's hometown. The meaning is that a damaged body still loves the damaged land, and that the same ground holds both the ruined present and the remembered spring. The tenderness of the ending is not a contradiction of the suffering; it is the reason the suffering matters.

我用残损的手掌，摸索这广大的土地：这一角已经变成灰烬，那一角只是血和泥；这一片湖该是我的家乡，春天，堤上繁花如锦障，嫩柳枝折断有奇异的芬芳。

Appreciation

[Plain Paraphrase] The opening sentence is a single long metaphor. Instead of saying 'I think of my country', the poet puts a hand on the map and lets the hand travel: one corner, then another, then a lake. What the hand finds is the poem: ash, blood and mud, and then a sudden remembered spring. [Structure] The movement is exactly the movement of a hand. It starts at the whole ('this vast land') and breaks into pieces ('this corner', 'that corner', 'this stretch of lake'); each piece is a separate touch, separated from the last by a semicolon, which is why that mark matters more than any rhyme. The poem stops mid-gesture, at the scent of a broken willow twig, rather than concluding. [Imagery] The poem's first sense is touch, not sight — 'grope' sets the register, and every image that follows is something a hand would feel: ash is dry, mud is wet and heavy, a broken twig gives off scent. The colour scheme has two poles, grey and dark against bright: ash, blood, mud against 'flowers like brocade screens'. That contrast is the poem's whole argument. The word 'should' in 'this stretch of lake should be my home' is the emotional centre; it is a hedge, and through the hedge the reader hears the split between what memory holds and what the map now shows.

【白话串讲】 戴望舒写《我用残损的手掌》：“我用残损的手掌，摸索这广大的土地”——“这一角已变成灰烬，那一角只是血和泥”——“这一片湖该是我的家乡”——“只有那辽远的一角依然完整”——他写抗战中的中国。 【意象与手法】 以「手掌摸索地图」为统摄全诗的隐喻，触觉意象贯穿始终；沦陷区之痛与家乡之美强烈对照；语言沉痛而温润，象征与写实交织 【情感与主旨】 戴望舒于狱中写祖国之痛与家乡之美，表达对沦陷土地的悲悯、对侵略者的控诉，以及残损之躯仍深爱这片土地的赤子深情 【名句点睛】 常考「我用残损的手掌，摸索这广大的土地」的象征手法——残损的手掌既是狱中受刑的身体，也是饱受摧残而不屈的民族精神的化身

Allusions

The poem uses no classical allusion, but it hangs on older traditions. The gesture of a hand on the land continues the Chinese dwelling-place sentiment that runs from the 'Odes' to Qu Yuan; the difference is that Dai Wangshu makes the hand a blind one — it 'gropes' rather than looks, which turns a romantic homecoming into a difficult version of it. The ruined corner answers the line of national-ruin poems by Lu You and Wen Tianxia, 'the remnant people's tears are spent in the dust of the Hu', and the ash is the modern form of 'the country broken like a wind-blown willow fluff'. The lake, the bank, the flowering willow descend from the whole southern-towns tradition of Jiangnan memory — the lines of Wei Zhuang about spring water greener than heaven. And the groping is a blind man's act, quietly in line with the Qu Yuan formula 'the road is long and hard, and I will seek above and below'. What the poem does is translate these inherited images into a modern, hurt body.

此诗不用典故，而以意象与象征承载文化意蕴，其深层可上溯中国文学的土地书写传统。其一是「手掌抚摸土地」的意象：承中国「乡土」情结——从《诗经》「昔我往矣，杨柳依依」的故园之思，到屈原「长太息以掩涕兮，哀民生之多艰」的忧国之情，戴望舒以手掌代目、代足，「摸索」而非「遥望」，把对祖国的爱化为最直接的身体接触，正合中国人「故土如母」的文化心理；其二是「这一角已变成灰烬」的沦陷书写：承南宋陆游「遗民泪尽胡尘里」、文天祥「山河破碎风飘絮」的国破之痛，灰烬与血泥正是「破碎山河」的现代转译；其三是「这一片湖该是我的家乡」：湖、堤、繁花、嫩柳构成江南的典型意象，暗承韦庄「春水碧于天，画船听雨眠」的江南记忆与历代游子望乡的母题，「该是」二字以虚拟语气写记忆与现实的断裂，更见沉痛；其四是「摸索」的盲人式姿态：暗喻国难中摸索前路的民族处境，与《楚辞》「路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索」的求索精神一脉相通。全诗以现代诗艺写古老的情感母题，故能于抗战诗中别具深厚。

Commentary

'With My Wounded Palm' is a classic of the war poetry of resistance and the turning point of Dai Wangshu's career. Critics have long read the poem as the moment when the 'rain-lane' poet of private reverie became a poet of national mourning; it is placed alongside Ai Qing's 'I Love This Land' and Tian Jian's 'To the Fighters' as one of the peaks of the period. The strength of the image is widely noted: the wound of the body is the wound of the nation, and the groping hand is the love of a son who cannot see. After 1942 the poem travelled through every anthology and textbook, and 'the wounded palm' became one of the most quoted images of the literature of the war. Its tone — anguish without despair — is what has kept it readable: it does not plead, and it does not boast; it only keeps touching until it finds something still sweet.

《我用残损的手掌》是抗战诗歌的经典之作，也是戴望舒诗歌生涯的转折点与巅峰。文学史上，戴望舒以《雨巷》成名，诗风唯美忧郁；此诗标志着他由个人内心的低吟转向民族苦难的歌唱，其语言仍保有象征主义的精致，而情感已注入时代的血泪——研究者普遍认为此诗是「雨巷诗人」蜕变为「土地诗人」的关键文本，与艾青《我爱这土地》、田间《给战斗者》共同构成抗战诗歌的三大高峰。思想上，「残损的手掌」这一意象具有强大的象征能量：身体之残即民族之伤，手掌之摸索即赤子之爱，戴望舒以个体的伤残写出了整个民族的受难与不屈，被论者称为「以身体书写民族」的典范。传播上，此诗自1942年问世后广为传诵，入选多种教材与选本，「残损的手掌」成为抗日战争文学中最著名的意象之一；1999年中央电视台《诗歌散文》节目曾配乐朗诵，影响及于当代。此诗以沉痛而不绝望的基调，证明诗歌在最黑暗的年代依然保有照亮人心的力量。

Prosody

Line by line

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