In the process of conceiving poetry, the author needs to put unspeakable emotional implications on tangible things, make abstract things concrete and visualized, and make them an image or a group of images for readers to understand. It is difficult for people to get aesthetic satisfaction from poems without images; It is difficult for readers to gain a deep understanding of poems with images and unintentional images. Poetry is inseparable from images, and it is difficult to be a poem without images. Image is the basic element of poetry content. If you want to create poetry, you have to understand images and pay attention to the application of images in poetry.
First, the significance of poetic imagery
The so-called poetic image is the artistic unity of the poet's inner feelings and the external image of life, and it is a touching and concrete image created by the poet after the fusion of care and image. In poetry creation, image is a poetic, high-spirited and introspective ideological form created by the poet in a specific situation. It is the aesthetic agreement between the poet's aesthetic feeling and concrete appearance, and it is an indispensable intermediate link for the poet to transform real life into artistic image.
As a poetic noun, image is not difficult to understand and belongs to a compound noun. Meaning refers to the artistic expression of the poet's subjective consciousness and emotion in poetry. It is the poet's rational sublimation of realistic aesthetic feeling and the direction and forerunner of poetry creation. The poet's "meaning" cannot be directly expressed, but must be closely related to and integrated with the perceptual content of poetry. Image is an object image, that is, an external objective thing as a poetic expression. For a poet, "image" is the object of his expression and the objective counterpart of his "meaning" as a "home". The combination of images is the combination of subjective feelings and observable images, and it is the product of "God swims with things" and "God communicates with images". For example, there is an oak tree in the yard. Someone pointed to it and said, "This is an oak tree." The oak tree here is just an objective object, not an "image". However, if the poet melts his feelings into the oak tree and moves it into the poem as a symbol, the oak tree is the "image" created by the poet. The "Oak Tree" in the poem "Oak Tree" written by Xichuan is an image created by the poet: "They tore everything down/they left this oak tree/they left this oak tree flourishing/they left moonlight and dust on our doors, and our windows were torn down/an old man sobbed/this oak tree left it in his memory/this oak tree left it in his memory/morning light. They left the oak tree/the moonlight soaked the branches and buried it in the morning/the memory burned. We turned white. We cried and felt sorry for the oak tree. Should we rebuild the house/They tore everything down/The oak tree is a new starting point for the world. " The poet expresses homesickness through the oak tree, which is intended to express the sadness of losing a beautiful spiritual home. Here is the meaning of "oak tree", which makes "oak tree" a poet's "oak tree". Therefore, "oak tree" becomes the image in the poem. As Baudelaire said: "At first you put your passion, desire or melancholy on a tree, and its * * * and swaying become yours, so you are a tree." No matter whether the poet writes about trees, flowers, grass or all other objects, he does not express the objects alone, but expresses his images in a harmonious way. As Hegel said: "Lyric poets regard the most substantial and essential things as their own things, and express them as their passion, mood and feelings, and as the products of these psychological activities." The "product of psychological activities" created by poets according to physical images is "images".
Second, the role of image
Image plays a bridge role in two aspects in poetry. On the one hand, it is an indispensable bridge for poets to "swim between gods and things" and "connect gods and images". Images fix the intangible (abstract) spiritual interest in a tangible (concrete) way, and also make ruthless images smart, because they absorb the poet's spiritual interest. "The tangible hair is invisible, and the invisible king is tangible." Without the creation of images, the poet's conception cannot be embodied as poetry; The image of life cannot be poetic.
On the other hand, image is a bridge to communicate feelings and understanding between poets and readers. Just as a poet must pass through the bridge of "image" in order to put his inner meaning into the poetic image for creation, so readers must also pass through the bridge of "image" in order to discover the inner meaning of the poet from the poetic image in appreciation. As Yu Guangzhong pointed out: "The poet's inner meaning appeals to the external image, and readers try to restore the poet's original inner meaning according to this external image." Reading is a kind of "re-creation", which may not be able to "restore the original inner meaning of poetry". But without the "image" provided by the author, it is difficult for readers to "restore" (or partially "restore") the author's poems, let alone "re-create". Readers can look at the "inner meaning" of a work according to their own life experiences, imagination, aesthetic standards and cognitive level, and "different people have different opinions." However, no matter what you see is benevolence or wisdom, if you leave the "image" expressed by the poet in his works, readers will never see benevolence and wisdom. Poets always express their thoughts through images as the basic elements of poetry, and convey appreciation-oriented information to readers. As for the reader's tacit understanding of the work, the proper understanding or extended understanding is based on the images in the poem. Based on this understanding, Xie believes: "Creation is the poet's reading of aesthetic objects, thus constructing aesthetic images, while reading is the creation under the guidance of images, thus discovering the poet's thoughts and feelings."
Third, lack of image.
Image is the basic element of poetry, and it is also an important form of artistic characteristics and beauty of poetry. Poems without images, that is, poems with images or unintentional images, do not meet the requirements of poetic characteristics and beauty.
Poems without images, such as "Freedom and Love! I fell in love with it. I would rather sacrifice my life for love; I would rather sacrifice love for freedom. " (petofi's Freedom and Love) "If life deceives you, don't be depressed or indignant! Restrain yourself temporarily when you are unhappy, believe it, and a happy day will come. Our hearts look forward to the future, and today is always sad: everything is temporary and fleeting, and the lost will become lovely. " (Pushkin "If Life Deceives You") "Die a heroic death and live a miserable life. Afraid of death, how to die again! Birth, illness and death are the most embarrassing things. Farewell, worry; It doesn't matter if you die, why not have a touching farewell! " (Zhou Enlai's "Life and Death Parting") The significance of these poems is very obvious and profound. They can spread widely, not because of the beauty of poems, but because they express some beliefs and philosophies that people agree with. They give people an enlightenment of ideological understanding and an education of outlook on life, rather than the enjoyment of poetic beauty. If these poems have no clauses, they can be read as essays or quotations.
Poems are unintentional, such as Bai Pu's "Shaqiu in Jing Tian" in the Yuan Dynasty: "The sunset in the lonely village, the old tree in the west of Western jackdaw smokes, and the shadow flies a little. Green mountains and green waters, white grass, red leaves and yellow flowers. " This Sanqu deliberately depicts the scenery. Although the Qiu Jingtu it depicts vividly shows the characteristics of autumn scenery, it lacks the poet's emotional implication. Compared with Ma Zhiyuan's Qiu Si, it is far from artistic conception. Ma Zhiyuan's Qiu Si is still popular today, while Bai Pu's Autumn is little known. Another example is Zhu Ziqing's "Drizzle": "The drizzle in the east wind blows my face, and the stars are the fluff on my face." This poem writes that the drizzle of spring breeze caresses the face like soft fluff. It can't be said that there is no feeling in the poem, and this feeling is delicate, but writing only the direct feeling of the spring rain touching the skin will almost lose poetry. Compare Du Fu's "Good rain knows the season", when spring happens. Sneaking into the night with the wind, moistening things silently "("Delighting in Rain on a Spring Night "), naturally we can see the aesthetic difference between poems with unintentional images and poems with mixed images.
The most fundamental feature of poetry is lyricism, and the main way of thinking of poets is emotional thinking of images. Of course, the poet's thinking does not exclude rational thinking. Since writing poetry requires conception, it cannot but include necessary rational thinking. However, it must be noted that the affection of poetry is integrated into the "psychological image" which is transformed from a considerable object image to a subjective image, and the expression of intention should be contained in the image rather than independent of it. Otherwise, poetry will become a tool of reasoning or representation, rather than what Ai Qing said: "A poem is a sculpture with a flexible mind". Poetry without image can't be a sculpture with flexible mind, it can only be a direct declaration of mind, or a sculpture without mind. Therefore, we believe that poetry cannot be without images.