Wen Yiduo's "writing poetry is a bit like Li He's sculpture, which is more rational than emotional control." Xu Zhimo "is not as precise as Wen, but he is not as calm as he is." He is jumping, spilling the water of life that has not slept all night. "(Zhu Ziqing, new literature department? Introduction to poetry)
"Zhi Mo Shi" and "Dead Water" are "different in style, one is light and the other is dignified." (Bian "Rereading Xu Zhimo's Poems")
The different styles of Wen Yiduo's and Xu Zhimo's poems are rooted in their unique aesthetic character and concept. In Xu Zhimo's love for "moving", he said: "It is moving, no matter what its nature is, it is my interest and my agility. If it is moving, it will speed up my breathing and add color to my life. " (Xu Zhimo's Self-analysis) This "dynamic" character forms the turbulent mood and flowing tone of Xu Zhimo's poems. He once used "runaway wild horses" and "the proliferation of irrelevant fences" to talk about his emotional appeal. Indeed, when we read Xu Zhimo's poems, we feel that the rushing thoughts are touching our heartstrings, and we feel that the rhythm of jumping is beating our hearing.
Wen Yiduo praised China's traditional aesthetic consciousness-"uniformity". Wen Yiduo believes that "one of the greatest characteristics of China art is uniformity, which is particularly remarkable in architecture and poetry." When discussing and practicing the new metrical style, we should pay attention to absorbing nutrition from metrical style and lyrics, so that the arrangement of lines runs through the traditional aesthetic consciousness of uniformity, and form a new poetic style to appeal to people's visual "architectural beauty" in developing the traditional concept of "uniform beauty".
The external musical beauty of Xu Zhimo's new metrical poems, as he himself said, is mainly about the "uniformity and flow of syllables" in the poems. The unity of syllables corresponds to the flow of syllables. Xu Zhimo's main contribution is to realize the harmony and unity of the two, and to create a large number of well-known new metrical poems.
The external musical beauty of Wen Yiduo's new metrical poems is neat and harmonious. He believes that the architectural beauty and musical beauty of new poetry are closely related and interdependent. On the one hand, "without format, there will be no symmetry of boundaries, and there will be no unity of sentences." "Symmetry of sections and uniformity of sentences" affects the rhythm of new metrical poetry, which is in line with the artistic law of poetry. As Shelley said, "the poet's language always involves some consistency and harmonious reproduction of sound, otherwise, poetry cannot be called poetry." (Shelley's Poetry Debate)
It can be seen that Wen Yiduo emphasized the neat rhythm. He arranged poems regularly by roughly equal scale, and then arranged stanzas and poems by roughly equal scale, which formed the neat and harmonious rhythm beauty of new metrical poems. Xu Zhimo pays attention to the flowing melody, and he arranges his poems regularly, thus forming the uniform flowing melody beauty of the whole section or the whole new metrical poem.
In the following content, the author will try to analyze how Wen Yiduo and Xu Zhimo, two poets, opened up the development path of China's new metrical poems from different aspects through different rhythm systems-the former arranged the rhythm according to the rules of sound groups, while the latter organized the rhythm according to the rules of lines.
Poetry mainly relies on the rhythm and melody of sound to form artistic beauty. "Rhythm is the main force of poetry, so we should pay attention to energy." (《lt； What is the basis of the rhythm of Selected Poems of Mayakovski? Wen Yiduo believes that the rhythm of China's poetry is based on "scale". "Foot" was originally the term of rhythm component in Greek poetry. Greek poetry combines a long sound and one or two short sounds into a rhythmic unit, which is called a foot. English poetry theorists combine light and heavy sounds into rhythmic units, also known as steps. Wen Yiduo called the rhythm unit of new poetry "scale" (that is, step). Obviously, he borrowed from western poetic methods, but he endowed China's poetry with brand-new flesh and blood according to its characteristics.
Xu Zhimo emphasized the function of poetic lines. "Dividing a poem into several lines is often to arrange the rhythm correctly." (Is Mayakovski's New Poetry Europeanized? ") There will be some natural pauses in the process of poetry reading. As far as a line of poetry is concerned, this pause cannot form a unified law, but two or more pauses are arranged symmetrically, and their intra-line pauses (rhythms) will naturally present a law in the comparison between lines. Xu Zhimo's new poetic meter also draws lessons from the western poetic style, reproduces the effect of symmetrical overlap on the beauty of syllables, and creates a Chinese poetic system.
Regarding the metrical foot (or ruler), Xu Zhimo did not ignore or reproduce it in his poetry creation, but did not systematically expound it in theory like Wen Yiduo, and deliberately pursued it in practice. It should be said that there are many examples in Xu Zhimo's poems that attach importance to the arrangement of metrical steps, such as Tiny:
We look at the ancient mountains,
They did not say a word.
Sunlight depicts my smallness,
The grass is at my feet.
From Xu Zhimo's use of cadence to enrich the rhythm of poetry creation, we can see that in a sense, Xu Zhimo is also a practitioner of Wen Yiduo's new metrical poetry theory.
As for Wen Yiduo, he not only actively advocated in theory, but also worked hard to realize his own theory in practice and successfully created a model work, such as Still Water.
Comprehensive analysis of his creation, there are roughly four situations:
First, the number of syllables and words in each sentence is exactly the same. For example, the poems in Sin are all three-syllable and nine-character, while the poems in Night Song are four-syllable and nine-character. A poem of four feet and ten words is dusk, and a poem of four feet and twelve words is like spring. Judging from Wen Yiduo's practice, the rhythm of nine poems and ten poems in four scales is the best.
Second, the number of tones in each sentence is different, but the number of words is the same. From the appearance, the sentences of this kind of poems are completely uniform, and each section is square, but the number of scales is uneven and the rhythm is not uniform.
Third, the sound level and the number of words are relatively uniform. In one case, the meter and number of words in each verse are relatively consistent, such as "Don't blame me", the first and fifth sentences are two meters and four words, and the second, third and fourth sentences are seven words and three meters. On the other hand, the verses in the four verses are even, such as the first and third lines, and the second and fourth lines of the end are even respectively.
Fourth, the number of scales and the number of words are only roughly the same. Although this kind of poem has no strict meter, it is different from free verse because of its close tone and word number and regular rhythm.
From the above analysis, we can see the characteristics of the isochronous pause rhythm of the sound group used by Wen Yiduo. It is not impossible for Wen Yiduo not to use its prosodic function in poetry creation, but it is not as free and changeable as Xu Zhimo.
Wen Yiduo said: "It is generally believed that the stanza is the largest unit of poetic meter." As for the arrangement of poetic lines, from his practice, it mainly embodies the characteristics of "sentence equality" He designed more than 20 architectural types for the architectural beauty of poetry, and its fundamental starting point was "clothes of the same genre". There are two main types:
One is that even stanzas and isosyllabic groups form rhythm, and the other is to achieve "symmetry of stanzas", but the rhythm in stanzas is not completely neat, while the rhythm of the whole poem is neat. The other is the combination of the first two forms.
Judging from the uniformity of Wen Yiduo's poetic lines, his creative practice is very consistent with his creative theory.
Xu Zhimo's use of lines of poetry is not only a reference to English poetry, but also original, which obviously shows rich diversity. Through the arrangement of lines, we can achieve the even and smooth melody beauty of poetry.
Xu Zhimo attached great importance to the effect of line symmetry on the beauty of syllables in the practice of constructing new poetic meter centered on "line", and used a lot of forms such as line symmetry, cross symmetry, node symmetry and head-to-tail symmetry.
Monotonous symmetry will destroy the aesthetic feeling of poetry. Xu Zhimo not only pays attention to the change of poetic lines, but also pays attention to the symmetry of poetic lines. There are many ways of this change, which can be roughly divided into two categories. One is regular and the other is irregular. Some verses in the poem are symmetrical, but others change at will. Changing lines are related to other lines in form and rhythm, and syllables are even flowing.
Xu Zhimo attaches importance to the symmetry and change of poetic lines, and its aesthetic significance lies in: on the one hand, it avoids monotony, thus causing uniform and flowing musical beauty; On the other hand, you can avoid the constraints of rules on content and express your thoughts and feelings more freely.
Xu Zhimo not only creates a uniform flowing musical aesthetic feeling with the symmetry and changes of lines, but also creates the melodic beauty of poetry with the continuous overlapping and repeated intervals of lines. Xu Zhimo did this because of the overlapping and repetition of lines, which is also conducive to the emotional expression and musical beauty of poetry. China's ancient poems have a tradition of overlapping sentences, such as The Book of Songs. In the English poetry style borrowed by Xu Zhimo, overlapping examples abound. It can be considered that the essence of overlapping sentences and complex sentences is the overlap and repetition of rhythm and melody, which can strengthen the sense of rhythm and circulation of poetry. From the static point of view, overlapping sentences and complex sentences are the same rhythm and tone, which can cause repetition and unity of rhythm. From the dynamic point of view, it appears at different levels of poetry development and can cause the flow of syllables. Xu Zhimo's creation shows that properly arranging the repetition and repetition of poetic lines is of great benefit to the "neat and flowing syllables" of new metrical poems.
Through the above comparison and analysis, we can clearly see that Wen Yiduo and Xu Zhimo have different styles in the exploration of new metrical poetry creation practice. In the final analysis, there are two different rhythm systems in their different styles: one is "intonation rhythm" and the other is "Italian rhythm".
The so-called pitch rhythm, to be more complete, should be called group isochronous pause rhythm. The most representative work is Wen Yiduo's Dead Water. This rhythm consists of three elements: first, the rhythm unit is a "sound group"; Second, the synchronization of rhythm units; Third, its rhythm composition is an isochronous "pause".
The so-called Italian rhythm, to be more complete, should be called interpretation of the rhythm of pause. Xu Zhimo is obviously an important poet who uses Eton's rhythm, and the elements of this rhythm also have three aspects: first, the rhythm unit is "interpretation"; Second, the principle of meaning group arrangement is "symmetry"; Third, "pause" regularly.
From the analysis of Xu Zhimo and Wen Yiduo's poetic rhythm system, it is not difficult to find that two writers belonging to the same school are trying to create different rhythmic systems of new metrical poems. From this point, we can see that: as the first new metrical poetry school in the history of modern literature in China, the writers of Xinyue School have different styles and characteristics in their creation; At the same time, we can see that they, as the first representative writers of the New Metric Poetry School, have made pioneering contributions and outstanding achievements for the development of the modern New Metric Poetry Movement in China.
Their contributions and achievements are indelible, but their pioneering exploration also has shortcomings.
Wen Yiduo's Metric Poetry, published in 1926, is recognized as the main representative work of his metrical poetics. People often pay more attention to the "three beauties" he put forward in his article-the beauty of music, painting and architecture, as well as the pitch rhythm of the two-character ruler and the three-character ruler. In fact, the most valuable thing in Wen Yiduo's poetry theory is the three differences he put forward when comparing the old metrical poems with the new metrical poems. These three points can be summed up in two sentences and eight words, that is, "different styles emerge one after another", which needs to be reflected by the natural tone rhythm that adapts to these requirements. Regrettably, Wen Yiduo took a road of sticking to the stylized scale rhythm in his creative practice.
Although Xu Zhimo is the leader of the "Crescent School" metrical poems, he does not stick to the rhythm of scales, but pursues what he calls the "neatness and flow" of syllables: "The length of lines and the decision of neatness or scribbling of words all depend on your understanding of syllable fluctuations" (Poetry Publishing Holiday), so it is natural and smooth to write, charming and moving. Obviously, his ideas are different from Wen Yiduo's. However, Xu Zhimo did not raise this issue to the height of the rhythm system.