Artistic conception refers to the imaginary world formed by the combination of the poet's subjective feelings and the objective physical environment, which is enough to immerse readers in it. However, the so-called blending of subjective feelings and objective physical environment cannot be simply understood as the blending of scenes or adding artistic conception. There is nothing wrong with these four words, probably because they are used too much, giving people a superficial feeling. What I mean by "subjective feelings" is not only "feelings", but also includes many factors such as thoughts, feelings, interests, personality and so on. So sometimes I just use the word "emotion". My so-called "physical environment" is not equal to "scenery", and "scenery" is just a kind of "physical environment", which is common sense and needs no elaboration. As for the addition of artistic conception, it is very superficial. No dictionary will interpret "blending" as "addition". The "artistic conception" produced by the blending of meaning and environment is a new life. Without understanding this, it is difficult to discuss other issues about artistic conception.
There is also a question about the relationship between environment and image. Liu Yuxi's so-called "environment is born outside the image" is often quoted and played. However, as long as we start from the reality of China's classical poetry (instead of making a conceptual deduction) and contact our psychological activities to appreciate poetry, it is not difficult to find that the relationship between context and image is not so simple, and the expression of Liu Yuxi's sentence may not conform to his original intention. If we discuss the relationship between environment and image, we must first admit that the environment is born of image, and there is no environment without image. Although Liu Yuxi said that "the environment is born outside the image", he did not deny this. After reading the full text of "The Collection of Eastern History and Wuling", there is a poem praising Dong Wei: "The heart is a furnace, the pen is charcoal, and it is the original, group carving, arguing for mistakes, and running away one by one." It can be seen that Liu Yuxi also attaches great importance to the intake and processing of elephants.
However, being born in the image only says one aspect of the problem, and another aspect is that the environment is outside the image. The environment in which images are produced is not the sum of images, but a new quality. Artistic conception transcends the specific image and the specific time and space, and it has greater freedom and imagination. Arriving from an elephant is like flying from the ground to the sky. People stand on the ground, surrounded and congested by things around them, and see some specific scenery. Once you soar in the vast sky, you can see a kind of weather outside the specific scenery. Du Fu climbed the high Ci 'en Temple Tower and said, "If you look down and get angry, how can you tell the state of an emperor?" Borrowing these two poems can illustrate the situation that entry transcends images. Without the earth, there is no starting point for soaring, but it is impossible to enter the artistic conception without flying off the ground. People who are good at reading and appreciating poetry have similar experiences. When reading poetry into the artistic conception, their hearts seem to have wings and fly freely in a boundless world beyond time and space.
The so-called situation is outside the image, which does not mean that the formation of artistic conception must rely on the metaphor, symbol and hint of the image. Indeed, the images mentioned by the imagists in Britain and America mostly refer to those artistic images with metaphors, symbols and hints, and the pine, chrysanthemum, vanilla and beauty in China's classical poems are similar. But China's understanding of images is not limited to this. Images with metaphors, symbols and hints are rare. Anyone familiar with China's poems knows that the formation of artistic conception does not necessarily depend on metaphor, symbol or hint. For example: "How wide the world is, how close the trees are to heaven, and how close the moon is to the water! ""The desert is lonely and straight, and the long river sets the yen. " "Lonely sails sail in the blue sky, and only the Yangtze River flows in the sky." "Until dusk, when the snow collapses our tent, our frozen red flag can't fly in the wind." "How magnificent Mount Tai is! The endless green stretches across Qi and Lu, and the terrain is very high. ""Leaves fall like the spray of a waterfall, while I watch the long river roll forward. " "The building boat snows in Guazhou at night, and the iron horse is in the autumn wind." These most artistic poems are not composed of metaphors, symbols and hints. It is always inappropriate to apply the images told by the British and American Imagism to the artistic conception of China's traditional poems.
In a word, the comprehensive and accurate expression of the relationship between environment and image should be: the environment is born from the image and transcends it. Image is the material to form artistic conception, and artistic conception is the sublimation after the combination of images. Image is like a tiny water drop, while artistic conception is a cloud floating in the sky. Clouds are made up of water droplets, but once the water droplets condense into clouds, there are all kinds of clouds. That erratic, unpredictable, colorful and changeable cloud is just like the artistic conception of poetry. I'm afraid this is an experience that everyone who is good at reading poetry and can talk with it will have.
(selected from "essays on academic culture?" Poetics-meaning and context, this article has been deleted)