On the Origin of Wen Yiduo's Theory of "New Three Beauties"

In the history of new poetry since the May 4th New Culture Movement, Mr. Wen Yiduo was the first person to put forward the concept of "new poetry meter". He once wrote an article about poetry, entitled "The Metric of Poetry", which elaborated the metrical of new poetry in detail, and put forward the three beauties that new poetry should have for the first time, namely, "the beauty of music, the beauty of painting and the beauty of architecture", which was later called the "new three beauties" of new poetry. As for why new poetry needs rules, he first said that "Fiona Fang can't be made without rules", and new poetry also needs some minimum rules. For the reason why these rules are needed, he made an analogy: writing poems is like playing games together. If everyone participates in the same game without the hidden rules of the game, then leave it to everyone to play casually. You play yours, so do I. Therefore, he put forward the three beauties that new poetry should follow, that is, the above-mentioned "new three beauties", and introduced and explained the specific connotation of this "new three beauties" in detail. (You can refer to Wen Yiduo's Metrics of Poetry to understand it, so I won't go into details here. )

After the birth of the "new three beauties" theory, its practitioners were mainly "Crescent School" poets headed by Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo and Wen Yiduo (because most of them gathered in a publication called Crescent School). There are many crescent poets, among which Liang Shiqiu, Zhu Xiang, Sun Dayu and later Bian are famous poetry theorists and translators. Others can't make detailed statistics for the time being, so I won't queue up in detail here.

The main purpose of my article is to explore the theoretical source of the "new three beauties" proposed by Mr. Wen Yiduo, so as to make a similar study with fans and listen to different criticisms.

As for the origin of Mr. Wen Yiduo's theory of "new three beauties", I think it must benefit from Yu Xiansheng's profound study and discussion of ancient poetry. Mr. Wen and the old poets of the "Crescent School" are very proficient in ancient poetry. When they were enlightened, new poetry had not yet been born or just sprouted, so the education they received in ancient poetry was definitely different from that of our contemporaries. They come from three or a hundred surnames, thousands of words, Li, Weng Dunyun and all kinds of Tang poetry and Song poetry. When they start writing new poems, it is impossible not to think of ancient poems. It is very natural and the easiest for them to draw nutrition from ancient poetry. You will know a thing or two about how many of them use rhymes. As far as their rhyme is concerned, they often use "horizontal rhyme" (old rhyme) to write new poems, and you will often taste the artistic conception of ancient poetry in their new poems. One of the most important reasons is that they absorbed many useful "primitive elements" in ancient poetry. I can understand by looking for Mr. Wen's "new three beauties" in ancient poetry.

Let me first talk about the "musical beauty" proposed by Mr. Menwen. About "musical beauty", it refers to the synthetic elements and rhythm of words between sentences in a poem. As we all know, our ancient poems don't rhyme. (Of course, the "Crescent School" has never given up rhyme. Some people say that Xu Zhimo's poems are unorganized, but he is superficial, which means that he has not found Mr. Xu's rules. So I won't say "rhyme". Let's talk about poetry and sentences.

This is a backwater of despair.

This sentence consists of the following words and elements-

This is/a ditch/despair/stagnant water

Spring breeze/can't afford to blow/half a ripple/ripple

Take apart the above sentences, and you will basically understand that a sentence or a poem is originally composed of some original words. If these words are properly collocated, it will produce a sentence that reads well, cadence and cadence. So there is a musical beauty in the middle of the sentence itself. This "musical beauty" hidden between sentences, coupled with the harmonious rhyme of poetry, becomes a wonderful beauty. Every sentence in Mr. Wen's Dead Water is full of nine words, and each sentence is composed of four tones (a sentence composed of four original words is called a four-tone level, and if it is composed of three original words, it is called a three-tone level, and so on. "Adjusting ruler" is also called "step", which refers to the word structure of the previous sentence)

Let's look at the "scale" in ancient poetry—

Yellow River/Yuan Shang/Baiyun Room

Sporadic/isolated cities/Mount Wan Ren

Johnny/Why/Angry Willow

Spring breeze/no crossing/Yumen Pass

(three-tone scale)

Look again-

Sunlight/mountain fatigue

The Yellow River/Flows into the Sea

Want to be poor/thousands of miles away

By going up one flight of stairs

(two scales)

Haha, now you should understand. It turns out that ancient poems are easy to read and listen to because of these scattered words. No wonder our traditional ancient poems are beautiful to read first, and the rhymes of each sentence are wonderful. Reading poetry is like humming a beautiful movement. Some people say that Mr. Wen's "musical beauty" refers to the requirements of gorgeous rhetoric, and I am particularly opposed here. As for other examples, they are all ancient poems, and readers can pick up any ancient poem at will. As I said above, it is natural to analyze and dissect its "phonetic ruler", so there is no need to say more here.

Since the source of "musical beauty" has been found above, let's take a look at the so-called "painting beauty". The beauty of painting means that reading a poem can give readers a feeling of appreciating a painting, making people read a poem like watching a painting and taste a poem like being there. You can't expect to finish every poem. Now please come with me to find the beauty of painting in ancient poetry-

Qianshan/Bird.

All classics/characters disappear

Lonely boat/Lao Li Weng

Fishing alone/icy river snow

Look how beautiful the poem above is. It's a beautiful picture. It shows a fisherman sitting on the bow of the boat on a dark night, absorbed in fishing, and some cold snow falls around him. ...

Look at another picture-

II/Oriole/Wu

Yixian/Egret/Shangqingtian

Window Han/Xiling/Qianqiuxue

Membo/Wu Dong/Wan Li Ship

So much the better! In four sentences, the first picture is a picture of an oriole singing in front of a tree, which is a close-up of the ground; The second picture of egrets flying in the sky is a picture of you looking up at the scenery in the sky; Looking at the third white painting of Xiling from the window is the prospect outside the window; The fourth picture shows a man standing on the riverbank outside the door looking at the Wan Li fishing boat on the river, which is a combination picture of the far and near scenery in front of the door. These four pictures depicting different scenes near and far are not beautiful, but wonderful!

In fact, many ancient poems have the artistic conception of "beauty in painting". I hope my friends will pay more attention and find a lot at will.

Well, I found the basis of "beauty of music" and "beauty of painting" I was looking for. Now let's look for "architectural beauty".

The so-called "architectural beauty" refers to the overall morphological structure of sentences, sections and paragraphs in poetry, which requires the overall structure of poetry to be neat or symmetrical, making people feel comfortable. All right, I'll leave it to you. I believe you can see the neatness of ancient poetry (words) at a glance. Because the five laws (absolute) are the square of five words; Seven laws (absolute) is the square of seven words; Generally, the upper and lower parts of words are structurally symmetrical, so I don't have to bother.

Finally, I have to thank our older generation of poetry revolutionaries, who are so proficient in the profound and excellent traditional culture of the motherland, how can they casually abandon the most precious treasures in the motherland culture! Then they are the most loyal inheritors, defenders and developers of the cultural heritage of the motherland. How can they become "rebels" and "scorners" of the traditional culture of the motherland like some people?

Above, I combine Mr. Wen's "new three beauties" and ancient poetry to analyze, on the one hand, in order to let readers better understand and master the more specific, comprehensive and accurate connotation of "new three beauties"