Uncle Ding
Recently, I accidentally heard a video lecture on music appreciation given by Zhou Haihong, professor and vice president of the Central Conservatory of Music, and I was deeply impressed. If you are always thinking about something, then whatever you read or listen to will naturally come to mind. No, I can't help but think of poetry appreciation, especially new-style poetry.
The humorous Professor Zhou started from the psychological shadow of his childhood. One day, his father saw that he played the piano piece "Spring River with Flowers and Moonlight Night" so skillfully, and he asked: "Tell me about this piece of music. Where does it express spring, where is the river, where is the flower, moon and night." The young man was speechless for a moment, feeling ashamed and not knowing how to respond. For this reason, he felt deeply inferior because he did not know how to appreciate music.
The embarrassment of young Professor Zhou is not uncommon. Thousands of listeners feel inferior because they cannot understand serious classical music. Similarly, many readers feel disgusted and resistant to a poem because they cannot understand it.
Here, I would like to compare Professor Zhou’s music appreciation theory with my understanding of poetry appreciation.
Music itself is an auditory signal. The feeling of sound does not contain visual information and cannot convey a direct visual image. 2000 years ago, the story of Boya Ziqi's bosom friend was purely a misleading about the attributes and appreciation of music. Music is different from the symbolic art of language. Each note does not correspond to a given connotation. Therefore, it cannot be clearly concluded that the sound of Boya's zither is that of mountains or flowing water. The melody of "Spring River, Flowers and Moonlight Night" cannot simply be analyzed segment by segment as spring, river, flower, moon, and night.
Does this confusion seem familiar? Yes, it is very similar to the misunderstanding of poetry appreciation. Readers often say they don't like a new poem because they can't understand it. Of course poetry is different from music, it is a form of language, and every word in the poem has a definition. But poetry is an abstract language art that is different from prose. This abstraction is closer to music.
In fact, this association between music and poetry is not new. I want to bring out the philosopher Nietzsche and respond to the Bai Xing poets of Jiuzhou Fangwen. Because he is a huge fan of Nietzsche, he wrote an article and poem "I Soak My Taste Buds with Alcohol" a few days ago to talk about Nietzsche's Dionysian and Apollonian spirits.
Nietzsche repeatedly elaborated on this as early as "The Birth of Tragedy". "Melody is the earliest and universal thing." And folk songs are "the mirror of the world of music". In poetry creation, "language goes all out to imitate music." Nietzsche also pointed out that when listeners listen to Beethoven's music, they can't help but make associations with images, but in fact this is not everything the music contains, it is just a possibility. Beethoven used images to mark his music. For example, "Pastoral" and "Stream Scene" only metaphorically trigger musical associations, and these images are not the objects that music should imitate.
Poetry’s imitation of music is destined to be abstract. It is different from other literary styles such as prose, which is straightforward and easy to understand, and can carry more diverse and heavier connotations.
Therefore, why do you need to "understand" poetry? That is to say, when reading poetry, you do not need to pursue a line-by-line interpretation of poetry.
Music is abstract and the notes do not have a clear definition. But the melody of note combinations is colorful. With a sensitive hearing and "synesthesia", you can feel the music. That is to say, you can feel the visual, tactile, taste, and smell associations triggered by the auditory art of music to truly appreciate music. In fact, isn't this "syneraesthesia" in poetry creation?
The pitch and speed of the sound can correspond to changes in scenery, time, color, and emotions. In poetry, poets use words that you understand well to combine into long and short verses to express poetic meaning that you don't understand well. Likewise, you can experience, feel, and appreciate through synaesthesia and synaesthesia.
This method of listening to music and reading poetry will inevitably lead to Professor Zhou’s next point.
Just like many performers and conductors have different interpretations and interpretations of classic music such as "Symphony of Destiny". Everyone's understanding of poetry can also be different. The reason why Boya identified Ziqi as his close friend may be that Ziqi's understanding of mountains and flowing water was completely in line with his original intention of composing music.
But the abstract nature of music and poetry determines the ambiguity of its content. After a work is born, the author's original intention no longer matters. The age, experience, cultivation, personality, and even the state of mind at this moment of the listeners and readers completely affect the appreciation of music and poetry.
To like a poem does not necessarily mean that you understand the poet's creative intention, but that you get a resonance, an association, and a touch in the poem. Your feeling about poetry is not necessarily wrong than others, nor is it necessarily wrong than the poet's. Because poetry appreciation cannot be measured by right or wrong.
To quote Nietzsche again, poetry is a mirror of music. Then the reader's understanding is a mirror of the poem. Each of these mirrors is a magic mirror, reflecting poetry and revealing readers.
Special topic for submission of Jiuzhou poetry and prose