What is prose? So far, there is no unified definition. Because its meaning and scope have been evolving with the development of literature. Before the May 4th New Culture Movement, all articles except poems, ci, qu and fu were called essays. The prose we are talking about today basically refers to a literary genre called poetry, novel and script, and its connotation is extremely extensive.
Prose is short and pithy, expressive, eclectic, free and flexible, and has always been praised as a beautiful article. Prose painting landscapes, writing notes and writing freely; Describe lyricism and narrative discussion, and use both. Good prose can let readers see the colorful life in the ocean, hear the joys and sorrows of the world, appreciate the iron tree and silver flowers of thought and philosophy, and harvest the flowers and fruits in the spiritual field. Therefore, all prose has been pursuing the beauty of structure, artistic conception, style and language. In the history of China, there have been countless essayists, all of whom are outstanding language masters. The famous "Eight Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties" are also famous poets. With the help of the language art of poetry, they constructed a gorgeous artistic conception of prose and pushed the beauty of prose language to another peak.
I think whether writing, reading or appreciating prose, we should seriously learn from our predecessors and learn from language art to form the beauty of language with our own artistic characteristics. I think the importance of the beauty of prose language cannot be overemphasized. Make an inappropriate metaphor: how disappointing it is for a beautiful girl to associate with others if she stutters. Spit out filth again, it's really flowers on cow dung. Personally, I think: the beauty of language is a beautiful coat of prose. At first glance, people feel very happy and beautiful, so that the article can be read.
I often see some authors' essays, and some sentences are very long, just like the foot-binding cloth of a lazy woman; Some languages are tasteless, like a glass of boiled water; Some rhetoric is gorgeous and greasy, like donkey dung eggs wrapped in a layer of frost; Others are unpretentious and lack of exercise, just like the hat of an old monk-flat and unyielding. The language is so bad, even if the content of your prose is good and the theme is high, I'm afraid it's hard for readers to understand. After all, the first thing that young men and women look for is looks. It is estimated that the same is true of readers' choice of articles.
Prose is not as fascinating as the twists and turns of the novel. Prose has no dramatic climax, which is exciting. Prose is short, and it is won by the tempering of language. Mr. Qin Mu, a famous modern essayist, once said, "There are small piles of stones on a mountain, which often does not damage the grandeur of the mountain. But if there is a pile of stones in the small garden, it is easy to destroy the beauty of the garden. Similarly, short essays need to be concise and beautiful. Any failure is often particularly dazzling and difficult to cover up in short articles. " Mr. Qin Mu believes that the beauty of language has become the lifeblood of prose, which seems to determine the success or failure of an article.
In my opinion, to pursue the linguistic beauty of prose, the author should strive to create the beauty of language environment and create different contexts according to his different moods. Sometimes, like "The River Never Returning", it is surging, which makes readers feel passionate and passionate; Sometimes it's like drinking a glass of alcohol syrup, which makes readers fascinated and has a long aftertaste; Sometimes it is as common as chatting with intimate friends, which makes readers feel more cordial; Sometimes it is like a clear spring river, which makes readers relaxed and happy. ...
Personally, I think that the beauty of prose language should strive for vividness, simplicity, rhythm and simplicity. Of course, you can also sum up other kinds of beauty.
Let's talk about vivid beauty first. Prose language should be vivid, such as the willow swaying in the spring breeze, with a three-dimensional sense. Let people hear their voices, see their environment and see their people. Look at the good story of Lu Xun;
"I seem to remember passing the mountain vagina by boat. Ubuntu, Xinhe, wildflowers, chickens, dogs, bushes and dead trees, huts, towers, Galand, farmers and village women, village women, clothes dryers, monks, bamboos, flowers, clouds and bamboos on both sides are all reflected in the green river. With every beat, shadows and objects are dissolving, but they are also shaking, expanding and merging with each other; As soon as they merged, they retreated and returned to their original shape. " In this passage, the natural scenery written by Lu Xun is full of movement and lightness, poetry, sensibility and atmosphere. The spreading and breaking of the reflection on the water is particularly delicate and beautiful. It makes people feel immersive, which embodies a kind of context that the ancients said.
The simple beauty of prose language, like a cup of tea, is very light. After careful tasting by readers, it will be more delicious and memorable. The simplicity of language is like "clear water produces hibiscus, which is naturally carved". This is not to say that the author should not carefully process and repeatedly temper the language, but should not overuse beautiful words and exaggerated words. Prose writing and sentence-making should be combined with context, flowing naturally from the deep heart, simple and unpretentious, but touching. This is like a woman with elegant temperament. She always wears light makeup to show her natural beauty, instead of painting her face with colorful powder. Many of us have read Zhu Ziqing's Back, Sun Li's Lotus Lake and Yu Dafu's Autumn in the Old Capital. These essays, written by everyone, are as plain as broad-minded, but they are well-known and fragrant. In the current prose creation, there is a kind of half-written and half-white writing, which is different from poetry and prose. It is laid-back, casual, emotional, very consuming and fashionable among students. It is gorgeous, but it has no thoughts. Personally, I don't object to this kind of prose, because it is the existence of these essays that embodies the aesthetic value of classic prose.
I think the language of prose should also have rhythmic beauty. Because Chinese itself has tonal rhythm. China's ancient prose, especially the prose of "Eight Masters in Tang and Song Dynasties", pays great attention to the ups and downs of tone, the overlapping of words and phrases, and the interlacing of length. Their articles use rhetorical devices such as parallelism, antithesis, metonymy, conjunctions, thimbles and circles, and their tone is harmonious, flowing and full of changes. It is catchy to read, and it sounds "like pouring pearls of all sizes into a plate of jade". Such as Liu Zongyuan's "feudalism" in a passage:
"Han has the world, correcting the waste of Qin, favoring the system of Zhou, cutting Hailizong and sealing the hero. In recent years, three generations rushed to help the wounded, trapped in Pingcheng, fell ill and died. After that, it was the consultant who proposed the painting, but left a self-controlled cut. However, at the beginning of feudalism, counties and counties were half occupied, but there was treason without rebellion, and the Qin system was also clear. Those who followed the Han Dynasty as emperors have been known for hundreds of generations. "
This passage is staggered in length and clear in rhythm. The tone is sonorous. Although it is a discussion, it sounds good and easy to read. In my opinion, when we study modern prose creation, we should also strive to pursue the rhythmic beauty of language and make it full of love, voice and meaning.
Finally, talk about the concise beauty of prose language. Personally, I think the simplicity and fluency of prose language should be the innate essence of prose. Only brevity can make it clear. When discussing the dynamic beauty of prose language, we quoted Mr. Lu Xun's Good Story, which is also a model of concise beauty of language. Concise and elegant, clean and neat, without superfluous words, it has a simple and unique aesthetic feeling.
The beauty of prose language, the length of prose, the cadence, the speed of rhythm and the use of rhetoric, although there is no certain law, have certain miraculous effects. Grasping it mainly depends on more practice, more practice, more thinking, more reading and more reference. Some of the "some wonders" here can only be understood and cannot be described. However, as long as we persevere, carefully ponder, write more and practice more, we can grasp the beauty of tone, melody and rhythm of prose language, and then create an aesthetic language with our own characteristics.
A writer's pen is like a shoemaker's cone. The more you use it, the sharper it will be, and it will be as sharp as a sewing needle later. Writing is a whisper of human mind, an emotional narrative and an extension of the mind, because it talks about the true face of the world and moves the true feelings of the world, and it becomes an ideological pioneer and an artistic practitioner after gaining insight into the "real" phase of the external world and its own subject world. But his concept will be wider and wider, just like a person's mountaineering and sightseeing. The higher he climbs, the farther he sees. A thinker is like a silkworm. He vomited silk instead of mulberry leaves.
Writers' aesthetic categories such as beauty, ugliness and sublimity, people's aesthetic consciousness, aesthetic experience and the creation of beauty are always accompanied by various psychological activities, emotions, pleasure and imagination. For example, Li Bai's poem "Cold Mountain is full of sadness", in which "coldness" and "sadness" are not purely objective descriptions, but expressions of feelings. Psychological activities when appreciating natural beauty and artistic beauty. For example, when the poem "The petals have flowed like tears, and the lonely bird has sung sorrow" arouses our aesthetic feeling, it is important not to study the life of flowers and birds and their own characteristics, but to study the characteristics of people's psychological activities (heartache and tears) caused by flowers and birds. The reason why flowers and birds become aesthetic objects is because of psychological activities in aesthetic experience. Subjective colors such as personal thoughts and feelings, aesthetic taste, temperament, style and aesthetic characteristics determine artistic innovation.
Prose is not only unique in thought, but also involves a wide range of knowledge, from literature, philosophy, religion and art to smoking, drinking tea and shopping. All-encompassing, brushwork runs through China and foreign countries, ancient and modern China and foreign countries. Specific to an article, let go of your hands and feet, hook up and down, and concentrate on making a high-density material group and knowledge group. Gossip prose is rich and simple. In my spare time, my mind is peaceful, quiet, indifferent, quiet and far away. I daydream about my wings and open and close freely. I want to live in various ways. My language is unpretentious, unpretentious, and does not pursue novelty. My recording style and classical Chinese style are clean and concise, with a high degree of colloquialism. In terms of expression, we only use traditional and ordinary methods instead of playing "modern" tricks. Articles are rich, easy and difficult.
Prose, narration, lyricism and description are based on human nature, human nature and humanistic truth, knowledge, feeling, experience, mining and refining, and moving people with emotion is a major feature of prose works. The views of the article are endless, and they never cite classics and fiddle with conceptual terms, but rely on a large number of vivid materials to emerge their own opinions, namely stories, poems, historical facts, anecdotes and life experiences, life details and so on. Pay attention to the observation of real life, and the articles written are far away from the truth and trend thinking, close to reality and strange. The most rare thing in the article is backbone and strangeness. The former is the product of independent personality and the latter is the product of unique thoughts, but they are inseparable. There is no distinction between the old and the new, only the true and false. "It is only the embellishment of the last days that catches up with the excitement, not the prosperous times." "Action without thinking may be stupid, but action without common sense often leads to tragedy." They come from the author's understanding and wonderful perception of the world and life.
Prose in life is a description of the freedom and beauty of workers. The people and things around you, the weather in the four seasons, the flowers in Fang Fei and the intoxicating warm sun are often light and elegant. Thoughts and souls flow in the pen, their own thoughts are recorded and carved between the lines, and romantic love and warm life are also built between the lines. It is often used to describe emotions, manage marriage and express life. In the text, there are joys and dreams, smiles and tears, feelings and worries. There is elegance and happiness in the smile of words. Calm and passionate entanglement.
The overall style of prose is the nectar that nourishes people's minds, and it is also the substitute function of literature, such as Tao Qing, recreation and enlightenment. It focuses on leisure. In fact, the chat style is winding and secluded. Kindness is "I", casual, casual and simple, plus its high knowledge and culture content, transcendental concept, extraordinary wisdom, relatively calm state of mind, carefree mood and strong interest in life. "Leisure" is a generalization of "talking style" and "personal style", and it is also the basic aesthetic feature of all casual prose.
Prose creation is the art of depicting images through language, which does not rely on abstract reasoning, but appeals to readers' specific feelings, so language is particularly required to have image beauty. The so-called image beauty is to reflect and express the object of the work. Because only when we know the truth clearly can we be vividly described by the so-called "real things" and "real scenes" because we want to "recall", "narrate" and "tell people things", giving people a vivid picture. Induce readers' association and imagination and create vivid artistic images.
In the world of prose, I am looking for a relief from the intersection of words and mind. Read life as poems, essays and novels; Interpret life as love and beauty. Prose reveals the true nature of self and plants roses in the garden of the soul. Let the ups and downs of life, rice, oil and salt go through the ups and downs of spring, summer, autumn and winter, turn into beautiful words and bloom strangely enchanting. Have a plenty of spiritual temperament and spiritual experience, vicissitudes without losing elegance, richness without losing essence, sophistication without losing agility, elegance without losing simplicity. Fresh as an empty valley, charming as a rose under the moon, fresh as a morning breeze with white lotus, gorgeous as a graceful peony. Words can be soft with rigidity, colorful and vicissitudes. It can be said that a hundred flowers are blooming and colorful.
Through the objective description of life phenomena, life problems, characters' deeds and meticulous decoration, we can open readers' minds, expand people's horizons, enlighten people's hearts, convey humanistic thoughts and ideas, and embody the orientation of an era. The culture that conforms to the value orientation will be absorbed and promoted, so as to enhance the ideological elements and meet the needs of the times. Therefore, to grasp the characteristics of the times, language must be vivid, fresh and innovative to improve readability. The movements and demeanor of characters are the characteristics of culture and art, and the writing techniques pay attention to the characters themselves, making the works dynamic and popular, and the ideas are easier to convey. Under the background of the times, only by excavating the ideological connotation of characters, exchanging different views and improving people's humanistic cultivation can we collide with the spark of culture and make the article perfect day by day.
Prose, generally called lyric prose; Once known as "beautiful prose" and "essay"; In recent years, some people call it "artistic prose". Prose is a free and flexible style to express what you see and feel. Its uniqueness lies in that it allows us to read the author's feelings about life or nature in a very pithy and intimate form. Therefore, the essay is a glass of wine brewed by the author with his own life experience. When we read the passage, we were drinking this kind of wine. The more you savor it, the more you can appreciate its rich and complex flavor and get enlightenment.
Prose is a wonderful flower in literature. China's literature has traces of prose for a long time, such as Ouyang Xiu's Zuiweng Pavilion, Fan Zhongyan's Yueyang Tower and so on. Since modern times, a large number of essayists have emerged in China. Such as Zhu Ziqing, Yang Shuo and Ai Qing. Some of their works are fresh and beautiful, and some are profound and dignified. But they all recorded and admired the establishment, growth and development of the new China. This has a profound influence on the later prose style.
Prose mainly has two aspects worthy of attention, genre and style:
First, genre, there are several prose genres now. There are essays, modal particles, travel notes, narrative lyricism and so on. With the author's different feelings, the definition of each essay is different. In a few words, speak your mind, such prose is very essence, and complement modern poetry; Delicate and meticulous artistic conception, such prose is very concise, the author must have profound meaning, and must be understood in combination with the topic.
The second is style, which is fresh, dignified, joyful, sad, positive, lonely and countless. But there is a purpose, that is, the writing must be beautiful and the article must be smooth. The shape is scattered but the spirit is not scattered. There must be a finishing touch at the end, highlighting the theme and reflecting the idea of this article. In fact, life is like wine, and articles are like tea. A successful good article is a good article as long as it can attract readers' attention. Although prose has its own unique laws and categories, who is not moved by it as long as it is written from the heart?
In a short space, writing about life or nature is frank, kind, beautiful and meaningful, which is as accurate and powerful as an arrow, and as implicit and meaningful as "when a man dies, there are several peaks on the river" This is the form requirement of prose. This requirement determines the characteristics of prose form creation.
First, in the narrative way, prose reflects things from the author's subjective feelings, with personal lyricism as the mainstay. Although narrative methods such as narration and discussion are also used, they all integrate the author's feelings. They often combine lyricism, narration and discussion into one furnace, forming a style of narrative discussion, which makes people feel as if they walked into the author's open heart, listened to his confidence and felt cordial.
Second, in terms of artistic expression, prose does not have specific requirements like novels, poems and plays, but it also needs considerable "wit". Someone once compared the artistic expression of prose to "winning by surprise", and winning more with less.
The "wit" of winning by surprise and getting twice the result with half the effort is mainly reflected in three aspects:
Write down the details first, and see the big picture from the small. Reading prose, we often see that the author's observation and description of things are always so subtle. The author is good at grasping the vivid details that can best contain his thoughts and feelings. With a few strokes, he can write very rich and complicated contents, or personal feelings, or character styles, or beautiful mountains and rivers, or environmental atmosphere, which makes people "see the big picture from the small". For example, in Zhu Ziqing's Back, the description of his father crossing the railway and buying oranges on the platform is as detailed, clear and infinite as the close-up of the film in slow motion before our eyes, and the author's deep understanding of this kind of fatherly love is all in it.
Second, side hints, short essays, using side hints, are often better than adopting positive and straightforward narratives. This can not only provide us with a novel perspective, but also give full play to our imagination, thus further broadening and enriching the realm of prose description. For example, Lao She's Little Sparrow is very suggestive. The author's understanding of social life permeates the description of sparrows. "It was destroyed by people, but it still wants to rely on people. How pitiful! " "Because the kitten was only born for four months, we haven't caught the big mouse yet. It probably hasn't learned to kill people yet, but it's just a bird for fun. " "It is not prepared to resist, but it is not without courage, because it does not dare to move in front of the cat." The lines between the lines are full of the author's sympathy for the weak who have been devastated and humiliated, including the expectation that the weak can struggle for survival, and also contains some thought-provoking life philosophies. However, when reading a work with this implied writing, we must pay attention to the actual situation of the work and think carefully about the body odor, so as to avoid "exploring the seclusion" and "the taste outside the image" of the work far-fetched, so as to avoid misunderstanding.
Thirdly, in terms of structure and writing, prose pursues a "natural rhythm". That attitude is really a bit like "walking", "chatting" and "flowing". The reason why I can reach this state is mainly because the author is very familiar with the written materials and has a well-thought-out plan, and can design the best structural blueprint for prose; At the same time, he has skillful presentation skills and can easily realize the structural blueprint. The specific situation is different.
Prose is a literary genre. It is an article that the author records, describes and describes nature and its life, existence and description in languages other than verse, which is artistic and can fully express the author's thoughts and feelings.
After 1990s, China's prose has made great progress. Entering the period of prose revolution, the debate about prose is very fierce. In this period, prose is no longer pure artistic lyric prose, nor is it only for politics. Prose has become diversified and diversified. People's concept of prose has also changed a lot. So prose emphasizes people's modern consciousness. So, what is the focus of modern consciousness? In other words, our prose should focus on what most human beings are thinking. What do you do? It's no longer simply praising anything, but going deep into the society and people's inner world from multiple angles, advocating concern and thinking about history and life destiny, and awakening people's hearts and thoughts in a variety of ways. During this period, writers with Yu as the pioneer put forward the idea of writing big prose, and put it into practice, and wrote many big prose. China's prose entered the stage of advocating big prose. So what is big prose? That is to say, prose should pay attention to the expansion of realm and theme, and be innovative, instead of writing a big theme and a big space just by talking about prose.
Author. There are differences between authors. There is a kind of ass that the author always keeps up with the times. Most of their works cater to the times, praise modeling and charm customs. Other writers always try their best to pay attention to the forefront of the times. They are independent-minded and forward-looking. They are far away from the times and sometimes conflict with them. The fate and living conditions of these two writers are also different. The former often leads a comfortable life, while the latter always leads a hard life. But the former is often abandoned and hidden by history, and history will always remember this forward-looking writer.
Literature is not a craft, and writers are not craftsmen. Literary creation focuses on life, thought and language. Therefore, prose creation cannot be taught as simply as a craftsman. But here I can discuss with my literary friends and put forward some methods to improve the level of prose creation.
The first is to learn and learn from. Learning and the premise of learning is reading. More importantly, prose should be full of the breath of real life, have an understanding of the world and people's hearts, reflect the joys and sorrows of people's livelihood and the hardships of food and clothing, and at the same time have a feeling and cognition of life. We sometimes fall into an inescapable mode in writing, mainly because our reading horizon is not broad and our thinking is relatively simple. So we often have a phenomenon that when we see a good prose, we just write our own prose according to the routine of that prose, and there is nothing new. This is the taboo of prose creation. Therefore, we should broaden our reading horizons, broaden our writing ideas, and constantly learn from excellent authors and works.
Author. Learn from life. Life is the source of all our literature and prose is no exception. Therefore, every successful writer is, first of all, a man with a heart in his life. This requires us to learn to observe the reasons of life. No life, no true feelings, no touching works. Writing prose needs passion. Without passion, prose will lack the flavor of the times and life, and it will become empty words of fiction. No matter how talented the author is, he will end up in failure.
The second is to write more. When we look at other people's works, we will have a feeling that I can actually combine these words. But when you really want to write it yourself, you will know the importance of holding a pen. Therefore, we should write more, stimulate the inspiration and passion of creation, improve our ability to choose words and make sentences in writing, and form our own style of expressing ideas. Otherwise, how can there be "long-term accumulation and accidental acquisition"? Literature itself is a personal matter, and what it belongs to is entirely due to the author's writing habits! Only by following their own writing habits can writers write good works, otherwise they are just literary rubbish! Rubbish perfectly packaged by socialism! I don't know whether it is lucky or sad that literature has reached this point! On the one hand, literature is no longer sacred, and anyone can have fun with words. On the other hand, the Confucian Temple has become a big garbage dump. Of course, there are a lot of excellent "garbage" here, but most of them are garbage that pollutes the environment and cannot be cleaned up!
Prose is a kind of prose, which is a literary genre with free materials, short length, flexible brushwork and vivid expression in the field of literary creation. Essays can fully and freely express the author's inner world, clearly show the author's spiritual realm, and flexibly show the author's personality and talent. This article describes our feelings about life. It captures the spark of thought in an instant and captures the scene that flashes by. In a sense, the essay is a sincere dialogue between the author and his own soul, that is, sincerely revealing his own soul to readers. It truly reflects the self's understanding and evaluation of things, and truly expresses what one thinks. It refuses affectation, abandons insincerity and opposes deliberate writing. It advocates true representation, true reflection, true expression and true writing.
The form of prose generally requires the following two points:
First, the essence. Although the essay emphasizes the meaning of the pen and the composition is not very particular, it does not mean that you don't have to choose words hastily when writing the essay, but you should strive to be concise, accurate, vivid, lively, fresh, full of personality and spirituality on the premise of natural language, so as to achieve the purpose of practicing calligraphy and give people beautiful enjoyment.
Second, feel free. Inadvertently refers to a scene, an event, a person and a reason in life. As long as it can touch our heartstrings and touch the nerves we feel, we can do it according to our own wishes, interests and spontaneity, and we can copy it individually.
Keep a relaxed mind, don't ask for work deliberately, show your personality, express your true feelings, and be natural and smooth. The beauty of prose comes naturally. The pen moves with emotion, and the heart moves with emotion. Write my prose and dance my soul. Right here. When learning essay writing, we should pay attention to two points:
First, we should be good at seeing the big from the small. Essay is a synchronous tracing and imitation of life fragments, accidental experiences, little insights and instant thinking. Its expression is free, and it can describe a small scene that affects feelings, a little thing full of interest, a little person with distinctive personality, an inspiring truth and a unique feeling. Such as Zhu Ziqing's Back, and Yu Pingbo's Qinhuai River under the Sound of Paddle. If you always cover everything like a running account, it can only truly reflect life, not be artistic.
Second, to be good at description is to describe the state of people or scenery with vivid language. Description is like colorful and lively TV pictures in prose. Only by being good at description can we be vivid, vivid and vivid. This is because the author describes people and things through concrete visual language, and makes objective things sound, sound, taste and tangible, so that people have the feeling of being there, seeing people, smelling their voices, smelling their tastes, seeing their colors and experiencing their things.