The most representative love poems in the west are sonnets. Sonnet is a lyric poem with strict meter in Europe. Sonnets originated from the Cultural Renaissance. Generally speaking, sonnets mostly describe passionate pursuers and indifferent pursued women. Purchasers often have unimaginable enthusiasm and sincerity, and desperately hope that their loved ones will look back and hug. The most representative is edmund spenser's sonnet 54. Nothing in this poem expresses the poet's despair and pain more clearly than the last sentence: "She is not a woman, but an unconscious stone." She's not a woman, she's a stone! In the theater of life, I tried to perform-I was happy when I performed a comedy, and then I was worried and cried-and she was not infected by my scream. She is ruthless and ignores my sincerity. This is a classic sonnet, or the product of cultural renaissance. It is full of emotion and passion. Through the paper, it seems that you can hear the poet's cry and the despair behind it. At the same time, another feature of this love poem is that it is not based on the real reality. It compares life to a play by rhetorical means, and compares people's love and hate to actors and audiences. It seems that only one play has been written, but it truly describes the pain and struggle of the characters in reality. This is also a major feature of poetry in the cultural renaissance era. It jumped out of reality, rearranged scenes and roles by using poetic techniques such as symbols and metaphors, and created a world by itself. Love and hate in that world are just the mapping of emotions in reality, natural and vivid. This way of writing greatly enhances the appeal of poetry-the so-called "my road has been winding through a sheltered depression"-and this gorgeous way shows the charm of art and the charm of literature.
Another poem by edmund spenser, Sonnet 34, gives full play to this metaphor and symbol. At the beginning of this poem, it describes a lonely boat sailing on the vast sea, which is guided by only one star. Now it's cloudy, and the boat is depressed and hesitant in the dark, and has passed many dangerous beaches and reefs. I sincerely hope that my big dipper can shine on me again. Before that, I can only feel sad and full of worries. This poem doesn't write anything that happened in reality, but tells my feelings and feelings over and over again. He compared his beloved woman to a star, and described himself as a boat sailing on the vast sea with rich imagination, longing for the light of Polaris. It can be said that this rich imagination, coupled with the use of gorgeous language and melody, has expanded the simple sentence "You are very important to me, and I need you" into an affectionate poem, which is the beauty of poetry and the power of literature.
This skill, in a word, is that poetry is unrealistic. Poetry can be full of emotions or hoarse, but all this is in a virtual world. The poet's inner world-it can be a theater, it can be a summer, it can be the sea, or even nothing, just a simple consciousness, a simple mood and a simple emotion-but this is a lingering feeling in the poet's pen.
The emotional expression of westerners is often very bold and straightforward. Despair means "she's not a woman, she's a stone", and joy means "I'm too lazy to condescend to change places with the emperor when I think of your love"-as if I could see the expression of the task at the moment and hear people's happy or sad voices when reading. This imaginative narrative style seems to be born for this purpose, which makes people taste it again and again in twists and turns and shows the unique charm of poetry. Each one has an unspeakable beauty.
In my opinion, this is the first meaning of love poetry besides love-to show the charm of poetry itself. This also coincides with a great idea of the Renaissance-emphasizing the artistic significance of literature itself. Humanity is a quality, and love is an innate emotion. It is beautiful, worthy of praise and deep thought, but "careful design is the symbol of human creativity and artistic ambition." The Renaissance emphasized the literary display of human nature. Therefore, both the ingenious use of poetic rhythm and the technical conception of content show the charm of literature itself.
However, in China's poems, the methods used to express this literariness are quite different. The Book of Songs is the source of China's classical poetry. Its greatness lies in its implication, classicality and restraint on feelings, so those bold and direct lyricism in sonnets will not be reflected in the Book of Songs. The same sadness and indifference to her lover. In the west, she is "not a woman, but a stone", but in the Book of Songs, it is "a bank with a bank, and a plate with a plate"-this implication is also one of the differences between Chinese and Western literature and art.
The literary charm embodied in The Book of Songs is different from sonnets. One of the similarities between these two poems is that they don't care about each other. The emotional expression of sonnets is mostly subjective. Even if it is euphemistic, even if it is tortuous, surging emotions always come to my face. The moral in The Book of Songs is really calm. The expression of characters' feelings is the casual expression in some words, like a small bubble in a calm spring, which makes people understand that there are fish in the pool. Even some deep feelings that should have been poured out can always be expressed at a leisurely pace.
There are three kinds of love poems in The Book of Songs, one is thinking of people, the other is in love, and most of them are about newlyweds, and the other is about married life. Jia Jian, the representative poem of "thinking about people", is as plain as water. Similarly, like edmund spenser, it will not subjectively cry about the hardships in the process of wanting but not getting it, nor will it complain in a vicious tone. On the contrary, it's basically just drawing a picture. "The Sword is Pale" is beautiful from the beginning, and "The White Dew is Frost" blends the faint coldness of autumn into the whole picture, and then the whole poem basically maintains this tone. The picture of this poem is really beautiful. The cold artistic conception sets off a touch of emotion. No love, no hate. It's just a step-by-step pursuit, a little hesitant, but not giving up. When reading a complete poem, beauty is the first feeling, and the faint autumn coolness is the second feeling. It is this ultimate elegance that makes it easy to overlook the ultimate love in poetry. Every time he overcomes so many difficulties to pursue his lover, he always fails-Everything is in the middle of the water, Everything is in the water and Everything is in the water, but the faint sadness never makes people despair, so he finds the whole poem "White" from "White House is Frost" to tell a story calmly, without using too many skills, but between the lines he reveals some emotions implicitly. Even the deepest love, in the prosperous autumn, has become calm and elegant.
This is the interpretation of literature and art in the Book of Songs, that is, beauty, the aesthetic feeling that comes to my face, and the thoughts that remain in my heart after careful tasting.
In addition to aesthetic feeling, love poems have more important significance, which I think is an interpretation of life.
Sonnet 18, the most classic of Shakespeare's sonnets-"Can I compare them to summer?" I don't know whether it is reasonable to define it as a love poem, because the meaning it can imply is too wide. My poem can give you eternal charm, perhaps it can be defined as a courtship poem: nature is impermanent, but my poem can be eternal, making you eternal in the world. But it's more than that. Life on earth is impermanent, flowers can be destroyed, summer will pass away, and the sun will sometimes be too violent and sometimes disappear-but people, people can be eternal, and people can be eternal in poetry. This is not only an eternal praise for poetry, but also a praise for people themselves. This is precisely one of the great ideas of the Renaissance: "humanitarianism". People are meaningful, people's ability and potential should be affirmed, and the meaning of people's existence can be continuously improved throughout their lives. Life itself is meaningful, and people's value is determined by people, not by God.
Therefore, love poems praise not only the lover, but also an idea, a reflection on the meaning of the whole human being in a specific social background.
If the theme of love poems can be divorced from love and rise to a higher meaning, this is the greatest success of love poems. There is a classic "Meng" in the Book of Songs. The story it tells is actually very simple, that is, a pair of lovers from acquaintance, love, marriage to the final disillusionment, a short essay can be described as writing all the ups and downs in love. Some people say that this poem is called "the poem of abandoning a wife", but I beg to differ. I think this poem is beautiful, instead of reducing it to its own aesthetic meaning-"moving by feelings, but acting by words." The feelings of this poem from beginning to end are ordinary and true. From the beginning of two people's love, they slowly pursue it, and finally the sweet love turns into a helpless marriage-so this is not about a woman's process from love to abandonment, but the sadness that everyone will experience. Therefore, a love poem is not only about love, but also a life process.
It doesn't matter, and the Book of Songs doesn't try to tell you clearly what it is, why and how. Poetry is the realm it pursues-China's classical poetry is illogical, it just wants to say how I feel now: I am sorry to see the mulberry leaves turn yellow; Seeing the germination of millet reminds me of my sadness; When you see the sunset, you suddenly feel lonely-it won't tell you why, because it is the most real concern for life. When a person can't clearly describe the situation of life, he uses poetry to express it. Therefore, we should not look for answers and cause and effect in poetry, nor try to have a moral or emotional understanding after reading a poem-this is enlightenment, and poetry is definitely not like this. Poetry allows us to see the state of life, not to draw conclusions about life.
Love poem begins with love, its beauty lies in art, its charm lies in the height of thought, but I think the most beautiful love poem is actually "indifferent." It begins with love and ends with love, but the latter is not a love-hate entanglement. I think it is a life situation, which is the meaning of people themselves.