It can be seen that temperament is a major feature of China's poetry. Next, the author uses three chapters to analyze the rhythm and rhythm of China's poems for readers.
In the part of "On Tone", the author thinks that although the Chinese four tones have changed in length, pitch and tone, the situation of poetry four tones is more complicated. The tone of each tone can expand and contract with the literal tone, and also expand and contract under the influence of adjacent tones, and even the tone can not be considered as tone length or tone intensity. Therefore, it can be said that the four tones have little influence on the rhythm of China's poems. The most obvious influence lies in the conditioning, that is, the harmony of pronunciation itself and the coordination of sound and meaning. The most common application of conditioning is in disyllabic rhyme and even tone harmony.
Many poems in The Book of Songs are in harmony. Like Guanju, which we are familiar with, there are many disyllabic words, such as "pigeon", "continent", "stagger" and "toss and turn", and some rhyming words "graceful and restrained". As for rhyming, it is essentially the same thing as overlapping, both for the sake of making the words themselves harmonious. In addition, many words themselves have the characteristics of harmonious sound and meaning. The opening voice is mostly high-spirited and powerful, and the closing voice is mostly delicate and graceful. I remember Jiang Xun said that most Chinese characters originated from rhyme have a special aesthetic feeling, such as "wine", "sorrow", "building" and "leisure". Sometimes when we teach ancient poetry, we can guide students to feel the rhythmic beauty of poetry from the perspective of sound.
In the part of "On Tone", the author thinks that the rhythm of China's poems is not easy to be seen in the four tones, and it is mainly reflected by "Tone". Pause in poetry is not exactly the same as pause in speech. It has a formal musical rhythm. Every meal in ancient poetry usually contains two syllables, while the last syllable in odd-numbered poems is extended to a meal. But when reading poetry, you can also change it, starting from the meaning and trying to conform to the natural language rhythm. However, there is a premise that Chinese poetry must not be promoted first and then suppressed, but must be suppressed first and then promoted. But this inhibition is not entirely based on weight, but on length, height and weight at the same time. The second word in every meal is longer, taller and heavier than the first word.
At the same time, China's poetry is different from sentence reading. "Escape" is a complete pause of sound. "Reading" is a pause in meaning. In most ancient poems, there are strange "thoughts" and even "sentences". In Songs of the South, an interline parenthesis like "xi" is often added after "reading" to indicate that the sound stays a little longer. This kind of sentence reading is mainly based on phonological paragraphs. This tendency is especially obvious in words, and the word "dun" often only indicates the sound segment, which has nothing to do with the meaning.
These expositions have three inspirations for us. First, when instructing students to recite ancient poems, we should pay attention to the rhythm of music and try to conform to the rhythm of meaning, especially in teaching, which should also be based on the rhythm of meaning. Second, the place where the rhythm is divided in ancient poetry, that is, the place of "pause", does not need to pause, but only needs to be slightly extended, improved and aggravated. Third, because of the limitation of tone, words must stop at a certain word and stop at a certain word, all according to certain rules. When we guide students to understand the content of a word, we can break the restriction of "pause" and understand it with a complete meaning sentence.
In the part of "On Rhyme", the author tells us that there are two kinds of rhymes, the middle rhyme and the ending rhyme. From the origin, rhyme is the trace of the same origin of song, music and dance, and its main function is to arouse the echo and harmony of syllables. Why is rhyme particularly important in China's poems? Because there are many ambiguities in Chinese language, syllables are easy to ramble, so only by highlighting, echoing and echoing through rhyme can a poem become a complete tune. In the past, China poets used rhymes in three ways: ancient poems, regular poems and lyrics. The rhyme of ancient poetry changes the most, while the rhyme of metrical poetry is carried out chapter by chapter. All songs and lyrics have a fixed tone. However, some rhymes are flexible. However, with the passage of time, modern pronunciation is different from ancient times. If you rhyme when writing a poem, others will not read it smoothly, and then you will really lose the original intention of rhyming.
This statement also solves a problem in our teaching and rhyme reading of ancient poems. In junior middle school Chinese ancient poetry, the rhyme of "oblique" and "black" is common in poetry. Some teachers will teach students with sounds like Xia and He in order to rhyme. According to Mr. Zhu, it is really unnecessary. You read these two rhyming words according to the ancient sound, and all the other words are read according to the present sound. It's really neither fish nor fowl. The compilation of new textbooks makes this point very clear. Whether it is ancient poetry or classical Chinese, except for the special notes at the bottom of the book, the rest are read according to modern sounds.
The rhythm of China's poetry has its origin and development, its advantages and limitations. Knowing more, we can be more handy in teaching.