When the Crescent Poetry School came into being spontaneously, it unanimously advocated the pursuit of poetic rhythm. Therefore, the crescent poetry school is also called the "metrical poetry school".
The so-called "meter" of crescent poets has its special meaning, which not only refers to the traditional poetic style, syllable and rhythm, but also includes all the formal elements related to the visual and auditory perception of poetry. In short, with Wen Yiduo's definition: "Metric is form". In this sense, the Crescent Poetry School is a poetry school that is not afraid to talk about new poetry forms after the May 4th Movement.
Reasons and Background The Crescent Poetry School pursued the metrical form of poetry at that time because of its members or schools and the background of literary history.
As far as members or schools are concerned, the early new poetry mainly absorbed the influence of western culture, including literature, from the spirit of freedom, but showed a tendency to ignore or ignore the national tradition of China literature. In view of this situation, Wen Yiduo and others advocated absorbing, transplanting, imitating or drawing lessons from the spirit of British and American culture and the metrical form of poetry, and at the same time paid more attention to the combination and innovation of "Chinese and Western art", including inheriting, sublating and reviving China's existing national literary traditions in the new frame of reference. For example, Wen Yiduo clearly put forward the question of "the marriage of Chinese and western arts" in his article "The Native Land of Goddess":
I have always thought that new poetry is always "new", not only in China, but also in the West. In other words, we should not only make a pure local poem, but also keep the local color. It should not be purely foreign poetry, but try to absorb the advantages of foreign poetry. It should be a wonderful work after the marriage of Chinese and western art.
The "metrical theory" and "metrical poetry" of crescent poets such as Wen Yiduo are their attempts to integrate Chinese and western poetry: on the one hand, they consciously converge to British and American poetry in the19th century and even the 20th century; On the one hand, it returns to China's traditional poetry in aesthetic taste.
Judging from the history of literature, especially the history of the development of new poetry, the May 4th new poetry first appeared in the poetry world with the attitude of opposing all traditions. Therefore, as its mainstream, it is straightforward "vernacular poetry" and unrestrained "free poetry". As for the form and rhythm of new poetry, it has not been paid attention to by ordinary people for some time. By the mid-1920s, many people, including Wen Yiduo, criticized this new poetry fashion and began to pay attention to and think about the form of poetry. Crescent poets pay attention to the form and skills of new poetry, advocate the theory of metrical form and practice hard, which not only reflects the development trend of new poetry, but also is a deliberate "correction" of early poetry style. Because of this, Wen Yiduo criticized naturalism and romanticism in the declaratory paper "Metric Poetry" of the Crescent Poetry School, and strongly advocated "Metric Poetry". Therefore, the theory of "meter" is not only related to the aesthetic consciousness of aestheticism or classicism, but also comes from the examination and anxiety about the development status and future of new poetry.
The beauty of architecture and music, whether in theory or in practice, the pursuit of meter by Crescent Poetry School mainly focuses on two aspects. First, "belongs to the rule of vision", which mainly refers to "symmetry of nodes and uniformity of sentences". The second is "hearing", which mainly involves "format, scale, balance and rhyme" and other issues. These two different aspects of meter have their own specific aesthetic categories and standards. Wen Yiduo called the former "architectural beauty" and the latter "musical beauty".
"Architectural beauty" is mainly related to the writing symbols of poetry, and it is the plastic beauty expressed in the combination of sentences and paragraphs. Because people in China use hieroglyphics, Chinese characters have more modeling power and appeal than western common pinyin in visual form, which also increases the possibility of visual expression of poetry. Wen Yiduo's thought of thinking about the aesthetic impression of poetry and creating architectural beauty from the modeling of characters and symbols was not only influenced by some modern British and American poets at that time, but also consistent with his desire to create diversified poetic styles in new poetry. He said: China's old poems, especially metrical poems, also have certain architectural beauty, but in his view, China's classical metrical poems are greatly limited in the diversity of architectural beauty. Because there is always only one format for old metrical poems, and others set it for us. In contrast, the format of new poetry is endless-because it can be constructed by our own opinions at any time. In this way, one of the characteristics of new poetry is to increase the possibility of architectural beauty.
Wen Yiduo's admiration for the architectural beauty of new poetry is also related to his understanding of the syllable problem of new poetry. He said:
Syntactic order not only does not hinder syllables, but also promotes the harmony of syllables. ..... It is an inevitable phenomenon that syllables are harmonious. Absolute homophonic syllables, words must be neat.
Wen Yiduo's view is of course too absolute, and it may not be recognized by all crescent poets. For example, Xu Zhimo once put forward a different opinion: "I say he is wrong when he is confined to seeking the neatness of sentences between the lines." The length of the line, whether the word is neat or not depends on the fluctuation you experience ... "
However, compared with early new poetry, especially free poetry, it pays more attention to the "architectural beauty" of poetry, but it is the basic feature of Crescent Poetry School. Most of the poems in The Book of Songs attract people's attention with the symmetry of sections and the uniformity of sentences. In Selected Poems of Crescent Moon, more than two thirds of the poems meet Wen Yiduo's standard of "architectural beauty".
Needless to say, in the pursuit of "architectural beauty", there are many crescent poetry schools, including some poems by Wen Yiduo, which are too pedantic. But on the whole, the emphasis of the Crescent Poetry School on the visual form of poetry was targeted at that time-it could call people's attention back to the stylistic style of poetry, and it was also in line with an orientation of the later development of Chinese and foreign poetry-not only attaching importance to the "sound" and "sound" of poetry, but also taking into account the "shape" of poetry.
As for "musical beauty", it mainly refers to the aesthetic feeling produced by the rhythm and rhythm of poetry. This is the emphasis of most members of the Crescent Poetry School, and this emphasis mainly focuses on the "syllable" problem.
Paying attention to "syllables" is the consistent theory and creative tendency of crescent poets. As early as in Tsinghua and during his stay in the United States, Wen Yiduo talked about the relationship between rhyme and syllable many times. After the Book of Songs was published, the crescent poets also questioned the syllables of the new poems.
First of all, they think that to develop new poetry, we must attach importance to syllables. Rao Mengkan and Wen Yiduo even regard the progress and creation of syllable new poetry as an important symbol of the new construction period and maturity period of new poetry.
Secondly, the reason why crescent poets attach so much importance to syllables is to correct the tendency of ignoring the beauty of music in early new poetry; On the other hand, it is also closely related to their understanding of the essence and aesthetic value of poetry. Wen Yiduo said: syllable is an extremely important element for poetry. "If we want to break the syllables of poetry, it is undoubtedly the suicide policy of poetry." Xu Zhimo also regarded syllables as "the life of poetry" and said that "the secret of a poem lies in the uniformity and flow of syllables it contains". When talking about Baudelaire's poems, he also said: "The beauty of poetry lies not in his word meaning, but in his incomprehensible syllables." Rao Mengkan further linked the problem of syllables with the problem of emotional expression, and proposed that "if the syllables of a new poem reach a perfect level, readers can unconsciously identify its special feelings from the style, rhyme, rhythm and level tone of a poem".
It is worth emphasizing that the crescent poets did not look at the syllable problem in a completely formalistic way. For example, Xu Zhimo once emphasized that "syllables themselves have to come from pure poetry"; "The words of a poem are the shape of the body, the syllables are blood, and the poetry or the original poem is the beating of the heart. With it, blood can flow. " In artistic practice, crescent poets also regard the musical beauty of syllables as a very important aesthetic pursuit, and have formed two distinct characteristics: one is to boldly try a variety of rhymes, and the other is to pay attention to the rhythm of poetry.
Of course, the pursuit of "meter" (form) by Crescent Poetry School is not limited to the consideration of poetry "stanza", "sentence", "rhyme" and "rhyme". For example, many of them are very careful about the choice and deliberation of "word" and "word". Wen Yiduo's theory of "painting beauty" is related to the synaesthesia of rhetoric and even the synaesthesia of the whole poem in terms of color and image. Because these problems are not only the rhyme or form of poetry, I won't go into details here.
In a word, Crescent Poetry School, as the representative of Crescent Literature, not only reflects the cultural orientation and aesthetic attitude of Crescent Literature, Crescent School and even Crescent School with its own characteristics, but also reflects the aesthetic choice and poetic tendency of American and British students with national characteristics in the post-May 4th period. It not only had a wide influence on the poetry circle at that time with its distinctive personality, strong emotions, absurd images and deliberate rhythm, especially the beauty of music, which made the existence of Crescent Poetry School as a poetry paradigm recognized; Moreover, with the complementarity of local poetic tradition and foreign literary sources, the entanglement of classical aesthetic concepts and romantic poetic feelings, as well as the coordination of individual multi-directional interests and the unanimous pursuit of groups, an aesthetic way, poetic fashion and poetic genre that still has its unique value at least today have been integrated and developed. In this way, the Crescent Poetry School not only promoted the modernization and maturity of China's new poetry in the field of poetry; At the same time, it also provides a cultural and literary spirit that may be more referential for the evolution of modern China culture and literature from multi-source to multi-source and the interaction and infiltration between multi-sources.