The message written with lines is a famous poem. This means that although it is difficult to define poetry from the ontological sense, it still has some formal factors or stylized factors, which determine why a poem is a poem.
In fact, the theory of poetry is the most developed, and there are also the most books. For example, books on novel narratology only gradually emerged in the middle of the 20th century, and the theory of poetry at least began with Poetics in Plato's era. But the most complicated and inconclusive field is also the field of poetry. First of all, what is poetry is a difficult question to answer. People who study poetry generally know a dialogue between Scottish writer Bao Si Will (1740-1795) and Johnson (Johnson is a very famous American writer and lexicographer in the18th century):
Bao Si Will asked, Sir, what is poetry?
Johnson replied, alas! It is much easier to say what is not a poem. We all know what light is, but it is not so easy to explain it.
This means that it is very difficult to define poetry, but it is relatively easy to point out what is not poetry. But is this really the case? What is not a poem? A message is definitely not a poem. For example, we can look at this message:
pay attention to
I ate plums in the refrigerator. They may be used to make breakfast. Please forgive them for being so delicious, so sweet and so cold.
This seems to be a typical message. A person ate Yangmei in someone else's refrigerator and felt embarrassed. He wanted to leave a note to apologize. In fact, this is a very famous poem by William, a great American poet in the 20th century. Let's read it again:
pay attention to
I have already eaten.
It's in the refrigerator.
plum
They may be
You save it for breakfast.
I'm sorry
they
It tastes great.
So sweet
It's too cold.
The message written with lines is a famous poem. This means that although it is difficult to define a poem in the ontological sense, it still has some formal factors or stylistic factors, which determine why a poem is a poem. In fact, when we analyze a poem, we often start from the formal elements rather than the definition and essence of the poem. Today, with the help of the interpretation of China11930' s modernist poetry, I will briefly talk about the formal elements of poetry.
Five elements of poetic form
On the surface, modern poetry has no certain rules, giving people the feeling that they can't start, but branches, rhythms, images, styles and situations are all important elements that constitute the form of modern poetry. Grasping these five elements can effectively analyze.
1, branch.
The first thing you can see at a glance is the branches. Even if a communication report is divided into lines, it will feel very poetic.
American scholar Keller gave an example of communication:
Yesterday, a car crashed into a French phoenix tree at the speed of 100 km per hour on Highway 7, killing all four people.
Let's try to recite this branch of communication:
yesterday
On highway 7.
a car
At the speed of 100 km per hour.
collide
On the tree
France wutongshang
There are four people in the car.
all
die
It's really a good poem, recited in a sad tone. This point is very simple, so I won't talk about it.
2. rhythm.
Starting from the rhythm, it entered a relatively complex poetic level. Many people who recite Tang poetry will feel the rhythmic beauty of ancient poetry from an early age. How old children can recite dozens of Tang poems without knowing anything. Among them, the sense of rhythm played a role. Why are almost all children aged two or three forced by their parents to recite Tang poems instead of Guo Moruo's Goddess? On the one hand, they think that Tang poetry has more eternal classical literary value, on the other hand, it also has a strong sense of rhythm. Language itself is musical, and this musicality-an inherent beauty of syllables and rhythms is not limited to poetry, but also potentially restricted by syllables and rhythms in daily language. Jacobson, the originator of modern poetics, once gave an example of daily dialogue.
Q: Why do you always say "John and Marjory" instead of "Marjory and John"? Do you like John better?
A: Nothing. I say "John and Marjory" because it sounds better.
One girl put "John" in front, saying that it aroused the suspicion of another girl. However, John and Marjory put "John" in the first place for the sake of syllables. John and Marjory is better because when we speak, we always unconsciously choose short syllable words first. For example, it sounds awkward to replace "five stresses, four beauties and three loves" with "five stresses, three loves and four beauties". There are also examples of rhythm in the novel. Two sentences in the novel left a deep impression on me, and I remembered them at once. One is a sentence from Joyce's Dubliners: "It's snowing all over Ireland." One is a sentence from Bao Si Tosky's The Golden Rose: "The bell of vespers rings in Verona." Two sentences gave me a sense of shock at that time. It is hard to say where this vibration comes from, but the aesthetic factors of the voices of "Ireland" and "Verona" may be one of the important reasons. If you change the names of two cities in the world, such as "the bells of evening prayers resound throughout Urumqi" and "it is snowing in Zhumadian", it seems that there is no original rhythmic beauty. Therefore, there are aesthetic factors, ideological factors, cultural and political reasons behind the sound. For example, some researchers have pointed out that we use beautiful words in the translation of the names of some European and American countries: England, the United States, Scotland, France and so on. That sounds nice; As for the translation of small countries in Africa and Latin America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mauritius and Ecuador all sound terrible, and it feels like some wild places. This can be said to be an example of the history of colonial power in language translation.
Now let's look at the mistakes written by Taiwan Province poet Zheng Chouyu in 1954, which is a poem with a strong sense of rhythm: