Wordsworth (177-185), the leader of English romantic poetry in the 19th century, is not so much famous and influential because of his wisdom, but rather impressed and fascinated by his emotional strength, just as matthew arnold, a famous English poet and critic of his time, asked in his mourning poem for Wordsworth.
Wordsworth's "She lives on a lonely road", one of his famous "Lucy's Poems", perfectly presents his great and far-reaching emotional strength through traditional rhythm, deep feelings and diversified images. This paper tries to analyze this poem from the aspects of rhythm, theme and artistic techniques in order to interpret the deeper expression of emotional power in Wordsworth's poetry creation.
《She dwelt among the untrodden ways》
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star,when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown,and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave,and,oh,
The difference to me!
She lives on a lonely road
She lives on a lonely road,
She lives near the wild pigeon spring;
No one ever praised this girl,
Few people ever fell in love with her:
A half-hidden violet,
blooming beside a mossy stone!
It's as beautiful as a twinkling star, and
it hangs in the sky uniquely.
Who knew she was alive, and
Who even knew she died young;
but Lucy has been buried in the grave!
it's so different for me!
(translated by Huang Gao)
A ballad composed of simple language
This poem is recognized as a masterpiece in modern poetry circles, and it is the first poem in william wordsworth's famous group of poems "Lucy" published in 1799, describing an ordinary Scottish girl. Although she is "as beautiful as a star", she was born on a "lonely roadside", and she has neither praise nor love; What's more, she died in obscurity at an early age. The news came, which shocked and pained the poet. Poetry is written in plain language, but there is deep affection between the lines, which is really touching.
prosodically, this poem is divided into three sections, which adopt the ballad form with folk song style (four-step iambic and three-step iambic alternate, which is the cross rhyme "abab
cdcd
efef"), and the characteristics of these language forms are also in harmony with the image of Lucy, a country girl in the poem. Many famous ballads handed down from ancient times (such as Sir Patrick Spence) and some famous works (such as robert burns's A Red Rose) are written in this meter. Wordsworth used this poetic style extensively, which made his romantic poetry stand out from the neoclassical poetry at that time, and drew a clear line with the double-rhyme style that has been circulating in English poetry for more than 1 years, which is quite different from the neoclassical poetry that he strongly opposed, especially the poems of Dryden, Pope and Johnson. From the original work above, the arrangement of lines seems to be uneven, but in fact, the meter is quite strict: each line is a four-step step, and each step is mostly composed of two syllables that are light before and heavy after; Both lines are three-step steps, and each step is also composed of two syllables that are light before and heavy after; In each stanza, the first and third lines rhyme, and the second and fourth lines rhyme. There are also some ending rhymes, such as "Dove" and "love", "stone" and "one".
This poem embodies Wordsworth's creative ideas in language. In terms of language, he advocated abandoning the elegant and outdated words and phrases in the neoclassical period and adopting the language in daily life and the vivid language of the people. He said that this is "a more simple and powerful language." People who use this language "express their feelings and thoughts simply without affectation"; He believes that the rhythm and rhythm of poetry must be consistent with the tone of spoken language to a great extent; He also emphasized the poet's imagination, believing that imagination can "present everyday things to the mind in an unusual state".
Second, the feelings built by the lives of lowly people
In p>18, in the preface written for the second edition of Lyric Songs, Wordsworth advocated not only writing great historical events, but also writing about the daily life of lowly people, because in this life, "people's enthusiasm and natural beauty are combined in a permanent form", and this poem describes the daily life of lowly people.
There are different opinions about the ideas expressed in this poem. Some people think that poetry expresses the narrator's passionate love for Lucy. Although others don't care about Lucy's life or death, he still loves her and loves her beauty. Her beautiful qualities will live in his memory forever; Some people think that the poet used this poem to tell his rich life experience and deep feelings about life, that is, his true love and the sad experience of losing this love; As for Lucy's identity, critics have made various speculations, but they are inconclusive. Traditionally, Lucy is the poet's sister Dorothy; Others infer that Lucy is Annette Walloon, the mother of Caroline, Wordsworth's daughter (the poet did not marry her); Others think that Mary Hutchinson, the poet's childhood partner and later legal wife, is the prototype of Lucy's life in the group poems; Others think that Lucy in the poem is not a specific person, but an ideal figure, a typical example of imaginary ideal beauty synthesized by Wordsworth's sisters Dorothy, Annette and Mary Hutchinson. Some people even think that Lucy in the poem may not be the poet's lover, perhaps her friend, or just a nodding acquaintance, but it just writes the poet's deepest affection. Specifically, through the description of a beautiful girl's image and the narration of her fate, the poet aroused the readers' * * with his sympathy for beauty and weakness. Generally speaking, for beautiful people or things, people want to have beautiful circumstances to match them, otherwise, there will be a sense of dislocation. As such a beautiful and lonely girl, people hope that she can have a good situation! But the opposite is true. What a pity that her death is like the fall of stars! Through the art of expressing one's will and expressing one's feelings, the poet focuses on expressing one's feelings and displaying the artistic conception, so that readers can appreciate and feel the same. The sentimental atmosphere in the poem, the helpless mood for the passing of life and the poet's pitying mood are the natural expression of this kind of extreme affection, which makes the poem full of appeal, deeply loved by readers and enduring charm.
Three Natural Beauty and Eternal Form * * * Beautiful Poetry
Wordsworth clearly advocates that poetry should replace imitating objective things by expressing subjective feelings and spiritual world. That "all good poems are the natural overflow of strong feelings" (the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from
emotion recovered in
strangeness), It is claimed that the great themes of poetry are "the basic feelings of human heart", and that "those great and simple feelings" always interact with "natural beauty and eternal forms" and are expressed in a "naked and simple" language, which is used to "please mankind forever". And this poem presents the great and far-reaching emotional strength of the poet in form.
from the artistic point of view, this poem seems to be unskilled, but in fact it is natural and shows no traces. This poem is extremely short, with only three sections and twelve lines. The first two lines and the last two lines of the second verse seem to be unrelated or even contradictory, but they are actually interlocking. The first verse describes a young girl who is in full bloom, but "who once praised this girl and few people ever fell in love with her"; In the second verse, two diametrically opposite images are used to describe Lucy. One is "a half-hidden violet, blooming beside a mossy stone!" ; At the same time, it is "beautiful like a star flickering and hanging in the sky uniquely." In order to better understand the originality of these two images, we can try to extract the second verse from the whole poem and observe its effect.