It's no accident that the writing is fluent. It takes hard work,
Only those who can dance can dance most easily.
Poems should not only avoid harsh words,
Sound should be like an echo of meaning.
The breeze is warm, and the melody is so gentle.
Ripples are smooth and flow in a smooth rhythm;
But when the raging waves hit the shore, the potential is like thunder,
Rough poetry should be like a torrent.
When Ajax tries hard to throw the giant out
, the lines are also heavy, and the words are hard to move;
Unlike the description of Ksenya Goryachova Camilla skimming across the plain,
When flying over the wheat field, the straw doesn't even bend.
please listen to Timothy's song,
make all kinds of emotions rise and fall alternately with the music!
With the music, Alexander, the son of Zeus, was suddenly ignited by glory and suddenly melted by love.
Suddenly his fierce eyes flashed with anger.
Suddenly he sighed quietly and wept:
The Persians and Greeks were also in ups and downs, and
The conquerors of the world were conquered by music!
Our hearts recognize the power of music.
Dryden is Timothy today.
(translated by Fei Bai)
Appreciation
alexander pope was the most famous classical writer in Britain in the 18th century. He respected and promoted the classical literary view, emphasizing rationality and rules, which was extremely suitable for the social fashion at that time. His poems are rich in materials and superb in skills. He is famous for his varied poetic styles and meticulous poems. Some people call him a "skilled" poet. He developed and perfected heroic couplet, forging this ancient style of poetry to the highest level in the history of English poetry. However, with the rise of romantic poetry, his poetic art has been criticized and attacked day by day. matthew arnold, a poet and critic, even said that his poetry is only a "classic of prose". In the 2th century, his poetic title revived. Most critics think that although he is no longer lyrical and has no profound thoughts, he is good at writing poems with arguments and philosophies, and his writing is concise and meaningful, and heroic couplet's application is even more perfect. We can't say for sure whether his poetry title will go through some ups and downs, but at least we can be sure that his artistic attainments are beyond the reach of other contemporary poets.
Criticism was Pope's famous work when he was 23 years old. In this 744-line long poem, Pope imitates the tradition of many critics in the history of European literature to write poetic literary criticism, and discusses the importance of literary criticism and the cultivation of brilliant critics (1-2 lines), ten reasons for improper criticism (21-559 lines), correct principles of criticism and a brief history of European criticism (56-744 lines) with superb poetic skills. The whole poem is cleverly conceived, carefully discussed, elegant and lively in wording, calm and peaceful in tone, and famous sentences and passages emerge one after another. The poem excerpted here (corresponding to lines 362-383 of the original poem) is a very wonderful paragraph in the Criticism, which usually appears in all kinds of poetry selections with the title of "sound and meaning". Pope believes that the content and form of poetry should be organically unified, and sound, or "sound", needs to be the echo of meaning. He not only put forward such a literary view, but also tried to practice the perfect combination of sound and meaning.
The first sentence of the passage "Fluency in writing is by no means accidental, it depends on kung fu" has become a well-known aphorism. Pope emphasized that poetry creation, like dancing, can only be achieved through hard training, and it is impossible to rely solely on accidental factors. The next two sentences embody Pope's views on the relationship between sound and meaning, especially "sound should be like an echo of meaning", which is the main theme of the whole poem.
In order to illustrate the harmony between sound and meaning, Pope wrote a series of demonstration lines. In the line "How gentle the breeze is, how gentle the melody is,/The ripples are smooth and flowing in the smooth rhythm", Pope repeatedly uses the friction consonant and the nasal consonant to show the softness and smoothness of the sunny weather and water waves. When he wrote, "But when the raging waves hit the shore, it is like thunder,/rough poems should be like torrent rushing", he used a series of blasting consonants, and when he pronounced them, he used long vowels and diphthongs with full lips, which vividly showed the momentum of crashing on the shore and roaring waves.
In the next four lines, Pope used the allusions of Hercules Ajax and "Scud" Ksenya Goryachova Camilla in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, once again demonstrating that different contents need different sound effects to express. When describing Ajax, an ancient Greek hero, Pope first used the "vastway" to render his strength, and then in the nine syllables in the second line, he used six heavy syllables and two fantway to enhance the calm style of the poem. For such lines, we can only read them slowly with emphasis, and gradually associate them with Ajax's burly body and brave strength. However, when describing Ksenya Goryachova Camilla, the heroine of ancient Rome, Pope used light syllables and iambic rhymes more, so that we could read the poem easily and quickly, just like Ksenya Goryachova Camilla "skimmed over the plain" and "flew over the wheat field" lightly.
Finally, Pope emphasized the allusions played by musician Timothy for Alexander the Great. Timothy's quyi is superb. He can play different kinds of music and arouse the ever-changing emotional experience of the audience. Even Alexander the Great, who has fought for a long time and conquered Europe, Asia and Africa, surrendered to the power of music, and his emotions fluctuated with the rhythm of music, either happy or sad. Dryden once wrote this allusion into the poem "The Banquet of Alexandria, also known as the Power of Music", and gave full play to his poetic talent and sense of music in the poem, expressing colorful musical melodies with varied poetic rhythms, vividly reappearing the musical charm of Timothy. Pope believes that Dryden's poems, especially this poem written for the Christian music festival St. Cecilia Festival, are a model of the organic combination of sound and meaning, form and content. He couldn't help sighing at the end of the passage that "Dryden is Timothy today", and the lines were filled with admiration for Dryden.
From the stylistic point of view, some sounds are often associated with certain meanings because of their pronunciation characteristics. Clever use of the association between sounds can further strengthen the meaning and increase the expressive force. Pope's literary viewpoint "Sound should be like the echo of meaning" tells the important law of poetry creation, which is worth learning and practicing.
(Cai Haiyan)