Our ancestors, primitive humans, could not understand many natural phenomena such as wind, electricity, thunder and rain, so they all came down to the gods. Primitive humans sang and danced to the gods out of awe, expressing people's expectations-good weather, abundant crops and so on. This is the origin of poetry.
It originated from religion. There is another form, which comes from labor. Primitive people made simple and rhythmic cries while working, so as to forget the temporary pain and spirit brought by labor and coordinate their actions. Gradually, this simple and rhythmic cry has developed into a poem that imitates the voice of labor itself and expresses the feelings of workers themselves. Mr. Lu Xun once said: "Poetry is verse, which occurs during labor; Fiction is prose, which happens from rest. " Therefore, we say that poetry is a universal art and the oldest literary style.
The most essential feature of poetry is lyrical beauty. No matter novels, essays, plays and the most beautiful places, the aura of poetry is shining. Therefore, poetry is literature in literature. Poetry is everywhere in the art field, and the beauty of poetry is the highest embodiment of the universal factors of artistic beauty. The beauty of poetry also appears in the non-literary field from time to time. Exquisite fragments in scientific works, even in people's life and work, exude wisdom and brilliance, with traces of poetry.
Poetry is not only poetry, but also lyrical beauty, which is the common quality of all literary styles and artistic types. Therefore, poetry is a universal art, even beyond the boundaries of art.
There are two famous definitions of the essence of poetry in Chinese and foreign poetics: one is poetic, and the other is that poetry is homogeneous in music. These two definitions were reasonable under the historical conditions at that time, so they had great influence at that time. But in fact, both definitions are unscientific.
First of all, talk about the essence of poetry and painting; The similarities between poetry and painting are phenomena that express the objective world, but the differences are heterogeneous in nature. Poetry and painting are very different in content, image and media. In content, the main content of painting is the artistic representation of the external image, which tends to retain the appearance of objective things. The main content of poetry is the direct expression of the poet's inner feelings, avoiding accurate description, and the expression of objective things is implied by the feelings expressed in the poem. Painting creates the visual image of objective things, while poetry creates the image of the poet himself, relying on imagination rather than vision.
On the other hand, poetry sometimes shapes the image of scenery and forms a picture in poetry. But this picture is uncertain and changes with the imagination of poets or readers. And painting is a static image, the image of things at a certain moment. On the contrary, the picture of poetry is flowing with the passage of time, not static. From the media of image-shaping, the media of painting is lines and colors, and the media of poetry is language.
Colors and lines can only accurately reproduce the objective world, and are greatly limited in expressing the complex subjective world. Language, as a medium, is unrestricted. Good at expressing complex and subtle spiritual world, so poetry and painting are heterogeneous.
Similarly, poetry and music are essentially different. Although their formal characteristics are the same, that is, both poetry and music have a sense of rhythm and pitch fluctuation. Although music has more freedom in expressing the subjective world than painting, it goes further. It uses two abstract symbols, rhythm and tone, to express social life, which is too uncertain and random. The artist's feelings are only expressed symbolically in the tone. The emotion expressed by music lacks the clarity and concreteness of painting content. It went to the other extreme of painting.
Although poetry pursues the beauty of music, it is not only rhythm and tone, it is not a simple sound art. The main medium of poetry is pronunciation rather than sound. The expression of sound in language is only an intonation, so the language of poetry is a "special language" produced by the blending of meaning and sound, which we can realize from reading articles and reciting poems.
It can be seen that the emotional content expressed by poetry is far more certain than that expressed by music. Poetry, on the other hand, breaks the limitations of music and endows the emotional world with deeper and more substantial content and a clear and clear face, which is the "promotion" of music. So poetry and music are heterogeneous.
From the perspective of exploring the possibility of poetry style, we can grasp the essential connotation of poetry more clearly. Viewpoint is the unique relationship between creative subject and object. Views are divided into external views and internal views, and different views bring different stylistic possibilities. Prose is similar to painting. Prose takes time-consuming artificial symbols-language as the medium, and painting takes space-consuming natural symbols-colors and lines as the medium. Both of them have an outward tendency of nostalgia for the objects they care about. No matter how they are expressed in words or symbols, their views are external and concrete.
Poetry is alienated from painting and close to music. Music belongs to pure inner activity. It denies the space of visual art and its own voice, which gives music the greatest possibility of expressing its inner activities without objects. Musical views are internal views and abstract views. But there are obvious differences between poetry and music: poetry is completed once, music is completed twice, and the medium of poetry is not just sound, but the sound of music directly becomes the purpose; Poetry makes emotions concrete (music is abstract); Wait, but poetry and music are direct expressions of the inner world. Both views are internal and abstract. Here we can divide literature into two categories according to the aesthetic point of view:
First, foreign literature (that is, non-poetic literature). Foreign literature narrates the world, which has a strong historical reflection function and shows the richness of the objective world.
Second, literature with internal views (that is, poetry and other lyric styles). Internal viewpoint literature experiences the world, proves its advantages by its emotional response to the world, and reveals the subtlety of the spiritual world. Inner view is spiritual view, spiritual view.
The internal viewpoint takes people to an unexpected place and to the world of poetry.
Poetry is a typical literature of introspection, the external world is decomposed and reorganized in the process of spiritualization, and physical time and physical space are meaningless. Restricted by the aesthetic point of view, poetry does not need, is not allowed, and is not longer than a broad description of reality. Poetry is not prose. Prose is a typical literature from an external perspective, attached to the object it cares about, observing the general laws of objective things and looking at the world from the perspective of prose. And poetry is to experience the outside world. From the viewpoint, the internal viewpoint of poetry shows six characteristics of poetry:
-the subjective experience product of poetry
The process of poetry creation is the process of transforming object into experience and objective into subjective. Or the process of transforming the material world into the spiritual world, that is, everything in the external world has gained the life of poetry through the poet's subjective experience.
Second, poetry is dreamy.
The main feature of fantasy is that it comes from reality but is insulated from reality. It is a variant in real life, coming from an illusory space. The main feature of the dreamer is that he gets rid of physical time and space. Poetry and dreams, poets and dreamers are very similar in this respect, and they are full of dreaminess because they are subjective experiences.
Thirdly, poetry is a structure without logic.
Since poetry is a subjective experience, it is a natural law and logical concept that refuses to follow the objective laws of things. Poetry shows deeper and stronger normality in the abnormal feeling, abnormal thinking and abnormal formation of routine; It's so beautiful. The ancients called it "unreasonable and wonderful", and "unreasonable" means excluding conventional logic.
Fourth, the direct expression of the mind.
Art is the result of the mind seeking liberation and expression, the mind is the direct content of poetry, and poetry is the direct externalization of inner experience. The direct expression of the mind makes poetry a universal art. Architectural art is the most imperfect art. Due to the limitation of the media, the soul of an architectural artist can only be expressed symbolically. On the other hand, poetry is the art of expressing opinions in time and space. In directness, music is similar to time art, and in concreteness, it is similar to painting of space art.
Fifth, the namelessness of poetry.
Poetry has no concreteness, the lyric hero of poetry has no specific direction, and the anonymity of poetry brings a high degree of universality and generality.
Sixth, the reciprocating swing of poetry.
Most spiritual and emotional spectral tones are reciprocating and lingering. The internal viewpoint of poetry is not as linear as the external viewpoint. Poetry's eyes are flowing, up and down, left and right, freely pitching, spinning back and forth in the inner world.
About what is poetry? It can't be defined in a few simple words. Historically, Guo Moruo and He Qifang have successively defined "poetry". Although their definitions have certain scientific value, they do not comprehensively summarize the formal characteristics and contents of poetry. Today, Professor Lv Jin, director of the Institute of Chinese New Poetry of Southwest Normal University, accurately, comprehensively and scientifically summarized the essential features of poetry. His definition of poetry is as follows:
Poetry is the highest art of singing life, and it is usually the direct writing of the poet's feelings.
Poetry does not directly reflect life, but seeks human emotions from life. Poetry is not good at describing objective reality in detail, but good at describing emotional waves in detail. The essence of poetry lies in lyricism, and the singing life of poetry emphasizes the lyrical beauty of poetry. "Singing" is not only "singing", but also the feelings of poetry singing life are infinitely rich, either love or hate, or sadness or joy. Poetry is the art of singing life, which determines that poetry is usually written directly by poets. Poetry is inseparable from the poet's experience, encounter, personality, temperament, ideal, pursuit and so on. In most poems, the poet's personality is revealed explicitly or implicitly, the poet's mind is publicly displayed, and the poet's inner feelings are directly written.
Among all the language arts, poetry is the highest language art, and the language of poetry comes from the language of life. The language of life must be treated by poetry before it can get a visa to enter the kingdom of poetry. Teacher Lu's definition brilliantly covers the essential characteristics of poetry, so this definition can briefly answer the question of what poetry is.
Poetry belongs to youth. China is a country of poetry, and as a member of the nation of poetry, we must have an indissoluble bond with poetry. But what is poetry? How to write poetry? However, it has become a mystery that we can't open, especially young friends, who are full of yearning for poetry but are often rejected by it. So how can we approach poetry and how can poetry embellish youth? This is exactly what I want to talk about next.
First, what is poetry?
If someone asks me now what is poetry? Maybe I can only answer like this: "I know what kind of words can count."
The world is a poem. I know what kind of words are not poems, but I don't know what poetry is. "Poetry is not defined. But at least have a general idea! Yes, actually, poetry is not mysterious. Everything that is affectionate and beautiful is poetry. Simply put, psychological image (emotion)+physical image (beauty) = poetry. For example:
A twig,
Like a wire;
Small yellow flowers,
Like a shiny electric light;
The earth, like a
Power plants in spring. (Zhang Shizhen's "Winter jasmine")
In this poem, "branches", "yellow flowers" and "earth" are psychological images, while "wires", "electric lights" and "power plants" are physical images. This wonderful poem came into being because after seeing the green branches and yellow flowers in spring, I had a good impression on the spring of the earth in my heart, and then compared the spiritual image with the material image through imagination, so that love and beauty were skillfully combined.
Of course, this is not a fixed pattern of poetry. Poetry is free and diverse. To really know and understand poetry, we still need to understand it through long-term reading and creation.
Second, the basic characteristics of modern poetry
For the creation of modern poetry, we must first understand the characteristics of modern poetry, which is very important for us to learn the creation of modern poetry.
Extremely important, know yourself and know yourself, and fight every battle.
Modern poetry is the modern emotion that modern people feel in modern life, and it is a set of sentences arranged by modern words.
Therefore, modern poetry is about the feelings of our times, and it is written in modern language (that is, modern Chinese, not classical Chinese)-this is the most basic feature of modern poetry.
In addition, compared with junior high school students, modern poetry has the following important features:
1, content: beautiful imagination, extraordinary in the ordinary;
2. Ideologically: Write touching feelings. In other words, personal feelings and experiences should be added;
3. Format: If you want to branch, you can branch by sentence or by content.
After understanding the basic characteristics of modern poetry, you can start to try to create, so what must be paid attention to in creation?
Third, how to write a poem?
Poetry is beautiful. To make ordinary things shine with beautiful light, we must imagine. Imagination is the source of beauty and the storehouse of poetry.
A good imagination is a poem in itself. For example:
Open your big mouth,
Serve the people. (He Zhou's scissors).
Only by exerting imagination can we create a vivid image. Imagination endows poetry with vitality. Without imagination, the poems written are dry. Imagination can make a little thing show amazing charm. For example:
Flowers in the corner,
When you appreciate yourself,
The world is getting smaller. (Bing Xin's Star)
Flowers are common in corners and are easily overlooked. If you only appreciate your own beauty, it will become smaller. Here, the poet draws an extraordinary truth from an ordinary thing by imagining and comparing people and flowers. Without imagination, it is impossible to write such inspiring poems.
Secondly, poetry must be true, and only true is beautiful. We should be able to find something that can move us from life and then express it in the language and form of poetry. In this way, people can make their hearts sing and poetry becomes meaningful. For example:
You are so small.
Run in the dark
……
Although it is a small insect.
Make the night brighter (Bucong's firefly)
At the end of the poem, the little poet sent a sentimental eulogy to the devotees with the emotional sentence "Although it is a bug/make the night brighter". But such poems need to be experienced from the heart. If the little poet didn't observe fireflies carefully, didn't talk to them attentively, and didn't transpose himself into fireflies to experience their life and life, he couldn't have written such a vigilant poem.
With the wings of imagination and the power of emotion, the beauty of poetry will emerge as the times require.
However, we must be clear that the format of poetry is also a problem that must be paid attention to, except for writing according to content or sentences, especially in the organization of language. Mainly manifested in two aspects: first, the use of rhetoric; The first is to break the conventional combination. Flexible use of various rhetoric can enhance the vitality of poetry, and boldly breaking the conventional combination (that is, not matching according to grammatical requirements) can achieve unexpected results, but it should not be too much.
Rhetoric is an important skill in poetry. Including personification, metaphor, parallelism, rhetorical question, repetition, thimble, duality, exaggeration, symbol and so on. It can be said that each expression technique has its own uniqueness. The use of metaphor can express the content of poetry more vividly and vividly. The use of xing can make readers understand the artistic conception of poetry from the beginning, and make poetry more affectionate and lasting appeal; The use of exaggeration, symbolism, synaesthesia and other techniques can inject more fresh blood into poetry, make poetry more imaginative and approachable, without making people feel vague and obscure, and make readers truly understand the thoughts and feelings expressed by the author.
Symbolism, on the other hand, uses concrete things to express a special meaning, which is the most commonly used technique in poetry. For example, Bing Xin's Paper Boat symbolizes the yearning for his mother, and Feng Zhi's I am a river symbolizes the pursuit of love. Usually we also like to use symbols, such as "plum blossom" to symbolize perseverance and "candle" to symbolize silent dedication. Wang Jiaxin's Beyond the Mountain uses "sea" and "mountain" to symbolize "ideal" and "difficulties and setbacks in pursuing ideal". Do you know the common symbolic meanings of the following objects? Sun, bees, flies, mosquitoes, snowflakes? Bright, selfless, dirty, exploitative and pure.
I won't go into details about the use of other techniques, but we will continue to learn and use them in the creative process.
As mentioned above, there is another aspect of the language organization of poetry, that is, breaking the conventional combination, which can sometimes make poetry language and poetry achieve a leap-forward effect.
The language of poetry transcends the general grammatical rules, and it has the characteristics of jumping, prominence and supernormality. Its combination is flexible, for example, we can use modifiers with different functions alternately, such as "black sigh", "dream of oil foam", "pink memory", "warm silence" and "ivory song". And use this incredible expression to express the complex emotions of modern people (of course, this is also a rhetorical device called synaesthesia).
Part-of-speech conversion is also a routine technique in poetic language. For example, in love poems, "Summer is too heavy, autumn is too cicada" ("Light Snow Today") and "We have weathered the wind and frost" ("Heavy Snow in Hunan"), where nouns are used as verbs, can not only arouse readers' corresponding image feelings, but also contain rich experience. The word "lotus" gives people a feeling of declining enthusiasm, the word "cicada" gives people an impetuous and desolate image, and the words "wind" and "frost" give people a hard and mature life experience.
After mastering some creations, we should also have the effort of "hammering words and refining sentences", which is also a revision in our usual composition. This is especially important for us beginners. Du Fu's lifelong pursuit is "words are not surprising and never stop", while Li Bai is called "talents are amazing", and most poets are experts in hammering words and refining sentences. For example:
You stand on the bridge and watch the scenery.
The landscape observer is watching you upstairs.
The bright moon decorated your window.
You decorate other people's dreams (Bian Zhilin's out of line)
These "sights", "sights" and "decorations" appear repeatedly, creating a thought-provoking mood. In addition, such as a middle school student's poem "The Window of the Classroom" (Tian Xin) has such a passage:
The windows of the classroom
internally and externally
It doesn't allow me to be confused.
I want to sail.
Rolling the Yangtze River upstream (part two)
The words in brackets existed before publication and were edited and deleted when published. The little poet's pursuit of formal beauty damaged his poems, but after deleting the words in brackets, he became refined and beautiful, and he read fluently.
When we write poetry, we should not only pay attention to the accuracy and vividness of rhetoric, but also try to find the words that can best reflect people's feelings from the height of spiritual experience and create a harmonious and poetic atmosphere.
In fact, language also serves the ideological content of poetry, not only highlighting objects and events, but also creating the artistic conception of poetry, that is, expressing ideas.
To sum up, we can see that poetry must have three elements: imagination, emotion and language. It can be said that imagination is the blueprint, emotion is the direction, and language is the method.
Fourth, kung fu is outside the poem
For those who learn to write poetry, it is essential to master various methods and skills of writing poetry. However, to really write poems well, they still need to read a lot, pay attention to new things in daily life, and constantly accumulate experience to find inspiration in order to write the most beautiful poems.
Youth needs poetry, and writing poetry is of great significance to a person's growth. A poet once said: If a person does not write poetry when he is young, he will miss the best time of his life. Now, you can pick up a pen and hold up the youthful sun with poetry.