For example, seeing that genius is destined to be a beggar,
Boring straw bag dress,
Pure faith has unfortunately been betrayed,
The golden crown was shamefully worn on the head of the walker.
The virginity of virgins was humiliated by thugs,
Serious justice is illegally abused,
A strong man is crippled by a lame man in power,
Stupid, putting on a doctor's airs, controlling talent,
Art was rendered speechless by the government,
Pure sincerity is blindly called stupidity,
The prisoner "good" has to serve the commander-in-chief "evil";
Tired of all this, I want to leave this world,
But when I die, my lover will be lonely.
(translated by Liang)
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Shakespeare's 66th sonnet has attracted much attention. But the reasons for concern are different. According to China's textbook in 1970s and 1980s, this is the best of Shakespeare's sonnets, because it is the most crucial. This view has continued until now, and no one seems to doubt it.
In fact, the success of this poem lies in its excellent artistic quality. As can be seen from the original text, this poem adopts a variety of artistic techniques similar to the original poem. Let's analyze them one by one.
The first is the use of alliteration. Alliteration generally means "two or more words in the same line or different lines have the same initial, vowel or consonant combination." Encyclopedia of world poetics. This usage is similar to the "double voice" in Chinese poetry. Its purpose is to enhance the musicality of poetry and make it more artistic.
In Shakespeare's sonnets, alliteration is skillfully used. For example, second-line beggars burn (destined to be beggars), third-line poor (boring straw bag) and so on. By using the alliteration technique of the same initials, the musicality of this poem has been strengthened to some extent. The purpose of Shakespeare's alliteration is not only to strengthen musicality, but also to emphasize key words. 1 I cry at the beginning of the line, 14 at the end of the line I love alone. These two alliterations, the initial pronunciation of one word is the same as the non-initial pronunciation of the other word. These two alliteration techniques are not only the same, but also used in keywords, which strongly express the author's wishes and have shocking artistic effects.
The skills corresponding to alliteration in Chinese and English poems are "disyllabic" and "overlapping rhyme". "Disyllabic" in Chinese poetry refers to the repetition of initials of adjacent words. Such as: "Time flies, first frost is perishable, and we are waiting for a reminder." (Bai Juyi) "Overlapping rhyme" refers to the repeated appearance of vowels of adjacent words. Such as: "I hope Li Shimin will cry in the future, and the melancholy of different times will be different at the same time." (Du Fu) In China's poems, these techniques are mainly used to produce musical effects.
The second is the technique of repetition. Repetition refers to the repeated use of a word, a line of poetry or a metrical form. This technique is common in both English and Chinese poetry.
Relatively speaking, the repetition of words is often used in Chinese poetry, which some people call "overlapping words". For example, "leaves fall like the spray of a waterfall, while I watch the long river roll forward." (Du Fu) "I was sad for several years. No! No! ..... Although Meng Shan is there, it is hard to trust this book, Momo! " (Lu You) "Looking for it, it is cold and bright, and it is miserable." (Li Qingzhao)
In European and American poetry, repetition is more widely used. There is not only the repetition of words, but also the repetition of poems. For example, Whitman, an American poet, especially likes to use this technique in Leaves of Grass, especially in poems like I hear America singing.
Repetition is not only for musicality or rhythm, but sometimes repeated words and poems themselves have semantic value. Repeated words or lines are often sublimated semantically, which is different from the original intention. For example, the Russian poet Pasternak repeatedly used the poem "The candle on the table is burning" in the lyric poem "Winter Night", but the recurring poem was no longer the original intention, but escaped to the fiery characters in the poem. Frost, an American poet, wrote repeatedly at the end of the lyric poem "Standing by the Woods on a Snowy Night": "There are still many ways to go to sleep peacefully." The first sentence is the original meaning, which means that there are still many miles to catch up with and I can't sleep. The second sentence is escape, which means that life is a long journey, and we must struggle and not rest. It can be seen that the word "sleeping", the first sentence is sleeping, and the second sentence is fleeing to death. The "far" in the first sentence refers to the specific itinerary, and the second sentence refers to the life course of people.
In Shakespeare's sonnets, there are both poems and word repetitions. In the structure of "connecting the past with the future", the 1 sentence and the last part of "he" repeatedly use "tired of all this", which is consistent from beginning to end, highlighting the main tone of the poem "tired". In terms of word repetition, it is the first word And from line 1 to line 12. In the original English poem, the use of 12 "he" at the beginning of a continuous sentence is obvious, which is consistent with the theme of the poem. Perhaps the purpose of the poet's repeated use of this word is to arouse readers' boredom.
The third is personification and metonymy. Personification refers to bringing ordinary things or abstract concepts to life and concretizing and visualizing abstract nouns. Metonymy refers to escaping an abstract noun with a certain quality into a person with this quality. Both personification and metonymy have played a role in turning "ideological perception" into reality.
Personification is a common skill in Chinese and foreign poetry. For example, when Luo Yin, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, described his feeling of riding slowly and lingering, he wrote: "Plants and trees are obstacles to horses, and good clouds cover the balcony everywhere." Both "fragrant grass" and "good clouds" in the poem have human feelings, thus enhancing the charm of the whole poem. In the poem "Farewell", Du Mu associates "candle wick" with anthropomorphic "candle". "Candle has a heart to say goodbye and shed tears for others until dawn", thus expressing a more sincere sadness of parting.
This technique is also widely used in Shakespeare's 66th sonnet. From line 2 to line 14, every line has such metonymic or anthropomorphic abstract nouns, such as desert (genius), nothingness (straw bag), faith (belief), honor (golden crown), virtue (chastity), perfection (justice) and strength (strong man).
The fourth is contradiction contrast and paradox technique. Contradiction modification refers to combining seemingly contradictory words, revealing their extraordinary internal meanings through strong contrast and contrast, so as to achieve strong ideographic effect. This rhetorical method is also regarded as a paradox by some scholars. Paradox refers to seemingly self-contradictory and contrary to common sense, but in essence it reflects the nature of contradiction and opposition of things. In western lyric poetry, the common technique of paradox. It seems that this technique has been discovered since the birth of lyric poetry. For example, the ancient Greek poetess, Sha Fu, not only widely used this technique to express her complicated inner experience in her poems such as "I Feel ……", but also defined "sweet pain" as "love", which took an important step in exploring people's inner world. Petrarch, a famous lyric poet known as "the father of Italian poetry" in the Renaissance, expressed his true and complicated love experience through a large number of contradictory images in his poems such as The Contradiction of Love. /kloc-in the 7th century, john donne, a British metaphysical poet, and gongola, a Spanish poet, developed the basic technique of paradox in their respective poetry creation. Collins Brooks, a famous critic in the 20th century, asserted in The Exquisite Urn: "Poetry based on paradox embodies the basic structure of romantic thinking mode, which is completely different from literary games of carving insects."
For example, in Shakespeare's sonnets, the poet uses captives to decorate goodness, captains to decorate evil, and doctors to decorate stupidity. The collocation of these words seems unnatural, but it embodies the artistic effect of complementary opposites.
To sum up, Shakespeare's 66th sonnet is very representative in both thought and art, which embodies Shakespeare's artistic spirit.
(Wu Di)