First, the definition and basic characteristics of modern poetry school
In the early 1930s, a school of modern poetry appeared, which had a far-reaching influence on the art of new poetry.
Modern Poetry School: A school of poetry that appeared in the early 1930s and was named after Modern magazine. Representative poets include Dai Wangshu, Bian, Shi Zhecun, He Qifang and others. They inherited and developed the poetic thought of symbolism and advocated writing "pure modern poetry". Most of their works do not pay attention to the neatness and rhyme of poetry, but express the rhythm of emotion in the form of spoken language and freedom, and pursue the prose beauty of poetry. They are famous for their complex images, rich connotations and peculiar combinations, forming a hazy and obscure poetic style. Poetry mostly expresses the poet's instantaneous emotions and reverie, which is called "image lyric poetry".
Modernism in 1930s evolved from Crescent School and Symbolic Poetry School in the late 1920s. Dai Wangshu is known as "the leader of modern poetry school". Rain Lane, written by him in 1927, has shown the trend of the transition from crescent school to modernism, and My Memory was written in 1929, which became the starting point of modern poetry school. 1932, Modern magazine, presided over by Shi Zhecun, was founded (1published in May, 935), which became an important garden for publishing modernist poetry and making it independent and mature. Modernist poetry also got its name. 1934, Bian edited Mercury in Peiping, and in 1938. Modern Poetry Style and New Poetry edited by Dai Wangshu and others were published one after another, which pushed this wave of modernist poetry to a peak. With this peak, a large number of new poetry magazines came out from 1936 to 1937, so that Louis, as a modernist poet, thought that "these two years were a golden age of China's new poetry since the May 4th Movement". After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the group of modern poets was sharply divided, and the tide of modernist poetry crossed the golden age and entered a period of decline. His artistic style and expression techniques were inherited and developed by the "Nine Leaves Poet" in the 1940s.
The basic characteristics of modern poetry school: On Poetry published by Shi Zhecun, editor-in-chief of Modern, can almost be regarded as the declaration of modernist poetry: modern poetry is poetry, and it is pure modern poetry. They are modern emotions that modern people feel in modern life, arranged in modern words and in modern poetic forms. Here, seven "modernity" are used to summarize the content and artistic characteristics of modern poetry school. To sum up, the basic characteristics of modern poetry school can be shown in the following aspects:
1. Pursuing the artistic view of "pure poetry".
That is, Shi Zhecun said that "modern poetry is poetry and pure modern poetry". This is a typical "aristocratic" position of poetry, which is in the same strain as the early symbolic poetry school. If the early vernacular new poetry pursues the prosaic and comprehensible nature of poetry and realizes the popularity of poetry, then the modern poetry school attaches importance to "modern poetry is poetry" and still pursues the hazy beauty of poetry, taking the road of "aristocratic poetry". As for poetry, times, people, life and other external things that do not belong to poetry itself, it is even more out of their consideration and proposition. His theory is represented by Dai Wangshu's On Poetry and Zero Zagreb.
2, morbid mind, sad sound in troubled times. It is also the modern emotion that modern people feel.
The so-called modern people actually refer to petty-bourgeois intellectuals who are far away from the vortex of modern struggle and have a sense of confusion and disillusionment about life.
The so-called modern mood is the unique mental state of these people, and the most typical one is urban homesickness. Most of these modernist poets in China in 1930s were marginal people who were divorced from political parties and factions. At the same time, most of them come from the countryside, feel the squeeze of traditional and modern civilization in the city, become vagrants and vagrants in the city, and live between traditional and modern, urban and rural areas. They felt the pain of the transition from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization, and also experienced the deep despair of western aesthetes and symbolic poets for the city and the decadent mood at the end of the century. The ebb tide of the May 4th Movement and the failure of the Great Revolution destroyed their pure faith, so the contradiction between ideal and reality turned them to faint homesickness (conversion to the pastoral, traditional culture and spiritual home of their native land). "The land far away" has become a high-frequency image in their poems, symbolizing the destination of modernist poets and souls and the ideal world in their dreams. This is a group of dream catchers, but the utopia in their dreams does not exist on the earth. Therefore, the potential crisis of poets and poets inevitably suffers from the disillusionment of paradise dreams, thus forming a "sentimental" mood and poetic state of mind.
The most typical expression of this mentality is Birds in Paradise by Dai Wangshu, which is one of the best achievements of modernist poetry. In addition, his Dream Seeker, Secret Lover and Nightcrawler also describe the helplessness and sadness of modern poets in China struggling in a modern society that has lost their ideals. This kind of poetry is modern and China's. There is a pessimistic and nihilistic thought in the content of modernist poetry. Modernist poets have a young and morbid heart. Therefore, in the works of these poets, the center is often a "lonely me", far away from the times and struggles, chewing my own bits and pieces of joys and sorrows, so most of them are pale in content and depressed in tone.
3. Breakthrough and innovation in poetic art ... That is to say, it has modern vocabulary and modern poetic forms.
Modernist poets are mainly influenced by French symbolism poetry, American imagist poetry movement and modernist poetry trend represented by Eliot, and have modern writing and poetry forms.
Modern discourse: In the modernist poetry creation in 1930s, "literary discourse enters poetry" is a striking linguistic phenomenon. For these words, they have no concept of "ancient" or "classical Chinese". As long as they are suitable for expressing a meaning and an emotion, even if they only complete one syllable, they adopt these words, so they are called modern words. For example, "Nai X is gently comforted by a wall of light" (Li Guangtian's Under the Lamp) has far-reaching influence.
Modern Poetry Form: In 1930s, modern poetry schools once again raised the "prose cultural banner of poetry" and emphasized breaking the rules of poetry. They believe that the rhythm of poetry lies not in the cadence of words, but in the cadence of poetry emotions. Regular meter will hinder the artistic conception of poetry, just like cutting off your own feet to wear other people's shoes. This seems to be a response to early vernacular poetry, but it actually has different meanings, because they still attach importance to the thinking and emotion of poetry, and on this basis, they establish the rhythm of poetry, pursue the hazy beauty of poetry, and take the road of aristocratic poetry. As Fei Ming commented, the content of modern new poetry is poetic and the form is prose.
However, the modern poetic style of modern poetry is more reflected in the superficial form, and at the same time it shows distinct classical characteristics in aesthetic taste and cultural psychological orientation. An important factor for the maturity of modern poetry is that the poet consciously inherited the tradition of China's classical poetry. They found "kindness", "implication" and other parts close to each other in traditional poetry and western poetry, and thus found the legal basis for bringing tradition into modernity, thus gaining the support of a long-standing classical culture and poetic background. However, their inheritance is still selective, mainly inheriting and developing the "pure poetry" tradition of Li Shangyin and Wen in the late Tang and Five Dynasties, because the illusory beauty and hazy artistic conception in Wen and Li Shangyin's poems coincide with their aesthetic tendency, showing endless aftertaste.