情怀小样杜陵诗——余光中作品与中国现代诗的主题与格律

In the Shadow of Tu Fu—Yu Kwang-chung and Modern Metrics

余光中的作品中随处可见中国文化典律的影子,虽然是新诗,没有明显的格式规范,而且主题博大,但余诗并未因此而失去中国诗的精神与潜在的韵律,原因应是诗人能够在作品中与文化及传统主题连结,处处唤起典律的回忆。而今日现代诗却面临着两大困扰:格律的消失与主题的扩大。前者导致现代白话新诗无章无法,无从建立标尺,无论句法或段落均大幅度自由解放,在散文诗诞生后,更彻底磨灭了诗与散文的可能区隔,何者为诗、何者为文已难分晓。英文本是拼音语言,文字本身有潜在音律及抑扬顿挫的本质,虽同是字母,却能辨别诗与散文,白话中文无此一本质,在去掉格律后即无法区分诗与散文,充其量只能有诗的意境。主题扩大后,诗的国界更是无限,雅俗同聚一堂,这容或是大势所趋,却造成一些让人摇头叹息的作品。这两大因素使得现代白话诗的领域博大如宇宙,却谋杀了传统诗歌的美,也毁灭了文化的传承。这些负面的影响,在一般诗人的作品中都可能产生,而余光中却能从中蜕变而蝶化,为现代诗竖立新的典范。

Although Yu Kwang - chung writes his poems in vemacular Chinese, one sees and feels a touch of the Chinese classics throughout his canon. Despite the clear absence of classical metrics and poetics, a sense of rhyme and rhythm is built into his po- etry via a subtle use of half quotes and allusions, articulating powerful sentiments that conjure up classical themes of past poets. This paper also address two main issues that haunt practitioners of modem Chinese poetry but that do not seem to cast a shadow on Yu Kwang-chungg performance ： the disappearance of metrics and the unlimited expansion of themes. The former has all but elim- inated the difference between prose and poetry, despite the fact that unlike English, modem Chinese does not have an internal musicality or built-in rhythms that allow it to scan and distinguish prosaic from poetic articulations. The latter effectively expands the border of modem Chinese poetry to infinite space, resulting in all sorts of semi - poetic or even vulgar iterations. It now seems that freedom of creation in modem vernacular Chinese poetry is celebrated at the expense of a poetic tradition, with the exception of Yu Kwang-chung, who has been able to strike a sensible balance in his poetry.