“诗辨”传统与学衡派“新诗”概念的形成

The Tradition of “Differentiation Poetry” and the Formation of Xueheng School's Concept of “New Poetry”

学衡派的"新诗"概念某种程度上是在中国"诗辨"传统基础上形成的:通过诗文之辨,确立"诗的文字"之于诗歌的必要性;通过"音节"辨析,确认韵律节奏之于诗歌的重要性;通过中外和古今之辨,确立诗歌的汉语特性和旧格律的价值。学衡派还主张在坚持诗体之"常"的前提下,寻求诗歌表现内容的"变"。这种文体改良观一方面体现了对文学传统和文学规律的充分尊重,但另一方面也显得墨守成规,缺乏开拓精神。

While questioning Hushi＇s theory of ＂Great liberation of genre,＂Xueheng School again proposed its idea of genre reform, which claimed ＂to use new material into the old rhyme. ＂The formation of Xueheng School＇s concept of ＂New Poetry＂ was,to some extent,originated from the tradition of ＂Differentiation Poetry. ＂ First of all, Xueheng School stuck to the traditional belief that poetry has its own principles and believed that poetry styles contribute to determine poetry qualities. Xueheng School regarded the genre style as the primary feature of poetry. Secondly, the traditional poetic theories placed great emphasis on the differences between poetry and prose, the spirit of which was totally accepted by Xueheng School. Thirdly, the tradition of merging poetry and music together was also used as a critical weapon to criticise the ＂free style poetry＂ in New Literature school. Xueheng School believed that non-rhyme and non-meter meant losing the nature of poetry,and proposed that preserving rhyme and meter was the only hope of China＇s modern poetry. Finally,influenced by the tradition of ＂Differentiation Poetry,＂Xueheng School also discussed the differences between ancient poetry and modern poetry, as well as those between Chinese poetry and foreign poetry. They criticized that the ＂May Fourth new poets＂ had blindly copied foreign poetry which ignored the characteristics of the Chinese poetry and made new poems from the translated versions of foreign poems. They also specified the basic features of the ＂ideal New Poetry. ＂Between the choices of old and new, Xueheng School insisted that content of poetry should be constantly updated but the ancient style should remain. Additionally,Xueheng School also suggested that maintaining the old style did not mean rigid adherence to the rules of ancient poetry, and they claimed that appropriately changing the style and maintaining the nature of ancient poetry were two sides of the same coin. The reason for the decline of old-style poetry proposed by Xueheng School was the decayed content. Therefore, they think that the literature revolution should concentrate on the aspect of content. As far as cultural attitudes were concerned, Xueheng School was undeniably very conservative, which was embodied in its proposal of style reform. The old rhyming style is a genre, which is comprised of learnable conventions and symbol systems. The old rhyming is one of the carriers of cultural identity. To some extent, identifying with the old rhyming style is identifying with Chinese culture. The persistence of Xueheng School in keeping the old poetry style showed their identification with the tradition Chinese culture. As for how to reform literature, Xueheng School favored building up the concept of ＂New Poetry＂ on the basis of the old ones. The ideas of Xueheng School showed their full respect for the old literature traditions and the old literature principles. Nonetheless, the weakness of Xueheng School was also obvious, for example, they lacked innovation and constrained themselves by the old principles. The poetic ideas of Xueheng School appear to be stagnant. From the perspective of theory building, Xueheng School did not propose anything new, and from the perspective of poetry practices, Xueheng School did not contribute too much either. It is hence expected that there were no strong response to the call of Xueheng School.