节奏潜能与节奏美学:以《只是想说》的文本细读为例

Rhythmic Potential and Rhythmic Aesthetics: Taking a Close-reading of “This Is Just to Say”

传统诗学界误以为诗歌节奏是完全客观的,因此他们所构建的传统节奏美学主要体现为种种严格的格律模式。现代学者通过科学实验发现了节奏的主观特性,并在此基础上形成了基于人类认知机制的现代节奏美学。诗句(诗行)中的节奏所造成的停顿,有利于读者对语词以及诗句(诗行)的充分理解,从而在大脑中深刻、强烈的印记。诗人们利用人类的节奏能力规律,可以创造出丰富多彩的节奏美学,其中最有效的做法是以诗行形式来引导读者的认知注意力,通过节奏划分让部分诗歌语词在读者大脑中得到凸显,激发读者领悟奇妙的诗歌之美,正如威廉斯在《只是想说》中所做的那样:他娴熟地利用节奏美学,让读者对诗歌语词的情感内涵(即诗人对他的妻子所表达的那种"甜蜜")留下了非常深刻的印象。

Scholars of traditional poetics considered that poetic rhythm is totally objective,so that they built up all sorts of strict poetic forms on the basis of the traditional rhythmic aesthetics. However,scholars of the day have discovered that rhythm is subjective by carrying out certain scientific experiments,and have thus put forwards modern rhythmic aesthetics on the basis of human cognitive mechanism. The pauses in and between lines caused by poetic rhythm help readers fully consume phrases and lines in a poem,so that deep and powerful impressions are left on minds of the readers. Professional poets are good at taking advantage of the mechanism of human rhythmic potential and capability to create many different poetic forms,among which the most effective is to attract cognitive attention from the readers with poetic lines,and help them to be fully immersed in the beauty of certain poetic words and the whole poem. William Carlos Williams is a master in making beautiful poetic rhythm with line breaks with“This Is Just to Say”as a wonderful example. In this poem,with his skillful application of rhythmic aesthetics,readers are deeply impressed by the sweet love of the poet to his wife via the emotional substance of the words applied in the poem.