论作为意象符号系统的诗歌存在形态

The Existing Forms of Poems as a System of Image Signs

从诗的存在形态看,诗是一个意象符号系统,具有符号与系统的基本特性。"语言艺术说"与"意象符号说",不仅是对诗的切入角度的不同,而且是理论思维方法的不同,由此带来对诗本体认识的差异。意象的运动自表象始,其最终目标不是通常所说的指向意境,而是指向情境,情境才是诗的整体审美效应的表现形态。

On the basis of the investigation of the forms of poetry, a conclusion has been reached that poetry is a system of image signs. The basic ingredient of a poem is image, and the difference between poem and nonpoem is whether it has images. The creating, assembling, developing and transforming of images consist of the exact process of poetic thinking. Nonpoetic ingredients in a poem derive from the poetic ones and are adjunctive parts of images. The nonpoetic ingredients serve the purpose of illustrating the significance of images and indicate where the images lead. They are the extension of images and are not independent by themselves. Without images, the nonimage ingredients have no reason to exist.Poem as a system of image signs has all the essential characters of a system. In such a system, the weaving of images aims at directing and presenting the whole, and each image should be adapted to meet the needs of the whole. As a result, the images can only exist as a necessary part of the whole poem and the meaning and status can only be established in the context of the whole. By fitting images together the whole becomes a living art as a vigorous structure. The difference between 'language art theory' and 'image sign theory' is not only a difference between the angles from which poems are approached, but also between the ways of looking at the poems themselves. Taking poetry as a language art means to put poetry in the common thinking system in which the language lies, while 'image sign theory' puts the poetry in an art thinking system. Only in this way can the essences of poetic art can be reached. The function of the language used in poems decays in exchange for the highlight of images. Language is the material shell of the image. In ordinary forms of writing, language serves as a pure carrier of meaning and it can be abandoned as soon as it finishes performing the task. But in poems images come first and the significance of the poem is the significance of its images. When the importance of images is highlighted, we may say that the beauty of poems is essentially the beauty that appears in the process of the presentation, movement and assembly of images. There is no way to discuss the beauty of poems without the beauty of images. In terms of language, sensual words serve as the shell of images. Images come from ideas. An idea is a sensual appearance we keep in our memory and it originates from the external object. Idea is the preliminary and essential perception of the objective external world which deepens as we know more about the world. Storage of large quantities of different images is the important precondition for image creation. Image is a concept above the concept of idea. Compared with the idea in the memory, which mainly consists of external objects, image is the product as a result of the process of a greater mind and it has become part of the inner life of the poet and a particular and creative way of expressing feelings. The final purpose of the movement of poetic images does not lead to 'image' or 'context', but to significant situation. The context here refers to the object, the surroundings, and the atmosphere, i.e., the sensual images and the space where feelings lie, form and create. However, the significant situation is, in general, the form of appreciating poems formed by the interweaving of the poet's emotion and ideas and external objects.