Research on the Construction of New Poetry Forms in the Past Century (Essays by Contemporary Scholars)

Author: Wang Ke
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: In the history of Chinese and Western poetry creation, there is a process where content is given form. The innate human pursuit of freedom demands breaking free from the constraints of form, while the autonomy of art requires poets to adhere to specific artistic forms. This keeps poetry in a constant state of contradiction between "breaking" and "establishing" form, ultimately aiming for an ideal where poetry becomes a harmonious blend of content and form—what might be called a "graceful and refined" synthesis. However, achieving this ideal is nearly impossible. Any excellent form undergoes a process of emergence, prosperity, and decline. The forms of classical Chinese poetry, particularly those in classical prose style, gradually developed over a long period into fixed and quasi-fixed poetic forms such as regulated verse (shige), regulated ci, and regulated qu. Quasi-fixed classical verse has variable tones and line counts but a generally determined form, with representative styles including four-line classical verse, five-line classical verse, seven-line classical verse, and miscellaneous-line classical verse. Fixed-classical verse, on the other hand, has fixed tones and line counts, with completely determined forms, including four-line five-character quatrains, seven-line quatrains, eight-line five-character regulated poems, seven-line regulated poems, regulated poems with ten or more lines, as well as a small number of six-line quatrains and seven-line regulated poems. Regardless of how complete these forms may be, they eventually become tedious to poets and face challenges from emerging poetic styles. Although folk qu (a form of vernacular poetry) emerged in the folk culture from the Yuan Dynasty, with more popular content and some folk language becoming poetic language, the form of poetry, especially its metrical structure representing musical beauty, saw little change. During the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the mainstream poetic scene in China experienced minimal changes in form. By the late Qing Dynasty, some poets could no longer tolerate the status quo. Not only did movements like the "Han Wei and Six Dynasties Poetry School," the "Late Tang Poetry School," and the "Song Poetry Movement" (including the "Tong Guang Body" as a branch) emerge, seeking to revitalize poetry through classical forms, but also figures like Huang Zunxian, Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong, and Xia Zengyou advocated for the "Poetic Revolution," calling for Chinese poetry that combined the style of the ancients with new themes, new imagery, and new lines. Some colloquial expressions and transliterated foreign terms were also allowed in poetry. However, the form of Chinese poetry remained largely intact, essentially just a refinement rather than a radical transformation. The true poetic revolution that followed was the "New Poetry Movement." While vernacular Chinese poetry also had quasi-fixed forms, such as folk songs, children's songs, and European-influenced poems like the sonnet, the new poetry that became popular over the past century was largely non-fixed in form.