Aesthetic Poetics

Author: Jiang Juntao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-06-01
Features: Poetry reflects social life, not a mere imitation like a photograph, but rather a concentration and generalization of typicality. This is a fundamental law of all kinds of literary and artistic works, and poetry is particularly so. Aesthetic imagination is an important artistic means of achieving typicality. Through aesthetic imagination, the poet creates a typical artistic conception that blends subjective and objective elements, infuses distinct personal qualities, and forms a uniquely styled poem with strong lyrical effects. The personalized characteristics of poetry are expressed through aesthetic imagery, which is formed through the cutting, casting, and fusion of artistic imagination. The poet's personal qualities and ideological tendencies become the driving force of aesthetic imagination, playing an active role in the selection, cutting, and fusion of aesthetic imagery.
In Chapter 70 of Dream of the Red Chamber, both Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai compose a short lyric titled "Willow Fluff" during the late spring when willow catkins flutter all over the sky.
Lin Daiyu's "Tang Dang Ling · Willow Fluff":
"White jade hall before, spring dances freely,
.
Bee and butterfly swarm in chaos,
Never followed the flowing water, nor settled in the fragrant dust.
Ten thousand strands, a thousand threads, remain unchanged,
Let them gather and scatter as they will.
Do not laugh at the fleeting years, for they have no roots,
With favorable winds, lift me to the blue clouds."
Xue Baochai's "Ling Jiang Xian · Willow Fluff":
"Before the white jade hall, spring dances gracefully,
.
Bee and butterfly swarm in chaos,
Never followed the flowing water, nor settled in the fragrant dust.
Ten thousand strands, a thousand threads, remain unchanged,
Let them gather and scatter as they will.
Do not laugh at the fleeting years, for they have no roots,
With favorable winds, lift me to the blue clouds."
The willow catkins in both lyrics are highly personalized aesthetic imagery, reflecting their life experiences, emotions, and attitudes toward life. The two characters, whose personalities are strikingly contrasting, are portrayed vividly. Lin Daiyu is sensitive and melancholic, living under the shadow of others and unable to control her fate, expressing deep sorrow and lament. Xue Baochai is open-minded and optimistic, not holding a pessimistic attitude toward the passing of spring. She adapts to her environment and achieves her ideal through objective conditions. She pursues her goals without openly revealing them, yet succeeds through compliance.
Liu Xie's The Art of Writing · Thought and Spirit: "The thought of writing is far-reaching." He emphasizes the soaring of imagination in artistic conception. Whether it is the grand and magnificent realm in Qu Yuan's Li Sao or the delicate scenes of willow catkins in Lin Daiyu's "Tang Dang Ling" and Xue Baochai's "Ling Jiang Xian," they are all the result of aesthetic imagination's cutting and casting.
Examining the combination of "virtual" and "real" in the overall structure of artistic imagery reveals diverse structural relationships and forms, reflecting the richness of the aesthetic connotation of this artistic dialectical category. For example, if we examine the hierarchical relationship, the relationship between the whole and the part, or the relationship between the subject (main) and the background (subordinate), we will find different combinations.
This applies only to poetry as an art form. If applied to fiction, it can manifest as the combination of concrete and abstract descriptions, or the combination of scenes within and outside the narrative. If applied to dramatic literature, it can manifest as the combination of stage presence and backstage, the combination of physical actions and sound effects, or the combination of spoken words and subtext. In different art forms such as painting, music, and architecture, it presents different structures.