On Poetry

Author: Zhu Guangqian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: In Europe, from ancient Greece to the Renaissance, works on literary theory were generally called poetics. The term "literary criticism" emerged later, with a broader scope, but poetics remained a major field. China had only poetics discussions (poihua) without poetics proper. Although Liu Yanshe's The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons was well-structured and not limited to poetry, poihua discussions were mostly casual and spontaneous, often hitting the mark concisely and intimately, which was their strength. However, their weakness lay in being disorganized, fragmented, and sometimes overly subjective or overly reliant on tradition, lacking a scientific spirit and methodology. The reasons for the underdevelopment of poetics in China can be attributed to two main factors. First, poets and readers often held a prejudice that the subtlety and profundity of poetry could only be grasped intuitively and not expressed verbally, as scientific analysis would shatter it like a jeweled pavilion into pieces. Second, the Chinese mindset tends to favor synthesis over analysis, excelling in intuition but lacking in logical reasoning. Rigorous analysis and logical induction are precisely the methods needed for poetics. The neglect of poetics is an unfortunate phenomenon. Historically, artistic creation and theory often influence each other. For example, Aristotle's Poetics was a conclusion derived from analyzing Greek literary works, which later influenced many poets. This influence was neither entirely good nor entirely bad. Moving on to appreciation, our love or dislike for artistic works should not be blind. Simply feeling that something is good or bad is insufficient—we must further investigate why it is good or bad. The task of poetics is to find reasons for the facts about poetry.