Symbol Of The Drift

Since the blossoming of the modern Chinese poetry during the last century, the focus of the poeticness in different periods keeps shifting among different symbolic structures. This paper, with the aim of presenting a clear picture of the poeticness transformation of the modern Chinese poetry, chooses several representative symbolic structures, probes into their own generating and evolution processes, and makes an effort to describe the changing among these symbolic structures.At the very beginning, the modern Chinese poetry relates to the Chinese classical poetry and western poetry closely methodologically and practically. In order to clarify the transformation track and background of the poeticness changing of the modern Chinese poetry, I add all these to this paper for a complete discussion. In order to sort through the modern poets'reflection upon the classical poetry resources and their absorbing of it, I analyze the interpretation of the poem Shijing·Zhengfeng·Fengyu and reference to it in the first chapter, clarify the classical basis of its modern interpretation and close relationship with the reflection of the modern Chinese poetry methodology, and conclude a new angle to observe the generation and evolution of the modern literature viewpoint after revealing some unnoticeable details and clues of the change from the Chinese classical literature to modern literature.The second chapter discusses the exemplification of some interesting phenomena fashioned during the formation of the describing conception and imagery system against the background of the join-together of the Chinese and western poetry tradition to project their characteristics. In my opinion, although the imagery systems in the Chinese poetry tradition are very different from those in the western tradition, we are still able to find something in common between them. Especially when we investigate the rebuilding of the describing ability of the modern Chinese poetry, we have to start with the discussion of these two traditions, since their connection leads to the existence and development of the modern Chinese poetry. After the contrast and comparison, I propose that there are two kinds of poetry writing after the May 4th movement in 1919, one kind is seeking the blank of the wording and word building to express the freedom of life; the other kind, which is becoming the motivation of the futurism poetics, is using the existing words to satisfy the needs of the nation and political ideology.The third chapter focuses on the metaphor of motherland which is a key imagery system of the modern Chinese poetry. In my opinion, it is important to understand the poem itself, instead of political ideology, collectivism and patriotism expressed in these poems from the viewpoint of poetic sociology. The birth of the motherland lyricism and its legalization and internalization aesthetically lead to the appearance of many new characteristics of literature. Motherland becomes one of the most mysterious imageries in the modern Chinese poetry, and it builds the unprecedented main body of the lyricism, and continues to exist in the contemporary obscure poems. Of course, the focus of the greatness of the modern Chinese poetry gradually shifts from the digest of the discourse about motherland soaked with the political ideology and nationalism to the exploration of the language itself for a new symbolic structure. Therefore, chapter four explores the history and deployment of the imagery of swan which was used extensively in the 1980s, and its related poetic issues. This poetic metaphor of motherland, travelling through the entire symbolic net in a particular historic condition, makes the whole group speak out in one way. However, the swan metaphor and its related bird metaphor make the Chinese poetry reposition its role to rethink the relationship between the poems and the invisible things, and it also separates the individual from the group illusion and creates a new self symbolic way against a new background.Due to the tremendous historical change, the self-group relationship in the Chinese poems in the 1990s began to change. It seems that all the good poets tend to build the poeticness on the warning of this relationship. In many masterpieces written after 1990s, this kind of warning transferred to the poetic description of the public life. In this period, the legendary poet Du Fu was reimaged in order to adapt to the growing mutual denial between the society and poetry. Therefore, to deny that "denial" became the starting point of the poet writing during that period.To sum up, the truth of poetry is always expressed different in different historical context. This paper discusses the symbolic structures which are the locus of the difference of the modern Chinese poetry and have a profound impact on the imagery change in the history of the modern Chinese poetry. The poeticness of the modern Chinese poetry lies in these structures or even more, and it also shifts among them, for its sustained development. Therefore, poetry has to transfer according to its existing difficulties to escape various ideologies and knowledge durance and to fill our eternal missing.