| In the 1930s arose a group of poets,who tended to go back to the poetic tradition in the Late Tang Dynasty.Instead of constant learning from the Western poetry,they began to seek the feasibility of inheriting the Chinese old-style poetry.The spontaneous tendency reflects a transformation of poetic concepts.Fei Ming,Bian Zhilin,Dai Wangshu,Lin Geng,Zhu Yingdan,Wu Xinghua and other poets among this group have reflected a tendency of conscious return to the traditional Chinese classical poetry on different levels.The tendency is intimately related to the study of Western poetry,such as Bian Zhilin’s acceptance of Eliot’s poetry and poetic style.With the influence of the poets and scholars like Wen Yiduo and Zhu Ziqing,Lin Geng began to study the history of Chinese literature as a scholar and formed his own idea of literary history and poetic.In his study of the history of Chinese literature,he holds that lyricism is the characteristic of the traditional Chinese poetry literature and the narrative literature forms like the drama and the fiction since Song and Yuan Dynasty are also lyrical.Lyricism is a tradition of the Chinese poetry which Lin Geng has stressed.As a new poet,Lin Geng hoped that the new poetry would inherit the spirit of traditional poetry in practice.Lin Geng,who built his system completely on the basis of the tradition of Chinese classic poems.This paper will use text analysis as the main method to discuss the phenomenon "using old-style poetry as a method" from Lin Geng and his efforts to establish a new poetic style.On this basis the poets in the 1930s who tended to "go back to the poetic tradition in the Late Tang Dynasty" will be observed and their differences beyond the common tendency will be analyzed.This paper will discuss this topic in three parts.First of all,the use of Chinese classical poetry resources of Lin Geng is reflected in his poetic style.One is the extensive use of natural images,which have similarities and differences in his early and later works.Second is inheritance and development of the old-style poems,which focus on two keywords cleanness and dream.Thirdly,his use of Chinese poetry resources is reflected in his understanding of the poetic and Ci styles.Second,it is an important direction of explore and practice for the poets in the 1930s to focus on the form.It is Lin’s target to construct a new metrical pattern of poetry after his form experiment in 1935.He spared no effort in this aspect and insisted for the longest time.He brought up concepts such as semi-funny law,typical verse through his study of rhythmical forms in classical poetic styles and tried to restore the rhythms in the modern style poem with five or seven characters.In this way he tried to build a new metrical pattern of poetry.Both Natural poems and nine words poetry are products in his attempt of forms.Due to the ignorance of the objective fact of Europeanization in modern Chinese language and deviation in creations,Lin Geng’s attempt of the new poetic style is nearly a failure.Finally,Lin Geng’s using old-style poetry as a method is fundamentally not a tendency towards idolizing the ancients,but an attempt to use the outstanding tradition of Chinese classic poems as reference to create new poems.Unfortunately he deviated his way due to his obsession with the form.In the debate with Dai Wangshu and other poets who tended to inherent the old-style poetry we can see the pursuit of modernity in the poetic circle at that time.Also we can see the complexity of the relationship between old and new poems.Meanwhile Lin Geng’s attempt of constructing Chinese literature history with lyrics and some specifics of his creations in the new poems correspond to the aesthetic orientation of Chinese poems translating into English at that time.It reflects the complicated relationship between new poem and the lyric tradition. |
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