格律体新诗的创作：拥有充分的自由The Freedom of New Poetry

曲径通幽

格律体新诗的创作：拥有充分的自由


            文：万龙生

    人有追求自由的天性。“为自由而斗争”是一个壮烈的口号，甚至有许多人为之牺牲了宝贵的生命。“不自由，毋宁死！”是一些仁人志士的坚定信念。
但是“自由”的概念在不同的范畴是不一样的。在社会的范畴，在道德的范畴，在法律的范畴，任何人，在任何时候，都不可能享有绝对的不受约束的“自由”。艺术范畴当然也不能例外。歌德早就说过，创作只能在限制中寻求自由。
但是，我们中国当今诗界大部分人士对此缺乏足够的认识。他们操的是一种被称为“自由诗”的武器，在诗坛上横冲直撞，所向披靡，如入无人之境。一提"格律"，就满脸的不屑，甚至如临大敌，必欲除之而后快，一言以蔽之曰：那玩意儿限制了诗意的表达，限制了我的自由。他们不懂得艺术的辩证法：限制与自由是相对的一组矛盾，彼此互相制约又互相依存。
格律体新诗就是在诗歌领域里解决限制与自由的矛盾的一种方式，是经过几十年努力探索才找到的一条出路。
跟一些不明就里的人武断的想法完全不同，只要掌握和运用了格律体新诗的规则，诗人在创作的时候是相当“自由”的，能够孕育出面貌各异的精神的孩子。正如一个高明的艺匠得心应手地使用他手中的工具，可以制作出各不相同的赏心悦目的制品。它们绝不是千篇一律的毫无灵气的用具，而是有灵魂的“生命”。
在格律体新诗的三个大类中，各有自己的创作“路数”。掌握并运用这些路数，不但不会妨碍诗意的表达，而且恰恰相反，还能有助于诗意的表达；不但不是如那种无知的臆想，会失去创作的自由，而且反而能帮助诗人取得限制中的自由。试分述之：
一、整齐式：只要最初形成了一个诗行，无论是几言几步，以此为“基准诗行”，下面的诗行照此复制，并接着决定“节式”，（即几行为一节，包括一定的压韵方式），待意思表达完了，这首作品也就成立了。
这仅仅是最普遍的整齐式作品的“操作”方法。一首齐言等步的整齐式作品，其分节的方式是可以因情绪的波动而变化的。如十四行诗就并非每节行数一致，八行诗除四、四和二、二、二、二两种常见的节式安排外，也有二、四、二，三、一、三、一等特殊的设计。至于其他行数不固定的作品，每首诗内部的节式也是可以有多种变化的。
如笔者另文所言，创作实践中，整齐式还有“变言同步式”和“变言变步式”的发展，即不同的诗节可以采用不同的“基准诗行”，那就有了更大的自由度。
二、参差（对称）式：如果最初的诗思不适合以整齐的行式表达，就可以任其参差不齐，形成一个初始诗节。然后，不断地“克隆”这个“基准诗节”，就可以形成一首参差体的作品。由于基准诗节千差万别，参差式作品的体例也就不可穷尽。这就是个从自由到不自由的过程，后面那段的不自由的旅程，也因为有了一条可以遵循的路径，而实际上取得了一定程度的“自由”。
需要指出，参差式作品还因为一首诗里可以有两种甚至更多的基准节式，甚至每一节诗里可以形成各各不同的内部对称方式，而显得更加摇曳多姿，丰富多彩。
三、复合式：
根据表达的需要，同一首诗里，在不同的部位，各自以整齐或参差的面目出现，这在创作中无疑也拥有很高的自由度，这就无须多言了。
以上的论述，是从创作的自由度这个角度来回答对于格律体新诗的一种相当普遍而又毫无道理的指责。与在另一篇短文里提出格律体新诗“体式的无限丰富性”一样，这实质上也是我提出的“无限可操作性”论断的延伸。

曲径通幽

The Freedom of New Poetry


By Wan Longsheng

People are born with the desire for freedom. “Fighting for freedom”---the slogan is so inspiring that many people even sacrifice their lives for it. “Give me liberty, or give me death” has become the conviction of those with lofty ideals.
But the concept of freedom varies in different fields. Under no circumstances is anybody given absolute freedom in social, ethic and legal domains. And art is no exception. Goethe remarked long ago that creation can only find freedom in confinement.  
    Nevertheless, most contemporary Chinese poets do not have a sufficient understanding of what “freedom” really means. They have grabbed the so-called “free poetry” as a weapon supporting their arrogant intrusion and invincible take-over of the poetry world. The mention of meter incurs their contempt or even hostility. They enjoy eradicating meter from their poems and justify themselves by accusing it of hindering the spontaneous flow of their creativity. However, they rarely understand the dialectics of art---confinement and freedom are reciprocal---they constrain and depend on each other. Scores of years’ exploration has found New Poetry as the key to the balance between confinement and freedom.
Unlike what a layman arbitrarily asserts, the poets who have a good command of the rules of New Poetry are quite free to compose poems, like giving birth to babies, handsome and spirited. Similarly, a brilliant artisan adeptly employs his tools to create various works of art that feast the eye, which are nor monotonous and boring copies, but live sprites.
New Poetry falls into three categories, and each of them has their own tricks. Mastering and using these rules is conducive to the expression than hinder it, and assists the poets in attaining the freedom from the confinement rather than lose it. I will elaborate the three categories as the followings:
1. Neat pattern
Regardless of how many words or feet the first line contains, it is the reference for the following lines. The next step is the decision of the stanza pattern--- how many lines to comprise a stanza and what rhyming scheme to choose? Once the poet has expressed what he wants to, a piece of art is there.
This is merely the commonest employment of a neat pattern. A poem with the same length and feet in each line can be divided into different stanza patterns according to the emotional variations. For instance, sonnets do not have stereotyped fourteen lines; octets can either have two four-line stanzas or four two-line stanzas; in addition, it has special patterns like two/four/two and three/one/three/one lines. There are also poems of random lines with variable stanzas.  
As I referred in a different essay, the composition of a neat pattern can also be developed into “varied length with same feet” and “varied length with varied feet”; namely, different stanzas can choose different reference lines. This contributes to greater freedom.
2. Irregular symmetric pattern.
If the initial inspiration refuses to be expressed in a neat pattern, it will turn to an irregular pattern to form the first stanza. Sequentially, as a reference, the first stanza will be “cloned” into an irregularly-patterned poem. And diverse reference stanzas contribute to various irregularly-patterned poems. This is a process from freedom to non-freedom, and the subsequent non-freedom, finding a path to beat, has actually acquired “freedom” to some degree.  
Moreover, an irregularly-patterned poem is allowed to have two or more reference stanzas and inside each stanza, various symmetrical styles can be formed, which endows the poem with diversity and inflexibility.
3. Compound pattern.
Wheeled by the expression, a poem can contain both neat and irregular patterns in different parts, which undoubtedly promises greater freedom during creation.

The above analysis replies to the common but unreasonable accusation of New Poetry from the perspective of the freedom of creation. Just like “the infinite richness of styles” of New Poetry I proposed in another essay, this essay is actually the extension of my “infinite practicality” theory.

（Tr  Yin  JingJing ; Proofread by  zhao  yanchun)

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谢谢雨玲，费心了！