January 14th, 2010

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I think I should post something so people might not think I am dead.

In these days I hurry myself in finishing a poem collection by my friend, who recently pulished his first poem book and became eager for appreciation. Although in most cases, I wouldn't like to give too many comments on poetry( that's the most respect I can give to poetry). Since he is my friend and poetry nowadays desperately needs to relocate itself, I will go to his debut speech and share damning opinion with those who strive for "poetry."

It's not easy for poetry, especially for poetry written in Chinese nowadays. The reformation of Language started in the eaily part of last century still not came to its end. Now we have so many people claim themselves lovers of poetry, but what they actually love are the romanticism and fantasy poetry offers. Language stills waits someone to give the final shoots, not from romantic or lyric sides, but from philosophical, experiental sides that make language simplest and most profound. That's what the poem writers should restore nowadays, but poetry gradually becomes minor (at least in my country) in contemporary times.

Thanks to the popular taste poets invest on their works. Like too much sugar in tea.

This is really like what a old-fashioned language grammarian would say. I am not sure. I just want have more cold severe poetry like images reflected by ice mirror.

(This is an unconscious blabber from a man who should go to bed two hours ago. So, don't take it too seriously. If you take it seriously, keep it inside)


The most gratitude to @seekay for his kindly comment. Sometimes I just hesitate to choose this as my career.

And, is there any beautiful lady boother want to talk to me in English!! It seems my Englist started to get rotten again!! Come!! Save me!!
  • SeeKay

    #0

    Reply

    @PERHAP

    I am very much intrigued by the 'reformation of language' you mention as having been happening in China for a great many years.

    What has it entailed?

    January 14th, 2010

  • PERHAP

    #0

    Reply

    Ok, I should explain it at length tomorrow morning. As to now, I should go to bed. GOOD NIGHT.

    January 14th, 2010

  • PERHAP

    #0

    Reply

    @seekday....I finally find out it must cost me a thousand words to explain this clearly. I just reach 300 words.

    January 18th, 2010

  • PERHAP

    #0

    Reply

    Sorry for the late reply. I have no excuse other than my laziness(especially when I spend my time in watching Top GEAR.....)

    It is hard to expound on what the “reformation of language”entailed, since the influence of Language is almost everywhere. To give a satisfactory explanation would require a deep knowledge of linguistics, which I lack greatly. So I will restrict the discussion, in the perspective of a poetry major.

    First, please keep in mind that Mandarin is a language based on ideogram. You may not agree with me. But to me, ideogram is more free in expresion thatn alphabet. This is because, in alphabet language, the structure and grammar are so fixed that one can hardly change the pattern of their speech. Take Spanish for example, when someone say te amo( I love you), the first singular and time is always abbreaviated into the suffix o, with te placed ahead to represent you. This is what I would call “fixed grammer” that always demands a restrict pattern of speech, which cannot be broken off. You can never start a question without put “what”, ‘how” or “is” in the first place(At least in most case). However, Mandarin is not like this. It doesn’t require something like grammer or functional preposition/adverb to express itself. This doesn’t mean in Mandarin these concept don’t exist. It is only due to the special quality of ideogram, word in our language can be verb, adverb, or proposition, depending on what other words it connects with. For example, 在 can be interpreted as is, are, at or in different lines.

    However, the explanation above would not bring us near to the understanding of “reformation of language” in the early 20th century. To be exact, this movement is called “Modern Vernacular Movement”, which aimed to overthrow 文言文, the literary/official language used in ancient China. As you know, in the past, China was a vast land with distinct regional divergence. Each region had its own culture/custom, which shaped the way language was performed. So文言文 was more like an lingua franca that, on the one hand, became a public medium for people around the country to communicate with each other. And on the other side, which also made thing more complicated, 文言文 was also used to convey classic education, which was derive from ancient people’s speaking. Since Mandarin is a language of ideogram, and its structure is based on the way words connected to each other, it can change dramaticly across the time. So, as you can see, there was a great gap between文言文 and vernacular language in People’s daily life. Although they share the same vocabularies, the difference between文言文 and vernacular language is higher than that between Faerie Queen and nowadays English. Try to image the difference between Latin and Italic.

    So, this was the backgroud when the “Modern Vernacular Chinese Movement” occured, which claimed the restoration to vernacular writing. If you are still interested in the consequent influence on poetry, I should type down another article.

    January 18th, 2010

Chen is a 28 year old male from Taiwan.

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