This poetic concept entered China's literary theory in the 1920s and had a long-term influence. From the "pure poetry movement" in the 1920s and 1930s to the pursuit of pure poetry in the middle and late 1980s, until the reaction to pure poetry in the 1990s, this concept still had an impact on China's poetics. It is generally believed that the word "pure poetry" appeared in China's poetics as early as 1926. Mu's Tan Shi and Wang's Re-Tan Shi first put forward the concept of "pure poetry". The former said: "We want pure poetry, we want to live in the world of poetry, and we want a clear distinction between poetry and prose. We demand pure poetic inspiration. " [3] The latter also believes: "To eradicate the shortcomings of weak aesthetics and rough creation in China's current literary world, we must advocate poetic purity." [4] The concept of pure poetry in the 1920s is obviously due to people's dissatisfaction with the May 4th vernacular poetry, which is too dull, too rough and simple, and thus lacks the unique charm and aesthetic feeling of poetry. Many people disapprove of Yu Pingbo's vernacular poetics, thinking that he overemphasized the utility, freedom and generality of poetry and neglected the modern form, rhythm and individuality of new poetry. Yang Zhensheng, Zhou Zuoren, Liang Shiqiu and others all oppose poetry as a universal "tool of knowledge and morality", but advocate that poetry should take beauty as the center, take the expression of personal feelings as the purpose, and "stress rather than meaning" [5]. Liang Shiqiu even said when reading "The Reductionism of Evolution at the End of Poetry": Yu Jun's pursuit of goodness is not only denying the realization of beauty, but also denying the existence of art. Art exists for art, and its purpose is only beauty, but it does not know aesthetic good and evil. It is against this background that the concept of pure poetry enters the field of vision of China's poetics. Zhou Zuoren began to translate and introduce Baudelaire's works and pure poetry theory very early. Today, people have not forgotten his work-some scholars even think that the germination of modern pure poetry concept has been continued and expanded under the careful care of Zhou Zuoren. [6]
China's "pure poetry movement" was formed in the late 1920s and lasted until the mid-1930s. After 1926, the concept of pure poetry officially surfaced: ① Mu Hewang officially unveiled the slogan of "pure poetry" and preliminarily expounded the aesthetic connotation of "pure poetry". The former thought that Hu Shi was the biggest sinner of China's new poetry movement, because Hu Shi advocated taking prose as poetry, which resulted in the highly prosaic culture of new poetry and a kind of nondescript prose of Fauci School. In order to correct its deviation, he put forward the idea of pure poetry: the unity and continuity of poetry and "poetry is mathematical and musical" [7]; The latter also believes that the unity and continuity of poetry can only be fully demonstrated by pure poetry, and it is necessary for China's new poetry to learn from French pure poetry-Lamartin's "emotion", Wei Erlun's "voice", Rambo's "color" and Laffargue's "strength"; He also put forward the formula of pure poetry: (emotion+force)+(sound+color) = poetry. This formula highlights the importance of pure poetry to the means of writing expression. "We must work hard and don't completely believe in inspiration." "I hope we can work hard to complete the art, learn from Baudelaire, Wei Erlun and Rambo, and be a beautiful poet!" [8] (2) The translation of western pure poetry theory provides theoretical resources for the development of China's pure poetry. 1926, Zhu Weizhen translated The Principles of Poetry by Allan Poe, the originator of pure poetry. In this paper, Poe put forward the concept of pure poetry: pure poetry is the rhythmic creation of beauty, and interest is the only criterion. "For intelligence or conscience, it is only an indirect relationship. It has nothing to do with morality or truth except by accident. " [9]; 1927, Zhu Ziqing and Li Jianwu jointly translated Bradley's Poetry for Poetry's sake, and later translated R.D. James's Pure Poetry. Both Bradley and James advocate the concepts of "poetry for poetry's sake" and "art for art's sake". Shao published Pure Poetry, introducing the concept of pure poetry by British writer George Moore. Liang's Poems and Truth and Poems and Truth Ⅱ give full play to paul valery's pure poetic thoughts. Valery has a classic definition of pure poetry: "Pure poetry is actually a fictional thing inferred from observation. It should help us understand the general concept of poetry and guide us to conduct a difficult and important study-to study the various relationships between language and its functions on people. Perhaps it is better to say' pure poetry' than' absolute poetry'; It should be understood as an exploration-the effect of exploring the relationship between words, or the effect of the relationship between various associations of words; In short, this is an exploration of the whole sensory field dominated by language. " [10] Liang commented on Valery's poems: his poems have reached the purest musical and perhaps the highest artistic realm.
Liang's contribution to the construction of pure poetry theory includes two aspects. First, the concept of pure poetry is defined accurately and comprehensively. "The so-called pure poetry is to get rid of the writing, narration, reasoning and even sentimental sentiment of all objective scenery, and only rely on the elements that constitute its basic form-music and color to produce a spell-like hint, thus arousing our senses and imagination and making our soul cross into a fugue state." Like music, become an absolutely independent, absolutely free, purer and more immortal universe than this world; The close mixing of its own phonology and color background is the internal reason for its existence. This is not to say that there is no emotion and thought in poetry; The poet's cultivation in this respect is deeper than usual. Because it should be refined to the point where it can't distinguish between rhyme and color, in other words, only the elements that prose can't express can be incorporated into poetry-it should be turned into poetry. Even if these feelings or thoughts occasionally appear in prose, they are like unfinished poems, waiting for music and pictures. "Second, link the concept of pure poetry with China's traditional poetry and poetics. He believes that pure poetry is not metaphysical or just a western patent. " There are many pure poems in China's ancient poems, and Jiang Baishi's ci is the most representative one. "[1 1] Su Dongpo's" Words of Seeing Tao ",Yan Yu's" Tao lies in wonderful understanding "and Wang Guowei's" triple realm "are all related to the concept of pure poetry. In Liang's view, pure poetry is the highest realm of poetry and the quality of all great poems. It brings people a kind of "intoxication" and a common understanding. " [ 13]
Zhu Guangqian is another aesthetician who explains the concept of "pure poetry". He found the formalistic root of "pure poetry" from Kant's theory of "pure beauty". On the one hand, he criticized the neglect of aesthetic association caused by the content in the pure poetry movement, on the other hand, he agreed with the synaesthesia art of "pure poetry" very much. This view is closely related to its aesthetic intuition. In the middle and late 1930s, with the historical prominence of the theme of national salvation, the concept of "pure poetry" gradually withdrew from the stage of literary theory, and poetry discourses such as street poetry, popular poetry, new folk song movement and political lyric poetry flourished. It was not until 1956 that Nianxian founded Modern Poetry magazine in Taiwan Province Province and published Six Creeds of Modernism, and Ai and others re-emphasized the strict difference between poetry and prose, and the concept of "pure poetry" was revived.
After 1980s, Chinese mainland's new poetry entered a brand-new development period. Various poetic concepts and modern poetic concepts have appeared one after another, and many people are arguing. Although the concept of "pure poetry" is not common, people can vaguely see the revival of the concept of "pure poetry" from the fact that poetry is a self-sufficient world and Haizi's pursuit of purity of poetry. After 1990s, against the background of "pure poetry", this concept was heated again. Under the attack of marketization, extreme colloquialism, civilian life and vulgar "lower body" writing, the concept of "pure poetry" is once again highlighted in front of people. Wang Guangming reminds people to pay attention to1poets who have been writing on the edge since the mid-1980s. "Like Xichuan, Ouyang, Wang Jiaxin, Xiao, Sun, etc., they don't directly respond to their own history, times, society and culture like novelists, but try to explain and imagine the contemporary living situation from the perspective of the soul, and respond to the superficial and vulgar trend of the times with serious thoughts and language exploration." Among them, Nishikawa clearly regards the purity of poetry as his artistic pursuit: "to be restrained in emotional expression, to be transparent, pure and noble in rhetoric, and to adopt an independent posture that is both involved in and far away from life", but this purity is different from the previous purity of language self-sufficiency and independence. Wang Guangming believes that this concept actually contains a reflection on formalism in the tendency of "pure poetry" in the late 1980s. [13] Cheng Guangpei's "Listening to the Rain Maple" characterized the poetry tide in the 1990s as opposing "pure poetry", arguing that poetry writing in the 1990s did not stay in the world of pure poetry for the sake of poetry, but had enough ability to enter various lives. Yu Jian, a colloquial poet, explicitly opposes the concept of pure poetry, thinking that this concept always involves the standard of poetry, legality and illegality, and the value judgment of poetry and non-poetry, which will make people think of the so-called "innocence of poetry". He even said that in poetry, the so-called pure poetry is just a butcher's knife to the creative spirit of poetry. Obviously, the fate of "pure poetry" has once again attracted the attention of literary critics. Tang Xiaodu defended pure poetry, arguing that "pure poetry" is a necessary dimension in China's modern poetry tradition. In modern poetry, it means that the poet constantly endows himself with dark and nameless experience in form, that the content, form, structural mechanism and experience skills of poetry are inseparable, and that every poem must invent its own form, and that the poet must invent himself by inventing the form. It is not the transformation of experience, but the direct gestation of experience, which is not contradictory to "anti-poetry" and the intervention of some heterogeneous factors. The writing of new poetry has a history of 90 years, and people have been dissatisfied with the lack of classics. Since modern Chinese can undertake the translation of foreign classic literary works, it shows that modern Chinese itself has the ability to produce classic works. The key lies in the imperfection of the tradition of new poetry, which hinders the poet's powerful writing. If we avoid pure poetry, our tradition of new poetry will remain so incomplete.