Beiping, in a humble Peking University dormitory.

Because it was during the summer vacation, the whole dormitory building was very deserted, and there were not even a few ghosts.

"Smack!"

Sun Zuoyun swatted a mosquito to death and turned his attention back to the manuscript paper. He was bare-chested, wearing a pair of shorts, and a pair of low-quality slippers on his feet. However, the article he is writing is destined to go down in the annals of modern Chinese literature.

Sun Zuoyun was born in Liaoning Province in the northeast, which means that he is now an exiled student.

His college career was very tortuous and bumpy, and he graduated from the High School Attached to Northeastern University at the age of 19, and could have been admitted to Northeastern University without examination. But he went to Shanghai alone and approached Fudan University with his ability.

Sun Zuoyun studied in Fudan for less than a year, when suddenly the "128 Incident" broke out, and the Japanese invaded Shanghai. Fudan students initiated the organization of the Volunteer Army, and Sun Zuoyun resolutely threw himself into Rong, abandoned school and joined the 19th Route Army, which actively resisted Japan, and was responsible for transporting ammunition to the soldiers who killed the enemy on the front line.

The battle was fought in a blur, China and Japan actually made a peaceful truce, and the Fudan student army was disbanded.

Sun Zuoyun and his students were embarrassed, they couldn't be soldiers, and they couldn't go to school. In a fit of anger, Sun Zuoyun simply went to the north and was successfully admitted to Peking University that year.

Sun Zuoyun is about to be in his third year of college, and he saw Zhou Hexuan's new poem "Praise" a few days ago, so he decided to write something.

Let's just write your graduation thesis in advance.

There are more than a dozen reference books on the desk, plus a thick stack of magazines, Sun Zuoyun is like a god under the pen, and soon lines of pen words appear on the manuscript paper-

"On 'Modernist' Poetry"

(1) Three stages of the evolution of Chinese new poetry

Counting from Mr. Hu Shi's "Trial Collection", the new poems have a history of more than ten years...... Up to now, the new poetry has come to the most confusing path, and the new writers have set their own standards, and the unfixed form of the new poetry is also one of the reasons for the confusion......

I divide the development of new poetry into three stages: (1) the era of Guo Moruo, (2) the era of Wen Yiduo, and (3) the era of Zhou Hexuan.

Issue 1: There are many writers in Guo Moruo's era, and they are also very complex. However, although the artistic conception and content of the poems of this era are different from each other, their common characteristics are that the form is not fixed and does not rhyme......

The second issue: represented by Mr. Wen Yiduo and Mr. Xu Zhimo. Mr. Xu's poetry is characterized by fluency, clarity, and gorgeousness...... The poet of the same school as Mr. Wen is Mr. Chen Mengjia. Mr. Chen's poems are full of artistic conception and form, and he is not limited by others, and he is a poet who can best express himself...... The characteristics of this school of poetry are the uniformity of form, the tone of syllables, and the material is higher than that of others.

Phase 3: Represented by Mr. Zhou Hexuan, Mr. Dai Wangshu, Shi Yucun, Li Jinfa and other Mr. Zhou are of the same faction. The beginning of this school of poetry is Mr. Zhou's "Answer", "Meanness is the pass of the despicable, and nobility is the epitaph of the noble", two simple sentences that describe the ugliness of the world. This poem uses novel and magnificent imagery to bring many influences to later poets. This school of poetry is now the most popular poetry style in the domestic poetry circle, especially since 1932, most of the new poets belong to this school, and it is a fashion for a while. Because the poetry of this school is still growing, there is only one common tendency, and there is no obvious banner, so it has to be called 'modernist poetry', because this kind of poetry is mostly published in the magazine "Modern".

(2) Characteristics of modernist poetry

The characteristic of modernist poetry is that poets want to abandon the beauty of the words of poetry, or ignore the beauty of words, and seek the beauty of poetic imagery. Their poems do not follow the rhythm, so they do not rhyme, and therefore the form is uneven.

In this respect, modern poetry is a reaction of crescent poetry. They advocate the use of new vocabulary, discarding old words that have become rotten, but also those whose old words have new suggestive power...... Take Mr. Zhou's new work "Praise" as an example, the first stanza has 19 lines of poetry, and only 3 lines fit the rhyme...... Mr. Dai Wangshu's "Wangshu Grass" is also a typical work of this school of poetry, and I have seen many young poets imitating it......"

In this 10,000-word essay, Sun Zuoyun listed Hu Shi as the forerunner of new Chinese poetry, and then divided the development of new poetry into three stages. The leaders of the first stage are Guo Moruo, the leaders of the second stage are Xu Zhimo and Wen Yiduo, and the leaders of the third stage are Zhou Hexuan and Dai Wangshu.

Well, by accident, Zhou Hexuan became the originator of Chinese "modernist" poetry.

In the article, Sun Zuoyun also discussed the creation of poetry today, saying:

"After 1931, Chinese politics became more and more repressive. Poets are born without flattery, do not slip on their beards, and are not satisfied with the present society, and every writer falls into the quagmire of despair...... And because of the Northeast Incident, the tragic ancient country lost one-fifth of the country's land in a few years...... What if you are not pessimistic?

Modernist poetry often expresses pessimistic nihilistic thoughts, so in the past three years, modernist poets have multiplied, flourished for a while, and formed a large faction. However, there are many drawbacks in their creations, such as moaning without disease, such as scattered structure, such as art for art's sake, such as tending to morbid subjects.

Mr. Zhou Hexuan's "Praise" provides an example for the creation of modernist poetry. Its intention is healthy and upward, and it is positive and enterprising; Its structure may seem loose, but it is actually perfectly self-contained; Although its rhyme is irregular, it is plain and catchy to read; Its use of imagery is at its peak, and there is no gratuitous deliberate accumulation...... Today's young poets should really read Mr. Zhou's poem more, and don't let their creation fall into a dead end......"

Sun Zuoyun's "On Modernist Poetry" was published more than half a year earlier than in history, and it caused a great discussion as soon as it came out.

"Modernist" poetry, finally having a name of its own.

In this school of poetry, Zhou Hexuan is the founding patriarch and sect leader, Dai Wangshu is equivalent to the deputy sect leader and chief protector, and Shi Yucun, Bian Zhilin and others are several elders in the sect. As for the "Hazy Poetry School" that emerged a few decades later, it is just a branch of the "Modern Poetry School", and Gu Cheng's status is probably equivalent to that of the head of the outer sect.

Young poets across the country are crazy, grabbing Zhou Hexuan's "Answer" and "Praise" to imitate them, and even directly dismantling and reorganizing the original sentences, and then putting them into their own poetry works.

If Guo Moruo was a poetry idol 15 years ago, Xu Zhimo was a poetry idol 10 years ago, then Zhou Hexuan is the current poetry idol.

Whether it is a girl in the boudoir or a patriotic youth, they all hold Zhou Hexuan's new poems like a treasure.

It's a pity that Zhou Hexuan's poetry output is too small, and it doesn't exceed ten so far, which makes his admirers feel very regretful.

After more than ten years of development, Chinese vernacular poetry has finally matured, and Zhou Hexuan inadvertently added a fire to it and left an unshakable historical position.