"裊苢" is the eighth chapter in "The Book of Songs·Guofeng·Zhounan". The last three chapters contain twelve sentences and forty-eight characters, all of which are four-character sentences. Its greatest feature is the overlapping and looping of chapters and sentences, and its degree of repetition is the highest in the Book of Songs.
From a formal point of view, the whole poem is connected in series through only six verb changes, namely: "cai", "you", "掇", "捋", "袺", and "襭" Start a complete labor process and convey the joyful mood brought by labor. In other words, the whole poem only uses eleven different words and two basic sentence patterns - "pick up the various things and talk about them" to complete the poem, which is not bad.
Of course, this repetitive structure does not only exist in the "Fuyu" chapter, but appears quite widely in the "Book of Songs", most obviously in the "Wind" poem. Fundamentally speaking, this artistic feature comes from the sung artistic quality of the Book of Songs. Although the Book of Songs is originally a poem sung to music and is naturally different from ordinary literati poems, we rarely understand the Book of Songs from the perspective of songs.
By summarizing the basic formal characteristics of "The Book of Songs", we can find that: the "Wind" poems in the "Book of Songs" are generally composed of four characters, with sentence patterns of varying numbers of words; they are long. It consists of two, three, and four chapters, and the number of sentences in each chapter is mainly four or six. The overall length is small, and the structure of repeated chapters and overlapping sentences is the most prominent.
Such a poetic structure is quite similar to contemporary pop songs. It conforms to the repetition of musical tunes and the repetition of lyrics in language. Those tiny detailed changes, such as changes in individual sentence patterns and individual vocabulary, are precisely the most expressive aspects of poetry. It is not an exaggeration to say that they are the core words and phrases of poetry.
So, from the perspective of a song, looking at the piece "裣苢", its repetitive structure just meets the needs of song creation and communication. In music creation, the repetition of basic tunes is the norm, which is reflected in the language text as the repetition of poems. What is used in the "Feng Tou" chapter is three repetitions of a melody. It is the simplest musical form and is also a form of melody combination that is frequently used in the "Book of Songs". This form of music has short chapters, simple lyrics, easy to remember and sing, and is most suitable for spreading among the masses.
In fact, in the poem "裊苢", the two most basic sentence patterns are "Caicai XX, Boyan XX", and other poems are all derivation of this sentence. They appear widely in other chapters of "The Book of Songs", the former such as "Juan Er", such as "Ephemera"; the latter such as "Caifeng", "Cailing", "Shimai", etc. This shows that the repetitive technique of the poem "Fu Tong" evolved based on relatively fixed formulas and formulas. This kind of formula and formula is one of the basic methods of poetry creation in the Book of Songs. It is the artistic skills and creative rules formed during the long-term spread and singing of poetry at that time.
As for the six verbs with detailed changes, they are the language refinement adopted to better express the poetry, and the central vocabulary carefully crafted to realize the change and advancement of the scene. In the poem "裣苢", "picking 芣苢" is the basic content of the story, and "how to pick" is the main context of the story's development, so the six words expressing the "picking action" have become the central words of the whole poem.
There are many previous explanations for these six verbs, each with its own merits. Taken together, these six words are generally divided into three groups: the first group is "pick" and "you", which are always written about picking, and are interpreted as picking 芣苢, and bluntly saying that there are many 芣苢; The first group is "掇" and "捋", which describe the matter of picking in detail, and are interpreted as picking up and stroking during the picking process; the third group is "袺" and "襭", which describe the matter of decoration in detail, and are interpreted as The process of pulling up the skirt or tucking it to the waist to wear clothes.
If you have engaged in similar agricultural picking activities, you will have a clearer understanding of the labor process: women met to pick lettuce and found that there were many lettuce in the wild, so they kept picking and harvesting. After picking it up, they finally filled it up and carried it back together. We don’t care for the moment what they are, nor what the purpose of picking them is. Judging from the poetic text itself, what it describes is actually just a simple and neat labor matter.
Of course, although the picture of the poem is simple, it is not dry and boring - in the change of a few words, the scene has been changed thousands of times, vivid and natural. This is the condensation of key phrases in the Book of Songs. Typical examples include "Fu Lu 'sui', 'general', and 'cheng'" in the poem "樛木"; such as "it is suitable for its 'family', 'family', and 'family'" in the poem "Taoyao"; For example, in the poem "Cai Ge", "Not seeing each other for one day is like 'March', 'Sanqiu', 'Three years old'"!
To sum up, the basic artistic features of the poem "裊苢" are repeated chapters and repeated sentences, loops and loops, and the use of a small number of changes in words to promote the dynamic development and emotional sublimation of the entire poem scene. Such superb creative skills just show that it is not a simple folk song, but a work of art that has been polished and reprocessed by professionals.
——Full text——