英語修辭與寫作·17.2　韻格使用中的三個問題

17.2　韻格使用中的三個問題

17.2A　韻格的綜合使用

英語是一種韻律豐富的語言，不僅押韻的形式多種多樣，而且經(jīng)常是一種韻格連用，或兩種甚至多種韻格綜合使用，尤其在詩歌中更是如此。例如詩人Algernon Charles Swinburne的長詩Nephelidia 通篇充滿Alliteration，這里僅引其中一句：

Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.

Robert Graves的詩 The Traveler's Curse After Misdirection中除了尾韻連續(xù)出現(xiàn)外，還可以找到其他多種韻格：

May they wander stage by stage

Of the same vain Pilgrimage,

Stumbling on, age after age,

Night and day, mile after mile,

At each and every stile, withal,

May they catch their feet and fall;

上節(jié)詩中除了尾韻/d?/和/?/分別構(gòu)成前三行和后四行的韻腳以外，每行中還含有頭韻、母韻、尾韻，真是韻味無窮。

17.2B　韻格同其他辭格并用

英語中的韻格常常和其他辭格并用，給它們增添各種音響色彩，如前面Robert Graves的那節(jié)詩中不僅有多種韻格，還可以找到 Repetition, Parallelism, Contrast等，反之，也可以說，在其他各種辭格中都會出現(xiàn)并用的韻格，其中尤其和擬聲格配合時，能創(chuàng)造出理想的聲響效果，例如：

Tom Carvel, 84, the ice-cream tycoon whose voice — a near-indescribable mix of grumble, mumble, rasp and gasp — Peddled his company's wares in radio and TV ads for 35 years, died in his sleep in Pine Plains, N. Y., Oct. 21.

（People, Nov. 1990）

句中一連串?dāng)M聲的母韻、尾韻給讀者以清晰的音響感，老人發(fā)出的嘟嘟囔囔、咕咕噥噥、嗄擦嗄擦、撲哧撲哧的聲音似乎就在耳邊。又如：

Hark, hark

Bow-Bow.

The watch-dogs barks!

Bow-Bow!

Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer.

Cry, “Cook-a -doodle-doo!”

上面是W. Shakespeare的一首抒情小詩，題為Song: Hark, Hark!詩中擬聲詞和幾種韻格結(jié)合使用，讀來生動、逼真，似有犬吠雞鳴之感。

17.2C　韻格的恰當(dāng)使用

1） 英語中各種韻格的使用十分普遍，詩歌、諺語中隨處可見，新聞和廣告中更為風(fēng)行。

有篇廣告詞是這樣的：

One man's disaster is another man's delight.

The Sale is now on.

在這個相當(dāng)聳人聽聞的大削價廣告中，首先引人注意的恐怕是對照 （參見16.1A），接著是對諺語 One Man's meat is another man's poison的仿擬（參見13.1A），與此同時，頭韻又增添幾分幽默情趣，似乎店老板果然是真心讓利，樂意酬賓呢。相比之下，我曾見到的另一份促銷廣告則遜色得多：

Kick your can into higher gear.

Come to our clearance here!

這個廣告雖有頭韻和尾韻，但相當(dāng)于順口溜，沒有什么深度，可以說是為韻而韻。

2） 范家材教授在《英語修辭賞析》一書中提出了“避免因韻害義”的告誡，同時引用了Dr. Samuel Johnson的話：“It's the mind that governs the ear.”在韻格使用中，除了上面講到的單純追求押韻以外，還有的押韻不和諧，甚至損害文體的協(xié)調(diào)。例如：

Can the Democrats Defy Decline?

這是《經(jīng)濟學(xué)家》論述美國民主黨如何挽回頹勢一文的標題，其中謂語動詞defy雖然達到了押頭韻和尾韻的目的，但與賓語decline搭配牽強，音韻呆板，若將defy換成check, face out這樣清輔音開頭的詞語，則既保持了頭韻又使?jié)崆遢o音相間，效果會更好些。

練習(xí)十七?。‥xercise Seventeen）

I. Preview Questions:

1. The three figures Alliteration, Assonance and Consonance are all related with sounds, aren't they?

2. Is it true that all English letters can be used to form Alliteration?

3. Is Assonance always associated with vowels?

4. Consonance is formed by repeating the last consonants of two or more words, isn't it?

5. Both Single Rhyme and Double Rhyme can occur in the three figures Alliteration, Assonance and Consonance. Do you agree with this statement?

6. Is it advisable to use the rhyming figures as much as possible since they can produce musical effects?

II. Identify what figures are used in the following:

1. The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

2. “No sweet without sweat” is a proverb in which two kinds of figures can be found.

3. Why do we garnish our own traits but tarnish the other fellows?

4. With the election weeks away, both sides are claiming victory and crying foul.

（David Lawday）

5. The day is fresh and fair, and there is a smell of narcissus in the air.

（Amy Lowell）

6. Green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope together in the sunshine towards the brows of ravines, where the pines take up their own dominion of saddened shade, and with everlasting roar in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down, pale from the glaciers, filling all their chasms with enchanted cold, beating themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise.

（John Ruskin）

7. Like as the tide that comes from th' Ocean main,

Flows up the Shenan with contrary force,

And overruling him in his own rayne,

Drives back the current of his kindly course,

...

（Edmund Spenser）

III. Further reading:

Rhyme is the repetition of sounds in positions close enough to be noticed. We associate this aspect of language with poetry, usually in the form of end rhyme — the closing of successive or alternate lines with the same sound:

The grave's a fine private place,

But none I think do there embrace.

（Andrew Marvell）

Poetry also has inner rhyme — the repetition of sounds within the line, as the a and i vowels and the p's of the first line of Marvell's couplet.

Despite its association with poetry, rhyme also occurs in prose, more often than people think. It is usually a kind of inner rhyme — prose writers rarely structure sentences or clauses by ending them with the same sound. Like rhythm, rhyme can affect the ear both pleasantly and unpleasantly, and it can enhance meaning, for by rhyming key words, a writer draws attention to them. In prose such rhyme often takes the form of alliteration, the repetition of initial sounds in successive or near-successive words. In the following sentence the writer emphasizes “wilderness”by repeating w and “decay” by repeating d:

Otherwise the place is bleakly uninteresting: a wilderness of windswept grasses and sinewy weeds waving away from a thin beach ever speckled with drift and decaying things, — worm-ridden timbers, dead porpoises.

（Lafcadio Hearn）

Alliteration can be risky. Hearn succeeds, but G. K. Chesterton rides alliteration too hard and too long in the k sounds of this sentence:

Thus a creed which set out to create conquerors would only corrupt soldiers; corrupt them with a craven and unsoldierly worship of success:and that which began as a philosophy of courage ends as a philosophy of cowardice.

Excesses like this have led some people to damn and blast all alliteration — and, in fact, all other varieties of rhyme — in prose. There is no doubt that in prose a little rhyme goes a long way. The trick is to keep the rhyme unobtrusive, subordinate to the sense. Composition suffers when rhyme comes to the surface, a fault to which poets are sometimes given when they write prose:

Her eyes were full of proud and passionless lust after gold and blood; her hair, close and curled, seems ready to shudder in sunder and divide into snakes.

（Algernon Charles Swinburne）

His boots are tight, the sun is hot, and he may be shot. ...

（Amy Lowell）

These contain too much rhyme for most tastes. Lowel's sentence, an example of what she called polyphonic prose, seems especially awkward, employing in “hot/shot” the kind of vowel-consonant end rhyme common in poetry. The unrelieved meter of the sentence also contributes to its awkwardness.

His boots are tight, the syn is hot, and he may be shot. ...

Yet despite such abuses, it is extreme to say that rhyme has no place in prose. It is more reasonable to acknowledge that the sounds of words play an inevitable part in their effect upon a reader. Negatively, certain things should be avoided: obvious and jingling rhyme or combinations of awkwardly dissimilar sounds. Positively, sounds can create a tonal harmony which pleases the ear and makes us more receptive to what the sentence says, as in this passage by John Donne （a seventeenth-century poet who also wrote great prose）:

One dieth at his full strength, bewing wholly at ease, and in quiet, and another dies in the bitterness of his soul, and never eats with pleasure; but they lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers them.

Or sounds can enhance the effect of an image:

Dust swirls down the avenue, hisses sand hurries like erected cobras round the corners.

（Virginia Woolf）

Thus rhyme is — or can be — a positive element in composition. It is less significant than rhythm, but far from negligible. Too great a concern with sound, too much “tone painting,” is a fault in prose （and in poetry, too）. Controlled by a sensitive ear, however, the sounds of a sentence enrich and widen its meaning.

Points for Consideration:

1. How does rhyme differ from rhythm?

2. What is inner rhyme in poetry? Is inner rhyme associated with poetry only?

3. What effect（s） can rhyme produce when it is used properly?

4. What form does rhyme often take in prose?

5. How can alliteration be risky?

6. What principle（s） should one follow in the use of rhyme?

7. What should one guard against in the use of rhyme?

8. Can you cite any extreme view（s） concerning the use of sounds?

參考答案

Ⅱ. 1. Assonance, Alliteration, Consonance

2. Alliteration, Allegory

3. Assonance

4. Alliteration

5. Alliteration, Assonance

6. Alliteration, Consonance

7. Assonance, Consonance