my Xu Zhimo

王錦厚：《五四新文學與外國文學》，成都，四川大學出版社，一九九六年。頁四一九至四二九。

在他們（新月派）的試驗（新詩創作）中，有兩項是最可稱讚的：

A. 體制的輸入

這以徐志摩和聞一多最為努力，貢獻尤多。《志摩的師》和《死水》的每一首詩，幾乎都是一種體制輸入的試驗。經他們輸入試驗過的有散文詩……有素體詩（無韻格律詩）……有十四行詩及其變體……自由詩就太多了，而排列形式又是那麼多種多樣……還有歌謠體，無韻體詩、駢句韻體詩、奇偶體詩、葬歌、挽歌……這些體制的輸入和試驗，多半是以英國詩人為「模特兒」。難怪梁實秋在給徐志摩的信中要這樣說：

志摩，你和一多的詩在藝術上大半是模仿近代英國詩，有時候我能清楚的指出哪一首是模仿哈代，哪一首是模仿葉伯齡。（梁實秋：〈新詩的格調及其他〉）

這恐怕是事實吧！當然，模仿中也有創造，徐志摩深受了英國世紀末的唯美主義印象主義文學的影響，同時，他更接受了英國貴族的浪漫詩人的薰陶，把主義放到濟慈、渥茲渥斯、卜雷克、拜倫和半個雪萊的上面，把主義更放在哈代、曼殊裴爾、西蒙茲、哈得生（Huason）、裴德的上面，於是應運產生出來對於世界的全然唯美的態度，人生之最高的意義在於美的主張。

還有哈代，徐志摩服膺得五體投地，極力去遵循他的教導。哈代的氣質、詩風、悲觀主義和「世界之惡」的宿命論觀點都給了徐志摩不小的影響。

卞之琳說：「徐志摩寫詩，要說還是和二十世紀英美現代派有緣，那麼，也僅限於和哈代（如果可以說作為詩人的哈代也是跨到二十世紀英國現代派的橋樑。）」（卞之琳：〈徐志摩選集‧序》，一九八二年《上海師範學院學報》第三期。）

B. 音節的移植

王錦厚：《五四新文學與外國文學》，成都，四川大學出版社，一九九六年。

……只有新月社的詩人們，他們對文學，特別是對詩的觀念，才更多地與英詩人的觀念相吻合。

由於觀念的變化，詩的題材，詩的情趣，詩的形式，都跟著發生了變化。這種變化，有的出於直接模仿，有的則從中得到暗示，有的則在吸收、消化中加以創作……「五四」新文學的創造者主張藝術的藝術，莫過於新月派的聞一多、梁實秋等人……

豐華瞻：《中西詩歌比較》，生活‧讀書‧新知三聯書店，一九八七年十一月。

我們的新詩是在外國詩的影響之下產生的，新詩形式類似西洋詩。寫新詩的先驅者都懂外國文學，尤其是英美文學。他們受英國浪漫詩人拜倫和雪萊以及美國詩人惠特曼的影響，也受俄國詩人普希金的影響。他們是以外國詩為「模特兒」來寫新詩的。

Mr Hardy's new volume of poems is a very interesting, and in some ways a baffling book...

It is full of poetry; and yet it is also full of ugly and cumbrous expressions, clumsy metres, and flat, prosaic turns of speech.

a curious mixture of the contorted and the jog-trot

Even Mr Hardy's grammar is not impeccable.

And his vocabulary, though in general it is rich and apt, has occasional significant lapses...

It is important to observe such characteristics, because, in Mr Hardy's case, they are not merely superficial and occasional blemishes; they are in reality an essential ingredient in the very essence of his work. The originality of his poetry lies in the fact that it bears everywhere upon it the impress of a master of prose fiction.

...Mr Hardy... has brought the realism and sobriety of prose into the service of his poetry. The result is a product of a kind very difficult to parallel in our literature.

...but what gives Mr Hardy's poems their unique flavour is precisely their utter lack of romanticism, their common, undecorated presentments of things. The are, in fact, modern as no other poems are.

Many of the poems - and in particular the remarkable group of 'fifteen glimpses' which gives its title to the volume - consist of compressed dramatic narratives, of central episodes of passion and circumstance, depicted with extraordinary vividness. A flashlight is turned for a moment upon some scene or upon some character, and in that moment the tragedies of whole lives and the long fatalities of human relationships seem to stand revealed...

Review in New Statesman (19 December 1914).

Meredith and Mr Hardy, coming at the end of the Romantic movement and contemporaries of that extreme poet Swinburne, have been prose writers who have tried to impart some of the virtues of prose to poetry.

But there is a section of this book, the fifteen 'Satires of Circumstance' which give it its title, in which we feel that Mr Hardy would have done better in prose. It is not that they are prosaic, but that he does not manage to tell enough in verse. In each he gives us merely a situation, an ugly sitation, with all the emphasis of verse laid on the whole ugliness, as if he had a brief against life; and in each case we feel that the whole truth is not told and could not be told in this medium.

Unsigned review in the Times Literary Supplement, (19 November 1914).

The main impression left upon the mind after perusal of Mr Hardy's new volume is admiration, mingled with some perplexity, at his mastery of technique. It is surprising that gifts so high should be contentedly devoted to subjects on the whole so narrow; and as we consider the manner in which these subjects are handled, we are confronted by a further problem; for how is it possible for a writer to be at the same time so poetic and so casual?

Mr Hardy pursues his course with excellent skill, avoiding every pitfall. His poetic tact is unsurpassable. The temper he writes in is exactly that which could alone give credibility, artistic justice, and a natural appeal to the point of view he is expressing.

What is the force of such a passage as this, if not the easy nonchalance, the unconscious, conversational tone given to a statement against which every fibre of poetry in us stiffens and rebels? If it were less casual, might it not be almost offensive?

Mr Hardy, in using these queer conversational forms...

Mr Hardy is, in fact, casual or coversational in tone, but not in workmanship.

Like Meredith, Mr Hardy, whatever else he disbelieves in, believes in the strength and permanence of truth. Like Meredith, he aims at adhering in his poetry with scrupulous care to the facts which he believes to be before him.... But Mr Hardy will not, any more than whould Meredith, have poetry at the expense of truth...

Unsigned review in The Ahenaeum (8 January 1910), No. 4289.

Mr Hardy's Wessex Poems were perplexing in the unevenness of their literary quality. The contained much that was inconsiderable and that failed to distinguish itself from the most commonplace productions of early Victorian art.

(Wessex Poems)They suggested a temperament which had never learnt, as professed poets to some extent learn, to evoke the rhythmic mood at will, but which was stirred from time to time, perhaps at rare intervals, by some inner fluctuation of its own to this kind of utterance. It must be owned with regret that but few such moments seem to have gone to the making of Poems of the Past and the Present... That he should have considered that the large majority of the verses in this volume give worthy form to his thoughts and feelings can only show that he is almost wholly devoid of the faculty of self-criticism. The diction is persistently clumsy, full of ugly neologisms, with neither the simplicity of untutored song nor that of consummate art. The matter is colourless and abstract, although Mr Hardy's strength lies essentially in the actual and the concrete.

Unsigned review in The Athenaeum (4 January 1902), No. 3871.

Mr Hardy is too selfconscious, too deliberately rhetorical, too monotonously disenchanted, for the word poet to spring naturally to our lips at all in connection with this book. There is more of sheer poetry in his novels. Mr Hardy has his lyrical moments...although we fell that he has had difficulty in urging his vocabulary to keep pace with him...

Unsigned review in The Academy (23 November 1901)

Much that Mr Hardy has amused himself by collecting is quite trifling, conceived in the crude ferments of youth, and expressed with woodenness of rhythm and a needlessly inflated diction.

We do not conceal our opinion that Mr Hardy's success in poetry is of a very narrow range. He is entirely dependent for his inspiration upon this curiously intense and somewhat dismal vision of life, which is upon him almost as an obsession. Where he is not carried along by this, his movement is faltering, and his touch prosaic.

Review in The Athenaeum (14 January 1899)

But as we read this curious and wearisom volume, these many slovenly, slipshod, uncouth verses, stilted in sentiment, poorly conceived and worse wrought, our respect lessens to vanishing-point, and we lay it down with the feeling strong upon us that Mr Hardy has, by his own deliberate act, discredited that judgement and presentation of life on which his reputation rested. It is impossible to understand why the bulk of this volume was published at all - why he did not himself burn the verse, lest it should fall into the hands of the indiscreet literary executor, and mar his fame when he was dead.

Last of all comes a veritable poem, 'I Look Into My Glass'. It is an original thought realised and felt completely; and the expression is so clear and simple, that it will surely live when the rest of the book has been forgotten...

Unsigned review in The Saturday Review (7 January 1899), LXXXVII, 19.