英语修辞与写作·17.2　韵格使用中的三个问题

17.2　韵格使用中的三个问题

17.2A　韵格的综合使用

英语是一种韵律丰富的语言，不仅押韵的形式多种多样，而且经常是一种韵格连用，或两种甚至多种韵格综合使用，尤其在诗歌中更是如此。例如诗人Algernon Charles Swinburne的长诗Nephelidia 通篇充满Alliteration，这里仅引其中一句：

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

Robert Graves的诗 The Traveler's Curse After Misdirection中除了尾韵连续出现外，还可以找到其他多种韵格：

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;

上节诗中除了尾韵/dʒ/和/ɪ/分别构成前三行和后四行的韵脚以外，每行中还含有头韵、母韵、尾韵，真是韵味无穷。

17.2B　韵格同其他辞格并用

英语中的韵格常常和其他辞格并用，给它们增添各种音响色彩，如前面Robert Graves的那节诗中不仅有多种韵格，还可以找到 Repetition, Parallelism, Contrast等，反之，也可以说，在其他各种辞格中都会出现并用的韵格，其中尤其和拟声格配合时，能创造出理想的声响效果，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）

句中一连串拟声的母韵、尾韵给读者以清晰的音响感，老人发出的嘟嘟囔囔、咕咕哝哝、嗄擦嗄擦、扑哧扑哧的声音似乎就在耳边。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的一首抒情小诗，题为Song: Hark, Hark!诗中拟声词和几种韵格结合使用，读来生动、逼真，似有犬吠鸡鸣之感。

17.2C　韵格的恰当使用

1） 英语中各种韵格的使用十分普遍，诗歌、谚语中随处可见，新闻和广告中更为风行。

有篇广告词是这样的：

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

The Sale is now on.

在这个相当耸人听闻的大削价广告中，首先引人注意的恐怕是对照 （参见16.1A），接着是对谚语 One Man's meat is another man's poison的仿拟（参见13.1A），与此同时，头韵又增添几分幽默情趣，似乎店老板果然是真心让利，乐意酬宾呢。相比之下，我曾见到的另一份促销广告则逊色得多：

Kick your can into higher gear.

Come to our clearance here!

这个广告虽有头韵和尾韵，但相当于顺口溜，没有什么深度，可以说是为韵而韵。

2） 范家材教授在《英语修辞赏析》一书中提出了“避免因韵害义”的告诫，同时引用了Dr. Samuel Johnson的话：“It's the mind that governs the ear.”在韵格使用中，除了上面讲到的单纯追求押韵以外，还有的押韵不和谐，甚至损害文体的协调。例如：

Can the Democrats Defy Decline?

这是《经济学家》论述美国民主党如何挽回颓势一文的标题，其中谓语动词defy虽然达到了押头韵和尾韵的目的，但与宾语decline搭配牵强，音韵呆板，若将defy换成check, face out这样清辅音开头的词语，则既保持了头韵又使浊清辅音相间，效果会更好些。

练习十七　（Exercise 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?

参考答案

Ⅱ. 1. Assonance, Alliteration, Consonance

2. Alliteration, Allegory

3. Assonance

4. Alliteration

5. Alliteration, Assonance

6. Alliteration, Consonance

7. Assonance, Consonance