Chapter One: Surrealistic Techniques in Modern Poetry

Section One: Surreal Imagination
The "surrealistic techniques" discussed in this text are not based on "Surrealism" (Surréalisme) as a theoretical foundation, particularly its methods of collage and Automatic writing. While both are indeed expressive techniques advocated by the Surrealist movement, they are not the focus of this discussion.

The "surrealistic techniques" as defined by the author derive from Association activities, particularly the highest level of creative imagination (Creative imagination): a psychological activity that does not rely on the descriptions of others, but rather creatively synthesizes stored images from memory, independently producing novel, unique, and strange images. Through the combination of imagery, the poet presents extraordinary scenes beyond the shared aesthetic experience of ordinary people, thereby conveying a personal and distinctive aesthetic appeal, similar to the cinematic technique of Montage: according to the creator’s conception, shots (images) indicating different times and places are organically edited together, producing various effects such as continuity (narrative axis), contrast, association, juxtaposition, and suspense, ultimately forming a work that expresses certain ideas, offers an artistic aesthetic experience, and allows viewers or readers to participate, understand, and stimulate their imagination and aesthetic sense.

Section Two: Types of Surrealistic Techniques
Modern poetry texts often feature many expressive techniques that cannot be strictly categorized by rhetorical devices. For example:

1. Collage cannot be analyzed merely through enumeration or ornamentation.
2. Montage editing similarly cannot be explained solely by manifestation, exaggeration, or synesthesia.

This is because, in terms of their expressive form, these techniques are not suitable for analysis based primarily on sentence- or phrase-level rhetorical frameworks. In this text, the author will discuss three main types of surrealistic expressive techniques: variant form combinations, montage editing, and surreal performance.

1. Variant Form Combination

“Variant form combination” refers to the deliberate combination of images of different natures, such as time, space, distance, sound, light, and so on, to produce novel and aesthetically pleasing transformed images, conveying an artistic conception of “irrational yet marvelous.”

In my previous work, Rhetorical Aesthetics in Modern Poetry: The Aesthetics of Expressive Techniques, Chapter Eleven, “Image Transformation: Hyperbole,” I used the term “variant form hyperbole” to explain the combination of images of different natures that transcends ordinary aesthetic experience:

“Summer Heat in the Mountains, Seven Varieties: ‘The Sleepless Dog’” / Yu Guangzhong

Often, after the last train
The vastness of heaven and earth is no more than
A mile or half a mile away
The barking of the distant house’s dog, three barks, two barks
Only the lamp can comprehend
At this hour, the white-haired person under the lamp
Is also a sleepless dog
But guarding a different night
Barking at a different shadow
Just listen from a distance
— For example, a hundred years away
And it is heard clearly
And distinctly

In this passage, the poet first uses “spatially-reduced hyperbole”:

“The vastness of heaven and earth is no more than / A mile or half a mile away / The barking of the distant house’s dog, three barks, two barks”

Here, the vast space of heaven and earth is compressed toward “sound”, which is also a form of variant form hyperbole. The dog’s barking coming from a distant house is indeed a measure of distance, yet heaven and earth cannot literally be condensed into “three barks, two barks,” revealing elements of synesthesia (“transferred perception”) and nature transformation, key aspects of variant form.

Later, the poet again applies variant form hyperbole:

“Just listen from a distance / —For example, a hundred years away / And it is heard clearly / And distinctly”

Here, time (a hundred years) is used as a unit to measure distance, forming a transformed image: time (as a symbolic measure) is paired with the base image of distance. Since time and distance are clearly different types of imagery, this is another application of variant form hyperbole.

“Listening to the Night in the Deep Mountains” / Yu Guangzhong

Deep in the mountains, night is eternal
All sounds merge into a single dream
What could be more enduringly listenable than absolute stillness?
No matter how long or busy history is
There is always a moment
That requires no debate, right?
But the wind, you ask
The wind? That is just time passing through the terrain
Causing a little, occasional
A slight echo

In “But the wind, you ask / The wind? That is just time passing through the terrain / Causing a little, occasional / A slight echo”, the poet perceives an echo produced by the passing wind, sensing time passing through the landscape. This is not merely a simple sensory transposition or synesthesia transforming sound into form, because time has no concrete image. It is clearly a transformed image combination through material conversion, exemplifying the technique of variant form combination.

2. Montage Editing

Montage editing breaks free from the linear constraints of time and space, connecting images that could not exist simultaneously, and endows them with novel creative effects. When applied to modern poetry, montage editing often produces unexpected and imaginative imagery. Among Taiwanese modern poets, Lo Fu is the most outstanding in using this technique.

“Yesterday’s Water Ginger Flower” / Lo Fu

When I first picked you
Even the leaves and stems suddenly lunged at me
Naked, in white
With the body scent of mint
If beyond the two banks of the river there exists a third bank
My outstretched arm is it

All lost songs cannot be recovered by echoes
At the edge of the water
You habitually lean down
Striving to piece together what has dispersed
Layer by layer with the ripples
Yesterday’s
Reflection

In “If beyond the two banks of the river there exists a third bank / My outstretched arm is it,” though it is a product of imagination, the image of “my outstretched arm as the third bank” adds an amusing and creative visual.

“At the edge of the water / You habitually lean down / Striving to piece together what has dispersed / Layer by layer with the ripples / Yesterday’s / Reflection”

Here, the reflection of yesterday on the water has long been scattered by the ripples, yet the poet insists on depicting the protagonist’s obsession with reconstructing the fleeting reflection of the water ginger flower. This conveys a state of clinging and sentimental attachment, creating a deeply romantic and sensuous mood.

“Female Ghost (II)” / Lo Fu

She
Is elevated by a rope to
An extremely sorrowful and beautiful
Liaozhai

Following the sound of the xiao flute, she searches
Every window might be seated with
Her unfaithful scholar
Who went to the capital for the examination
The wind comes silently
She leaps into
The thread-bound book that has just been closed

A woman attempting suicide by hanging creates an image of extreme sorrow, yet the next shot cuts to “an extremely sorrowful and beautiful / Liaozhai”, which dilutes the reader’s sense of despair and simultaneously shifts the focus to the sorrowful beauty of the Liaozhai story.

“The wind comes silently / She leaps into / The thread-bound book that has just been closed”

The motion of leaping into the thread-bound book resembles a 3D special effects shot. This is no longer analyzable by hyperbolic figures of speech; it is an example of montage editing technique in poetry.

This passage clearly demonstrates how montage editing in poetry allows the poet to juxtapose disparate, impossible images in a single imaginative frame, producing layered, cinematic, and emotionally resonant effects that transcend ordinary literary description.

3. Surreal Performance

The surreal performance technique inherently possesses an absurdity that defies common sense, similar to a magician’s trick. Yet, such absurd imagery can be accepted by the reader’s aesthetic experience, because it provides the audience with interesting implications beyond the literal—even if it is “absurd and unreasonable,” it is “full of delight and wit.”

“Two Scenes of West Lake: Bai Causeway” / Lo Fu

Is Bai Juyi a Romantic poet?
That remains to be studied
Yet indeed, in a single night
He painted for West Lake
A brow that makes the heart beat
And hung the birdsong, long and short,
On the willow branches of the four seasons
Chirping for over a thousand years
Before waking me from my dream
Breakfast is a windowful of clouds
Takeaway with a jar of tiger-run spring water infused with bell sounds
Full enough to burp
Yet walking on the causeway
I had a second helping
Of autumn wind left uneaten by the lotus leaves

“Chirping for over a thousand years / Before waking me from my dream” uses hyperbolic extension of time. The following lines,
“Breakfast is a windowful of clouds / Takeaway with a jar of tiger-run spring water infused with bell sounds / Full enough to burp / Yet walking on the causeway / I had a second helping / Of autumn wind left uneaten by the lotus leaves,”
are cartoonishly absurd visual performances. The “I” in the poem is the Bai Causeway that has slept for a thousand years. Even if readers find the combination of images illogical, they can appreciate and accept this playful surreal performance.

“Afternoon of Water Lettuce” / Lo Fu

Afternoon. In the pond
Crowded with clumps of pregnant water lettuce
This summer is very lonely
If giving birth, then give birth to a pond of frogs

Alas, the problem is
We are merely pseudo-fat

The pregnant water lettuce giving birth to a pond of frogs presents a nonsensical, sequential imagery, which is not a matter of exaggeration of objects but rather a surreal imaginative idea. Readers do not reject such bizarre notions; instead, they find them novel and interesting.

“No Rain” / Lo Fu

Long clear skies without rain
This heart has long since cracked
If you are the condensed tear that does not drop
How much I wish
To become the fish in your eyes

The line “I am a fish swimming in your tears” is, of course, surreal imagination, yet this surreal image conveys a tender aesthetic to the reader. There is no need for rational reasoning to reject this emotional imagining.

“Entering the Mountains with the Sound of Rain but Not Seeing Rain”

Holding up an oil-paper umbrella
Singing of March’s sour plums
Among all the mountains
I am the only one in straw sandals

Woodpecker, empty
Echo, hollow
A tree spirals upward in the pain of pecking
Entering the mountains
Rain unseen
The umbrella circles a green stone, flying
There sits a man holding his head
Watching a cigarette butt turn to ash

Descending the mountain
Still no rain
Three bitter pine nuts
Roll along the signposts to my feet
Reaching out to grab
It turns out to be a handful of birdsong

The sequence “Three bitter pine nuts / Roll along the signposts to my feet / Reaching out to grab / It turns out to be a handful of birdsong” transforms pine nuts into birdsongs in the act of grabbing—like a magical trick. Though illogical, it carries a fresh, creative, and playful effect.

“Midnight Peeling a Pear” / Lo Fu

Cold and thirsty
I quietly watch
On the midnight tea table
A Korean pear

Indeed, it is a
Pear with icy-cold, shiny brass-colored skin
Sliced open with a knife
Inside its chest
Hidden a very deep, very deep well

Trembling
Thumb and forefinger gently pinch
A small piece of pear flesh
White and innocent

Knife falls
I bend down to search
Ah! All over the ground
My brass-colored skin

In “Midnight Peeling a Pear,” montage editing is also employed:

“Shiny brass-colored / pear / sliced open / inside its chest / hidden a very deep, very deep well”

The pear containing a hidden deep well is a juxtaposition of two images, a montage cut.

“Knife falls / I bend down to search / Ah! All over the ground / My brass-colored skin”

The yellow peel that should have fallen from the pear is subjectively transformed into the poet’s own brass-colored skin. If visualized as a film, this would not only produce a montage suspense effect but also a magical, trick-like visual effect.

Conclusion:

The three types of surreal techniques—form-transmuting combinations, montage editing, and surreal performance—when applied in modern poetry, often produce masterful visual effects that provide readers with a refreshing imaginative aesthetic experience.

If poets are willing to devote effort to rhetorical techniques, carefully hone their writing and creativity, and appropriately incorporate these three surreal techniques, the author believes that your poetry will not only feel fresh and striking to readers but also elicit admiration and acclaim, because you would have trained yourself into a “language magician of infinite variety.”