单选题 The close relationship between poetry and music scarcely needs to be argued. Both are aural modes which employ rhythm, rime, and pitch as major devices; to these the one adds linguistic meaning, connotation, and various traditional figures, and the other can add, at least in theory, all of these plus harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration techniques. In English the two are closely bound historically. Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry seems certainly to have been read or chanted to a harpist"s accompaniment; the verb used in Beowulf for such a performance, the Finn episode, is singan, to sing, and the noun gyd, song. A major source of the lyric tradition in English poetry is the songs of the troubadours.
The distance between the gyd in Beowulf and the songs of Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan may seem great, but is one of time rather than aesthetics. The lyric poem as a literary work and the lyrics of a popular song are both still essentially the same thing: poetry. Whether the title of the work be "Gerontion", or "Hound Dog", our criteria for evaluating the work must remain the same.
The most important prerequisite for both a significant poem and significant lyrics in a popular song is that the writer be faithful to his own personal vision or to the vision of the poem he is writing. Skill and craft for writing poetry are indeed necessary because these are the only means by which a poet can preserve the integrity of this vision in the poem. A poet must not, either because of lack of skill or because of worship of popularity, wealth, or critical acclaim, go outside of his own or his own poem"s vision—on pain of writing only the derivative or the trivial. Historically, the writers and singers of the lyrics of popular songs have seemed often to be incapable of personal vision, and to have confused both originality and morality with a servile compliance to popular taste.
单选题 According to the writer, the relationship between poetry and music ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 作者在第1段指出,诗歌与音乐自古就密不可分。据此可知,C项为正确答案。
单选题 The author cites Beowulf in order to show that ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 本文第1段中,从历史角度说明诗歌与音乐密切相关,其中,以《贝奥武夫》为例是为了说明本段主题,即英国诗歌与歌曲联系紧密。据此可知C项为正确答案。
单选题 Which of the following statements is true, according to the text?
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 从第2段可知,诗歌与歌曲的歌词实质上是一回事。因此B项为正确答案。
单选题 A poem or a song can be significant when ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 从文中第3段可知,意义深长的诗歌和流行歌曲的歌词二者最为重要的前提都是,作者忠实于自己的个人眼界或者所写诗歌的境界。因此C项为正确答案。
单选题 In the text, the author focuses on ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 综观全文,本文说明诗歌和音乐密切的关系,主要涉及二者共同的重要评价标准。因此A项为正确答案。