Ancient proverb
Ballads and proverbs in pre-Qin and ancient times. Besides The Book of Songs, Songs of the South and Poems of Escape, there are some ballads and proverbs in pre-Qin poetry, which also reflect the development process of ancient poetry.
Long before the appearance of writing, folk songs have been circulated orally by people. Because it could not be recorded at that time, today we can only find some materials in the memory of future generations from ancient documents. For example, "Playing Music" is a simple and primitive ballad: "Broken bamboo, continued bamboo, flying soil, kill one by one." (Biography of Gou Jian's Rebellion in the Spring and Autumn Period of Wu Yue) It consists of four short sentences with two words as a beat, which records the hunting life segments of making slingshots, popping up earth pills and chasing birds and animals. According to legend, it is a wax word in the ancient Yi era: "The soil is against its house, the water belongs to its valley, and the insects do nothing." (Book of Rites, Jiaote) This is a speech of wax sacrifice, with a commanding tone. In fact, it is to ask the God of Eight Waxes to eliminate natural disasters and make people's lives stable. The lyrics of the songs are neat and the writing skills are quite skilled. They can't be the legendary Yi era, and later generations may have polished it when they wrote it down. "Shangshu Tang Shi" records that the legend is a ballad in the last years of the Xia Dynasty: "Every day we lose, we die together!" It shows people's hatred for tyrants and has strong resistance. Mencius Liang Wang Hui has the same record, saying that it is a folk song cursing Xia Jie, which should be more credible.
Legend is a ballad in ancient times, and there are other ballads scattered in the literature, such as Beating the Earth Song, Qingyunsong, Ren Xia Song and Maixiuge. Although the books contained in it were published late, the rhymes were all passed down orally. They have been circulated for a long time before being recorded, and may be modified when recording, and they are inevitably influenced by the style at that time, but they cannot be judged as forgeries. For example, the song of digging the earth: "What's the use of land for me?" According to records, this is a song sung by an 80-year-old man in the Yaodi era. Judging from the history of social development, during the primitive commune period, the productivity was quite low, and it was impossible to have an independent economic life of "digging wells" and "cultivating fields". At that time, people didn't have the concept of "what's good for me?" These traces of opposition may be due to the rewriting of later generations, but from the basic content, they should have been produced earlier. Another example is "Qing Yun Ge": "Clear clouds are rotten, embarrassing, sun and moon are bright, Fudan is embarrassing!" (See Book of History, Volume I) This short poem is rich in content, well-chosen and skillful. Yu Shun's oral creation can hardly achieve such high attainments. Obviously, it has been polished by later generations, but its content expresses simple feelings of praising the sun and the moon and worshiping nature, and retains the shadow of ancient thoughts and customs.
The ballads recorded in later ancient books, such as Song of Picking Wei in Records of the Historian and Biography of Boyi, originated from the era of the Book of Songs with four-character poems as the main body. Even if it is possible, it may not be completely preserved. The Songs of the South in The Analects of Confucius and the Songs of the Ruzi in On Mencius and Li Lou reveal the clues of the transition to the style of the Songs of the South.
Closer to the southern song is Ren Yue's song in the Warring States Period: "What day is it today? What is the midstream of the ship? What day is it today, and you want to help the prince in the same boat? I'm ashamed. I don't deserve my humble opinion. Confused mood can not only satisfy the prince. There are trees in the mountains, and there are branches in the trees. The heart says that (Yue) Jun Xi Jun does not know. " According to Shuo Yuan, this song was translated from minority languages. The boat was taken by Prince E of Xi, and Vietnamese singers sang with E in their arms, with euphemistic tone and deep feelings. "There are trees on the mountain and branches on the trees" is a code word, and "branches" is the leaf sound of "knowledge", which is a bit like the folk songs of the Southern Dynasties. Shen Deqian's evaluation of this poem is: "It is the same as" I miss my son and dare not speak "(Nine Songs, Mrs. Xiang). (The Source of Ancient Poetry)
In ancient times, folk songs and proverbs were often combined. In fact, folk songs and proverbs have similar meanings, but they are different. Folk songs refer to singing without musical instruments; Proverbs refer to proverbs that use simple and popular fixed sentences to explain a certain truth.
There are few proverbs before the Yin and Shang Dynasties. There are many proverbs in ancient books, such as Zuo Zhuan, such as: "If you have an innocent heart, how can you be homeless" (Ming History); "The fox fur is velvet, one country is fair and fair, who is suitable for me" (Five Years of Xi Gong); "Auxiliary cars are dependent on each other, and their lips are dead and their teeth are cold" ("Xi Gongwu"); "The house is not divination, but the neighbor is divination" (Three Years in Zhao Gong). The upper limit of these proverbs is difficult to determine, and the content and form they reflect are quite mature. The first two situations are also proverbs, and the latter two situations are close to proverbs, and neither of them can be created by the ancients.
Many ancient proverbs are recorded in The Analects of Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Mandarin, Warring States Policy and Book of Rites. , which was produced and written later, is generally a neat epigram and a summary of people's labor and life experience.
Yi Shi
Poetry is often quoted in ancient books in pre-Qin period, and some poems exceed 305 in The Book of Songs, which was called "Yi Poetry" by predecessors.
The Book of Songs handed down from ancient times is not complete. For example, Xiaoya's six works, such as Nan Chang, Bai Hua, Shu Hua, You Geng, Chong Qiu and You Yi, are all found in Yili Township Drinking Ceremony and Yili Liyan. Mao Zhuan thinks that "words die", while Zhu Zhus Poem Zhuan thinks that all six articles are "words without words". Most scholars agree with Mao Chuan that he has passed away. And Ode to Shang Dynasty. According to Lu Yu of Mandarin, there were originally 12 articles. Up to now, only five articles have been included in The Book of Songs, and it is uncertain when the other seven articles will be lost. In addition, there are some missing sentences in The Book of Songs, such as the third chapter of Xiaoya Mianshui, in which there are 8 sentences in the first two chapters and only 6 sentences in the third chapter. Zhu is suspicious of the first two sentences; There are only four sentences in "Zhou Song and Wei Qing", which Zhu suspects is missing; Truffle Palace ***9 chapters, in the first five chapters, the first, second, third and fifth chapters are all 17 sentences, and only the fourth chapter is 16 sentences, which Zhu thinks is 1 sentence. Yao Jiheng's General Theory of the Book of Songs opposes Zhu Zhi's theory, so that there are no missing sentences in this poem, but the reasons are insufficient.
Poems quoted in pre-Qin ancient books, such as Xunzi Wang Ba, are like frost and snow, as bright as the sun and the moon. Do it and live, or do it or die. "Chen Dao" quoted "the country's life is too big to tell, which hinders its dedication"; There are some poetic sentences in Borrowing Mother, Zheng Ming and Fa Xing, but not in The Book of Songs. Another example is "Twenty-two Years of Zuo Zhuan and Zhuang Gong", "Skip the bike ride and recruit me with a bow. Don't you want to go? Fear of my friend, "and Zuo Zhuan's nine years of success, five years of" xianggong ",eight years of" xianggong ",thirty years of" xianggong ",four years of Zhao Gong, twelve years of Zhao Gong and twenty-six years of Zhao Gong are the same. However, it is still difficult to determine whether these poems were collected from the Book of Songs and then dispersed. There are also some other ancient books such as Mandarin and Analects of Confucius. The total number of these "escape poems" is not much.
The Book of Songs in Hao's Testament in Qing Dynasty has 1 volume, and the collection is relatively complete.
Sao style
Sao style is a poetic genre, named after Qu Yuan's work Li Sao. Because later generations often use Sao style to summarize Chu Ci, Sao style can also be called Chu Ci. Sima Xiangru's Changmen Fu, Da Ren Fu, Ban Gu's You Tong Fu and Zhang Heng's Si Xuan Fu are similar in genre to Li Sao, so the latter is also called Sao Style Fu. In this way, "Sao style" also includes some fu similar to "Li Sao"
Sao style is a lyric verse created by Qu Yuan on the basis of Chu folk songs, represented by Li Sao, which is generally long in length, fleXible and irregular in sentence structure, with six or seven words and the word "xi" as an auxiliary word. In addition, it has been summarized in the past that the tone of "Sao" takes function words as the waist of the sentence, the difference between the words on the waist and the words at the end of the sentence is harmonious, and the homology is awkward; "Nine Songs" takes the word "Xi" as the waist of the sentence, and so does the sentence tone. Sao style can be called poetry or fu. After the Han Dynasty, the second half of Cai Yan's Poems of Sorrow and Indignation, Han Yu's Fu Zhi, Liu Zongyuan's Fu of Punishing Blame and Sheng Min's Fu can all be classified as Sao style.
The main writers of Sao style: Qu Yuan, Song Yu and Cai Yan.