The "wall" in Poetry on the Wall can be subdivided into house wall, hall wall, pavilion wall, building wall, temple wall, temple wall, column wall, gable wall and so on. Among them, it is common to write about the walls of houses, such as Du Fu's The Wall of Cottage in Guo 32 Ming County, Qian Qi's The Wall of Chen Ji, Bai Juyi's The Wall of Shen, and Wen's The Wall of Friends. From the point of view of calligraphy, these poems are mostly suitable for the occasion, and generally speaking, they are of little value, but there are also many works by everyone. Because the "city walls" are difficult to preserve for a long time, most of them are destroyed, and only a few remain in the world.
Poetry on the wall began in the Han Dynasty and flourished in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Shi, a calligrapher at the end of Han Dynasty, was the earliest calligrapher. According to the Book of Jin, Volume 36 quoted Wei Heng's Four-body Book: "Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty wrote a good book, which was versatile, and the stone was the best. The big one was full of words, and the small one was full of words, praising his ability. Sometimes you don't take money, you just drink in the restaurant. Because of the wall of books, visitors must pay for drinks and beg for money. "
After the Han Dynasty, many people talked about walls. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, there were more and more poems on the walls. In the Tang Dynasty, the wind of topic wall prevailed in the world, and a large number of poems in The Whole Tang Poetry were marked as calligraphy. According to the statistics of Selected Poems of Tang Dynasty, there were hundreds of wall poets at that time, among which Hanshan and Cui Hao were the most famous. Hanshan is a famous poet and monk. He hung 600 poems on the wall, but half of them have been lost. Cui Hao's most famous poem on the wall is the Yellow Crane Tower: "A long time ago, the Yellow Crane carried saints to heaven, but now there is nothing left but the Yellow Crane Tower. The yellow crane never revisited earth, there have been no long white clouds for thousands of years. Every tree in Hanyang has become clear due to sunlight, and Nautilus Island is covered with sweet grass. But I looked home, the twilight was getting thicker, and the river waves were filled with sad mist. " That Li Bai went to the Yellow Crane Tower to write poems, because he saw this work by Cui Hao and stopped. Yao Chong's great-grandson and Jia Dao's Yao He, also known as "Yao Jia", also loved poetry. Xiang Si, a poet friend, said that he "wrote all his poems on the official wall".
During the Yuan and Yuan Dynasties, Bai Juyi's and Yuan Zhen's poems were all the rage, and poems with the theme of Yuan and Bai were everywhere. According to Yuan Zhen's Preface to Bai Changqing's Collection: "In the past twenty years, there have been no books on the walls of forbidden provinces, temples and post stations, but governors, concubines, cows, children and horses have left their mouths." Yuan and Bai are also very close. Ge Lifang's "Yang Qiuyun" (Volume 3) said: "Bai Yuan is as famous as ever, so it is natural. Wei Yuan wrote white poems in Zhuozhou West Temple, and Bai Letian wrote hundreds of poems in the Yuan Dynasty, which were combined into one screen and respected each other. "
Yang Ningshi, a great calligrapher, was the most famous calligrapher in the Five Dynasties. Yang Ningshi "never liked letters and feet", and traces of his main books were left on the walls of temples. There is a note in the book "History of the Old Five Dynasties": "(Yang Ningshi) lived in Romania for a long time, visited Buddhist temples, met mountains and rivers, lingered in poetry, looked at the wall and lacked paintings, and recited like a god." Even "there are more than 200 temples in Xiluo, which have been inscribed many times" (A Brief History of Books).
The style of inscribed walls in Song Dynasty is not inferior to that in Tang Dynasty, and there are many inscribed poems on postal kiosks, postal walls and temple walls. The famous ones are Wang Yucheng's wall of Buddhist monks, Su Shunqin's wall of Huashan Temple, Wang Anshi's wall of Shuhe House and Shuhuyin, Yang Wanli's wall of Gui Long Temple, Lu You's wall of restaurants and Su Shi's wall of Xilin. Nowadays, more people are referring to Lin Sheng's "Title of Lin 'an Post" in the Southern Song Dynasty: "When will the West Lake dance stop? ".Warm winds make tourists drunk and make Hangzhou Bianzhou. "Lin Sheng is so lonely in the history of literature, and his fame will be passed down to later generations, which is completely fulfilled by the wall of the post office.
After the Yuan Dynasty, with the wide application of printing, the style of literati's title wall gradually faded, but by the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, some scholars still liked this style. The mural poem discovered at No.38 Zhengbaiqi, Xiangshan, Beijing, was suspected by the red circle as "Cao Xueqin's former residence" because it was related to Cao Xueqin.
Why did the poems on the wall prevail in the Tang and Song Dynasties? There are two reasons: first, in the Tang and Song Dynasties, especially in the Tang Dynasty, poetry and calligraphy reached its peak, and there were many poems on the wall, which reflected the prosperity of poetry creation and calligraphy activities at that time; Secondly, although block printing and movable type printing were invented in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the printing ability was limited, and a large number of poems could not be kept up to date. "Title wall" has become the best way for poets to improvise and "publish" poems. The poets in Tang and Song Dynasties showed great enthusiasm for the topic wall, not only because of their love for calligraphy and poetry, but also because of their desire for knowledge dissemination. When they splash ink, they don't necessarily care about "publishing works", nor do they care about hidden walls and immortality. They are more interested in lyrical freehand brushwork itself, so that more people can get information from it faster.