Wang Wei was listed as an idyllic poet in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. Although it is not conducive for us to treat a poet comprehensively to divide poets in the prosperous Tang Dynasty into frontier poets and pastoral poets, Wang Wei's success in poetry circles really benefits from his pastoral poems.
Because he knows painting, Wang Wei's poems are also permeated with painting skills. His poems were very accurately summarized by Su Dongpo as "there are paintings in poems and poems in paintings". In his poems, Wang Wei observes the changes of nature with the painter's eyes and captures the interest of things with the poet's feelings. Give it a try:
It can be seen that the scenery in the poem is not static: spring seems gentle but it also hits rocks, and pine trees seem to be cooled by the sun; The interweaving of light and color, the contrast of cold and warm colors: Japan's colors are warm, but the cold colors of large green areas caused by the dense sunshine of pine forests also make people feel cold.
There are similar poems such as:
Beauty is beauty, but it seems dull. Then, the question is, why are Wang Wei's poems more popular than Li Bai's?
First of all, a very important force to promote the spread of Wang Wei's poems is that there are emperors among Wang Wei's fans. After Wang Wei's death, his brother Wang Jin was ordered by Tang Daizong Li Yu to arrange and present Wang Wei's collected works. After Wang Jin entered the Wang Youcheng Collection Table, he said in Answer to Wang Jinshu's Wang Weiji Table: "A scholar of Qing Dynasty, a scholar of the world, the first time in history, is the name of Gao Xi Dynasty." ...
Wang Wei is a politically smooth poet. He has served as a right gleaner, a censor, a left vacancy, a treasurer, an official doctor, a merchant, a prince, a Chinese calligrapher, and a Shangshu Youcheng. He experienced three dynasties: Xuanzong, Suzong and Daizong. Among them, Dai is always his loyal fan. Dai Zong was born in the 14th year of Kaiyuan (726). At this time, Wang Wei was 25 years old, just stepped into the upper class, and his fame was growing.
It can be said that both Wang Wei and his brother Wang Jin are quite suitable to survive in officialdom, but we should also remember that Wang Wei was criticized by countless people for accepting a fake position during the Anshi Rebellion. On this issue, during the Anshi Rebellion, Tang Suzong announced that he would become emperor before Emperor Xuanzong abdicated. Therefore, the criterion of Tang Suzong's employment is not whether he was an official in the Anshi Rebellion, but whether he stood on his side and whether Wang Jin always stood on the United front with Tang Suzong. Of course, Wang Wei's sentence "Every family is sad, when will the officials return to the sky" really increased his goodwill in Su Zong's heart.
What I want to say is that it is a bit demanding to criticize Wang Wei on whether he is loyal to the Tang Dynasty, not to mention that there were many "adherents poets" when he entered the Qing Dynasty in the late Ming Dynasty, such as Di who was loyal to Wuhou at the same time. It happened that at this point, Wang was the worst, and he was really a miserable poet. However, Wang Wei's official career during his tenure in Su Zong was quite smooth. Whether he is loyal or not, I think the emperor has more say than we do.
After Su Zong, Dai Zong began to pay a "reckless" visit to Wang Jin at the beginning of his tenure to help him sort out his idol Wang Wei's poems. As Sun Mingjun said in "The Literary School in the World, Gao Xi Generation-Wang Wei's Poems in Tang Daizong Expectation Field": "Dai Zong's evaluation of Wang Wei is not an ordinary reader's view of an ordinary poet, but reflects the political attitude and aesthetic taste of the supreme ruler at that time. From the perspective of imperial politics, Wang Wei's elegant and peaceful poems are new classics in the eyes of generations. From the perspective of daily life, Wang Wei's poems reflect the aesthetics of the aristocratic class in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. It can be said that among the poets in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, only Wang best meets the political requirements and aesthetic expectations of satirizing the emperor and his regime for literature. "
What we need to know is that Li Bai was outside the mainstream cultural circle at that time and Du Fu was behind it. The calmness in Wang Wei's poems is obviously much more popular than Li Bai's frequent accusations against the government. For Li Bai's love, please refer to my article: Singing the Declining Prosperity: Those "Disharmonious" Poems in the Prosperous Tang Dynasty.
Secondly, Wang Wei was at the center of the mainstream culture in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. As mentioned above, Wang Wei's poems are more in line with the mainstream aesthetics. So, what is the mainstream aesthetics?
I'm afraid the emergence of mainstream aesthetics has something to do with Wang Wei. Wang Wei is an active advocate of literature in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. Yuan Zhen said in "Appreciating Wang Wei": "The style of writing has changed into a contemporary style and also recommended wisdom." During the prosperous Tang Dynasty, there were two schools that had great influence on later generations: the pastoral school and the frontier school. Wang Wei is the core figure of the school of landscape pastoral poetry. The main poets of the pastoral school, such as Meng Haoran, Chu Guangxi, Chang Jian, Zuyong and Pei Di, all had close contacts with him. His career in Wangchuan is the center of his and other poets' activities. (Of course, Wang Wei also wrote many poems with great boldness of vision, such as "Journey to Youth": "Who knows that if you don't suffer from the hardships of the border court, you will have to look at the chivalrous bones when you die" and the more famous "Send Two Ambassadors to the Frontier" and "Send Two Ambassadors to Anxi")
Most of the anthologies of Tang poetry we see now are compiled by scholars after the Tang Dynasty. There were also many anthologies of Tang poetry at that time. He Yueling's Photo Collection is a representative of Tang poetry. Yin Kun, the editor, grasped the lifeblood of the times and recommended the poetic style of "God comes, Qi comes and emotion comes". In the preface to the Anthology, he said, "Guangdong and Guangxi are Wei and Wang Changling. He not only briefly explained the origin of the name of Selected Works, but also listed Wang Wei as the "first representative" of He Ling.
At this time, Li Bai and Du Fu were not so popular in the collection of Tang poems selected by the Tang Dynasty. As early as the Song Dynasty, Yao Kuan's Xixi Yu Cong pointed out: "Yi Yin is a collection of He Yue's heroes, excluding Du Fu's poems. Gao Zhongwu wrote Miracle's A Star, not Li Bai's poem. Ancient Pottery is a collection of poems by Tang Dynasty poets Yuan Bai Liu Du Mu Li He Zhao Wei. Yao cooperated with Extreme Mystery Collection and did not accept Du Fu and Li Bai. " Of course, there are many complicated reasons why these collections don't accept Li Bai and Du Fu's poems, but I think we can see the cognitive level and aesthetic standards of these writers from them.
Of course, not only poetry, but also Wang Wei is quite accomplished in music, painting and calligraphy. A combination of talents like Wang Wei may only exist in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. From this point of view, Wang Wei seems to embody the breath of the prosperous Tang Dynasty better than Li Bai. In the prosperous Tang dynasty, not only poetry, but also other art types have rich soil.
The third is the psychological suggestion caused by the "halo effect". Halo effect affects people's judgment in this way: a certain quality of a person or a certain characteristic of an article gives people a very good impression. Under the influence of this impression, people will also give a better evaluation of other qualities of this person or other characteristics of this item. (This paragraph is quoted from Baidu Encyclopedia)
Chatting with experts who study tripods at home about "why people liked Wang Wei's poems better than Li Bai at that time", I asked if Wang Wei had a bigger official position, and the "experts" pointed out that it was a "halo effect".
Indeed, in fact, Wang Wei is a near-perfect person-born in a clan (although some have declined), brilliant, with a smooth career, and is said to be pretty good. People always think he is good everywhere when they look at him, and his poems are naturally good.
At this time, Li Bai could never squeeze into the mainstream cultural circle. To put it bluntly, no matter how well Li Bai's poems are written, they can only be regarded as grassroots. Li Bai worked hard all his life to realize his lofty aspirations, constantly visiting celebrities for recommendation ("children of businessmen are not allowed to take the imperial examination", because they were born in Li Bai, so they can only hold their thighs everywhere for recommendation), but he always gives people a feeling of being unruly. Just as "Dapeng rises with the wind one day and soars into Wan Li. If the wind weakens, it can still lift away the turbulent current. When the world saw my unchanging tone, it sneered at all my big words. Fu Xuan can still be afraid of the afterlife, and her husband can't be young. "The writing background of this song" Li Shangyong "is that Li Bai and Li Yong are intransigent. (Li Yong, one of the main thighs chosen by officials at that time)
In addition, the social fashion in the Tang Dynasty is in harmony with Wang Wei's poems. The Tang Dynasty was a crucial period when Buddhism was introduced into China. Wang Wei has a strong interest in Buddhism and Zen all his life, and has contacts with eminent monks. There is a lot of Zen in his poems. For the Tang people, it is the embodiment of interest and the representative of elegance.
For example:
When reading this kind of poems, it seems that we can feel a kind of indifference that is willing to be lonely, a kind of tranquility that is completely freed from the exhaustion of the world, just like a self-sufficient hibiscus flower. Zen has been completely integrated into the realm of poetry, and there is Zen in every grass and tree, mountain and water.
In addition, there are some factors such as music that make Wang Wei's poems widely circulated. As Hu Zhenheng pointed out in Tang Yin Gui Qian: "In the early Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei was the most prosperous, and in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, Li Yi and Bai Juyi were the most prosperous." The works of Wang Wei, Li Yi and Bai Juyi have all been sought after by musicians and geisha. The singing of musicians and geisha has expanded the audience of poetry and increased the spread of poetry.
However, it must also be said objectively that from the influence of Dali to Xingyuan poetry, Li Bai is not as good as Wang Wei and Du Fu is not as good as Li Bai. In Zhenyuan and Yuanhe periods, Du Li's poems were widely spread and influenced at that time, which was one of the reasons why the number of Wang Wei's poems included in Selected Works decreased after the middle Tang Dynasty.
Today, we have constructed a series of modern theoretical systems and made various judgments on Tang poetry, which are not consistent with the evaluation system of Tang people. Objectively speaking, due to the changes of political environment, social ideological trend and literary level, it is normal that there is a gap between ancient and modern evaluations, but we cannot deny the evaluation standards of the Tang people at that time, saying that their evaluation is unscientific according to our standards. Is this fair to them?
In fact, when we say that "aesthetics is a highly subjective thing", everyone's aesthetics is not completely "subjective", and the formation of our aesthetics is influenced by various factors unconsciously. Just as "horizon of expectation" will be produced in the process of literature reading. The so-called "horizon of expectation" refers to an appreciation level and requirement for a literary work formed by readers' previous experiences, interests, accomplishments and ideals when reading a literary work, which is manifested as a potential aesthetic measure in specific reading.
Knowing this, perhaps we can understand that Wang Wei is the real master of poetry in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.