Wang Wei’s poems had been widely disseminated in the upper class when he was young, and had a direct social effect. Some poems were also incorporated into music and sung everywhere, expanding its acceptance. After his death Until the end of the Tang Dynasty, this kind of dissemination and acceptance continued. Many poets at the same time as Wang Wei and later drew inspiration and beauty from Wang Wei's poems. Among the poets of the Tang Dynasty, only Li Bai and Bai Juyi could achieve such a grand reception. Bijian.
Wang Wei's landscape poetry connects the past and the past, pushing landscape poetry from its boom period to its prosperity, and further develops Chinese landscape poetry. This can be confirmed by the artistic achievements and artistic style of Wang Wei's landscape poetry
Landscape poetry has a long history and has gone through the gestation period (pre-Qin to Western Jin); the formation period (Eastern Jin); and the boom period (Southern and Northern Dynasties to Sui Dynasty) ); prosperous period (Tang and Five Dynasties); extended period (Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties).
Wang Wei is an outstanding representative of the prosperous period and represents the highest level of Chinese landscape poetry. There are more than 400 Wang Wei's songs in existence, covering a wide range of themes. Among them, there are about 100 landscape poems that use mountains, rivers, dew, flowers, plants, birds, animals, insects, fish and other natural things as their themes, depicting their vivid images, artistically reflecting the various natural beauties, and embodying the author's aesthetic taste. A quarter of all poems, ranking first among all other themes. In terms of artistic creativity, these hundreds or so landscape poems far surpass those of their predecessors and have had a broad and far-reaching influence on future generations.
The Tang Empire was a country with unprecedented unity in Chinese history, unprecedented economic and cultural prosperity, and unprecedented frequent exchanges with foreign countries. This provided very favorable conditions for the development of literature and art, and the development of landscape poetry entered an unprecedented period of prosperity.
The prosperity of Tang landscape poetry is reflected in the following aspects: First, the number of poets engaged in the creation of landscape poetry is astonishing. According to statistics recorded in "Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty" alone, during the three hundred years of the Tang Dynasty, more than 2,200 poets emerged and more than 48,900 poems were written, which were left over from the 1,670 years before the Tang Dynasty. several times the total number of poems. Most of these thousands of mighty poets have chanted landscape poems; although there is no accurate statistics yet on how many landscape poems they wrote, it can be roughly estimated that the total number of landscape poems in the Tang Dynasty , probably several times the total amount of landscape poems left before. What is even more noteworthy is the emergence of talented superstars such as Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu. Their landscape poetry creations are not only large in number, broad in vision, and rich in content, but also extraordinary in poetic context, artistically colorful, and highly innovative.
Wang Wei is an all-around writer who has pushed the aesthetic value of landscape poetry to the peak of art. His artistic achievements in landscape poetry mainly include the following three aspects.
(1) "There is painting in the poem" and the beauty of poetry and painting
"There is painting in the poem, and there is poetry in the painting." This is what Su Shi highly praised Wang Wei's achievements in landscape poetry. . Wang Wei is good at both poetry and painting. He has always had the talent of both a poet and a painter. He writes poems with the meaning of painting and paints with poetic feelings, so that landscape poetry and landscape painting can penetrate each other and merge into one. His landscape poems not only reflect the beauty of the composition, color and shape of the poem, but also fully express the brilliance of the landscape and water colors in the transient changes in time and space. With the sentiments of a poet, he grasped the painter's colored pen tightly, so that his concise and beautiful verses could simultaneously display the wonderful landscape of thousands of miles of mountains and rivers. The processing of the distance, depth, density, light and shade of various scenery is all lifelike and vivid, and even the stillness in movement and the subtle changes in movement in stillness are all vividly carved. For example, "Zhongnan Mountain": "Taiyi is close to the ancient capital, stretching from the mountains to the sea. The white clouds look back and merge, and the green and gentle people come in to see nothing. The peaks change in the field, and the clouds and clearings are different. If you want to stay in a place where others live, ask the woodcutter across the water. "Husband."
This poem wants to express the majesty of Zhongnan Mountain, but it does not make an intuitive description from its natural appearance. Instead, it uses an exaggerated tone of admiration to express how high it is, close to the sky, and horizontally connected. The momentum of Haiyu summarizes the impression from a distance. Then I wrote about the close-up view of the mountain climbing, and I felt that I was at the end of the sea of ??clouds shrouded in white clouds and misty blue, and the strange and surprising mood came out. In misty joy, we climbed to the main peak. At this moment, the mountains and valleys show various shapes due to different terrain and positions, to set off the majestic appearance of the middle peak. The last sentence, as Shen Deqian said: "It may be said that the last two sentences do not fit the whole style. Now I am playing with their meaning. Seeing that the mountains are far away and there are few people, it is an unusual description of the scenery." (Volume 9 of "Tang Poetry Collection") This way of understanding It seems to be more in line with the reality of landscape painting, and it is a clever finishing touch. Let’s look at another poem:
The dangers are tens of thousands of times, and there will be three breaks in a few miles.
When I turn around, I see my disciples, hidden in the forest and Qiu. The rain rustles on the pines, and the gurgling water flows on the rocks. The quiet words are deep in the stream, and the roar is high on the mountain top. Looking at the sun in Nanshan, the day is misty. Qinggao Li has been purified, and the green water is as lush as floating water. I used to be tired of being secretive, and my worries disappeared in the openness. ("Since Dasan, the dense bamboo road in the deep forest has been winding for forty or fifty miles to Huangniuling to see Huanghuachuan")
The poet uses a pen to describe the twists and turns of the mountains and rivers one by one like a painting. out. The raindrops on the pines and the gurgling rocks on the creek echo each other with the quiet murmur of the deep stream and the roar of the mountains. Together with the hazy mist and the sunshine of the southern mountain, it is completely the composition of the painter. Chao Buzhi pointed out: "You Cheng is better than poetry, so painting has more than enough meaning." Fu Zeng said in the preface: "In the past, people called poetry sound painting and painting silent poetry. It is rare to achieve the same mastery of both. You Cheng is good at it. The name of the poem was in the Tianbao period of Kaiyuan, and it was the most popular in the Tang Dynasty. The painting is unique throughout the ages. You Cheng Gai has both. p>
The above are all masterpieces of Wang Wei's painting-in-poetry works. This is a major development in the creation of landscape poetry since the Six Dynasties. It incorporates the ingenuity of the painter, captures the essence of the beauty of natural landscapes, and strives for spiritual resemblance, overcoming the shortcomings of being constrained by complex representations and overly detailed depictions.
Wang Weineng broke through the realistic description method of landscape poets and incorporated painting into poetry, giving landscape poems a rich and vivid poetic and painterly beauty. Specifically, the first is to pay attention to the contrast between natural scenery, such as "Idle flowers fill the rock valley, and the waterfall reflects the fir trees. The singing birds suddenly come to the stream, and when they return to the clouds, they hug the peaks." ("Wei Shilang Mountain Residence") "Guomen At the head of the ferry, the village trees are connected to the mouth of the stream. Beyond the white water and bright fields, the green peaks emerge from the mountains." ("New Sunny Vision"); secondly, he is good at discovering and capturing the vitality of nature, and firmly grasps the fleeting and fleeting things. The aesthetic forms are cut, refined, and worded, and the scenery is combined into poetry, such as "Ten thousand valleys with towering trees, thousands of mountains ringing with cuckoos. Half of the rain in the mountains, tree branches with hundreds of springs." ("Farewell to Zizhou Li Shijun"); The third is to pay attention to color matching. For example, "The green mountains are across the green forest, and the red sun is closing the flat land." ("Winter Tour") "The sky is dark and dark, hundreds of miles away." ("Huayue") "In the ancient walls, there are green moss, and the cold mountains are red in the distance. ” ("Henan Yan Yindi visits others in a poor house and writes ten rhymes") These landscapes and landscapes, carefully selected and painted by the artist's discerning eye and aesthetic psychology, are more attractive than natural videos because they express the changes in nature. and inner rhythm, writing out the contradictory unity of movement and stillness. This is the so-called "painting within poetry" beauty of poetry and painting.
(2) The ethereal beauty of “similarity in form and spirit”
Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, landscape poetry, as a kind of exploration and praise of nature, has attracted widespread attention and interest. . Poets represented by Xie Lingyun refined landscapes from their metaphysical properties into works of art with spatial reality and aesthetic appeal, which promoted the development of landscape literature in the Six Dynasties. However, under the influence of the "shangli" and "nobleness" trends, there has been a tendency to blindly pursue form, ignoring the overall unified aura of nature itself. Wang Wei's landscape poems not only inherited the fine brushwork of the two Xies (Xie Lingyun and Xie Tiao) and the advantages of focusing on the realism of images, but also incorporated Zen into poetry, making the landscape poems leap from direct feeling and direct narrative to the realm of wonderful thoughts and ecstasy. That is, from "similarity in form" to a new stage of "similarity in form and spirit". Please see:
Chu Sai and Xiang are connected, and Jingmen is connected to nine sects. The river flows beyond the sky and the earth, and the mountains are beautiful. In the county town of Bucheonpo, waves are moving in the sky. It's a nice windy day in Xiangyang, and I'm left drunk with the mountain man. ("Looking at the Han River")
Comparing this poem with Xie Lingyun's masterpiece "Climbing the Pond and Going Up the Tower", we can clearly see that Xie's poem deliberately strives for craftsmanship, the most important thing is the similarity in shape, and pays great attention to vision. In this sequence, what you listen to and see with your ears and eyes will be unfolded from top to bottom, high and low, far and near, giving people a distinct three-dimensional and realistic feeling. Wang Wei's "View of the Han River" is a different story. The poet did not write about the size of the city or the shape of the river, but he exaggeratedly described the relationship between the Han River and the Three Hunan and Nine factions. He compared the river flow outside the world and the seemingly nonexistent mountains with the reflection of the city in the river. As well as the waves running into the distance, the virtual brushstrokes are realistic and integrated, thus showing the vastness and distance of the Han River, Xiangyang's graceful posture standing on the riverside, and the poet's leisurely state of mind, all of which are extremely vivid and expressive.
Wang Wei absorbed the detachment of Zen Buddhism and observed the world from a Buddhist perspective, "in the eyes of mountains, rivers and heavens, in the body of the world." At the same time, he also regarded the "empty" and "silent" realms of Buddhism as The destination of life. Therefore, his poems, especially the "Wangchuan Collection" written in the later period, present an "ethereal realm", which is a sign that his landscape poetry has reached its peak, and it is also the best example of his landscape poetry having both physical and spiritual similarities. explain. Therefore, his landscape poems are ethereal, elegant, far-reaching, infinite in meaning, and have eternal charm.
(3) Harmonious and unified sound beauty
Relying on his special accomplishment in music, Wang Wei often feels and accurately grasps the nature of landscapes more keenly than others when composing landscape poems. The sounds of nature are expressed vividly and vividly through concise and poetic language.
The flowers on Beiling have not yet bloomed, and the trees in the clouds are deep and shallow. In the clear day, I still sleep by myself, and the mountain bird chirps every now and then. ("Li Chushi's Mountain Residence")
There are few falling clouds in the mountains, and you can enjoy them in a distant boat. The cymbals are blowing in the Xijiang River, and the autumn sky is clear and clear. ("Send off Prefect Yuwen to Xuancheng")
The people are idle, the osmanthus flowers are falling, the night is quiet and the spring mountains are empty. The moonrise scares the mountain birds, and they sing in the spring stream. ("Birdsong Stream")
From the above poem examples, we can see that the poet not only integrated musical skills into the poem to write the natural sounds of the rhythm of the landscape, but also conveyed the poet through the characteristics of certain sounds. The emotions reveal the tranquility and agility of the harmony between man and nature. There is a saying in "The Book of Rites·The Book of Music": "Music is the source of music, and its origin lies in the human heart's feelings and objects." Different emotions will produce different emotions. Wang Wei can accurately capture the subtleties of nature. Ordinary sounds are integrated into the poem to express the movement and stillness of the natural ecology and the leaping vitality of life. Different sounds are deliberately used to play on the heartstrings to show different moods. It is this kind of interdependence and the combination of various forms that constitutes the infinite vitality and the gorgeous and natural beauty of all things in the universe. This is the poetry and charm brought by Wang Wei's landscape poems that depict natural sounds.
The aesthetic value of Wang Wei's landscape poems, from the beauty of painting and music, the natural and muddy style, the clear and quiet artistic conception, and the subtle and delicate language, fully prove that he has mastered the art of painting and music. The artistic level of Tang landscape poetry has been raised to an unprecedented height. Wang Wei not only completed the fusion of landscape poetry and pastoral poetry in terms of subject matter, but also realized the merger of the two traditional schools in art, thereby pushing the art of landscape poetry to a new peak and enjoying a high reputation in landscape poetry. A model for landscape poets to learn from, their influence is far-reaching.
"Historical Records" has a more sophisticated evaluation of the art of Wang Wei's landscape poems; "Wang Wei's works are like Lin Chunxiao, the fragrant trees are slightly dry, hundreds of warblers are singing, the palace merchants are playing in succession, Huangshan Zisai, the Han Palace and the Qin Palace, between the majestic beauty and the misty atmosphere, what is called a sound painting is not as good as a painting, but who can do it! "Reciting it is regular style." (See Appendix 2 at the end of "Wang Youcheng's Notes") "Literature is the aesthetic ideology manifested in the implication of discourse." Poetry is also one of the styles of literature. It also requires the implication of infinite things in finite words and sentences. He Yisun, a litterateur in the early Qing Dynasty, pointed out in "Shi Jian": "Poetry is mainly based on implication, and it has no choice but to overflow into light and strangeness. The extreme of implication creates light, and the extreme of light creates strangeness. Li, Du, Wang, Meng and Tang Dynasty All the masters have their own kind of strangeness, not only Changji is called strange."
II
The above are the artistic achievements of Wang Wei's landscape poetry, and the styles of Wang Wei's poetry are also diverse. sexual.
Poetry critics have made many comments on the style of Wang Wei's landscape poetry. From the above three characteristics of landscape poetry, we can further discuss its style of landscape poetry.
The artistic style of poetry is closely related to the poet's thoughts, feelings, personality, aesthetic preferences, the artistic conception of the poem, the expression of the artistic conception, and the techniques of expression, etc.
Sikong Tu of the Tang Dynasty said: "Wang Youcheng, Wei Suzhou, is clear and exquisite, and the style is in it, why not Qiuju!" ("Discussing Poems and Books with Li Sheng") also said: "Youcheng, Suzhou is full of fun and freshness, just like the cool breeze coming out of Xiuzhou." ("Reviewing Poems with Wang Jia") Volume 1 of "Zhuzhuang Poetry" by Song Hexiwen said: ""Xuelangzhai Diary" says: For poetry, I want to be clear, deep and leisurely. , look at Wei Suzhou, Liu Zihou, Meng Haoran, Wang Mojie, and Jia Changjiang. "Volume 2 of Wei Qingzhi's "Poet Jade Chips": "Zhen Weng's Poetry Commentary: Wang Youcheng is like a lotus in the autumn water, smiling to himself in the wind." Volume 4 of the Internal Compilation: "Suzhou's five-character style was excellent in ancient times and entered the prosperous Tang Dynasty. Its modern style is graceful and coherent, but its strong tone is naturally different from that of Wang and Meng. It has been studied in many schools, and all of them are of the light style of five-character style." Liu Daqin of the Qing Dynasty "The Continuation of the Poems of Poetry Friends" compiled: "Wang and Meng's poems pretended to be the sounds of nature for palace merchants, and sent them to the plain taste, harmonious style, and natural meaning. There is no trace of the beauty that can be found." Pan De and "Yang Yizhai" Volume 1 of "Li Du Poetry": "You Cheng's five unique features are pure and natural, and Xun has the highest state of the Tang Dynasty." Based on the opinions of the above experts, it can be said that lightness and nature are the most prominent artistic style of Wang Wei's poetry.
This style is mainly reflected in the poet's landscape poems that reflect the taste of reclusive life.
Please take a look at the following poem:
After the new rain in the empty mountains, autumn comes late. The bright moon shines among the pines, and the clear spring flows over the rocks. The bamboos are chosen to be returned to Huan Nu, and the lotus leaves are moved into the fish boat. The spring fragrance rests at will, and the king and grandson can stay. ("Mountain Dwelling in Autumn")
The osmanthus flowers fall when people are idle, and the night is quiet and the spring mountains are empty. The moonrise scares the mountain birds, and they sing in the spring stream. ("Birdsong Stream")
No one can be seen in the empty mountain, but the sound of people's voices can be heard. Returning to the deep forest, the light shines on the moss again. ("Deer and Chai")
The hibiscus flowers at the end of the wood have red calyxes in the mountains. There is no one in the stream. They open and close one after another. ("Xinyiwu")
Sitting alone in the secluded bamboo, playing the piano and whistling loudly. People in the deep forest don't know that the bright moon comes to shine. ("Zhuli Pavilion")
All the above works are true and true, without pretense or pretense, harmonious and plain, fresh and natural.
A great poet does not have just one pen and ink. The style of Wang Wei's poetry is not only light and natural, but also vigorous, vigorous, steep, magnificent, melodious, plain, handsome, elegant and other styles.
The vigorous and vigorous style includes landscape poems related to travel and sightseeing, such as "Looking at the Han River":
Three branches of Chu and Xiang are connected, and nine schools of Jingmen are connected. The river flows beyond the sky and the earth, and the mountains are beautiful. In the county town of Bucheonpo, waves ripple across the sky. It's a nice windy day in Xiangyang, and I'm left drunk with the mountain man.
This poem was written in the 28th year of Kaiyuan when Wang Wei passed by Xiangyang during his "Zhinan Selection". The Han River described by the poet has magnificent scenery and vast atmosphere. There is also his poem "Zhongnan Mountain", which describes the tallness, majesty and depth of Zhongnan Mountain, with strong penmanship and majestic momentum. Volume 5 of Zhang Qianyi's "Ji Zhai Poetry Talk" said: "In Zhongnan Mountain, we can see the beauty of accumulating strength and becoming majestic." When the poet walked out of the bustling city of Chang'an and rushed to the mountains and deserts of Han Dynasty, the majestic, majestic and colorful The colorful mountains and rivers of the motherland and the intense and intense life of fighting at the frontier surprised and amazed him; his vision broadened, and his mood became high-spirited, optimistic and heroic. This enabled the poet to create many landscape poems with a vigorous style.
There are many other landscape poems in this series of styles, so I won’t give examples and analysis one by one here. The above is a brief discussion on the artistic achievements and style of Wang Wei's landscape poetry, in order to further understand Wang Wei's landscape poetry and thus to further understand the poetry school of landscape poetry. .
The landscape poetry of the Tang Dynasty fully absorbed the nutrients of ancient literature, inherited the legacy of the landscape literature of the Six Dynasties, and thrived in the soil of the new era. At every stage of social development in the Tang Dynasty, a large number of outstanding poets emerged and created a large number of excellent landscape poems, which had strong artistic vitality. During the nearly three hundred years of landscape poetry in the Tang Dynasty, outstanding poets such as Wang Wei far surpassed the achievements of their predecessors and reached the pinnacle of the art of landscape poetry, thereby establishing their unshakable place in the history of landscape poetry. historical status.
Wang Wei’s landscape poetry is a link between the past and the past, pushing landscape poetry from the boom period to the prosperous period, and further developing Chinese landscape poetry. This has been briefly discussed from the artistic achievements and artistic style of Wang Wei’s landscape poetry. Therefore, it can be said that Wang Wei's landscape poetry is a treasure house and a milestone in the art of Chinese landscape poetry.