If Tang poetry is famous for its richness of spirit, emotion and charm, then the mature Song poetry is based on muscles, bones, thinking and reasoning, and pays attention to thinness, hardness, spirituality and the beauty of old age. In this regard, Huang Tingjian and the Jiangxi Poetry School of which he is the leader The creation is the most representative. When discussing Song poetry, predecessors always used Su and Huang as models, saying that Su Shi's "Dongpo style" poems have a grand atmosphere, like the Yangtze River, with wind and waves surging, creating a spectacle of its own; Huang Tingjian's "Valley style" poems have a strict rhythm , like dangerous peaks thousands of feet high, rising from the ground, making people look intimidating. The former is a genius, the latter is a profound student. People in the Song Dynasty paid great attention to rhetoric and meaning when writing poems. The Jiangxi Poetry School, with Huang Tingjian as its leader, became the longest popular and most influential poetry school in the Song Dynasty. Chen Shidao, Chen Yuyi and Lu Benzhong are considered to be the backbone of this poetic school. They preferred clumsy to skillful, simple to elegant creations, and their tragic and vigorous style that eliminated complexity, enriched the old-world beauty of Song poetry, and also enriched the old-world beauty of Song poetry. He advocated the "living method" of roundness and beauty, trying to correct the shortcomings of the Jiangxi Poetry School that blindly pursued thinness, hardness, and rawness.
A poem that is noble, thin and hard can lead to spirituality
Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), whose courtesy name was Lu Zhi, also known as Valley Taoist, also known as Fu Weng, lived in Fenning, Hongzhou Prefecture (now Jiangxi Province). Xiushui) people. He was able to compose poems at the age of seven. After his father passed away at the age of fourteen, he traveled to Huainan with his uncle Li Chang and made great progress in his knowledge. He passed the imperial examination in the fourth year of Emperor Yingzong's reign (1067) and was appointed as the county captain of Ye County in Ruzhou. In the fifth year of Shenzong Xining's reign (1072), he took the academic official examination and served as a professor at the Imperial Academy in Beijing (now Hebei Daming). In the first year of Yuanfeng (1078), he paid homage to Su Shi with a poem, and the two formally became friends. In the third year of Yuanyou (1088), Su Shi learned about Gongju. Huang Tingjian, Chao Buzhi, Li Gonglin and others were his subordinates and they often sang in harmony. In the first year of Shaosheng (1094), Zhe Zong was in power and the New Party gained power. Huang Tingjian was demoted to Fuzhou Biejia, resettled in Qianzhou, and then moved to Rongzhou. In the second year of Chongning (1104), he was listed as a member of the Yuanyou Party and supervised by Yizhou (now Yishan, Guangxi). He died in the demoted office in September of the following year. Huang Tingjian adhered to Confucianism and was accommodating to Buddhist scholars. He was good at calligraphy. He was one of the four great calligraphers of the Song Dynasty along with Su Shi, Mi Fu and Cai Xiang. He believed that "the best in poetry comes from knowledge", and his "Reply to Hongju's Father" said: "Lao Du wrote poems, but when he retired, he wrote compositions, and there was no source of any words; because the descendants read less, they called Han , Du Zi made this statement, and those who can write in ancient times can really cultivate all things. Even if they take the ancient sayings and put them into calligraphy, it is like a magic pill that turns iron into gold. "His "Ti Yi Ke Poem" also said: "It is better to have a disharmonious rhythm than to make the sentence weak; to use words that are not skillful and not to make the sentence vulgar." These two paragraphs show his own creative pursuit and are also the poetic program of the Jiangxi Poetry School.
Due to his relatively introverted and mature personality, Huang Tingjian adheres to the philosophy of "harmony with light and dust" and does not agree with Su Shi's laughter and curses, and directly criticizes current affairs in his poems. His poetry creation avoids social and political issues, and he is accustomed to seeking poetic meaning from the friendship between relatives and friends, the elegance of forests and springs, and reading and scholarship, so as to experience the emotions and wisdom in daily life. For example, "Guo Pingyu was in Bingzhou when he was pregnant with Li Ziguang":
The day before yesterday, I was walking on the embankment and grass to see the green robe. The heart fluctuates with the spring of Ru River, and the moon is high at night when Xing and Bingmen are together. Is there no thousand-mile horse in the world? Jiufang Gao is rare among people. When the wine boats and fishing nets returned, the flowers fell into the old stream a pole deep.
Another example is "Three Days of Wind and Rain in Chikou":
Three days of wind and rain in the isolated city, but only vegetables in the small city. The water is far away and the mountain is long, both belong to jade. The body is idle and the mind is suffering, and a hoe is used. The old man came from the side house to collect the net, but I was in the abyss and did not envy the fish. There are no traces between the pitch and the sky, and I return to the dusk window to read the remaining books.
The former song laments that I and my friends are in different places and have failed in their career, expressing the resentment of being unappreciated and understood, as well as the mood of wanting to retreat to the mountains and lakes; the latter song describes the experiences and miscellaneous feelings during the journey, expressing The inner anguish of being unable to realize one's ambitions, and the attitude towards life of not being vain but reading for self-entertainment. What Huang Tingjian wrote best and most personally was this kind of lyric poetry that could express his personality and ambition. For example, "Zi Yuan Ming Yun Ji Zi Yu":
Half a lifetime of friendship has passed away, how many people are drawn into Ling Yan? The spring breeze and spring rain pass through the eyes, and the water from the north and south of the Yangtze River beats the sky. If you want to ask about Tongzhang Xing, you must know your good friend Xu Wangnian. The ridges make everyone think and hate, and the sun and the moon make the mountains full of snow.
"Send to Huang Jifu":
I live in the North Sea and the South Sea, and I can't thank you for sending letters to the wild geese. A cup of wine with peach and plum spring breeze, and a light in the rainy night in the rivers and lakes for ten years. There are only four walls to run a household, but there are only three walls to cure diseases. Thinking about it makes my head turn white when I read, and the ape across the stream is crying because of the miasma of vines in the stream.
This kind of works that miss relatives and friends focus on expressing the feelings of relatives and friends, the feeling of life experience and the sigh of the boss. These are complex emotions often shared by middle-aged and elderly people. Apart from the superficial impulsiveness and willfulness, they are deeper and more mature. From them, we can see the poet's sincere character that values ??friendship, as well as his enlightened mind and honest ethics.
Huang Tingjian wrote poems with the purpose of learning from Du Fu, and emphasized that Du Fu's poems after arriving in Kuizhou should be used as an example. He said in "With Sun Ke Xiucai": "Please read Lao Du's poems and master their syntax. Every time you write a poem, you will be the master of it, and you can become a family." Syntax is not only the entrance for Huang Tingjian to learn from the artistic experience of his predecessors. , is also an important aspect of his own innovation in creation. His valley style poems like to use oblique sentences, which he learned from Du Fu, but Du Fu only did it occasionally, while Huang Tingjian concentrated on this. For example, the third part of "Four Poems on Luoxing Temple":
When Luoxing opened Shijie House, the old man from Long Pavilion came to compose a poem. It's light rain. Hidden mountain travelers sit for a long time, and the sails from the Yangtze River arrive late. The fragrance of banquet and bed is isolated from the world, and the paintings are wonderful and no one knows. Each hive has an account and a vine, and a branch of tea cane is brewed everywhere.
This poem not only draws on the syntax of the predecessors, but also takes the ancient statements to enlighten it, turning decay into magic; it also intentionally changes the flatness and obliqueness in the poem, causing twists and turns in the tone, giving people a sense of strangeness and sharpness. . The creation of language is curious but hard, striving to be unexpected, and creating "obvious style" poems with awkward sentences and awkward rhymes, which have become the creative characteristics of valley style poetry and help Song poetry also form its own distinctive characteristics in modern style. The so-called "Ao style" mainly involves changing the sentence structure and rhythm in the verses, either by changing the order of the sentence structure to make the style abnormal, or changing the rhythm of a sentence or a couplet to cause an abrupt tone, intentionally creating a situation that breaks the balance and harmony. The effect gives people a strange and stubborn feeling. For example, Huang Tingjian's "Ci Yun Pei Zhongmou was born in the same year": "The leaves are only a hundred miles away from Wuyang, and the noble and the male are both young." The word "bai" should be flat and flat, and the word "Ji" should be flat and flat, so the tone will be arrogant and airy. See you soon. This practice of not paying attention to the consonance of the tones and the order of the sentences in order to stay ahead of the popular customs, and deliberately seeking novelty while creating awkward sentences and hard language, is an important factor in the formation of the new thin and hard style of Gutisheng.
Huang Tingjian advocated using knowledge as poetry, advocating making the old into the new, and transforming the vulgar into elegance. He also said that "turning iron into gold" and "reshaping the body". In his specific poetry creation, he tried to avoid familiar allusions and common sayings that people often use, and focused on the transformation and utilization of allusions. Either take one end and spread it out, or merge several related allusions into one to create a new artistic conception. For example, "Climbing the Kuai Pavilion":
The idiot has taken care of the family affairs, and the east and west of the Kuai Pavilion rely on Wanqing. Thousands of fallen trees and mountains, the sky is far and wide, and the moon is clearly visible along the Chengjiang River. Zhu Xian is already a beautiful woman, and her blue eyes are as good as wine. Returning to the boat after thousands of miles to play the flute, I am in alliance with the white gull.
The allusions used in this poem are subtle and secret, which can make readers think of many things in one thing, reflecting the depth of the poet's thinking. For example, the sentence "idiot" uses an allusion from "Book of Jin·Fu Xian's Biography", which includes several meanings such as self-mockery, self-promise, self-release, and self-pleasure. The couplet "Zhu Xian" and "Qingyan" makes use of the allusions of Boya, Ziqi and Ruan Ji, which creates the frustration of the poem and the depression of the semantics. Allusions are an important aspect of the valley style that makes it unique and surprising. Huihong's "Leng Zhai Night Talk" said: "Gu Guyun said: Poetry is infinite, but human talent is limited. With limited talent, chasing infinite meaning, even if Yuan Ming and Shaoling are not able to work. However, it is not easy to create with his intention. In his words, it is called the method of changing bones; to get a glimpse of its meaning and describe it is called the method of taking the fetus. "The so-called "taking the fetus and changing the bones" is the embodiment of "turning iron into gold", and the purpose is to be able to use the idioms of the predecessors. Establish new ideas and use familiar images to create a new environment. This is a kind of language alchemy that turns the ordinary into magical, and can produce qualitative changes in the semantic meaning of poetry.
The artistic feature of "Valley Style" poems is the newness, thinness, and hardness that avoids clichés in soft words. "Thin" means washing away the beauty and abandoning beauty; "hard" means being strong and straight, and strengthening the weak. Huang Tingjian often uses the strangeness of words and sentences to create a sense of strangeness in his poetry, pursuing the new beauty of the poetic landscape, the steep beauty of the poetic language and the awkward beauty of the poetic rhyme. He is good at refining characters, and is especially famous for his good use of verbs, adjectives and particles, such as:
Cold insects urge us to weave the moon cage in autumn, and the lone wild goose calls the sky to splash on the water. ("Listen to Song Zongru's Excerpts of Ruan Songs")
Horses and withered bark make noisy pillows at noon, and dreams turn into stormy waves rolling over the river. ("Sleep on June 17th")
There are several rows of red trees and brocades, and a spring scene is filled with green and oil. ("Farewell")
The function of the article is not up to date, so why is it decorated with dewdrops?
("A Play Presenting Kong Yi's Father")
Huang Tingjian's calligraphy skills of "must come up with his own words", coupled with the sharp words of Zen scholars who make dead snakes come alive, the poems are naturally strange, alert, and lively. Newly thin and hard. However, this novel approach can easily cause the disadvantage of pretending to be difficult. Zhang Jie's "Suihantang Poetry Talk" said: "The valley only knows that strange words are poetry, but does not know that ordinary words are also poetry." This can quite well explain the shortcomings of Zhonggu style poetry.
However, the pursuit of writing without intention has come to an end, emphasizing that poetry must reach a natural and plain state without ax chisel marks, which is Huang Tingjian's ultimate creative pursuit. He said in "Fu Shu with Wang Guan": "The poems I sent have so many good lines, but I hate that they are so skillful in carving. But after familiarizing myself with Du Zimei's ancient poems after he came to Kuizhou, I found that the syntax is simple yet grand and clever, plain and high. The depth of the water seems to be beyond the reach of desire. The writing is accomplished and there are no axe marks, which is a good thing. "Huang Tingjian's valley style poems are not all new and thin works, but there are also works that are written in a clear and smooth way. For example, "Two Poems on Climbing Yueyang Tower and Looking at Junshan in the Rain":
Thousands of people died in the wilderness, and the hair on their temples was stained, and the Yanlu Pass in Qutang was born. Smile before arriving in the south of the Yangtze River, facing Junshan from the Yueyang Tower.
The wind and rain abound in the river, leaning on the railing alone, tying up the twelve servant girls of Xiang'e. It's a pity that you can't see green mountains from the surface of the lake, but from the piles of silver mountains.
It expresses the author's strong character who has endured hardships in his later years without giving in. Although there is no lack of force and style, the sentences are natural and smooth. The characteristics of freshness, thinness and hardness are most obvious in Huang Tingjian's early poems. In his later years, Liuliang style, which pursues nature and simplicity, appeared, and his poetry tended to be a mature state of "plain but high mountains and deep waters".
Huang Tingjian’s valley-style poetry is the product of the peak development of Song poetry during the Yuanyou period. Song people’s creation of modern-style poetry also shows a Song tone that is different from Tang’s pronunciation. It started from Jinggong style and completed it in Valley body. The basic characteristics of Huang Tingjian's valley-style poems are to avoid familiarity and to be elegant and refined. When writing poems, they pay attention to the sophisticated semantics and grand scale. The writing style is unique and vertical, and the syntax is particularly high. He is also good at refining characters and using allusions, and can make the old into the new. The language is clean and elegant, and the purpose is unique; the style is new, thin, hard and steep, but it also has a bright and smooth side. After Huang Tingjian's death, his valley-style poetry became popular and evolved into the Jiangxi Poetry School, which led to the poetry controversy between the Tang and Song Dynasties. Its popularity has not stopped until modern times.