Du Fu and Li Shangyin are both masters of object-chanting poems, but their object-chanting poems are quite different. Unlike Du Fu's love of singing eagles, horses and other things full of fighting spirit and masculine beauty, Li Shangyin prefers to sing weak and delicate things. As far as animals are concerned, there are warblers, cicadas, bees, butterflies and mandarin ducks. As far as plants are concerned, all kinds of flowers have become his favorite theme. Peony, very beautiful, appears repeatedly in his works, in addition to chrysanthemum, plum blossom, apricot blossom and hibiscus flower. As far as natural images are concerned, the narration of wind, moon, rain and snow also occupies a certain proportion in his creation. Li Shangyin's works hardly describe magnificent behemoths. Even though he wrote about pine trees famous for stepping on frost and snow, they are Komatsu and Yousong, which tend to be refined and refined, so they appear quiet and distant. When writing rain, except for the phrase "It's raining cats and dogs" ("Crying for Liu"), it's usually cold rain, Mao Mao rain and late rain: "Miss Chu was in love at that time, rustling and cooling" ("Rain in Mao Mao"), which is delicate and delicate; "Mao Mao Rain" ("Mao Mao Rain") is rain without rain; "The cool breeze moves the bamboo first, but the point is too fine to open the ping", which is the rain that cools the skin thoroughly ("Mao Mao Rain"). The loveliness and softness of the singing object make Li Shangyin's poems about objects present a feminine beauty. This difference between masculinity and femininity, apart from the poet's unique aesthetic pursuit, cannot but be said to be the projection of the spirit of the times on the poet's mind.
These things in Li Shangyin's works always seem to be doomed to tragedy, but they present a tragic beauty, such as the wandering warbler has nowhere to live, the cicada has white branches, and the peony is gorgeous but about to fall. There seems to be too much sadness and melancholy in the poet's heart, even the dewy wild chrysanthemum is also "Ran Ran's tears are dripping by the south pepper dock of bitter bamboo garden" (wild chrysanthemum). Du Fu's poems describing things after middle age mostly describe some unfortunate creatures, and these things often appear in front of poets in the form of old, ugly and sick people, such as sick horses, dead fish, withered nan, rotten oranges and so on:
A group of oranges have little business, although there are many, but they are also ridiculous. Cherish small and firm, sour as pears. It is advisable to cut moths and pick them. Not palatable, don't just leave its skin. The rustling leaves are half dead, but I can't bear to leave the branches. Frost and snow accumulate in severe winter, and the situation is that the return air blows. ("sick orange")
After doing so many things, the hard-working townships don't remember. I don't know how old I am, but I have no business. The upper branches rub the sky and the lower roots are thick. Thunder broke the huge encirclement, and the millipore ants extracted it. The freezing rain drips glue, and the wind grabs the air. (wither)
Seeing the Badong Gorge passing by day by day, the yellow croaker is making waves again. Grease and cream are not suitable for dogs when they grow up. The barrel looks like it, and the wind and thunder are willing to be gods. Looking back, Longlin is hard to blame. (yellow croaker)
This special aesthetic view naturally reflects the author's heavy sense of life experience, and also contains the poet's deep self-mockery and satire. At the same time, it also shows Du Fu's broad feelings of caring for life, compassion for all things and "harmony between man and things". They remind the poet of himself, a country over 500 years old, with no fixed place to live, poverty and illness, broken mountains and rivers and smoke. Just as he turned his eyes to the lowest people who were displaced in the war, Du Fu showed heartfelt sympathy for those humble and even ugly little creatures. So the ugly image is aestheticized and becomes a special symbol of beauty. But this transformation of beauty and ugliness is within the scope permitted by aesthetic laws. It will not bring people a bloody horror of turning ugliness into beauty and ugliness into ugliness like Han Yu's poems of Yuanhe Shengde, nor will it be unacceptable like some of Mei's poems, which will become a failure lesson in expanding the theme of Song poetry. These poems by Du Fu seem to be the first works describing ugliness in China literature, which reflect not banter and ridicule, but heartfelt tolerance and acceptance, which is another great contribution of Du Fu to the development of China's poetic realm. The horrible and lovely ghosts in Li He's poems in the mid-Tang Dynasty and Jia Dao's nostalgia for old age, illness, death, coldness and thinness are the inevitable logical products of this aesthetic tendency after it has developed to a certain stage.
Li Shangyin seems to have an aesthetic complex. In his works, the more he sings to the end of his life, the more frustrated he is, the more lovely and beautiful he is. This kind of beauty is destroyed, which is heartbreaking and tragic. This aesthetic transformation reflects the difference of aesthetic subjects. Du Fu is a sober realist. In the turbulent years, he never gave up his firm belief and persistent ideal for the country and people, but he did not shy away from the disability and suffering of life, and dared to "face the dripping blood" and "face the bleak life". In this way, he can find beauty in ugliness, greatness in mediocrity and appreciate the profound connotation of life in the most authentic state of life. Li Shangyin is more like a persistent aesthete. He is more inclined to pay attention to nature with beautiful and idealized eyes. Under the irradiation of this candlelight, natural objects always present a beautiful existence form after decoration. Therefore, Du Fu's poems also praise small things. They are often richer in inner strength and strength, showing a rough and masculine beauty, a kind of inner tension, full of unyielding cries, and can see the big from the small. Reading such poems can give people a sense of solemnity. Although the poet's writing is small and humble, it is not pitiful, but admirable. But Li Shangyin's poems are more narcissism and self-appreciation. What he reveals in his fascination with beauty is a high affirmation of his talents and a complete resistance to dark current affairs, which tends to see the big from the small. Like Qu Yuan, at the moment when life or its symbol is about to be destroyed, they get sadness and self-sufficiency, but they would rather turn to ashes than surrender to the great beauty and tragic beauty of the world, and they are self-completion and sublimation of individuals in a special sense. This kind of beauty has been destroyed and destroyed, which is the expression of Li Shangyin's feelings in the last days, and it is also the greatest feeling that his poems about objects give readers. Seeing beauty from ugliness, turning ugliness into beauty and turning ugliness into beauty, Han Yu and others developed Du Fu, although his aesthetic taste was somewhat morbid; From the beauty of truth to the beauty of ideal, from the beauty of everything to the beauty of self-mind, Li Shangyin showed a kind of opposition to the aesthetic trend of thought in the middle Tang Dynasty, which quite reflected the characteristics of the spirit of the late Tang Dynasty, thus becoming a higher level return to Du Fu.
Li Shangyin's poems about objects are much more subjective than Du Fu's. Du Fu's eyes always turned to the outside world, caring about everything in the world, which was triggered by foreign things and turned into poetry. Therefore, "Xing" plays an important role in his poetry creation. Li Shangyin, on the other hand, pays more attention to his inner world. He only vomited it as a poem when his inner feelings were difficult to control, and foreign objects became the poetic carrier of his feelings. In this way, in Du Fu's works, poems about objects have never been completely divorced from realism, and he can generally describe things in both form and spirit. However, Li Shangyin's poems about objects are often divorced from the form, and they only convey the poet's own spiritual feelings, while the description of foreign objects is placed in a very secondary position. Sticking to each other is the aesthetic standard of chanting poems. Du Fu's poems about objects generally conform to this standard, while Li Shangyin's poems about objects present two completely different situations: some studies on Qi Liang's poems about objects are only for depicting images, lacking deep feelings and being too "clingy"; Some poems about things are too attached to the expression of self-emotion, ignoring the concern for the object of singing, and almost close to pure poems about remembering things, which seems too "detached". The poems that truly represent his creative achievements are between the two, and they can be vivid by borrowing forms. The artistic image in poetry is both real and concrete, which transcends the objective image of things. Li Shangyin's poems about objects often use contrast. In "Xie Hedong Shi Qi", he said that his creation is "to wander around the scenic spot, to admire, to blame the prince and grandson for being grass, and to use beauty as a metaphor for a gentleman". However, compared with the traditional method of comparison, some of his poems about objects have broken away from the partial and simple traces of comparison and entered a high-level fit of inner spirit, and the meaning of trust is also there. This can be regarded as the further development of Li Shangyin's figurative technique and the symbol of China's artistic progress in poetry.
Poetry in the late Tang Dynasty is the further development of poetry in the prosperous Tang Dynasty after the middle Tang Dynasty. The prosperity in the early stage and the * * * in the middle and late stage together constitute a comprehensive Tang poetry. Although the overall achievements of poetry in the late Tang Dynasty can not be compared with those in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, they have made new contributions to the development of poetry art. The same is true of Li Shangyin's and Du Fu's poems about objects.
(Author: Institute of Literature, China Academy of Social Sciences, College of Literature, South China Normal University)