When was the earliest seven-character quatrain? What's the history?
Preface
A seven-character quatrain is a poem composed of four seven-character sentences, referred to as seven quatrains for short. Like the Five Musts, the Seven Musts include modern poetry and ancient poetry.
We all know that the Seven Wonders reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty, but it's not easy to say when the earliest Seven Wonders appeared.
We can take a step-by-step look at the characteristics of seven-character quatrains from the Tang Dynasty.
first, the ancient style and the modern style of the Seven Wonders in the Tang Dynasty
To understand the birth and development of the Seven Wonders, we must first understand the basic knowledge of old-style poetry.
There are modern poems and ancient poems in the old-style poems, while those that conform to the metrical poems are modern poems and those that do not conform to the metrical poems are ancient poems, so quatrains can also be divided into ancient quatrains and metrical quatrains.
since the northern and southern dynasties began to study the four tones and eight diseases, the phenomenon of metrical poetry has become more and more common. In the early Tang Dynasty, the rules of metrical quatrains were gradually determined, so a large number of ancient quatrains and metrical quatrains coexisted in quatrains.
Among them, there are many ancient quatrains, such as Li Bai's Thoughts on a Quiet Night, Meng Haoran's Spring Dawn, Jia Dao's a note left for an absent ecluse and so on. In Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty, the five-character quatrains and the five-character quatrains are almost equal, which basically reflects the vitality of the five-character quatrains.
However, the metrical form of the seven verses is very obvious, in which there are many near-body seven verses and few ancient ones. Interested friends can take a look at the chapter of the seven quatrains in 3 Tang Poems. Almost all of the seven quatrains we are familiar with are quatrains. For example, most quatrains such as Wang Changling's at hibiscus inn parting with xin jian and Wang Wei's on the mountain holiday thinking of my brothers in shandong are near-body quatrains.
"at hibiscus inn parting with xin jian"
Cold rain enters Wu at night, and seeing off visitors in Chu Mountain in Pingming. Friends, if Luoyang friends ask me to come; Just say that I still bing Xin Okho, adhere to faith!
"on the mountain holiday thinking of my brothers in shandong"
Being a stranger in a foreign land, I miss my family more often during festivals. Think of the brothers body boarded up high, will also because of less than I have a regret.
Except for Wei Yingwu's at chuzhou on the western stream, the word "human" in Li Bai's a farewell to meng haoran on his way to yangzhou is out of the law, and other words seem to be all legal sentences.
An old friend left the Yellow Crane Tower in the west, and fireworks went down to Yangzhou in March. The shadow of the friend's sail faded away, and disappeared at the end of the blue sky, only to see the first line of the Yangtze river, running to the distant horizon. Note: the word "person" is out of law.
Although the quatrains and the quatrains with obvious legalistic characteristics (some people call them the four quatrains) account for the majority of the seven quatrains in the Tang Dynasty. However, some of the Seven Wonders are completely archaic. For example, Li Bai's "Climbing the Five Old Peaks in Lushan Mountain" deliberately uses the sentence pattern of archaic poetry:
Five Old Peaks in the southeast of Lushan Mountain, and Jin Furong is cut out in the sky. Climbing to the summit can take the beautiful scenery Jiujiang, I will nest here in yun song.
flat and flat, flat and flat. Flat and flat, flat and flat.
Meng Jiao's "Looking at the Night at Luoqiao" (Yi Yun)
Tianjin Bridge was first frozen, and Luoyang was a stranger. The elm willow and the brook are idle, and the snow in Songshan Mountain can be seen directly in the moonlight.
average, average and even, average and even, average and even, average and even.
There is a saying that seven-character quatrains are not mainstream before the Tang Dynasty, and there are few seven-character quatrains before the Tang Dynasty, and even fewer seven-character quatrains, so they are not as influential as five-character quatrains.
When the seven-line quatrains began to develop in the Tang Dynasty, it was the time when the rules of meter became more and more strict, so poets who made seven-line quatrains were used to direct meter.
it can be seen that the seven wonders didn't appear in the Tang dynasty, so what were the previous seven wonders like?
Second, the Seven Wonders of the Sui Dynasty
The 64th Biography of the History of the North (Volume 76) records a story:
Twelve sons, Dr. Kai Tongyi, Dr. Hong Jin Zi Guang Lu, and Dr. Quan Zuo Guang Lu. You are brave and brave, good at caressing the royal family, and fighting against thieves, and you are happy in all directions. The thieves sang: The first hundred battlefields in Changbai Mountain, with fifteen spears. I am not afraid of thousands of loyalists, but I am afraid of Ronggong Sixth Lang.
Rong Guogong, a famous soldier in Sui Dynasty, came to nurse his son with 12 sons, among whom six sons came to teach Dr. Zuo Guanglu, who was especially brave in battle and invincible in quelling the rebellion in the south. Therefore, no matter how many loyalists there are, they are afraid of the old six of Rong Guogong.
Even in the Tang Dynasty, seven-character quatrains were often sung as songs, which shows that this custom appeared at least in the Sui Dynasty.
Except for the second sentence, this seven-quatrain is a regular sentence, and it's also an archaic seven-character quatrain.
The first hundred battlefields in Changbai Mountain have fifteen spears. I'm not afraid of thousands of loyalists, but I'm afraid that Ronggong's Sixth Lang
is flat, flat and flat, flat and flat. It's flat and flat, flat and flat.
why did the sui dynasty also have the seven laws? Go back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties and see what happened at that time.
? Iii. Characteristics of Seven-character quatrains after the Qi and Liang Dynasties in the Northern and Southern Dynasties
During the Qi and Liang Dynasties in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, an important event in the history of poetry appeared, that is, the poets of Yongming style, mainly Shen Yue, began to combine four sounds and eight diseases with poetry creation. From then on, poetry began to be metrical.
From then on, poets began to pay attention to the rhyme of every other sentence, the difference of four tones, and even a completely rhythmic poem appeared. Only in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the problem of losing adhesion often appeared in metrical poems, which was still quite common in the early Tang Dynasty, such as on climbing in nanjing to the terrace of phoenixes by Li Bai and at chuzhou on the western stream by Wei Yingwu.
Before this, there were often rhymes between sentences. After Qi Liang, we can see that singular sentences (the first sentence can be taken or not) are mostly white feet.
It is reflected in the Seven Wonders, that is, the third sentence doesn't rhyme (white feet) at first, for example, Yu Xin's Seven Wonders "Two Poems of Generation Hurt":
The miscellaneous trees are only in Jinguyuan, and all the flowers are old and full of Luoyang City. It is the place where songs and dances were performed in ancient times, and there is no place to go today.
There is a yellow crane in Qingtian, and two mandarin ducks under acacia trees. It's better to have nothing to do than never make a pair.
these two quatrains are all four lines with two rhymes, one or three lines with white feet and two or four rhymes. This rhyme is the same as the later quatrains.
Another example is Liang Jian Wendi's "Looking at the Flying Swallow at Night", the first sentence rhymes with 2 or 4 sentences, and the third sentence doesn't rhyme:
It's frosty in the north of Hebei, and there are few stars at night, so where does a goose go when it hisses? It's better to never fly alone than to know that we should lose each other halfway.
If we go back from the Tang Dynasty, we will think it is normal to rhyme like this, because the rhyming methods of quatrains in the future are all like this. But previous poets didn't particularly care about the rhyme of every other sentence.
Friends who are familiar with metrical poems can see that these three poems do not meet the requirements of smoothness and cohesion of qualified metrical poems. Of course, they are all ancient poems. Liang Jian Wendi and Yu Xin both lived after the birth of Yongming style poets, so we can see that there is legalization in their poems.
where did quatrains and quatrains first come from
so when did the earliest quatrains of seven characters appear? Let's talk about the appearance of "Jue" sentence first.
In fact, the word quatrains first appeared in the Qi and Liang Dynasties. As we all know, there are four ancient quatrains in the poem "New Poems on Yutai" written by Xu Ling, a poet of the Southern Dynasties:
Where is the anvil? There are mountains on the mountain. Why be a big knife, break the mirror and fly to heaven.
Earlier, Wu Maiyuan, a poet in Liu and Song Dynasties, handed down a five-line poem:
Sad songs enter the loose road. Looking at the castle peak in a wine fight. Who is not a hill of soil. Staggered back and forth.
The arrogance of Wu Maiyuan is recorded in the seventy-two volumes and the sixty-second biographies of Southern History:
There is another Wu Maiyuan, who is good for a chapter, and the Emperor of Song and Ming called him when he heard about it. And see: "This man has nothing to return to. "Maiyuan likes to boast and despise others. Every time he writes a poem, he has to say Italian, and he cries," How can Cao Zijian count?
This Wu Maiyuan was considered by Emperor Song Ming to be basically a waste except for writing poems (the judgment was basically correct, this man wrote an essay for the rebels and died in Guiyang's rebellion).
The word "Lian" and "Jue" are used here to represent poetry, which may be the first article called "Jue" in history.
Five, the earliest Seven Wonders
Before the Qi and Liang Dynasties, there was a song "aged person in Yuzhou is a Song of Zu Ti" in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In the 32nd biography of the Book of Jin, it was recorded that:
(Zu Ti) had a wine tasting meeting, and aged person sat in tears and said, "We are old! More parents, what will you hate when you die! " Nai Ge said, "Fortunately, Li was spared from being captured. Since I met my loving father on the third day of my life, I forgot to work hard on the wine. Why should I sing and dance?" It is so popular.
Zu Ti (the man who heard the chicken dancing), the general of Yuzhou, was loved by the local people. At a banquet, the old people sang in praise of Zu Ti:
Fortunately, Li was spared from being captured. Sanchen meets his loving father. Don't forget the wine. How to sing and dance.
Further on, there is a collection of notes written by Wang Jia in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which records a seven-word, four-sentence ballad "Song of the Traveler" in the Cao Wei period:
Wen Di (Cao Pi) loved beauty, and his surname was Xue Ming Ling Yun, and Changshan people also ... The emperor greeted him with ten vehicles, all of which were decorated with gold rims ... He also built a platform of earth, the base of which was 3 feet high, and arranged candles under the stage, which was called "candlestick" ... Therefore, Monkey sang, "There is dust in the green locust tree, and Cui Wei is looked at in the phoenix pavilion in the Dragon Tower. The breeze and drizzle are fragrant, and the golden fire shines on the soil. " These seven words are evil words.
Wei Wendi's marriage to Ling Yun was considered ominous. At that time, someone sang a seven-line poem:
There is dust in the green tree, and the phoenix in the dragon building looks at Cui Wei. The breeze and drizzle are fragrant, and the golden fire shines on the soil.
From these two poems, we can see that one is rhyming, the other is rhyming, and the similarity between * * * is rhyming, which is still different from the third rhyming quatrains.
Further back, in the Book of Yizhoushu Zhou Zhujie at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, there is a seven-character quatrain hidden in the following paragraph:
Therefore, it is said that the beauty of the text is stripped by the body, and the self-proclaimed wisdom is also insufficient. The beauty of the horn kills its cattle, and the words of glory are followed by Mao. Whoever helps others will never be lazy. It's interesting to watch a saint. A stone with jade hurts its mountains, and the suffering of all the people is in the words. When traveling, it is also a blessing for those who diligently migrate and call the Tao. Follow the times and act diligently, and those who don't know will die with happiness. Therefore, it is said that the fee will be cooked, the spring will be exhausted, and the straight wood will be cut.
Mr. Shen Zufen (199-1977) thinks that there are 28 words that can be said to be the ancestor of the seven-character quatrain:
Anyone who helps others will never be lazy. It's interesting to watch a saint. A stone with jade hurts its mountains, and the suffering of all the people is in the words.
Mr. Shen Zufen is a famous poet and scholar in modern times, with the reputation of "contemporary Li Qingzhao". Together with her husband, Mr. Cheng Qianfan, they are known as "Cheng Shen". They have collaborated on Selected Ancient Poems, Selected Classical Poems, Selected Ancient Poems, and Analysis of Seven Poems of the Tang Dynasty.
Conclusion
Seven-character poems were not valued by scholars before the Tang Dynasty. The real development of the seven-character quatrains was in the Tang Dynasty. In the early Tang Dynasty, with the creation of a large number of quatrains by Li Bai, Wang Changling and others, this poetic style was more and more favored by poets, and more and more works were produced. By the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the number of quatrains had increased several times compared with that in the early Tang Dynasty.
The development of the Seven Wonders in the Tang Dynasty was largely due to the fact that the Seven Wonders were used as Yuefu songs by the Tang people, which was similar to the popular song form at that time. Wang Shizhen specifically pointed out in the preface to the ten thousand quatrains of the Tang Dynasty:
The beginning of the examination, the arrival of Tianbao, the biography of Gong Ye, the songs sung by the disciples of Liyuan, the songs sung by the flag pavilion, and the advances made by the frontier generals, rate the quatrains made by celebrities at that time. Therefore, Wang Zhihuan's words "The Yellow River is far above" and Wang Changling's words "The sun shines on the sun" are still called Yan.
@ Old Street Taste
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