China is an ancient oriental civilization with a history of 5,000 years.
3 Expression of content and poetic ideas
3. 1
History. The west, especially western European countries, is located on the Mediterranean coast. The maritime climate and narrow living environment make people mainly live in the sea, which also leads to marine culture and westerners' outspoken character. China has always regarded the introversion of Confucianism and the rationality of Taoism as his behavioral benchmark. Based on the cultural background and the differences between church and state ethics, the differences between Chinese and western love poems are obvious. Being bound by the feudal system for a long time, China has been quite different from western poetry in form and content since classical poetry. China's poems are subtle and euphemistic, which often makes people tend to use excuses to express their ambitions. In terms of love expression, both men and women are gentle and reserved.
However, the openness of western civilization and the inclusiveness of the ocean are reflected in the poems as passionate emotions. Especially after the rise of the European Renaissance in16th century, the western world advocated freedom and equality and pursued individual liberation, which was reflected in the bold pursuit and yearning for beautiful love in love poems.
Cultural differences have caused many differences in expressing love between Chinese and western love poems, especially in classical poems. China has always used classical poems to express his feelings, but the west has always expressed love enthusiastically for cultural reasons, which has formed a great contrast.
Because the combination of men and women in feudal society in China was decided by parents' orders and matchmakers' words. Women follow the Three Cardinal Principles and the Five Permanent Principles, which leads men and women to get married first and then fall in love. Therefore, the male subject in poetry often falls in love with the female subject after marriage. However, in the western feudal society, western poetry did not have too many moral constraints and ethical concerns. Men's love for women is sincere and warm, and it is usually before marriage, and it does not rule out the love after many knights. Mainly because the women admired by Chinese and western male themes are before marriage and after marriage, the images of female themes in poems are often different. 3.2 There are differences in expressing feelings.
Most western love poems are enthusiastic and cheerful. The love poems of Shakespeare, Romain Rolland and Zweig all praise beautiful love, while China's love poems are mostly farewell and mourning. For example, Li Qingzhao, a poetess, expressed her thoughts and mourning for her late husband Zhao Mingcheng in her poems, while Su Shi expressed her mourning for her dead wife in extremely sad language in Jiangchengzi. In other words, many male poets express women's thoughts about their husbands through women's mouths, and the different concepts lead to different ways and contents of expressing feelings in Chinese and western love poems. Just as Zhu Guangqian's Comparison of Chinese and Western Poetry Interests holds that "Western poets want to realize their lives in love, while China poets often just want to entertain themselves in love poems".
It can be seen that China's love poems are relatively restrained and reserved from the beginning of classical poetry, while western love poems are passionate and unrestrained. The western economy is more developed, people's views and thoughts on affairs are more avant-garde, and the expression of love is more enthusiastic. Because of China's opening to the outside world and the continuous economic development, China people's thoughts are gradually opening up, and there are many bold eulogies about beautiful love in modern love poems, which are praised by people. However, on the whole, compared with western countries, China is still a more conservative eastern country. Love poems are full of quatrains, but they are still gentle, which is also the characteristic of a big country with a long history of oriental civilization.