The hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's poems

On the hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's love poems I. A brief introduction to Li Shangyin and his love poems Li Shangyin was an outstanding poet with important achievements in the late Tang Dynasty in China. He is as famous as Du Mu and is known as "Little Du Li". Li Shangyin, a beginner in classical Chinese, was appreciated by the Niu Dang Ling Huchu and entered his shogunate to learn parallel prose. Open two years (837), with the help of Hu Ling. The following year, our ambassador to Jingyuan, Wang Maoyuan, a member of the Li Party, was appointed as the shogunate general, and Qi took him as his wife. Therefore, he was pushed out by the Niu Party and moved to the shogunate of each buffer region, and he was frustrated all his life. There are about 600 poems by Li Shangyin. The source of his poems can be traced back to Qu Yuan, a doctor of Chu, and then to Li and Du in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. He inherited the aestheticism style initiated by Li He in the middle Tang Dynasty, and reached a new peak in lyric art of Tang poetry with exquisite conception, implicit rhyme and gorgeous rhetoric, representing the highest achievement in the late Tang Dynasty. Li Shangyin is a poet who has experienced hardships in his career and life. Therefore, his poems are extensive in content and profound in meaning, especially his love poems, which have reached a high artistic level. Li Shangyin can be said to be the first poet specializing in the creation of love poems in the history of China literature, which has had a far-reaching influence on contemporary writers, Wei Zhuang, poets and graceful poets. Many of his beautiful sentences describing love, such as "silkworms in spring will weave until they die, and candles will drain the wick every night." Although my body doesn't have bright wings like a phoenix, I can feel the harmonious heartbeat of the sacred unicorn. A moment that should last forever has come and gone before I know it. Wait a minute. Become an eternal swan song to express sincere feelings. Moreover, due to the implicit and polysemous characteristics of these poems, they go far beyond the jurisdiction of love and become the wise sayings to understand life. Among all the fragrant Tang poems, love poems are unique flowers of a country. Li Shangyin's love poems are the most striking among the wonderful flowers in this country. With brand-new enthusiasm and extreme concern, he went deep into the deepest feelings of men and women to explore, appreciate, know and feel, and regarded the feelings of men and women as his main aesthetic object and an important theme of poetry. He wrote more than 100 love poems (including poems with sustenance) in his life, accounting for almost one-fifth of his works. In terms of quantity alone, he is the first poet in China who has a large number of love poems. Of course, the number of creative works is not the standard to judge the quality of works. What really makes him reach the peak in the field of love poetry should be his unique artistic personality. His love poems are mainly characterized by expressing inner feelings and exaggerating the atmosphere. His poems are full of images and jumps, and he likes to use symbols, hints and metonymy. Li Shangyin can't extricate himself from the whirlpool of "Niu Li" party struggle. Although he has been exploring and pursuing all his life, his future is still bleak, which makes his character always depressed. He feels that the world is wandering in his heart, rolling on the opposite side and hiding something; What he wants to say is euphemistic, tortuous and obscure. This is reflected in his love poems, that is, he likes to express his hazy feelings with a symbolic hazy realm. Li Shangyin deliberately pursues the misty artistic conception as a beautiful poetic realm, and his misty feelings are really suitable to be expressed in this artistic conception. It can be said that the hazy artistic conception is the artistic personality of Li Shangyin's love poems, which is vague, like flowers in the fog and the moon in the water, looming, giving people a unique aesthetic feeling of nothingness. Hazy beauty is not Li Shangyin's original creation. As early as 1000 years ago, in the Book of Songs, "lush white dew is frost" formed a vast and blurred realm, and the looming and elusive image of "Iraqi people" was also the one written by Cao Zhi more than 600 years ago. But at that time, people did not regard it as an aesthetic form, and no poet regarded it as his own creative pursuit. Li Shangyin's contribution lies in his absorption of predecessors' experience and his conscious pursuit of this aesthetic feature in his creation according to his own life experience, making it his own artistic personality. With his own creative practice, he perfected people's aesthetic psychological structure and improved people's aesthetic ability. It can be said that it is the hazy beauty of his love poems that makes him set a lofty peak in the field of love poems. Second, the hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's love poems takes the expression of hazy beauty as his own creative pursuit, which is rare in the history of China literature. Because of this, for thousands of years, poets have always had different views and controversies about Li Shangyin's love poems, such as "affectionate", "obscure", "affectionate entrust, elegant wording". Some people denounced it as "fantastic materials and unique bones"; Some people appreciate his love poems "full of emotion, regardless of language skills, but insufficient meaning", and also regard his poems as the magical realm of "endless aftertaste and endless deliberation"; Some people also feel that "I hate no one when writing about Jian Zheng" and "a person who is difficult to understand". We can't agree with these widely different evaluations, and we can't blindly oppose them. Instead, we should analyze the aesthetic form of hazy beauty in detail, distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of this aesthetic form, and then draw our own conclusions. Hazy beauty is an aesthetic form opposite to clarity. We know that it is desirable for a poet to reflect reality with a clear image, and its theme is very clear, which makes people see at a glance. For example, Bai Juyi's poems are clear, fluent and approachable. It is also "the first chapter marks its purpose, and the pawn chapter shows its will." In order to avoid readers not understanding, make the creative intention clear. But it is so clear that people can see through it at a glance, there is no room for aftertaste, and there is no implicit aesthetic feeling. This is a great shortcoming of poetry. Therefore, people are often more willing to pursue a hazy aesthetic feeling. In some cases, obscurity is more beautiful than clarity, which is a common phenomenon in the aesthetic process of aesthetic subjects. When the aesthetic subject takes care of the object, because of the distance or other reasons, he can't see the clear image of the object clearly, which often leads to the confusion and uncertainty of speculation, thus arousing a desire and enthusiasm for inquiry. So the subject tries to supplement and beautify with his own imagination, which invisibly increases the charm and tension of the beauty of the object. Like the moon in the water, the flowers in the fog, the beauty behind the curtain and the West Lake in the rain, they are all a little more mysterious than usual. If it is not obvious, it seems to be looming and vague, which makes people think deeply and meditate, and dreams revolve around the soul. The experience gained by the subject has a magical charm and is more lasting. Especially in poetry, the advantages of this aesthetic form are more obvious. Because poetry reflects the writer's aesthetic experience, the aesthetic process of the subject to the object is not a scientific appraisal, and it cannot be accurately decomposed and synthesized with the concept of physical mathematics. The aesthetic relationship between subject and object is often a vague consciousness. Due to the limitation of language itself, the aesthetic subject cannot express this consciousness with accurate language and clear image, but can only be in the realm of words without words. In order to fully express this unspeakable inner emotional crystallization, it can only be expressed in a vague and hazy poetic realm. Through the aesthetic effect brought by hazy images and vague intentions, readers are attracted to re-create thinking activities and repeatedly experience the aesthetic quality implied by the author. Understand the author's unspeakable feelings. For example, "Sending Song Huayang Sisters Again on a Moonlight Night": It is difficult to steal peaches and medicines, but colorful toads lock twelve cities. It should be a * * * three-night reward, a jade building or a crystal curtain. This is a poem given by the poet to the woman he loves. There are only 28 words in the poem, but six fairy tales, such as Dong Fangshuo, Chang 'e, Twelve Cities, Caicai, Lou Yu and Crystal Curtain, are used, which makes the poem seem confused and mysterious. Only through repeated appreciation and aesthetic re-creation can we realize the unspeakable feelings that the author wants to express. The first sentence in the poem uses the allusions of Dong Fangshuo and Chang 'e, lamenting that man and God cannot have both. In the second sentence, the images of twelve cities and colorful toads can make us realize that Song Huayang's sisters entered the Guanghan Palace because of enlightenment, which is boundless and out of reach. The word "lock" describes the coldness of the high court, and women lose their freedom of love because of the shackles of palace rules. From the third and fourth sentences, we can understand that the poet wants to enjoy the moon with Huayang sisters, but when he comes, he can only expect remote sensing. It is forbidden to enter the palace, and the "Jade Building" seems to be separated by a "crystal curtain". The vague images in this poem bring you a hazy aesthetic feeling. The poet's vague feelings for the Huayang sisters and elusive ambivalence are all manifested in this hazy artistic conception, which is memorable. Therefore, judging from the aesthetic effect brought by the aesthetic form of hazy beauty, we have every reason to say that the hazy beauty in Li Shangyin's love poems is the aesthetic interest at a higher level, which is exactly his artistic creation of genius. We also have every reason to say that this hazy beauty is the artistic life of Li Shangyin's love poems. The hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's love poems is manifested in many aspects, but generally speaking, there are three main characteristics: one is the hazy image, the other is the hazy artistic conception, and the third is the hazy intention. 1. The hazy image of the image is the object that penetrates into the poet's aesthetic ideal and interest through the subjective color processing of the poet, or "meaningful image", which is an important factor that constitutes the artistic conception of poetry. In order to pursue the hazy beauty effect of poetry as a whole, Li Shangyin did not choose fresh and clear images when creating images, but often used a large number of images with hazy aesthetic feeling to create a sad atmosphere for the hero's love life and directly give people a hazy aesthetic feeling. In Li Shangyin's love poems, the most frequent images are moon, night, dream, fog and rain. For example, "who will teach Guizhixiang moonlight when the storm turns into rain?" ("Untitled") "The prophet is dizzy in the wind and moon, but he still shows cold flowers." (Visiting the village in the first month) "How to be on the twelfth floor of Yaotai on a snowy and moonlit night" ("Untitled") "Seeing the clouds change in the morning mirror, but the twilight songs dare to be cold in the moonlight" ("Untitled") "Spring dreams often rain, and the soul is not satisfied with the flag all day long." (Re-crossing the Temple of Notre Dame) "I cry for your leaving forever. I can't wake up yet. This book has been urged to be wet with ink." ("Untitled Four Poems") "It's a long way to go, when it's a spring night, it's late at night, and dreams are short." ("Spring Rain") "If you dream of his death next year, don't surprise him." (Galaxy blowing sheng) In his works, images such as the moon, night, rain, dreams and fog appear repeatedly, and these images themselves are vague. Dreams are illusory, as if blurred, the moon is at arm's length, the night is mysterious and fuzzy, and the rain and fog are even more hazy. A large number of these places of interest have cast a hazy and wonderful veil on this poem. Secondly, the obscure places of interest in the artistic conception are individual and partial, and they are only the basic components of poetry. Li Shangyin is good at combining individual images to form the artistic conception of poetry, showing the overall hazy aesthetic feeling. For example, one of "Bi Cheng Three Songs": "Bi Cheng Twelve Songs" withered, rhinoceros turned to dust, jade turned to cold. There are many books attached to cranes in Yuen Long, but there are no trees in the girls' beds. When the stars sink to the bottom of the sea, you can see them from the window. When the rain crosses the river, you can see them from another seat. If Zhu Xiao is bright and clear, a pair of crystal plates will grow. Here, eight sentences and eight images are used to describe a myth full of mysterious atmosphere in words with the external feelings of the immortals, such as Blue City Twelve, Cold Dust, Crane Attached to Yuen Long, Female Bed Living in Luan, Stars Sinking to the Seabed, Rain Over the Source of the River, Zhu Xiao Ming Ding, Long Piles of Pan Jing, etc. These images suddenly went up to heaven and down to earth, and heaven and earth became one. They seem to have nothing to do with each other, but there is an emotional line between these images, which firmly connects them. The image in that poem is the embodiment of emotion. "Shangqing Jing" says: "In the early days of the Xuan Dynasty, I lived in Ziyunque, and Bi Xia was the city." Feng: "Being a monk is to clear the dust, and having fun is to clear the cold." The romantic meaning of a sentence or two has hinted that she loves the female crown. There are three sentences in Yuen Long Wonderland: "A fairy crane sends a book and a white cloud sends a letter", which implies that we have heard about each other, and four sentences indicate that we have secretly made good friends. The above four images are the realm of the gods in the sky, but the love between man and god and the joy between men and women are all in a trance. The sudden fall from fairyland to the present disaster has caused the depression of love in the shadow. The two can only see the window during the day and the seats are separated at night. Seven or eight sentences also express infinite feelings: If the sun never sets, then I am willing to stay up all night and have a happy meeting forever. The poet weaves a complete artistic conception through the hazy image full of fairy spirit, and achieves the overall hazy feeling. The poet's persistent pursuit of love and hopeless depression. Third, the vague intention of the will is the creative intention. The lyrical objects of Li Shangyin's love poems can be roughly divided into three categories: the first category is the love objects of poets in their youth, such as Herry Liu, the daughter of Luoyang, and Song Huayang, a female Taoist. Such poems include Five Branches of Willow, A Gift to Mr. Liu, A Real Man in Huayang Song Dynasty, and Moonlit Reunion of Huayang Sisters. The second category is the poet's wife Wang. This kind of poem reflects the poet's love for his wife from pre-marriage to post-marriage, and regards him as a lifelong confidant, even as a mourning for his wife after her death. It shows Li Shangyin's loyal and sincere feelings of husband and wife and her subtle and graceful artistic feelings. This kind of poetry has more quantity and higher quality than the previous one. There are "Worship the Rang House in the first month", "Worship the Rang East Pavilion after drunkenness" and "Worship the Rang House Banquet on July 29th". Both of these poems indicate their own creative intention in the title of the poem, so that readers can find their own purpose. The third kind is different. The object of its creation is ominous, and we can't examine the poet's love object. Some are about the fact that the object does not belong to a person, and even the writing about a person is often extended and extended. Most of these poets are titled "Untitled". Or taking the word Tao in the poem as the topic is equal to no topic. There are also some poems with titles, such as Ode to a Saint, Ode to a Saint, Haike, Chang 'e and God of Ju Mang. In these love poems, the author consciously hides the creative intention, which makes the readers fall into the fog. Therefore, for thousands of years, there have been many disputes about Li Shangyin's poetic creation intention, such as an article "Jinse", and there have been more than ten kinds of understandings about his creative intention. Some people think that it is the author's self-preface, which is a summary of the content of poetry; Some people think that it is a political poem and a review of the poet's life after experiencing the turmoil of his official career. Someone changed it into a pure poem, describing four emotions: comfort, resentment, purity and harmony. Some people say it's a mourning poem, and the harp is a metaphor for husband and wife. Some say it is a work of reminiscing about old feelings, and Jinse is jane doe; Some people say that this is a homesick work in Shu ... Besides, the debate continues. Judging from the image and artistic conception of the poem, every statement has no basis, but no one can say for sure. This is all because the author intentionally buried the text. There are many poems similar to Jinse in Li Shangyin's poems. Some seem to write about love, but in fact they are pinning something on it. And this kind of sustenance is obvious and vague. In this regard, A Qing's Qu Fu said very thoroughly: "Every poem has something credible, something recognizable and something recognizable. Such as "the frost war in the middle of the month" and "I will forgive Yan's family in the end", which is a general statement; This knower. If "Jinse", "Untitled" and "Yushan" are admired by men and women, you will know that there is a sustenance. " Li Shangyin played a joke on later generations. He always refuses to spit out a straight word, his voice is blurred, or he (she) is compared. Suddenly, he continued to write these mysterious poems, forming layers of mysterious fog barriers in front of readers, so that future generations can find its meaning and sustenance. However, it is in this search that readers can enjoy a kind of beauty. Thirdly, there are several characteristics in the expression of the hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's love poems, among which the creative use of symbolic metaphor is the most important feature to form the hazy beauty of his love poems. He Shang said in "Poetry in the Wine Garden": "Wei and Jin Dynasties had many tasks and styles, and a mountain still existed." Li Shangyin is good at learning from the literary creation experience of Qu Yuan and Song Yu, and directly inherits their symbolic metaphor techniques. Poets use their imagination to make their wonderful associations and fantasies soar through the ages and struggle with the world. His association and fantasy are closely connected with real life, and they often express their special significance through concrete things in real life. He often sends his feelings to plants, flowers and birds, endowing them with human emotional personality, so that their own specific changes are skillfully intertwined with human emotional changes, achieving the unity of dual personality, and casting the specific things in the poem with the color repeatedly refracted by the poet: "The silk in spring will be woven to death, and the candle will drain the wick every night." (Untitled) The poet used two common metaphors of "spring silkworm" and "wax torch" to explain the silky lovesickness, indicating that only death can erase the biting lovesickness. Poets often take Bi Xing as a symbol, explore the vast world with the poet's active and sensitive mind, and integrate with everything in the universe, thus creating a hazy poetic and ever-changing image. "Saint Zhuangzi daydreaming, bewitched by butterflies, crowed by cuckoos. Mermaids shed pearl-like tears on the moon-green sea, and the blue fields breathe their jade to the sun. " (Jinse) The poet expresses eternal sadness and feelings by symbolic and comparative means. Because of the use of symbolic metaphor, the artistic conception of the poem becomes hazy, and because of the uncertainty of symbolic metaphor, the meaning of the poem becomes uncertain and irregular, which makes it vague and produces a hazy aesthetic feeling. It is another important feature of Li Shangyin's love poems to render the environment from multiple angles and levels, deal with images by suggestive methods and shape emotional images. In Li Shangyin's love poems, we seldom see very specific natural images and social and character images. He often uses such a method, that is, through the rendering and description of the environment, through the most accurate "counterpart" to convey his inner complex feelings and emotions, thus shaping the emotional image. Let me have a look at the poem "Spring Rain": I'm lying there in white for the Spring Festival, but I only think about the White Gate City where I can't go. There are two red mansions facing the cold, covered by rain, and a pearl curtain lamp shakes my lonely heart and goes home. This is a long road, accompanied by a short dream at night. How can you get the seal? I'm watching the lonely goose in the clouds of three thousand miles! Much like a bleak and sad "Xiaoxiao Spring Rain Map"! Here, the white doors are scattered, the red chamber is bleak, the rain is drifting, the lights are dim, the dreams are blurred, the clouds are gloomy, the geese are lonely ... everything is so sparse, everything is so cold and lonely. Here, the poet did not outline a specific image, but only emphasized an atmosphere. In this cold, drifting and lonely atmosphere, we can capture a kind of psychological feeling and emotional information, create and perfect it through our own imagination, and form an emotional image with individual characteristics. And the emotional image is no doubt as hazy as the dreamy vague artistic conception. Conversely, this hazy emotional image is suitable to be expressed in this hazy artistic conception. Because feelings are complex and unspeakable, they cannot be expressed by clear images, but only by hazy images and artistic conception, so that readers can experience the poet's feelings in this hazy artistic conception. A large number of allusions, especially fairy allusions with blurred romantic colors, are also a prominent feature of the hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's love poems in artistic techniques. For love, sometimes people have something inconvenient to say, and using allusions to express it can put a veil on the specific situation and make it more mysterious and beautiful. Moreover, the proper use of allusions can arouse readers' association through hints, which can save a lot of unnecessary narration and explanation. Li Shangyin knows this very well. Besides, he is a brilliant scholar and has read a lot of poems and books. His knowledge of ancient Chinese is profound, and he knows all kinds of allusions like the back of his hand. His poems often select some legends of immortals, myths, Buddhism and Taoism, and alchemists to express them in appropriate, lyrical and symbolic words, which are wrapped in a mysterious fog in image and artistic conception. According to incomplete statistics, the objects (things) used in the poems include Xuanyuan Huangdi, He, Queshoutian Emperor, Buddha, Penglai Sanshan, Suihe, Nvshuiluan, Magu scratching his back, the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon, Fairy Picking Branches, Empress Wang Descending, Phoenix Attracting, Zhuang Meng and so on. According to its 600 poems, each poem actually uses the words of immortals, monks and Taoist priests. In Li Shangyin's love poems, such allusions are often used. For example, in the Sage Temple, five stories about immortals were used in succession, namely Sanliwu, Wuzhuyi, Cui Luoshi, Liu Wuwei and Chai Tou Bai Yan. These fairy tales themselves have a hazy feeling, which makes people feel confused. When they are used in poetry, the whole poem is filled with some mysterious clouds. Moreover, because of the ambiguity of allusions, readers can understand them from different angles, which adds many angles to readers' understanding, and then leads to the ambiguity of meaning. Furthermore, because the allusion is not a direct description of things, it implies the content to be expressed through the quoted allusion, which will hinder the reader's understanding, add twists and turns to the wonderful poetry and painting, and produce indirect hazy beauty. From the three characteristics of the hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's love poems, we can see that Li Shangyin's love poems pay more attention to expressing psychological experience and conveying emotional information in the poems. Different from other poets of his time, he did not pursue the perfection of images and the distinctness of artistic conception, but deliberately disrupted the order and integrity of pictures, cut irrelevant images together, and created a vague emotional realm by jumping between images, so that readers could receive this emotional information in this realm, generate artistic association and obtain an ethereal aesthetic enjoyment. The hazy image, hazy artistic conception and hazy intention reflect the aesthetic effect of hazy beauty, which is the most distinctive artistic feature of Li Shangyin's love poems. With his genius creation, he enriched the aesthetic characteristics of poetry art and led poetry appreciation to a higher stage. For thousands of years, he has shined in the poetry world with the artistic characteristics of hazy beauty and won an immortal poem name. He is well-deserved as a "giant" in the late Tang Dynasty. Fourth, the cause of the hazy beauty of Li Shangyin's love poems The reason why Li Shangyin's love poems are far-reaching has a lot to do with his times and environment. As we know, as a feudal society in the late Tang Dynasty, it has entered a declining era. Factional struggles, in particular, made many gifted scholars fall victim to political struggles. As a scholar of this era, Li Shangyin wanted to serve the country through his own talents, but he was caught in the whirlpool of Niu and Li, and his career was frustrated. He had a deep feeling for the dark social reality, thus cultivating his extraordinary social insight and critical vision for reality. In terms of creative style, Li Shangyin tried to overcome the shortcomings of the previous generation of poets, such as being too straightforward, not concise and lacking artistic charm, and deliberately pursued the vague and implicit aesthetic taste of poetry, forming a unique artistic conception and improving the artistic charm of poetry. In specific poems, the artistic conception is often tortuous and confusing, and the theme is far-reaching and obvious. Li Shangyin was unhappy all his life. Faced with career, love, fame and fortune, he was always contradictory and hard to give up. His personality was a little weak and indisputable, so it was difficult to make a decision on war. This character makes Li Shangyin easy to indulge in love and taste the ups and downs of life in the love nest. But this made Li Shangyin unable to display his talents, so Li Shangyin deeply felt the hardships of life. "Since ancient times, talents and life have been hindered." He is always in confusion, contradiction and pain, and Li's poems give people a feeling of confusion, with a heavy element of "mystery". From Li's poems, it is not difficult to see that the poet advocates and cherishes love very much, and the sad style in the poem is probably the author's understanding and obsession with love. In particular, some works that express lingering feelings and pour out the suffering of lovesickness show his extremely complicated inner world, which is profound, subtle and euphemistic. Coupled with the melancholy emotional tone, floating and blurred artistic conception and gorgeous rhetoric, his love poems present a hazy beauty. Poetry is the precipitation after pain. Scholars at that time were imprisoned by feudal ethics, but they were also unconscious. People's pursuit of happiness and freedom is contradictory and painful, and this kind of pain also confuses them. This poem also gives people a feeling of confusion. In this environment, while people are pursuing freedom, love and happiness, they also feel guilty about the rebellion of feudal ethics. When they are afraid or unable to pursue, they are in pain, so people with rich feelings always live in contradiction and pain. In this kind of contradiction and pain, people often show a kind of helplessness of "mourning without hurting, complaining without anger". In this poem, it is not difficult for us to understand the poet's inner pain, and when this pain is expressed in gorgeous language, we will feel the sadness in our bones. Glory is dull, and pain is helpless. In this helpless pain, many people often take a joking attitude towards the writing of poems by the Dance Academy, but Li Shangyin does not follow it, which shows that Li is obsessed with guarding his own soul and is unwilling to despise beautiful things. Because of this, we can always vaguely experience some kind of beauty from Li Shangyin's poems, although this beauty is hazy and even bitter. Excerpted from Baidu netizens, thank you.