Tang poetry: the most glorious page of Chinese classical poetry. Tang Dynasty: An era when cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries were quite active in ancient China. It can be said that never before have so many forms of artistic expression (both Chinese and foreign) seemed to be presented to them at once.
The glory of the Tang Dynasty was not limited to poetry. After nearly four hundred years of division and turmoil, the Chinese people returned to the Sui and Tang Dynasties for reunification. The growing prosperity of the Tang Dynasty and the development of water and land transportation led to an unprecedented cultural exchange situation between China and foreign countries in the Tang Dynasty (the Tang Dynasty became the center of economic and cultural exchanges among Asian countries). At that time, the people of the Tang Dynasty had no sense of inferiority when they saw the colorful and strange things coming in, because at that time the people of the Tang Dynasty were no less inferior to the visitors from the Western Regions. Even so, the Tang people happily absorbed foreign things in music, dance, painting, sculpture, and even clothing and food.
For example, in terms of music, in terms of musical instruments, the erhu, which uses a horse's tail to play two strings, was not a Han nationality thing in the early days, but it became a Han nationality thing. China's multi-ethnic traditional music also absorbed foreign music and established ten music groups including Yanyue, Qingyue, Xiliang and Gaochang. The development of music obviously contributed to the spread of poetry into music and sung, and directly contributed to the birth of lyrics.
In terms of dance, sword dance and Hu Xuan dance come from the Western Regions. In the preface to "Sword Art", Du Fu mentioned that Zhang Xu's cursive calligraphy was inspired by Gongsun's sword dance and became "magnificent". He himself also benefited greatly from music, dance, and even calligraphy and painting.
Painting absorbed foreign colors and blending techniques, and Dunhuang murals appeared, as well as painting masters such as Yan Liben and Wu Daozi. Humanity is "poetry and painting", and there are many famous poems in Tang poetry that are integrated into painting. For example, Wang Wei's landscape poems are known as "paintings in poetry". So, can we say that the extraordinary development of Tang poetry was also achieved by absorbing the essence of various art forms? I said: Yes.
The achievements of seven-character poems in Tang poetry are well known to all. But the seven-character form existed before the Tang Dynasty. There were seven-character ballads in the pre-Qin Dynasty, and by Sima Xiangru, there were seven-character rhymes in Tongmeng calligraphy books. Dai Liang's "Losing Father Lingding" is a pure seven-character vulgar verse, and Zhang Heng's "Poetry of Four Sorrows" is an increasingly complete seven-character rhyme. It is a lyrical poem, but the word "xi" is sandwiched at the beginning of the sentence. Cao Pi's "Yan Ge Xing" removes the word "xi", which is regarded as the earliest and most complete seven-character poem in existence. However, literati at that time did not pay much attention to the seven-character form, and even regarded it as a "vulgar" form. But in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Bao Zhao boldly adopted this "vulgar form" and changed Cao Pi's sentence-by-sentence rhyme to alternate-sentence rhyme, and he could change the rhyme freely. Since then, the seven-character form has become increasingly prosperous in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. .
There was a period called "formalism" in the history of ancient Chinese literature, that is, the Southern and Northern Dynasties. At this time, scholars of letters had begun to explore the differences between literature and non-literature, and initially combined classics, history, and other scholars. Classified as non-literature, works within the scope of literature are divided into "wen" with rhyme and "pen" with "unrhyme".
Literati continued to explore the form of poetry. Zhou Yong discovered the four tones of Chinese. Shen Yue applied the four tones to the rhythm of poetry and proposed the theory of "four tones and eight diseases", creating The "Yongming style" was born, which laid the foundation for the formation of rhythmic poetry. Thanks to the efforts of Yu Xin and others, the prototypes of various later rhythmic poems were created, and a new era of development of modern Chinese poetry was thus created. All these formal achievements in poetry have prepared sufficient conditions for the development of Tang poetry.
What is also meaningful is that the poets of the Tang Dynasty also criticized the formalist poetry style of their predecessors, but did not abandon the form and continued to create on the basis of inheritance. Therefore, the Tang Dynasty was full of the influence of Chinese classical poetry. Various forms: ancient poems such as Wu Gu, Qi Gu, and Yuefu Songxing; modern poems such as Wulu, Qilu, Pailu, Wujue, and Qijue. Everything is ready. This is the solid foundation on which Tang poetry thrives.
The development and prosperity of Tang poetry undoubtedly lies in the creation of language expression and overall style by the poets of the Tang Dynasty. After Qu Yuan, Li Bai greatly expanded the romantic expression techniques, and his unique romantic poetic style is a significant symbol. Du Fu's "words that are not astonishing will never stop", which shows the degree of painstaking pursuit of his language. What's more, he also attached great importance to the rhythm and form, so that he "captured all the styles of ancient and modern times, while taking into account everyone's unique skills."
It seems that the poets of the Tang Dynasty have developed Chinese classical poetry to an extreme, which is not only unprecedented, but almost unmatched by future generations. So how could the literati of the Song Dynasty write?