I remember a few years ago, when I was reading Wang Wei's poems, I was particularly interested in two chronological poems. In fact, poetry is very general, but the content is only to promote Buddhism, without the usual ethereal rhyme in Wang Wei's poetic style. What caught my attention was the small note under the name of the poem: "Brahma Celestial Body". Who is Brahma? How can his poems be called "style"? And let the famous king follow suit? These questions, which now seem purely intellectual, have been bothering me at that time. Later, after reading Fan Yi's Friends in Yunxi and Feng Yi's Congtan in Guiyuan, I got some initial impressions of the so-called "Fanshi Style": Fanshi Wang Xing lived in the late Sui and early Tang Dynasties; He is a meaningful vernacular poet. He satirizes people with poems, and his writing is simple and popular, which is deeply loved by the public. Like the following words:
A skillful craftsman is good at learning, but good at being made.
I am an uninvited slave, and my wife is an official.
-"The Craftsman Mo Xueqiao"
When I got home at dusk, there was no rice or firewood.
Men and women are hungry. It looks like fast food.
-"Poor Han"
Earth steamed bread outside the city, stuffing grass in the city.
Everyone eats one, so it is tasteless.
China's poetry has always had the tradition of appealing to both refined and popular tastes. The proud poet "Ya" has aristocratic style, while the frustrated poet "Ya" has Confucian sour taste, greasy and sweet. For a young man who has been immersed in it for a long time, but can still protect himself-the feelings are not completely numb. Seeing the poem above is like finding a bowl of tofu brain outside the bird's nest and shark's fin. Naturally, it can't reach a star-rated hotel, nor can it be full of gold and silver, but it has its own delicious taste. Just before and after this, I collected some fragments of information from some notes and poems of Song people (such as Liang Xi Man Zhi Poetry, Geng Xi Poetry, Tiaoxi Fishing Poetry, etc.). ), I realized that besides Wang Moqi, the great poet Huang was also the promoter of Brahma School. I like the simplicity and simplicity of Brahma's ambition. As the saying goes, "although his words are contemptible, his reason is true" and "if he doesn't write, he will go far"! So I quickly went to search "All Tang Poems" and wanted to have a systematic look. However, the result was unexpected, and not a word of the whole Tang poetry accepted the work of this great poet!
Hu Shi once summarized the development of China's ancient poetry history into two clues: popularization and literati. He believes that the trend of the former has not resisted the latter. Lu Xun also pointed out that songs, poems and songs are originally folk things, and once they reach the hands of literati, they will die out; They changed "bamboo branches" into "classical Chinese". For example, they changed "small jasper" into "concubines". -"Brahma Celestial Body" is a popular "folk thing", and its "extinction" is a matter of course in the literary world. After the Song Dynasty, no one mentioned Brahma's ambition gradually, and the whole Tang poetry did not accept Brahma's ambition, which is proof. Some people may ask, "Aren't Wang Mo and Huang Li all literati in the Tang and Song Dynasties? Don't they admire Brahma style? " How do you explain this? In fact, the reason is very simple. After a little analysis, you will find that Mosha and Valley never paid attention to the "popularization" of Brahma's poetry. On the one hand, they all think that Brahma is a "put in order pedestrian", and in this sense, they agree with him. Their understanding of "Brahma Celestial Body" is completely different from the vernacular poems written by Brahma.
After Brahma, Hanshan and Xunde in the middle Tang Dynasty were masterpieces of vernacular poetry. The following quotations from Hanshan are self-knowledge of this kind of poet:
There is a Wang Xiucai who laughs at my inexpressibility.
Clouds don't know the waist of bees, and they don't bend their knees.
If you don't decompress the flat edge, take the second place.
I laugh at your poems, like a blind child reciting the sun.
If you don't speak even-handedly, it is inevitable that the literati will laugh at you. So Hanshan honestly and rudely expressed his position and fought back. Of course, his strength is weak after all. The fate of his poems is not much better than that of Van Gogh, and with the collection, their works have been circulated among the people rather than in the literary world.
Vernacular poetry can't compete with literati poetry, and finally disappears in the poetry world dominated by literati. Since the Song Dynasty, there has never been a famous vernacular poet in China.
My friend Yan Binghui, a famous painter, devoted himself to poetry and never picked weeds. He has a unique understanding of classical poetry and believes that vernacular poetry should not be doomed, so he has the ambition to revive it. He cautiously argued that there are both literati's poems and ordinary people's poems, but their artistic tastes are still different and their respective value orientations are inconsistent. Hong Tong's understanding should be, don't sell yourself short, don't judge ordinary people's poems by the standards of literati's poems, just like don't judge table tennis by the rules of playing football. He even advocates that literati should read more vernacular poems to save the shortcomings of vanity, which is similar to the view I have always held many times: "elegance" and "vulgarity" are by no means the value standards to measure poetry, and the so-called "refined" of poets should be understood as "approaching vulgarity" in a deeper sense, rather than simply seeking "elegance"; Too elegant is not true, and there is not much difference between falsehood and kitsch. So I especially encourage Bing Hui to write more indecent works, and I especially like his poems:
He lost his father at the age of one and his mother at the age of thirty.
Few people like it since childhood, but today Anemarrhena asphodeloides is bitter.
-"Self-condition"
Everyone is walking and no one is waiting.
Where are you going? Ask the wild animals in the forest.
-"Go"
Wandering around the world,
See the white clouds from the top of the castle peak.
There are no mountains in Qian Shan today.
Deep in the white clouds is my heart.
-"Heart"
These poems are written frankly and honestly, and they are not obedient. If you understand them, maybe those "elegant people" look "disdainful", but I believe they can't either.
Binghui has been chanting scriptures for several years, and his works are considerable in number and high in quality. A few days ago, he made great efforts to sort out and delete, and selected nearly 100 satisfactory works, Lizao Yannian. He asked my advice and ordered me to order. I told him that as a scholar, you can be so maverick and work hard on the vernacular poems that scholars sneer at. How much courage and perseverance you need, and how lonely you are. You don't have to be successful or even mature in your creation, as long as you have an attitude. I hope you set these works high, because they are beyond the understanding of ordinary people. Binghui said quite knowingly, "Building a house is on earth, and I write my heart by hand." .
There is a poem that is a gorgeous flower, opened in a vase and placed on the windowsill; There is a kind of poem that is the fruit without flowers, which grows in Yuan Ye and is born in the soil. Dear readers, which one do you prefer?
This is a sequence.