First, what to read?
Learning poetry is not like learning math. You must study arithmetic, algebra and calculus first. Not necessarily in the order of the Book of Songs, Han Fu, Yuefu, Wei and Jin ancient poems, Tang poems and Song ci. Just like learning calligraphy, most of them started from the inscriptions in the Tang Dynasty, not in the order of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Han, and Jin. Learning poetry should also start with reading Tang poetry. As mentioned above, China's poetry developed into the Tang Dynasty, with a large number of famous poets, diverse genres and a wide range of themes, reaching a highly mature golden age. As Lu Xun said, all the good poems were written in the Tang Dynasty, and the poems written by later generations failed to jump out of the hands of the Tathagata in the Tang Dynasty. Lu Xun's words did not mean that there were no good poems left for future generations, but said: "Poetry was well prepared in the Tang Dynasty and all methods were perfect." Therefore, the poet must take the Tang people as the standard, shoot and succeed, and manage the discipline. "(Preface to the Complete Poems of Kangxi) Whether modern people appreciate poetry as an art or learn to write poetry by reading it, they should generally start from reading Tang poems.
There are two problems in reading Tang poems: First, there are more than 50,000 Tang poems handed down from ancient times, which are too large to eat. What should I do? Second, not knowing the whole process of the development of Tang poetry, schools and famous artists is just like watching TV. Without knowing the programs and contents of various "channels", it is difficult to choose "channels". What should I do?
Reading poetry should save both time and cost. First of all, don't read such a voluminous book as The Complete Poems of Tang and Song Dynasties. You can read an anthology of 300 Tang poems. There are two kinds of books, one is ancient books, and there are many kinds of books compiled in Qing Dynasty. This kind of books, with classical Chinese annotations and no new punctuation marks, are more difficult for beginners to read, so it is better to choose the current books. There may be more than ten kinds today, which one do you choose? Relatively speaking, people's literature publishing house, Shanghai ancient books publishing house and other professional publishing houses have higher editing and publishing quality; The newly published, especially the second edition, is more complete than the previous one. After reading 300 Tang Poems, it is still a beginning. What should I read further? That depends on which one you like-Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Liu Yuxi, Li He ...? Which one or several do you like? Read their works more intensively. Such as Li, Du and Bai. They left thousands of poems, a large number. You can look at their poems first. And few works, such as Li He, only lived to be 27 years old, leaving only 233 poems, a small number. If you like his works, you can read his complete works. The Appreciation Dictionary of Tang Poetry published by Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House contains 1 105 poems of 96 poets, and you can also choose your favorite works from them. Unfortunately, the annotation of allusions and old sayings is too simple, while the appreciation of some chapters is too complicated, ignoring the inspiration of readers' own imagination.
Although there are not as many words as poems, there are tens of thousands of works from Huajian poets to Qing poets. You can read and choose books first, and choose a good version according to the principle of choosing three hundred versions of Tang poetry. For beginners, most of them choose Selected Poems of Song Dynasty published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House and annotated by Hu. Based on the principle of "being bold and unconstrained, not abandoning graceful and restrained", this book records 300 famous ci poems in the Song Dynasty, with concise notes. After reading it, read the complete works or anthologies of your favorite authors. The Dictionary of Classified Appreciation of Words in Past Dynasties published by China Tourism Publishing House contains 829 words of 337 poets from the Tang Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty. After reading Song Xuan, you might as well read your favorite works from this book, or read the complete works or anthologies of your favorite representatives of the bold and graceful school.
After reading the poems of Tang and Song Dynasties, if you still have spare capacity, you can look at Selected Poems and Songs of China in Past Dynasties published by People's Literature Publishing House. This book is selected from the original ballads in the pre-Qin period to the works of modern Su, Liu Yazi and others. 1999, The Collection of Poems of Past Dynasties in China published by the People's Liberation Army Publishing House contains 43 18 poems of past dynasties from the pre-Qin period to the May 4th period, written by 1045 people, with concise annotations and comparison between articles. You can read through these anthologies or choose them. To learn poetry, we should not only read Tang poems, but also the poems of Song poets Su Shi, Lu You, Fan Chengda and Yang Wanli. Gong Zizhen's works are also worth reading. To learn Ci, in addition to Song Ci, you can also read works handed down from ancient times, such as Wen in the late Tang Dynasty, Li Yu and Sadula in the Yuan Dynasty. If you like elegance and gracefulness, you might as well read the words of Nalan Xingde in Qing Dynasty.
People who love watching TV should always watch China TV news first to see which channel they like and its content summary. Before reading poetry, you'd better browse the relevant parts of the history of China literature. Reading Tang poetry can look at the relevant parts of the second volume of China Literature History edited by You Guoen, Wang Qi, Ji Zhenhuai and Fei Zhengang. When reading Song Ci, you can look at the relevant parts of Book 3. In this way, we can have a general understanding of the whole process of the development of Tang poetry or Song poetry, the representative figures and works in each period, and we can choose according to our own hobbies when reading poetry in the future, which will also help to understand the works. For those who have never studied poetry, the main difficulty in reading The History of China Literature is the works cited in the book. What should I do if I can't read them without notes? You can skip it for a while, and then you can figure it out after reading the poem. Don't spend too much time preparing for the start.
Second, how to read?
If possible, it would be very good to attend a poetry class and listen to the professor's class. But if you really want to learn to read poetry, you have to learn it yourself. "Teacher, so preach and teach." When the professor lectures, he will also choose some representative works of famous artists to explain and analyze, which will arouse everyone's interest in reading poetry. However, the educational level is uneven, and everyone has different difficulties in learning, so the effect of solving doubts alone may be better than that of collective preaching. Experience has proved that you can't learn to read poetry by giving lectures. Often after the lecture, learning stops.
There are many difficulties in starting to read poetry. Only by gradually overcoming these difficulties can we get started, appreciate the artistic conception of poetry, enjoy art and have fun.
The first difficulty is the understanding of word meaning and meaning. China's meaning and meaning change greatly, and a word often has multiple interpretations. For example, the word "Huang Xuan" is usually synonymous with heaven and earth, but some refer to silk and some refer to diseases. It is necessary to define the meaning of these two words in context. This change is particularly significant in poetry. For example, the word "credit", which is common in poetry, has many explanations. Everyone can understand the phrase "village wine can be drunk on credit" in Lu You's Travels on Lake Bridge and interpret it as "credit". This word is interpreted as "leniency" in the sentence of "sighing and walking far, taking credit for pity" in Wang's "Crossing Tianshan Mountain Late". Du Fu's sentence "Happy Sunny Day" has no credit for ploughing the fields today, and its explanation of "late". In Jong Li's Whispering the Night Flute, in the sentence "Who played the flute? Autumn is crisp and it's late at night. "He gave another explanation for" long ". Han Yu gave another explanation to the word "Yuan" in the sentence "Wan Li stopped paying credit" in "Translated Scriptures for a Monk". In Zhang Shuo's Yuezhou Zuo, the sentence "Things in the south of the Yangtze River are different, but things in the north of the Yangtze River are on credit" is interpreted as "slim"; In Han Yu's "The Second State Boundary", the phrase "When there are few businessmen, there are few people in the snow, and Deng Bichun sees the post on credit" also gives a "rare" explanation. This word is sometimes used as an auxiliary word, such as Yang Wanli's "Looking at Mei in Duojiating": "My husband will return to the city and go to the city to pay for it." Li Shangyin's "Yesterday": "Yesterday, the child died, and now the messenger of the Jade Bird comes back." Chang 'an used to be the capital of Han and Tang Dynasties, but Chang 'an is often called the capital in old-style poems, no matter which dynasty. This is easy to understand, but it is hard to understand if the capital is called "the sun is setting" or "the sun is setting". Another example is wine, which is called "Zhongsheng" in Li Bai's poems, "Bamboo Leaves" in Du Fu's poems and "Amber" in Li He's poems. Mao Zedong said in To Chen Yi, "Li He's poems are worth reading". Li He's poems have one characteristic: he makes good use of pronouns and doesn't directly say names. For example, the sword is called Yulong, the sky is round, the autumn flowers are called cold red, and the spring grass is called cold green. China's classical poems pay attention to metaphors, among which similes and metaphors are easier to understand, while metaphors are more difficult to understand. To understand them, you need to have relevant knowledge, such as Liu Zongyuan's "Suburb Residence": "Medical leisure is to prolong the country's old age, and treating the virtuous with deficiency." Use "Lao Guo" instead of licorice; Substitute "sage" for turbid wine. Another example is Su Shi's Snow: "When the jade building is frozen, the cold millet rises, and when the silver sea shakes, the flowers bloom." Replace the shoulders with "Jade Building"; Replace it with "Hai Yin". These are all things that have to be carefully considered when reading poetry.
Poetry, especially metrical poetry, because of the restriction of rhyme, flatness and antithesis, the meanings of some words are often specious and not as exact as those in prose. For example, Ma Dai's "Southern Tour of Fujian": "The reed withered and the cloud dreamed, and the orange was ripe and fragrant." The word "Xiang" is both a sense of smell and a sense of sight-when the oranges are ripe, Dongting Lake is full of golden autumn and the fragrance is overflowing; At the same time, because this poem is about "Yang" rhyme. Another example is "Send Xiao No.12 School to Marry in Yunzhou": "One horse wears a rainy mountain far away, and one lives in a long dream." People always say "sleep", why do they say "long dreams" here? This is not only to express the feelings of the newlyweds, but also to use the word "long" because this poem is rhymed with "Yang".
Here are two examples of accommodating words to achieve the same goal. Du Fu: Spring Hope and I stroke my white hair. It has grown too thin, and it can no longer hold hairpins. "There are only shorter scratches on my white hair. Where have I touched my white hair?". Where did it come from? Because this sentence should be "even" according to the meter, the first word can be ignored, the second word can't be accommodating, and the word "hair" is just a flat voice, so we have to replace it with the word "head" with a flat voice. Li Shangyin's Untitled: "The wind and rain are coming, and the moon dew is coming." There is only osmanthus fragrance, where is the "cinnamon fragrance"! Because this sentence should be "flat and flat" according to the meter, no matter135,246 is clear, and the sixth word must be flat, so we have to replace the flat word "flower" with the flat word "leaf".
It is more common to accommodate for confrontation. For example, Du Fu's "Night Tour in Zuogong": "There are thousands of windows flashing in the sky, and the bright moon is nearly nine nights." It means that the stars are shining and facing thousands of families; The bright moon is in the sky, and the light is brighter than nine nights. If the word "Duo" is superfluous in prose, it is essential in this poem. By analogy, "kuya Duo" is opposite to "moving thousands of households", but for rhyme, this poem is about the rhyme of "Song". Another example is Du Fu's "Five Songs on the Way to Chengdu Caotang" (the fourth song): "Physiology only depends on Huang Ge's old age and wants to pay Zidan." This couplet means that a person's life depends entirely on the care of Huang Ge, while the aging body is entrusted to Yao Dan for treatment. In fact, the author doesn't necessarily choose "Zijindan". The reason why he uses this word is to fight against the "Huang Ge Lao" who gives a sentence.
When reading a poem, don't take the meaning and meaning of words too seriously-stick to the elements of the poem to "read between the lines". It is of course much more convenient for novices to have a teacher's guidance; Without this condition, it is necessary to buy selected readings with more detailed annotations, as well as reference books such as etymology and Ci Hai.
The second difficulty is grammar. There are many differences in grammar between vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese. The grammar of poetry is close to that of classical Chinese, but there are great differences. First, because in a few words of a poem or a word, in order to stretch our imagination, we have to be as concise as possible and try to omit all the words that can be omitted; Secondly, subject to the requirements of sentence pattern, number of words and meter, sometimes we have to change the position of words or change the part of speech to break through the conventional syntax. The grammar of poetry is so complicated that it is difficult for beginners to understand it at once. You can understand two common things first, one is ellipsis, the other is to change the position of words and change the part of speech.