The Book of Songs is the earliest collection of poems in my country. It was created from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, and was compiled into a book around the middle of the 6th century BC. The original name of "The Book of Songs" was "Poetry" or "Three Hundred Poems". In the Zhou Dynasty, the imperial court had people who specialized in collecting poems. They collected poems from all over the country and then brought them to the imperial court, so that the imperial court could know the customs and customs of various places.
There were more than 3,000 poems collected at that time. Legend has it that after revision by the great sage Confucius, only 305 poems were retained, so it is called "Three Hundred Poems". By the Han Dynasty, Confucian scholars regarded it as a classic, so it was called the Book of Songs. The Book of Songs has a very close relationship with music. The Analects of Confucius Zihan records:
I defended myself against Lu, and then music was upright, elegance and poetry each found its place.
The meaning of this sentence is that Confucius said that after returning from Wei to Lu, he arranged the music in accordance with etiquette and law, so that "Ya" music and "Song" music could be played correctly. Sima Qian, the historian of the Western Han Dynasty, once said: "Confucius sang all three hundred and five poems with strings."
The poems in "The Book of Songs" can all be sung to music, and the poems it collects are based on music. It is divided into three parts: "Wind", "Ya" and "Song" based on different characteristics.
"Wind" is music with local color. The poem "Wind" is from Zhounan, Zhaonan, Bei, Yong, Wei, Wang, Zheng, Qi, Wei, Tang, Qin, Chen, Hui The folk songs collected from 15 regions including Cao, Bin, Cao, and Bin are known as "Guo Feng". "Wind" has a total of 15 places of "Guo Feng", with a total of 160 articles. Most of them are folk songs.
"Ya" refers to the music of the areas directly under the Zhou Dynasty, called "Zhengsheng Yayue". According to different music, it is divided into 31 chapters in "Daya", 74 chapters in "Xiaoya" and 105 chapters in "Xiaoya". Except for a small number of folk songs in "Xiaoya", most of them are works by aristocratic literati.
"Song" is the lyrics of dance music performed in ancestral temples, and the content is mostly about praising the ancestors' achievements. The "Song" poems are divided into 31 "Zhou Songs", 4 "Lu Songs", 5 "Shang Songs", and 40 *** poems. All are works by aristocratic literati.
From a time perspective, most of "Zhou Song" and "Daya" were produced in the early Western Zhou Dynasty; a small part of "Daya" and most of "Xiaoya" were produced in the late Western Zhou Dynasty to the eastward migration of the Western Zhou Dynasty time; most of "Guofeng" and "Songs of Lu" and "Songs of Shang" were produced in the Spring and Autumn Period.
"Wind" is the essence of the entire "Book of Songs". It vividly depicts the real life in ancient times. Some poems show the social life and scenes of productive labor at that time; some poems reflect the pain brought by military service and labor to the people; some poems satirize the corrupt and shameless life of some officials; some poems describe the love and marriage life at that time.
"Bin Feng? July" is the longest poem in "Guo Feng". This ancient farming poem records the agricultural work performed by ancient ancestors throughout the year, comprehensively reflecting the agricultural production conditions at that time.
"Guo Feng" contains the most concentrated poems reflecting love and marriage life, and also has the highest artistic achievement. Such poems may sing about the love and affection between men and women, or praise each other's charm and appearance, or describe the scene of a man and woman's tryst, or lament the misfortune of an abandoned wife.
"Guan Ju" ranks first in "Guofeng". This is an authentic love poem. It describes a man who feels yearning for a woman who is picking water plants. He can't help but say, "A beautiful lady, a gentleman is fond of being jealous" and unfolds the story. The unremitting pursuit of love expresses a desire for a happy marriage.
"Han Guang" is a poem about a man's disappointment in courtship. Metaphors and hints are used throughout the poem. "There are trees in the south, so don't stop thinking about them. In the Han Dynasty, there are wandering girls, so don't think about them." This is a metaphor. The tree cannot be closed down, nor can the wandering girl be sought after. This is actually a metaphor that the desired girl cannot be obtained.
The poems in "Guo Feng" that describe the corruption and ugliness of those in power have the significance of political criticism. Generally speaking, these poems reflect the dissatisfaction and even hatred of the lower class people towards those in power. Among them, the two poems "Fa Tan" and "Shuo Rat" are the most famous.
"Cutting Sandalwood" is a song sung by a group of lumberjacks while cutting wood by the river. They work hard and are tired all day long, but they have no food or clothing. However, those so-called "gentlemen" who "do not farm or harvest" or "do not hunt or hunt" have all kinds of food and prey at home. In the poem, the lumberjacks severely criticized and sharply satirized this phenomenon of getting something for nothing.
Most of the "Daya" in "Ya" are poems praising the Zhou Dynasty written by royal nobles, court officials and music officials, and used for the princes' court meetings. Most of the poems in "Xiaoya" were written by aristocratic literati and used in aristocratic banquets.
A few poems in "Xiaoya" come from the folk. They either write about the suffering of hunger and cold, or about the labor of conquering a husband, with vivid narratives and delicate descriptions. "Plucking Wei" is a poem about soldiers guarding the border. The last chapter of the poem contains the line "In the past, I left, and the willows lingered, but now I come to think about it, and the rain and snow are falling." It blends emotions into the scenery, using happy scenes to write sorrow, and sad scenes to write joy, doubling the sorrow and joy, and writing The true emotions of sadness and joy of a garrison soldier returning home after a long service.
There are five epic poems in "Daya" that are of great value. They are: "Shengmin", "Gongliu", "Mian", "Huangyi" and "Daming".
The history involved in these sacrificial poems spans a long period from the birth to the growth of the entire Zhou clan to the founding of the country. Some characters and events in the poems happened far before historical records. Therefore, in writing these long-circulated tribal stories , with the imaginative elements and legendary color unique to early myths and legends.
"Song" includes three parts: "Song of Zhou", "Song of Shang" and "Song of Lu". In the early Zhou Dynasty, the concept of gods was deeply rooted in people's hearts. Sacrifice was an important way for people to express their worship of gods and a very important part of people's lives. Sacrifice rituals and music also became very important.
Sacrificial songs are concentrated in the "Zhou Song" in the "Ode" of the "Book of Songs". These ancestral temple sacrificial poems mainly praise the civil and military achievements of the ancestors and praise their virtues and good deeds.
The Book of Songs not only has profound and broad ideas, but also has extraordinary artistic achievements, which has had a profound impact on later generations of literature.
The artistic style of "The Book of Songs" is simple and natural. The "Book of Songs" was mainly produced in the northern region centered on the Yellow River Basin two to three thousand years ago. Due to poor natural conditions and hard-working life, the people in the north have developed a simple and honest character. Their singing naturally shows the ideological characteristics of valuing reality, valuing reality and valuing true feelings.
The Book of Songs is very full of realistic creative spirit. More than two-thirds of the works in the Book of Songs were written based on the real life at that time. They truly reflected the social life conditions of more than 500 years at that time, and delicately depicted the ideological activities and emotional world of ordinary people at that time.
The Book of Songs adopts a variety of artistic techniques. "The Book of Songs" is mainly composed of simple four-character poems, but it does not stick to this sentence structure, but is full of changes. Many poems often break the fixed pattern of four characters, and use two, three, five, and six characters. , seven words or even eight words, etc.
The most commonly used artistic techniques in "The Book of Songs" are Fu, Bi and Xing. "Feng" and "Xiaoya" mostly use "bi" and "xing" techniques, while "Daya" and "Song" mostly use fu. "Caiwei" was written using the technique of "Fu". In the poem "Meng", the change of mulberry trees from flourishing to withering is used to describe the rise and fall of love.
In addition to using the artistic techniques of fu, comparison, and xing, "The Book of Songs" also appropriately uses a variety of rhetoric such as exaggeration, duality, parallelism, layering, and onomatopoeia, making the work swaying and full of literary talent.
The Book of Songs has neat sentence patterns and harmonious tones, and has extremely high aesthetic value. The structure often takes the form of overlapping chapters, with basically the same words and sentences in each chapter. One or two words are changed in each chapter to express the order and process of the development of things. This kind of expression technique of chanting in chapters and repeating words and phrases can form an artistic effect of singing three sighs in one sentence.
The author of "The Book of Songs" is good at choosing various sentence patterns such as statements, exclamations, questions and answers, dialogues, affirmations, and negations. With the help of various changes in sentence patterns, he expresses his ideas in appropriate and perfect forms, which invisibly expands the meaning of the poem. It increases the capacity of the sentence and enhances the expressive effect of the poetic language.
The Book of Songs established the fine tradition of poetry and became a rich treasure house of traditional Chinese literature and art. It had a profound influence on the literary and artistic creation of later generations, inspiring and inducing generations of literati. of creation.
"The Book of Songs"