Preface to Mao's Poems is the first poem monograph in the history of literature that we have seen at present. In other words, its pioneering work in China's ancient literary criticism has attracted people's attention. But more importantly, it noticed the most essential emotional factors in poetry creation for the first time, clearly linked emotion with ambition to discuss the motivation of poetry, and put forward a new concept of lyric expression. At the beginning of the preface, it says: lament the lack, so sing forever; Without eternal songs, I don't know how to dance with my hands, nor do I know how to dance with my feet. This is not only the inheritance of rational expression in poetry since the pre-Qin period, but also the clarification that rational expression depends on emotional germination. Although the expression of mind in language is poetry, it must be emotional, and language alone is not enough to be an elegant ode to poetry in The Book of Songs. We also need to lament the Long song long dance with stronger emotions. So the preface goes on to say: love comes from sound, and sound is written as sound. The voice of governing the world is happy, ... the voice of troubled times is angry, ... the voice of national subjugation is mourning, ... so it is gain and loss, moving heaven and earth, feeling ghosts and gods, not close to poetry. It further points out that poetry. The exposition of the emotional characteristics of The Book of Songs in Preface to Mao Poetry has become a conscious language art, except that the poetry creation at that time has not been independent from the initial state of being attached to music and dance, which is undoubtedly a historical progress and has a great influence on the poetry theory of later generations. This is the starting point of Lu Ji's poetic theory in the Western Jin Dynasty. However, when commenting on the six meanings and four beginnings of The Book of Songs, Lu Ji's theory of poetic sentiment based on Shi Mao's Preface fell into a strange circle in which Confucian poetry teaching in the pre-Qin period could only serve etiquette and justice, and there were contradictions and fallacies. The full text of this passage is as follows: The late king took husband and wife as filial piety. Change customs. Therefore, poetry has six meanings: one is wind, the other is fu, the third is comparison, the fourth is prosperity, the fifth is elegance, and the sixth is ode. The upper part is weathered, and the lower part is stabbed by the wind. The main text admonishes, the speaker is innocent, and the listener has a warning, so it is called the wind. As for the decline of the monarch, the abolition of etiquette and righteousness, the loss of politics and religion, and the home from foreign politics. Only courtesy and righteousness, the first king's ze is also. It is based on the matter of a country and the foundation of one person, which is called the wind; Talking about the sky and the earth forms a wind in all directions, which is called elegance. So is elegance. It is said that the reason of Wang Zheng is to give up and prosper. There is great politics, so there is little elegance. Praise is described as beauty and virtue, and success is also told to God. It is said that the four beginnings are the most poetic.
There is nothing wrong with the statement that the former king was filial, virtuous, educated and changed customs. It is precisely because poetry has great artistic appeal and unique social value of understanding the world, transforming the world and cultivating temperament that the former king used it to improve morality and implement education. There is no such thing as a conclusion that poetry can only serve morality and education. But there can be no other conclusions, such as pleasure and aesthetic function. The Preface to Mao's Poems just reached this conclusion, and put forward that we should stop at ceremony with affection. Therefore, it deviates from the broad inclusiveness of emotion in the middle and form in speech, degenerates into emotion that must be adjusted within artificial ideological etiquette, loses the freedom of enthusiasm, initiative and creativity, and becomes a tool in the hands of rulers. So, show affection to others. Stop at courtesy and righteousness, and the first king's ze is also. This kind of feeling is no longer allowed to be a true feeling of nature, but a false feeling that caters to the autocratic taste of rulers; In short, everything returned to the naive, gentle and sincere poetry teaching of Confucius at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, and the light from the previous theory of emotion began to dim. Just as Lu Xun sharply criticized in "On Moro Poetry", such as China. It is the cloud that holds people's temperament and aims at 300, which is covered by innocence. It's not a person's ambition to hold the clouds lightly. It is almost a question of freedom under the spur. Therefore, when discussing the six meanings and four beginnings, only the four beginnings, which are closely related to the content of serving the king's politics and religion, are involved: style, elegance, elegance and praise. As for art, there is no mention at all. In this way, post-secular Confucianism completely abandoned emotion and advocated the backward theory of pre-Qin. In a word, Preface to Mao's Poems is actually a contradictory mixture of profound opinions and fallacious conservative opinions in literary criticism. Whether it is an excellent emotional interpretation or a backward and erroneous interpretation, it has had a far-reaching impact on later poetic theories. So there is such a contradiction in a monograph. This is probably because it was not written by one person. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty written in the Southern Song Dynasty said in The Scholars that Xie Chu learned Mao's poems from Jiujiang and his teacher. (Wei) Hong Shicong was good at elegance because of his Preface to Mao Shi. It is inconsistent with the statement of the Three Kingdoms period in the Eastern Han Dynasty. If Wei Hong really participated in the word processing of "Preface to Shi Mao", and Confucianism at that time even reached the level of myth serving the kingship, then it is possible to tamper with the argument of Scapharca subcrenata in the early Western Han Dynasty.