Yang Wanli (1 127— 1206), a native of Jishui (now Jiangxi), was a scholar in Shaoxing for twenty-four years (1 154). He used to be a doctor in Taichang and a bachelor in Baomoge. When Han Tuozhou was in power, there was Zhai Chengji.
Yang Wanli's poetry creation has generally experienced the transition from imitation to self-integration. Thirty-two years ago in Shaoxing, he studied the style of Jiangxi school, and this poem was later burned by him. From then on, in the fourth year of Xichun (1 177), his poetic style changed. During this period, on the one hand, he studied and discussed the philosophical thoughts of Neo-Confucianism from Zhang Jun and Zhang Wei, and at the same time, he moved his opinions from his daily life to his literary creation. He said in the poem "Tang Deming builds a Zhai": "I have been a thorn in my side all my life, and later I learned that there are no children like this. I am sweating and laughing at the river. " This attitude of despising books and attaching importance to daily life has become an opportunity for his poetic style to change. Among the more than 700 poems in Jianghu Collection, some draw lessons from Chen Shidao's Five Laws, Wang Anshi's Seven Verses and Tang Dynasty's quatrains, and some are humorous and frivolous, such as:
The silence of spring is because I don't want a long stream of water, and the shadow reflected on the water is like sunny days and breezes. The delicate lotus flower bud shows a sharp corner from the water, and a naughty little dragonfly stands on its head. ("Little Pool")
Plums taste very sour, and after eating, the residual acid is still between the teeth; The banana is growing, and the green is against the screen. Spring goes to summer, and the days are long and tired. After a nap, I feel depressed and watch the children play with catkins in the air. (one of the two quatrains of taking a nap in early summer)
Five years after Xi Chun, the unique style of Yang Wanli's poems was basically formed, and his poetic view was basically mature. The preface to the collection of Jingxi said, "If you suddenly realize something, you will politely refuse the Tang people. Wang (An Shi), Chen (being a teacher) and the Jiangxi princes are afraid to learn, and then they will be happy." ..... Just give me a few songs, nothing is more rolling than the day before. "Moreover, at this time," leaving the garden to climb the ancient city to pick chrysanthemums, climbing flowers and bamboo, and offering poems ",writing poems is very smooth. This view, which attaches great importance to observing nature and drawing materials from daily life, is a powerful counterattack against Jiangxi poets' previous poetic theories such as "taking the fetus as the bone" and "turning iron into gold".
The formation of "Chengzhai style" not only attaches importance to obtaining novel and vivid materials from nature and daily life, but also needs transcendental mind and philosophical thinking; While the poet is enthusiastically involved in nature and daily life, he must also jump out to observe and understand the philosophy of life contained in it calmly and rationally, so that the poems written in this way are full of vitality of nature and life and rational interest, such as the following poems:
Don't say that there is no difficulty coming down from the mountain, which makes the climbers happy in vain. Just entering the chaotic mountain circle, one mountain releases another. (Five of Six Poems of Song Yuanchen Boiling Paint Shop)
If you can't find traces of spring, don't read poetry. The willow gull next to the leaf warbler and the grass next to it are greener and deeper every day. (One of "Duyang Toure")
Pour a glass or two of beer before the ship door closes and opens. No one looked at the wrinkled mountains, and they were all picked away by the sunset. (The third of three poems about crossing the Xie Tan)
In addition, such as "the lotus leaf in the sky is infinitely colorful, and the lotus flower reflects the sun in different colors" ("Seeing the Woods in Jingci Temple"), "There is no way to turn in the stream, and suddenly there are one or two plum blossoms" ("Returning from the Night Rain"), "Seeing the first lotus flower in the green duckweed pond" ("Going to Jianchang") and so on. Second, we should pay attention to the integration of our own subjective knowledge and experience into these scenes, so as to make them have a unique sense of interest, that is, the so-called "why there are new sentences unless they are different in their chests" ("Shu Yan closes the door with Zhang Zhiyun as a gift and thanks"), which is the product of his introduction of Neo-Confucianism and Zen experience into poetry.
"Chengzhai Style" is characterized by natural and fluent language and lively humor.
Because Yang Wanli's poems mainly describe ordinary natural scenery and daily life, in order to express the vitality and life experience in his heart, that kind of vulgar or too elegant language will hinder what he wants to express, so he does not work hard on the language form, but strives to pursue some meaning outside the language form, as he himself said: "The old man is not looking for poetry, but poetry is looking for the old man."
Specifically, first of all, most of Yang Wanli's poems are syntactically complete and coherent, with few intermittent splicing and jumping connections, surpassing Jiangxi Poetry School and inheriting the language style formed by Song, European and Soviet poems since May; Secondly, it is to apply natural spoken language and spoken language to poetry, so that poetry can be as lively as daily conversation, and achieve novel, vivid, brisk and interesting effects.
Judging from the development of Song poetry from the late Northern Song Dynasty to the early Southern Song Dynasty, Huang Tingjian created a new poetic style with his unique style and skills. However, this poetic style also has its drawbacks. The poets in the later period of Jiangxi School could not replace their predecessors with independent creation, but just followed the trend, which led to the deadlock in the poetry circle. This makes many people feel dissatisfied, and even Lv Benzhong is advocating "living method" to correct its deviation. Yang Wanli observed the ever-changing world with vivid eyes and expressed fresh and unique life feelings with vivid language, which broke the shadow of Jiangxi poetry school and became another hub of Song poetry transformation. In the third part, he said in "Xu's Work Poems and Postscripts":
"I'm ashamed to preach, writers each romantic. Huang Chen put his feet under the fence, and Xie Tao was more prominent before he left. " This attitude is the fundamental reason why he can be his own family.
Yang Wanli's poems rarely reflect the broad social life, but although there are few such poems, some of them are well written. For example, "Compassion for Peasants" is about the hardships of peasants' hard life. And "the first four quatrains of Huaihe River" is about what he saw and thought when he went to the State of Jin, which can also arouse readers' rich feelings, such as the third song:
Ships on both sides of the strait are running backwards, drifting with the flow, and it is difficult to negotiate. Only the Oulu in the sky can be seen freely, flying freely between the north and south shores.
Generally speaking, wit, liveliness and humor are the obvious advantages of Yang Wanli's poems, but at the same time, his poems rarely show a sharp and profound feeling of life (in this respect, he is not as good as Huang Tingjian), so most of them are mainly trivial materials and lack great courage.
Some poems are rough and slippery, which makes people feel shallow and tasteless; Occasionally, I have pedantic habits and go back to the old road of Jiangxi School. But after all, he created a new poetic style, which is unmatched by poets who blindly imitate the ancients. After Yang Wanli broke the shadow of Jiangxi Poetry School, some poets wanted to find another way out of Jiangxi Poetry School and lacked original talent, so they found other ancient poets to follow suit, as if they had walked out of one cell and entered another, but they were not as free as Yang Wanli.
Fan Chengda (1126—1193) was born in Wujun (now Wuxian, Jiangsu). He and Yang Wanli are similar in age, both born before and after the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty. They were both scholars in Shaoxing for twenty-four years and were listed as one of the "Four Poets of Zhongxing". But Fan Chengda was more successful in his official career, so that he could participate in politics and retire in his later years. There is the poetry anthology of Shihu lay people.
Fan Chengda was deeply influenced by Jiangxi School. In some of his early works, we can see a lot of language stagnation and allusions, as well as some arguments similar to Zen and Confucianism. However, while learning from Jiangxi's poetic style, Fan Chengda extensively absorbed the styles and techniques of poetry in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, and broke through the shadow of Jiangxi's poetic style on the basis of learning from others. In particular, many modern poems are euphemistic and beautiful, each with its own characteristics. For example:
A pool of new green things, snow wadding over the river geese does not fly. After the rain cleared, the wind changed again, so the sail had to be put in in time. (Yi Gui)
The west building is full of twelve pillars and hundreds of feet, and the sun shadow is idle. The spring breeze fell asleep, and cold food began. Broken willows lead to much sorrow, while fallen plums lead to new songs. If you want to visit the south of the Yangtze River, it is a thousand miles away.
("Going upstairs with friends from Jinling and Xuancheng on February 3rd")
Compared with Cheng Zhai style initiated by Yang Wanli, Fan Chengda's poems are not so free, but more tempered and carved. Not so funny and lively, but more deep and subtle;
Literally, it is not so shallow and vulgar, and it is often more elegant and luxurious. However, although Fan Chengda's poems were praised by Yang Wanli as "fresh and beautiful, there was Bao Xie in the election; The characteristics of "running away for Taibai" in the preface to Shihu Poetry and the styles of various schools in the middle and late Tang Dynasty have impacted the shackles of Jiangxi Poetry School, but after all, they have not formed their own distinctive personality like Yang Wanli, because extensive absorption cannot replace the unique creation. In Fan Chengda's poems, we can often see that there are many imitations, some of which are marked as "Xiao Wang Jian", "Xiao Li He" or "Yu Tai", and some are marked as "Snake Reverse" and "Stranded Pile", but we can see that they are all imitating Han Yu's style and so on. There are also poems such as Tinnitus Recurrence and Fu Man Urn. Using uncommon allusions and awkward sentences to make comments and show off knowledge gives people a sense of stagnation, which obviously belongs to the category of Jiangxi Poetry School. Due to the failure to integrate the styles and skills of various schools, it is difficult to establish a mature and distinctive style.
Therefore, Yan Yu's canglang poems have "Yang Chengzhai style", but there is no "Fan Shihu style".
The greatest achievement of Fan Chengda's poetry is that it reflects a wide range of life and exposes profound social problems, which Yang Wanli can't do. In his poems, such as "Feeling from Sitting at Night" and "The sound of selling vegetables on the wall in the snow is very bitter and there are three unique skills", he shows his concern for people's livelihood as an honest official. Poems such as Rent-collecting Bank and Post-rent-collecting Bank describe the poor people's hard life and despair under the oppression of heavy rent and taxes by the government. The most representative ones are the 72 quatrains he wrote when he went to the State of Jin and the 60 pastoral poems he wrote when he retired in his later years.
Avenue for six years (1 170), Song Xiaozong decided to abolish the humiliating etiquette that envoys knelt down to the emperor Xu Jinguo and received books. Ministers were afraid of not getting orders, so Fan Chengda stepped forward and sent a special envoy to Xu Jinguo with mortal determination. He was almost killed in the state of Jin, but in the end he did not live up to his mission and won unanimous praise from the ruling and opposition parties. Ambassador Kim's famous seventy-two quatrains were written by him on his way back and forth.
These 72 quatrains have a wide range of contents, including the people's miserable life in the occupied areas, their expectations for the recovery of the Central Plains in the Southern Song Dynasty, the backward customs and habits of Jin State (of course, there are also some national prejudices here), and the enthusiasm for praising historical events, satirizing the present with the ancient, criticizing national politics and serving the country. The central theme running through it is the sense of anxiety and indignation about the national crisis; Through practical observation, the poet filmed from different angles, reflecting different aspects of this theme, such as:
North and south of the state bridge is Tianjie, and the elders wait to drive back year after year. Tears asked the messenger: When will the Sixth Army really come? (State Bridge)
There is a note under this poem: "Looking at Zhuquemen in the south and Xuande Building in the north are all old imperial roads."
Bianjing was once the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, but now it has fallen into the hands of the rulers. Those who yearn for the Song Dynasty look forward to it year after year, but they can't wait for the troops of the Southern Song Dynasty, so they can only watch the messengers come and go. A tearful "When will the Sixth Army really come" not only expresses the wishes and disappointment of the elders in the Central Plains, but also undoubtedly satirizes the peace policy of the Southern Song Dynasty. Another example is Qingyuan Store:
The girls are sweating, and Yun has a father and a brother in Hu Aixiang. Slaughtering a handmaiden and killing a slave officer without asking, the punishment is still light.
This is a story about a slave girl who was tattooed on her face after trying to escape. Jin's social system retains some backward elements, and often adopts a cruel policy of oppression and slavery to the Han people. Fan Chengda reflected the sufferings of ordinary people under national oppression through the miserable experiences of female slaves. In the last song "Together with the Pavilion", it expresses the author's generosity:
Wanli lonely minister fatal autumn, how floating today! Mo Wen sheep can't wean themselves.
The four narratives of this group of quatrains, together, become a long scroll, which completely reflects the scenery and people's feelings in the north at that time and the poet's deep feelings for it.
The language of poetry is unpretentious, although there are also allusions to express feelings, but most of them are more appropriate and not difficult.
Fan Chengda wrote sixty poems about the four seasons in his later years, which is of great significance in ancient pastoral poetry. Past rural poems can be divided into two categories: one is represented by Tao Yuanming and Wang Wei, who express the literati's boredom with urban life and political life and their love for nature by praising rural scenery and farmers' simple labor life, showing a kind of indifferent ambition and inevitably describing rural pastoral; Another kind, such as the works of Wang Jian, Zhang Ji, Nie and others in the Tang Dynasty, inherited the tradition since the Book of Songs, mainly exposing the suffering of rural reality and reprimanding officials for exploiting and oppressing the people. This kind of poetry focuses on expressing the literati's sense of social responsibility and sympathy, so most of them do not describe the pastoral scenery, which makes people feel heavy and nervous. Generally speaking, these two kinds of poems can be said to be the poetic expression of the life interest of Taoism and Buddhism and the social concept of Confucianism. Originally, these two tendencies often existed at the same time in the minds of literati, but they were always separated in poetry. Fan Chengda's Sixty Pastoral Poems of the Four Seasons combined these two lines, which completely reflected the rural life and harmoniously showed the life interest of the literati in the Song Dynasty. From this, we can see the beautiful rural scenery and the customs of farmers' labor and life, as well as the heavy exploitation suffered by farmers and their poor life, such as:
Plum golden apricot fat, wheat white, cauliflower thin. No one has ever crossed the fence, but dragonflies and butterflies can fly
During the day, weeding in the fields and rubbing hemp thread at home at night, the men and women in the village took on all the housework. Although the children don't plow and weave, they also learn a kind of melon in the shade of mulberry trees.
Newly-built fields are mud and flat, and every family cooks, and first frost is clear. Laughter thundered and flail rang all night.
Diamonds are hard to pick, waste plows and hoes, blood is flowing, and ghosts are doing it. I can't afford to grow water in the field, and the lake has recently collected rent.
In his preface to poems, the author said that these poems were written when he lived in seclusion in Shihu, that is, by personal experience and observation, so there is no trace of his past simulation and career at all, and his style is more natural, fluent, relaxed and sharp than the 72 quatrains written in the middle of the year.