Qu Yuan (about 340 BC or 339-278 BC) was a poet and politician of Chu State during the Warring States Period in China. Born in Chu Danyang (now Yichang, Hubei). Mi surname, Qu family, human, the word is native; Since the cloud name is regular, the spirit word is even. The descendants of Qu Xian, the son of Xiong Tong in Chu Wuwang during the Warring States Period. When I was a teenager, I was well educated, knowledgeable and ambitious. In his early years, he was trusted by Chu Huaiwang as Zuotu, and was also a doctor of San Lv, in charge of internal affairs and foreign affairs. He advocated "American politics", promoting and appointing talents internally, perfecting statutes and uniting external forces to resist Qin. Slashed by nobles, he was exiled to Hanbei and Yuanxiang Valley. After General Qin attacked Ying, the capital of Chu State (now Jiangling, Hubei Province), Qu Yuan drowned in the Miluo River and died heroically.
Qu Yuan is the first great patriotic poet in the history of China, the founder of China's romantic literature, the founder and representative author of Chu Ci, which pioneered the tradition of "vanilla beauty", and is known as "the ancestor of China's poetry" and "the ancestor of Ci". The appearance of Qu Yuan marks that China's poetry has entered a new era from collective singing to individual originality. Qu Yuan's major works include Li Sao, Nine Songs, Nine Chapters and Tian Wen. Chu Ci with Qu Yuan's works as the main body is one of the sources of China's romantic literature. It is also called "coquettish" with the "national style" in the Book of Songs, which has a far-reaching influence on later poetry.
Literary achievements
Qu Yuan Qu Yuan is a poet. Only from him did China have a writer famous for his literature. He founded the style of "Chu Ci" (also known as "Sao Style"), and was praised as "a poet in clothes, not a generation". According to Liu Xiang and Liu Xin's collation and Wang Yi's annotation, there are 25 works of Qu Yuan, namely Li Sao 1, Tian Wen 1, Jiu Ge1,Nine Chapters 9 and Travel Far. According to Sima Qian in Biography of Qu Yuan in Historical Records, there are 1 evocation. Some scholars believe that Zhao Da is also the work of Qu Yuan. However, some people suspect that the chapters behind Journey and some chapters in Nine Chapters were not written by Qu Yuan. According to Guo Moruo's textual research, there are 23 works of Qu Yuan that have been handed down. Among them, Nine Songs 1 1, Nine Chapters, Li Sao 1, Tian Wen 1, Evocation 1.
Generally speaking, Li Sao, Tian Wen and Jiu Ge can be regarded as the representatives of three types of Qu Yuan's works. Nine Chapters, Journey, Buju, Fisherman, Evocation of Soul, and Da Zhao can be classified as Li Sao in content and style, and most of them are well documented and meaningful, focusing on expressing the author's inner feelings. Li Sao is a magnificent poem created by Qu Yuan with his own ideals, experiences, pains, enthusiasm and even his whole life. It shines with bright personality and is the focus of all Qu Yuan's creations. Tian Wen is a poem written by Qu Yuan according to myths and legends, which embodies the author's academic attainments and views on history and nature. "Nine Songs" is Qu Yuan's music for offering sacrifices to the gods in Chu. It is full of life breath in the expression of characters' feelings and the description of environmental atmosphere. However, it is the expression of generations or gods, rather than the author's self-lyric, which shows more traces of the literary tradition of southern Chu. Li Sao and Nine Songs constitute the basic style of Qu Yuan's works.
Qu Yuan's works are closely related to myths. Many illusory contents are developed from myths. Qu Yuan is also a poet who pays attention to reality. His works reflect various contradictions in the real society, especially the dark politics of Chu.
The style of Qu Yuan's works is obviously different from the Book of Songs. This is related to the differences in folk customs between the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin. At that time, the north had entered the patriarchal society, and Chu still had the legacy of clan society, which was tough and lively, and was not bound by etiquette. Therefore, the expression of love between men and women and patriotism is so straightforward, and the materials used are so rich that everything can run to the bottom of the pen. Write about the love between man and God, crazy people, ancient historical legends, and traveling with ghosts and gods. All gods have ordinary human nature among the people, and God is just a person beyond ordinary people. They make their works look bright, full of emotion and unrestrained. This kind of works shows different characteristics from northern literature. From the institutional point of view, Qu Yuan's previous poems, whether the Book of Songs or southern folk songs, were mostly short stories, and Qu Yuan developed into a long and huge system. Li Sao alone has more than 2,400 words. In terms of expression techniques, Qu Yuan skillfully combined Fu, Bi and Xing, and made extensive use of the Bi Xing technique of "vanilla beauty" to vividly express abstract morality, consciousness and complex realistic relations. In terms of language form, Qu Yuan's works have broken through the four-sentence pattern in The Book of Songs, with each sentence ranging from five, six, seven, eight and nine characters, as well as three sentences and cross sentences. Grammar is uneven and flexible. The word "Xi" and function words such as "Zhi", "Yu", "Hu" and "Er" are often used at the end of sentences to coordinate syllables and produce cadence, singing and sighing effects. In a word, his works are very creative from content to form.
Qu Yuan's works had a greater influence after the Chu people established Guanzhong, the capital of the Han Dynasty. With the continuous study and development of Songs of the South, the literature in the north has gradually become Chu. The new five-character poems and seven-character poems are all related to Chu Sao. Fu writers in Han Dynasty were all influenced by Chu Ci. After the Han Dynasty, works of "Shao Sao" appeared in all previous dynasties. The author often uses Qu Yuan's poems to express his own obstacles, and even uses Qu Yuan's experience as a metaphor, which is the direct development of Qu Yuan's literature. In addition, there are poems, songs, lyrics, songs, dramas, Qin lyrics, Daqu, scripts and so on. Take the life story of Qu Yuan as the theme, such as The Portrait of Qu Yuan, Nine Songs, Nine Tweens, etc. It is also difficult to count. Therefore, Lu Xun called Qu Yuan's works "outstanding" and "its influence on later articles is even above 300 (The Book of Songs)" (Lu Xun's Outline of China Literature History). Guo Moruo, a famous poet, once wrote Ode to Thunder and Electricity for him to commemorate his deeds.
Qu Yuan's works are rich in imagination and magnificent in ci style. A large number of myths and legends are used in Li Sao, and the sun, the moon and the wind are mobilized into the poem, making the words very colorful. He also highlighted the story of three times to find a woman to express his enthusiasm. He is good at describing a gentleman with beauty and vanilla. Bad wood and dirty grass are metaphors of villains. By contrast, the scene of the king trusting, the traitor in power and the patriot unable to serve the country is vividly written.
Qu Yuan's works like Qu Yuan in Wuhan East Lake are full of positive romantic spirit. Its main performance is that he integrated his passionate pursuit of ideals into artistic imagination and magical artistic conception. Wind arouses Chu is the style of Qu Yuan's Chu Ci. Qu Yuan was ostracized and framed by Mix, which made Chu Huaiwang, who once trusted him very much and relied on his reform and self-improvement, have doubts about him, and even alienated from exile. After King Xiang of Chu came to power, he became more fatuous and increasingly corrupt in politics. Chu was facing the crisis of national subjugation and persecuted patriots like Qu Yuan. The poet's integrity, noble personality and patriotic actions have all become sins. He turned his anger into poetry, forming an emotional appeal. This sentiment is very strong in the nine chapters.
Qu Yuan's works also use a series of metaphors to express his feelings. For example, he used flowers and herbs to describe a noble gentleman; Use smelly things and Xiao Ai as metaphors for traitors or disloyal villains; Wearing vanilla symbolizes the poet's moral cultivation. This technique of "vanilla beauty" makes a sharp contrast between loyalty, ugliness, goodness and evil in reality, and produces a concise and endless artistic effect.
For example, "Nine Chapters of Mourning" wrote at the beginning: "The emperor's life is unclean, and it is not a shock to the people. The people lost each other, and Fang Zhongchun moved eastward. " The poet was very angry at the destruction of the country and the pain of people's separation. His unique poems are strange, angry, desolate and cold. In many poems, he expressed great indignation that the society at that time did not attach importance to talents and thought that he was incompetent. The poet was angry and showed a feeling of grief and indignation. Although Qu Yuan's Chu Ci is full of emotional appeal, it has profound interest because of its broad mind and deep feelings, and it doesn't feel frivolous or frivolous when reading it. This strong interest is deeply contained in all kinds of poems he wrote. Not to mention the profound patriotic enthusiasm expressed in Li Sao and the poet's sincere feelings for the country and the nation, it is the strange poem composed of questions in Tian Wen that deeply touches the readers' hearts, which contains quite profound thoughts and fully shows his erudition and wisdom. It enriches the interest of poetry, is good at spirit and theory, and gives readers beautiful enlightenment.
As a great poet, the appearance of Qu Yuan not only marks that China's poetry has entered a new era from collective singing to individual originality, but also his new poetic style-Chu Ci, which broke through the expression form of The Book of Songs, greatly enriched the expressive force of poetry and opened up a new world for China's ancient poetry creation. Therefore, later generations called the "national style" in the Songs of Chu and the Book of Songs "national style". "Feng" and "Sao" are the sources of the two fine traditions of realism and romanticism in the history of China's poetry. At the same time, Chu Ci, represented by Qu Yuan, also influenced the formation of Han Fu.