Yuefu poems in Han dynasty
First, what is Yuefu
The so-called Yuefu in Han Dynasty refers to a musical organ. It not only composes poems praising literati to music scores, makes and plays new songs and dances, but also collects folk songs as music. "History of Han, Art and Literature" records: "Since Emperor Xiaowu established Yuefu, he has adopted songs, so Zhao, Qin and Chu have all felt sad and happy, and they also have considerable customs."
Types of Yuefu Poems in Han Dynasty
Second, judging from its content, it can be roughly divided into three categories:
Ode of noble literati
Poems of suburban temples are used to worship heaven and earth, ancestral halls, Tang Ming and the country. Today, there are songs of worship in the suburbs and songs of Anshifang.
Yan She Ge Song Ci was used for banquets in the imperial court.
"Dance songs" can be divided into elegant dances and miscellaneous dances. Elegant dance is used in suburban temples and banquets; Miscellaneous dances are used for banquets.
martial music
"Preaching music" is military music with flutes and drums.
"Crosswind Quci" is a military music played on horseback with drums.
folk song
Song of Harmony is a strange ballad in the streets of Han Shi. At first, it was just recited at will. Later, orchestral music became a harmony song.
Shang Qing Quci originated from three tones, which mostly reflected people's life, thoughts and feelings at that time.
Miscellaneous songs and miscellaneous words are called miscellaneous songs because they are written from the heart, lyrical about thoughts, narrating banquets and sightseeing, complaining about war and service, or because of the old Buddha, or because of foreigners and Lu.
Theme of Yuefu Poems in Han Dynasty
Reflect the pain of war
The Battle of the South of the City profoundly reflects the painful war life of the people in the Han Dynasty. The first painting of this poem describes the desolation and horror of fierce fighting.
In the latter painting, people abandoned farming because of the war and complained bitterly. It is a realistic poem that exposes the painful life of the war. Another example is Dongguang, which reflects the sadness and resentment of the soldiers when Emperor Wu conquered South Vietnam. "Cangwu is full of rotten millet, which is not good for the food of the army. How sad it is for the army to wander early. " It is also an anti-war work.
Reflect the pain of the corvee
The poem "Joining the Army in the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" describes a soldier who fought outside for sixty-five years and returned to his hometown at the age of eighty.
In recent years, houses have been destroyed and become nests of birds and beasts, and relatives have died and their bellies are hungry. So they use wild sunflower grass to cook books and soup rice, but how to eat it in this case? Tears kept flowing when they went out to look at the horizon. In the poem, they mercilessly criticized the unreasonable corvee system and the people's suffering.
Reflect poverty
The Journey of the Sick Woman describes the tragic scene of a poor family. In the poem, the sick woman is dying, and her husband cries all over her relatives and friends. She is an orphan.
The situation of crying in an empty house is really touching and sad. A Journey to the Orphans describes the abuse suffered by orphans. His brother and sister-in-law regard him as a slave and an enemy, and try their best to torture him, so he will die. Journey to the East Gate describes the process in which a poor old man was forced by poverty, cornered and rose up against it.
Reflect wandering/wandering in another country
The life of a wanderer is hard and it is not easy to return home, so every time I travel like this, I show strong grief.
For example, "A Journey to the Great Wall Cave by Drinking Horses": "It's incredible from a distance, but in the past I dreamed of it. I dreamed of being by my side, and suddenly I felt in a foreign country. I have never met in different counties. " This is about a wife who is looking for a good husband everywhere.
Love theme
"Thinking" writes that when a woman knows that her lover has his heart, she hates to destroy the gift she is about to give him at once.
I showed my determination to make a clean break, but when I was in a tryst, I remembered that life was sweet, and I felt that I couldn't make a clean break, which showed the author's painful contradiction. Thank you for expressing a woman's warm confession to her lover and her immortal love. She used fire to express her passion: love will not end unless mountains and rivers collapse and heaven and earth are destroyed!
Marriage/the tragic fate of women/the bondage of feudal ethics
Pulling weeds on the mountain tells a short question and answer when an abandoned wife and her dead husband meet by chance. It doesn't say abandoned wife from the front.
Sorrow, rather than writing about her nostalgia for her wife, shows that the abandonment of the hostess's family is innocent. Although her work is better than others and her skin color is not worse than others, she is inevitably abandoned. Her misfortune is only because men like the new and hate the old.
Peacock Flying Southeast reveals the evils of feudal ethics through the marriage tragedy of Jiao Zhongqing and Liu Lanzhi, and sings enthusiastically at the same time.
A spiritual ode to loyalty to love and unyielding death.
The debauchery of the ruler
Cock crow, meeting each other, and narrow evil deeds in Chang 'an all describe the luxury enjoyment of wealthy families at that time, with gold as the door and white as the door.
Jade is the hall, wine is served in the hall, the atrium is brightly lit, and rare birds are listed behind the house. Everyone is an official, and the most expensive one is 2000 stone. Young women are doing nothing but making adjustments. "Mo Shang Sang" tells the story of a satrap who insulted a woman picking mulberry and was severely reprimanded. The poem exposes the dissolute and shameless faces of officials, and at the same time creates a loyal, brave and beautiful female image, Qin Luofu.
People's working life
In the Han Yuefu, many of them showed the working life of the people at that time. For example, picking lotus in Jiangnan is a pair of young men and women in Jiangnan.
The songs sung during lotus picking and during labor show the happiness of collective labor life of rural men and women and the beautiful natural scenery of rural areas in the south of the Yangtze River.
Drinking for eternal life/impermanence of life
There is also the idea of seeking immortality through wine in Yuefu poems of Han Dynasty, which is a reflection of intellectuals' thoughts influenced by immortal thoughts.
Such as Good People and Good Deeds, The Journey to the West, Wang Ziqiao, etc. , are all works of this kind. As for the works with the theme of impermanence of life, such as Poems of Complaints and Driving East Gate, the theme is to lament impermanence of life and advocate "eat, drink, and wander freely" to vent decadent and declining emotions.
Thirdly, the language and formal features/artistic features of Yuefu poems in Han Dynasty.
Language is simple and natural
Yuefu folk songs in Han Dynasty mostly use vivid spoken language, which is cordial and simple, lyrical and touching. For example, in The Orphan's Journey, orphans are abused by their brothers and sisters, and the poems are uneven, but their feelings and plots are vivid.
Sentences vary in length, ranging from two to eight words; There are neat seven-character poems and intricate miscellaneous poems.
Yuefu folk songs in Han dynasty have no fixed rules and syntax, and their length is arbitrary, flexible and free.
Style, such as crossing the river without gong, doing good; If there are miscellaneous words, the syntax is free and changeable, and the whole dispersion is not limited. For example, "Shang Xie" in "Song of Persuasion" and "Book of Songs": "Shang Xie! I want to know you, and I will live long. At the end of my tether, lightning in winter and rain and snow in summer blend together, but I dare to say goodbye to you. " There are also two, three, four, five, six and seven words, which are extremely free to change. There are also many complete five-character poems in Han Yuefu, such as Picking Lotus in the South of the Yangtze River and Peacocks Flying Southeast.
There are both lengths, the longest is more than 350 sentences, and the shortest is a few.
The length of folk songs in Han Yuefu is different. The longest is Peacock Flying Southeast, with more than 350 sentences, and the shortest is Miscellaneous.
There are only four sentences in "Quyu Crossing the River and Weeping"; There are only seven sentences in "Picking Lotus in Jiangnan".
Rhyme is flexible.
The rhyme of Han Yuefu folk songs is free and flexible. There are rhymes, such as "Ping Ling East": "Ping Ling East, pine and cypress, nothing"
I know who robbed Yigong. "I'm so worried that my blood will leak. I'm going to sue my family for selling yellow calves." There are rhyming sentences, such as "East Gate", "Yan Ge" and "Fu Liangyin". There are also rhymes between two sentences and three sentences, such as "the southeast corner of sunrise" and "self-named Luofu" in Shang Mo Sang rhymes with two sentences, and "Qin Shilou" and "Gui Zhi made a cage hook" rhymes with five sentences, all of which show the diversity of rhymes.
Narration in the form of dialogue/monologue
Han Yuefu's poems skillfully cast dialogues to depict characters, which are full of sounds and feelings, making people feel like hearing their voices and seeing their people. For example, "going up the mountain to collect insects"
"Wu" is even almost entirely a question and answer between the abandoned wife and the deceased husband, which shows the kind character of his wife. There are also monologues throughout, such as "The Journey of the Orphans", which write the sufferings of orphans in a monologue way.
romantic flavour
Although Yuefu folk songs in Han Dynasty mostly show reality, there are also many romantic works, such as "Regret for the Past" such as flash floods.
Hair-like passion and high exaggeration; The crow's soul in Vu Thang attracts people. The rotten fish in "Dead Fish Crossing the River and Crying" will cry and write letters. These rich and peculiar fantasies show the characteristics of romanticism.
Equivalence sentence
Even sentences can also be said to be the characteristics of all aspects of Han Yuefu, such as: "The horn on the head shines in the ear."
Zhu Yue. Qi is the lower skirt, and Ziluo is the upper skirt.
Cycle back and forth, sound and rhyme are harmonious
There were many beautiful poems in the folk songs of that day, such as "Picking Lotus in the South of the Yangtze River": "Picking Lotus in the South of the Yangtze River, lotus leaves, fish playing lotus.
Between the leaves, the fish hit the lotus leaf east, the fish hit the lotus leaf west, the fish hit the lotus leaf south, and the fish hit the lotus leaf north. "This poem echoes before and after, with vivid image, harmonious phonology and lively words, which is the true nature of folk songs.
The influence of Yuefu in Han Dynasty on later generations
Carry forward realism
The folk songs of Yuefu in Han Dynasty carried forward the realistic spirit after The Book of Songs, such as Cao Cao and his son, RoyceWong and Chen Lin in Jian 'an period, etc.
Poems describing social unrest and suffering inherit the spirit of Han Yuefu folk songs, which are based on the ancient theme, narrative style and popular language of Han Yuefu and also show the influence of Han Yuefu folk songs in form.
Although Du Fu did not follow the theme of the old Yuefu in Tang Dynasty, the spirit and system of his poems are in the same strain as the Yuefu folk songs in Han Dynasty, and are directly influenced by Yuefu folk songs. Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen wrote Du Fu's social poems effectively, and put forward the slogan of "Poetry should be written according to the time", which is also the tradition of "Poetry should be written according to the situation" in Han Yuefu.
Simple language/fresh style
The styles of Han Yuefu's poems are diverse, including fresh and clear, affectionate and euphemistic, and bold and sad, but they are mainly simple and natural. The so-called simple and natural style, expressed in poetic language, has no literary decoration, so it is simple and sincere, unique in ancient and modern times. Later poets were mostly influenced by Han Yuefu.
Lay the foundation of five-character poems
Han Yuefu is mainly composed of five-character poems and miscellaneous poems. Miscellaneous poems flourished after Jian 'an, and Cao Cao, Cao Pi and Li Bai all originated from Yuefu folk songs. Yuefu had a great influence on five-character poems, and there were many imitators in the Eastern Han Dynasty. By the time of Jian 'an, there had been a situation of "five words soaring", which replaced the four words in the Book of Songs and the "Sao Style" in the Songs of the South.
The influence of Yuefu poetry genre on the singing style of later generations.
The genre of Yuefu poetry has also influenced the formation of the singing style of later generations. Bao Zhao, a poet of the Six Dynasties, has the most prominent five-character poems and miscellaneous poems, while Li Bai's Yuefu songs in the Tang Dynasty are unprecedented, and their artistic forms are obviously influenced by the folk songs of the Han Yuefu.
Narration in the form of dialogue/monologue
Han Yuefu's poems skillfully cast dialogues to depict characters, which are full of sounds and feelings, making people feel like hearing their voices and seeing their people. For example, "going up the mountain to collect insects"
"Wu" even consists almost entirely of questions and answers from abandoned wives and dead husbands, which shows the kind character of wives. Some use monologues throughout, such as The Orphan's Journey, to describe the suffering of orphans in a monologue way. These techniques also inspired the rhetorical devices of later poems.