The Differences of Song of Eternal Sorrow in Literary Criticism

Since the publication of Song of Eternal Sorrow, there have been different views and understandings on this theme. Today, there are still many themes. There are three kinds of views, namely "irony" (exposing the debauchery of the ruling class and hating its wrong country), "love" (praising the sincere and single-minded love between Tang and Yang Guifei) and "double theme" (referring to the duality of love tragedy, the hero and heroine in the play are both the makers and victims of the tragedy. It is not only the ruler who brings disaster to the country and the people, but also the embodiment of beautiful love; The author's original intention is to "punish the stunner and restrain the disorder", but in the specific description, the element of praising the love between the two people occupies a dominant position. At present, it is generally believed that the "double theme theory" is more in line with the reality of the work, and the author thinks that this is a poem describing love. It is said to be about love, according to the following: (1) This is a long poem describing the tragedy of love. It is said that Song of Eternal Sorrow is a long poem describing the tragedy of love. There is generally no ambiguity. Because the beginning and end of the tragic story are clearly expressed in the poem: the whole poem begins with "the emperor of China, longing for the beauty that may shake an empire", and first writes that Yang Yuhuan entered the palace and was favored by others; Write the tragic ending of Ma Wei mutiny and the love between Li and Yang; Rewrite Tang's sincere yearning for the imperial concubine after he went to Shu and returned to the palace; Finally, with the help of the wings of imagination, it is written that the imperial concubine became immortal after her death and was infatuated with Xuanzong, with "forbearance in the earth and forbearance in the sky;" One day, both will end, and this endless sorrow will last forever. " This poem not only has a complete story, but also has ups and downs. In the second half of the poem, a fantastic fairyland is imagined, which makes the gorgeous image of Yang Guifei reappear in Penglai after her death and communicates the love that never existed between heaven and earth. This makes the love story between Ming Chengzu and Yang Guifei no longer a simple documentary poem, but a more typical tragedy recreated by art, and this immortal tragic ending is treated as a comedy. It not only wrote the eternal love between Li and Yang, but also wrote the miracle of coming back to life and falling in love in a romantic way. We say this is a manifestation of subjective desire. It can be said that this kind of treatment is not an inevitable life logic. Not what has happened or may happen in life, but what the poet thinks should happen. What he wants to happen is a subjective plot, not an objective plot. In line with the aesthetic taste and habits of the Chinese nation. Readers and audiences don't want the "good guys" to die, let alone leave the theater with tears in their eyes. This happy ending is related to China's pursuit of classical aesthetics, which is determined by national tradition and philosophical foundation. The love story between Emperor Tang Ming and Yang Guifei in Song of Eternal Sorrow ended in tragedy, which reflected the poet's basic evaluation and attitude towards the part of social life he knew and described, and this love tragedy can dominate the soul of the whole poem. As for political factors such as indulging in politics, it can be considered as the background and typical environment. Take this love tragedy as the main clue to analyze and evaluate. Then the love theory in Song of Eternal Sorrow can be well explained. Objectively speaking, the love story between the emperor and the princess is different from ordinary people today and has its own uniqueness. It is full of strong political color. Both the hero and heroine are real figures in history, which play a great role in the rise and fall of the history of the Tang Dynasty and the security of the country. In this way, readers and critics can easily wander between historical truth and artistic truth, and the evaluation of historical figures is often confused with the comments on artistic images in literary works, resulting in differences and confusion in understanding. He doesn't know that literary and art workers may write a whole picture of a historical figure, or intercept a certain aspect of his personality, so as to express some thoughts or feelings and provide a credible basis for the figure in a specific description environment, that is, to shape a typical figure in the historical environment. Tang's "heavy color" personality characteristics can be described as incisively and vividly. The first sentence of the poem, "The emperor of China longs for the beauty that may shake an empire", highly summarizes his personality characteristics. Yang Guifei, on the other hand, focuses on the appearance of "falling in love with the country" and writes about her charm, charm and charm. This image is very personal and distinctive. As a love poem, it is different from ordinary love poems. It takes political and historical events as the background and takes it as the typical environment of love tragedy. Indulge in pleasure and mistake the country, and even lead to the Anshi rebellion, which is only one aspect. At the same time, it also led to its own irreparable tragedy. It is a prejudice to be confined to "female slaves" blindly. It must be noted that the demise of the "rule of Kaiyuan" was not limited to this, but more importantly, it was the result of various social contradictions in the Tang Dynasty. For example, people's livelihood issues, frequent foreign invasions, separatist regimes in buffer regions, and disputes between eunuchs and cronies have intensified. These knotty and complicated contradictions can't be changed by Tang, and even people of insight can't develop them. And this bleak reality has become the inevitable condition and typical environment of tragedy. We say that Song of Eternal Sorrow not only takes Tang and Yang Guifei as the hero and heroine, but also writes some important historical events. Such as "An Shi Rebellion" (until the drums in Yuyang shook the earth), "Xuanzong prospered Shu" (a thousand riders rode southwest), and "Ma Wei mutiny" (the soldiers in the army stopped and did not move). We believe that the creation of historical works should be faithful to big historical facts, but not mechanically subordinate to historical facts. Take it as a skeleton and make it historic. But the focus should be on the characterization and the description of details (flesh and blood). Only in this way can the integrity of literature and art be maintained. According to this, we can see that although these political and historical events contain strong persuasion and irony, they criticize the decadent life of Emperor Tang Ming in his later years, but this is not the theme of the poem. The title should be "everlasting regret" and "everlasting regret", and this endless sadness will last forever. The eternal hatred in the author's heart is obviously mainly the regret of love, but it is far from the feelings of where the pain between men and women will go. We don't think it will give so much sympathy to the wrong country. If we feel the rich historical content and profound practical significance from the profound meaning of Song of Eternal Sorrow, we will not regard it as a superficial and mediocre work. In addition, judging from the distribution of the whole poem 120 poems, about a quarter of the length is about pleasure and misunderstanding, but most of them are skimmed and some of them are left aside. Those places that were splashed with ink all fell on the tragedy of love between Li and Yang. The last fictional fairyland part. Write that Yang Guifei became immortal after her death and was infatuated with Xuanzong, without irony to persuade her. Judging from the three or two paragraphs of the whole poem, although the emphasis is different, the word "amorous feelings" runs through it all the time. In short, the whole poem is complete in form and properly laid out. Through the creative arrangement of poetry structure, we can also explore the implication of the poet and explore what the poet did not say. This will deepen our understanding and knowledge of love. (2)B& gt； Bai Juyi himself thinks that Song of Eternal Sorrow is just a sentimental poem with "various customs". This topic is quite long, starting from the time when Bai Letian wrote this poem. In the first year of Yuanhe (806), Bai was thirty-five years old and was awarded a captain to zhouzhi county (now zhouzhi county, Shaanxi). Here, he met the historian Chen Hong (the author of Song of Eternal Sorrow) and Lang Jing Wang Zhifu. They often swim and sing together. I visited a temple and talked about the story of Xuanzong and Yang Guifei in the Tang Dynasty. When Wang Zhifu raised a glass of wine to Lotte, he said: You are good at writing poems and have rich feelings. How about writing a poem? Wang Zhifu thought the story was poetic and emotional, while Bai Juyi was good at writing poems and was very emotional, so he was asked to write a poem. We think this is based on "love". Chen Hong, on the other hand, thinks that "Song of Eternal Sorrow" "is not only emotional, but also wants to punish the stunner, smothering the chaos and hanging the future." . "("The Legend of Eternal Sorrow ") Chen thinks that writing this poem for nothing is not only because it is moved by it, but also the main purpose should be to punish those beautiful women, because they often bring disaster to the country and the people, so as to prevent it from being passed down to future generations as a warning. The above are Wang and Chen's views: one thinks that we should start from "love" and the other thinks that it is intended to satirize the afterlife. This leads to two different views on the theme of this poem. In fact, Lotte himself doesn't think Song of Eternal Sorrow is a satire, and his view is different from that of Chen Hong. He himself commented: "One long poem is full of amorous feelings, and three fat's ten poems are close to the accent" ("Compiling fifteen volumes of clumsy poems, because of the end of the title volume, the drama adds nine yuan and twenty miles"). He clearly believes that Song of Eternal Sorrow expresses the love between men and women, which is different from satirical poetry. So when he compiled it himself, he classified the Song of Eternal Sorrow as a sentimental poem. Sentimental poems are those that "have something to pull out". "The reason is moving inside, and it is shaped by the sigher." (Preface and Postscript to the Biography of Baiju in the Old Tang Dynasty) Song of Eternal Sorrow expresses his inner "reason" that he was moved by the love tragedy of Li and Yang. He also said above: "The poems of today's servants are loved by people, but the miscellaneous poems and songs of everlasting regret are ignored. When the time is heavy, the servant is light. " In his own opinion, although the works such as Song of Eternal Sorrow are not as "wonderful and qualitative" as satirical poems, the poet just likes Song of Eternal Sorrow. It can be seen that the attitude of the poet is very clear. He never thought "Song of Eternal Sorrow" was a poem expressing political views and intentions. That is, it is not an allegorical poem, and its theme is not politics, but love. As Wellek said in the book Principles of Literature: "The full meaning of a work of art cannot be defined only by its author and the author's contemporary viewpoint. It is the result of a cumulative process, that is, the result of countless readers' criticism of this work. "Webster's point of view is correct, but on the contrary, it is often easy to ignore the former when appreciating reading. We see that there are two aspects involved here: the creative subject (author) and the receiving subject (reader). The two are complementary and unified. However, because the image system in poetry is often greater than the poet's subjective mentality, it will induce the re-creation motivation as the receiving subject (readers and critics), and all kinds of readers will sublimate their own different ideal blueprints. Various views on the theme of Song of Eternal Sorrow are examples. Some people sublimate it into "satire", some people sublimate it into "emotion", and some people sublimate it into both satire and sympathy. But we must see and admit that the reader's re-creation mentality will interfere with the poet's original mentality. That is, the extended meaning of the reader (such as irony and double theme) will interfere with the original meaning of the poem (love theory). On the contrary, it caused a gap in examining the aesthetic feeling of the original poem. Therefore. When we appreciate the beauty of poetry, we should fully understand the poet's initial creative mentality and try to reduce the interference of readers' creative mentality so as not to destroy the integrity and original appearance of the poetic image system. Therefore, when we appreciate it, we should evaluate its thought, art, realm, style, expression, language and rhetoric, and point out their values in their respective times and later generations, or point out their coordinate positions in the whole history of ancient China literature. We know that. "Poetry is the expression of personality creation and the expression of personality creation impulse." (Guo Moruo: On Poetry) "Style is man" (Marx: Comment on Prussia's recent book and newspaper inspection). However, as the creative subject, poets often transcend reality. Although the love story between Tang and Yang Guifei has folk basis and legends for reference, when the poet projects all his thoughts and feelings on the artistic image, because it is a typical image, it is bound to be higher than life and can give people inspiration and association. In this way, it will greatly surpass the author's original thought and have broader, deeper, more universal and richer significance. For example, at the beginning of the writing of Song of Eternal Sorrow, there was never a rational thought of "punishing stunners and suppressing chaos", but the result did not appear in the works, because from the existing poems, we did not feel that women were a disaster and "women perished". When the promotion of politics and religion conflicts with the description of sex, poets often take an exclusive attitude towards sex, but when the love tide that has been recognized by the world and owned by everyone comes to the pen, this feeling cannot be expelled or stifled, and the beauty of human nature has reached its peak. Even if there is irony, as long as love is described in depth, the main part of the work will not appear in the form of irony. Just as he wrote Li Furen, he deliberately satirized the emperor for not being close to women. But the pawn Zhang said, "Life is confusing, and death is confusing. You can't forget the stunner. It is better not to meet the whole city. " This is a helpless move to solve the problem. If we don't get close to "the whole city changes color", we can't solve the problem. This just reflects that the poet transcends the limitations of class consciousness within the limits allowed by the times, pursues the freedom and happiness of life, and embodies the value requirements of human beings. If Bai Juyi really writes this poem as an allegorical poem and criticizes "stunner", then the value of Song of Eternal Sorrow will plummet. In our opinion, reluctantly including Song of Eternal Sorrow in the category of satirical poetry will not increase its value. Commenting on Song of Eternal Sorrow from a macro perspective should not be regarded as exposing the decadence of the ruling class simply and mechanically, but should focus on the position and contribution of characterization methods in the history of ancient China literature. Combining the social value and aesthetic significance of Song of Eternal Sorrow, we may get better results. (3)B& gt； People's thoughts and feelings are the main object of literary psychology exploration and the central link of poetry aesthetic evaluation. From the perspective of appreciating the beauty of poetry, the ancients said: "Poetry expresses aspiration" and "Poetry is based on emotion". Although these two statements are slightly different, they are actually the same. Han said in Preface to Mao's Poems: "Mind is ambition. Speech is poetry. Emotion moves in the middle and is shaped by words. The "ambition" mentioned here refers to people's thoughts and feelings, and people's psychological activities, which are combined together. When he arrived at Lu Ji in the Jin Dynasty, he said "I'm interested in graves" in his prose. I want to cultivate my temperament from ancient books, and here is my feeling. We know that people's thoughts and feelings mainly come from their feelings about the objective world. It is a reflection of people's social practice: but these thoughts and feelings are often complicated. Different social life is reflected in the poet's mind, which inevitably produces different thoughts and feelings and different mentality. This kind of "emotion" and "heart" has become a main channel for us to explore the beauty of poetry. We believe that as an appreciator of the beauty of poetry, we should not only be satisfied with comments and explanations, but also explore the overall image of poetry in the complete sense of understanding poetry (content and form, ideology and artistry are inseparable whole). Discover the beauty of poetry from it. Mr. Lu Xun once said: "Appreciate poetry and prose. We should start with understanding the author's whole heart and full text, as well as the historical conditions and social background in which the author lives. "The reason why we have such and such views on the theme of" Song of Eternal Sorrow "mainly lies in how to discover the mentality as the creative subject, how to discover the inner image with vitality and how to discover the beauty of the poem. The central task of poetry aesthetics lies in highlighting "people" and "feelings". Because literature is a human study. Poetics is the study of emotion. No one can't be a literature. Ruthlessness is not its poetics, man is the root of literature, and emotion is the lifeblood of poetics. Bai Juyi himself once said: "The root of a poet lies in emotion, Miao characters, flowers and true meaning", and he used emotion as a metaphor for his own roots. Emotion is the starting point of appreciation and the end point of exploring the beauty of poetry. Poetry is based on emotion. Poetry is heartless. Where does beauty come from? Therefore, when appreciating the beauty of poetry, we should mainly discuss how the poet's emotional world is properly expressed in poetry. How does Bai Letian, who is "not just a feeling", express his feelings in the creation of Song of Eternal Sorrow? It can be said that the theme of his thoughts is relatively hidden, while "inclination" is "naturally revealed from scenes and plots" (Engles: Sensitizing Kaucki). Bai Juyi is on the balance of emotion and reason. This emotion is better than reason, and sympathy is better than criticism. There is no universally applicable method for the merits and demerits of Tang Xuanzong in his later years. Nor did it completely deny it. There is no blind criticism, criticism and disgust, and there is no public speaking, but sympathy is expressed in criticism and irony. For example, in the description of political indulgence, only "but the night in spring is short, the sun rises too fast, and the emperor gave up his early hearing from then on" and "soft songs and slow dances, string and bamboo music, the emperor's eyes will never be enough to watch her". The vivid description of specific feelings in the second half is more about sympathy and understanding for the poet than reason. Fantasy fairyland. Yang Guifei's infatuation with resurrection after her death is idealistic. It is "where there is reason, there is affection" (Tang Xianzu: Preface to Peony Pavilion). However, the seclusion and loneliness of the living Tang Xuanzong after his status changed in his later years are more likely to arouse people's sympathy because of his pain and suffering. In the handling of love tragedy, there is also more sympathy than criticism. Tang and Yang Guifei are the makers of love tragedy, the inheritors of love tragedy and the embodiment of beautiful love. The attitude shown by the poet here is intertwined with criticism and sympathy. The poet washed away the political color of their love with tears of sympathy, endowed ordinary people with unswerving love, and pinned their beautiful ideals on these two people. The affair between Yang Guifei and An Lushan was deleted. The fact that Yang Yuhuan is a "longevity princess" has also been deleted. In this way, Yang Guifei was dragged out from the prejudice of the ruling class of "the woman who conquered the country", and wrote the beautiful, gentle, affectionate, jealous and delicate sides of the feudal imperial concubine, and returned Yang Guifei to the true colors of history. Especially after her tragic death, she was endowed with a kind of pure beauty of "thinking face, taking Liu as eyebrow" and "spring rain on pear flowers" Deep sympathy. This is the expression of the poet's progressive thought. At the same time, the poet also highlighted Yang Guifei's loyalty on the issue of love and Tang's love for her. It can be said that the poet beautified these two characters in love and wrote the development process of their love from shallow to deep. When their love finally reached maturity, they reached an agreement, "We want to fly in heaven, two birds grow together on the earth with one wing, two branches of a tree. ".We say that this description does not conform to the love reality of the ruling class. It just shows an ideal of the poet and the opposition between true feelings and ethics. Through loyalty in love, the poet expressed deep sympathy for the love tragedy of the emperor's empresses. The reason why this long poem can be spread through the ages, even children can sing "Song of Eternal Sorrow" is because the poet tells a tragic love story of an emperor and his concubine with lyrical style and sympathetic psychology, which fully shows the joy, pain and sadness of love; It is also the poet who endowed emotional characters with extremely beautiful style, and Yang Guifei's deep affection for Tang's death was particularly touching. The lingering feelings, twists and turns, beautiful language and romantic fantasy have attracted readers of all ages, making it a world-renowned masterpiece.