The Book of Songs is the beacon and source of ancient poetry. Its high artistic achievements can be seen from the following aspects:
Realistic creative skills
In all kinds of works in The Book of Songs, their understanding of reality, their love and hate are all expressed in simple language and moving pictures of life.
This realistic writing technique has been well reflected in the national style and has become its remarkable artistic feature, which has a great influence on later poetry.
"July" depicts the intense working life of serfs for a year in a sketch way, just like genre painting, which is real and vivid.
Poetry with national style shows the author's understanding and criticism of society by describing specific things and highlighting a certain aspect of life or character characteristics.
"Yellow Bird", the author uses the theme of human martyrdom to protest this atrocity through people's sympathy and regret for the victims.
After a long time, by letting imaginary relatives tell it, it shows the pain brought by the corvee and military service to the people.
Those national folk songs that expose the ugly behavior of rulers, or repeatedly reprimand, or sharply ridicule, or severely curse, all deeply express the people's hatred of exploiters and are also a powerful impact on the unjust reality. .
Image building
In terms of image-building, The Book of Songs also shows the characteristics of realistic art. In most lyric poems, the author expresses their joy and sadness through the direct talk of the protagonist's heart, which resonates with readers and allows them to see the protagonist's actions and distinctive personality different from them.
"Wan Shang" is a short poem, but the girl's voice, face and smile suddenly come out.
The last chapter of Wild Birds Dead is a girl's monologue, which vividly shows her inner excitement while waiting for her lover to meet.
The gentleness and meekness of the heroine in Gu Feng, and
The heroine of Meng is strong and decisive, with strong contrast and outstanding image.
A vivid description
The description of scenery in The Book of Songs also plays a role in setting off characters, such as
"The gentleman is in service", the vivid scene of the poet's livestock returning in the evening, sets off the heroine's sad mood of leaning against the door and returning home, which is unpretentious and touching.
"Sword Armor" sets off the protagonist's emptiness and frustration in pursuing the right person with the bleak scene of "the sword armor is pale and the white dew is like frost" in the clear autumn.
"Yao Tao" is full of bright peach blossoms, which set off the radiant appearance of the girls who are going to get married.
Diversification of forms
The Book of Songs is mostly four words and one sentence in form, which rhymes with other sentences, but it is not rigid and full of changes. Many poems often break through the four-character freeze and use sentences with two, three, five, six, seven and eight characters. For example, "Cutting Sandalwood" is a miscellaneous poem, but it is not awkward. On the contrary, I feel patchwork and have a natural sense of rhythm. Overlapping chapters is another feature of The Book of Songs. In repeated singing, the musicality and rhythm of poetry are enhanced, and the poet's feelings and charm are also conveyed. For example, "Caige" expresses deep feelings for lovers in repeated singing.
Refinement and beauty of language
The language of The Book of Songs is accurate, beautiful and full of images. In particular, according to the characteristics of Chinese phonology, the author uses disyllabic sounds (such as "uneven" and "mysterious yellow"), overlapping rhymes (such as "Cui Wei" and "graceful and restrained") and overlapping words (such as "death" and "center of gravity").
On the position and influence of The Book of Songs in the history of literature.
The ideological content and artistic achievements of The Book of Songs occupy a high position in Chinese and foreign cultural history, and its influence on later literature is far-reaching and enormous, mainly from its ideological content and artistic skills:
As far as ideological content is concerned
The realistic spirit of The Book of Songs, especially folk songs with national style, has the greatest influence on later literature, prompting poets and writers to care about the fate of the country and the sufferings of the people.
Folk songs of past dynasties, from Yuefu in Han and Wei Dynasties to modern ballads, have profoundly embodied the realistic spirit of The Book of Songs.
In the early Tang Dynasty, Chen Ziang criticized Qi Liang's poems for "adopting beauty and contending for differences" with "elegance but not behavior" and "prosperity".
Du Fu, a great realistic poet, also took "not cutting the illusory body, being close to elegance" as his creative direction.
Bai Juyi also summed up the achievements of realistic poetry creation since Wei and Jin Dynasties with "elegance" and "comparison" as standards, and put forward the idea that "articles should be written in time and poems should be written in content".
Poets such as Li Bai also inherited and carried forward the realistic spirit of The Book of Songs.
As far as artistic skills are concerned.
In terms of expression techniques, The Book of Songs uses several techniques: Fu, Bi and Xing. Its accurate, beautiful and vivid language, combined with the characteristics of Chinese phonology, uses disyllabic, reduplicative and reduplicative words to describe delicate and tortuous feelings and the characteristics of natural scenery, which has had a great influence on later literary creation (especially verse). Its four words (including two, three, five, six, seven and eight words) mainly inspired later literary forms such as Han Fu, Yuefu, Tang Poetry, Song Poetry and Yuanqu.
In a word, The Book of Songs is the first of its kind in both ideological content and artistic skills. As Zhang Xuecheng said, "The writings of later generations ... mostly originated from the Book of Songs." This shows that The Book of Songs has a great influence on later literature.