At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the poetic world once followed the ethos of the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, with low style, narrow artistic conception and lack of change. After Yang Yi and others studied Li Shangyin's poems, Kunxi style became popular for a while. Although the atmosphere has changed, most of their works are divorced from reality because they pay too much attention to form and aim at exquisite allusions and gorgeous rhetoric, which brings new disadvantages. It was not until Mei and Ouyang Xiu joined forces in the field of poetry that a new road was opened up for the development of Song poetry.
Mei Yao Chen, the word Yu Sheng; He loved poetry all his life and his works were extremely rich. There are more than 3,000 existing poems, all of which are included in the book Wan. Ouyang Xiu, whose real name is Yong Shu, is recognized as a literary master in literature, and his poems, words and literary achievements are all very high. He and Mei have been good friends for many years and often exchange poems and songs. Their poems advocate closeness, and there are many similarities in their creative tendencies. People at that time were called Emei.
Ouyang Xiu and Mei both grew up under the influence of the wind, and their early works were inevitably influenced by the wind. Later, with the changes of the times, the influence of Quincy's poetic style weakened, and their poetic style gradually matured in the change. At that time, the Song Dynasty was at war with Xixia, social contradictions intensified and political struggles were fierce. In this environment, Ou Mei believes that poetry should touch the reality and reflect the social situation in time.
In Mei's works reflecting the current situation, some recorded the war with Xixia, some described the sufferings of the lower class people implicated in the war, and some showed the ruin of villages and exposed unreasonable social phenomena, such as potters. In several major political struggles, he stood on the right side, and his works also showed distinct love and hate. Ouyang Xiu is a political figure who wants to relieve people's sufferings through political reform. Therefore, his works are concentrated in his political comments and memorials. Therefore, his poems in this field are not as extensive as Mei Duo's.
Besides this kind of works, their other works are also very rich. Mei's poems record all aspects of his life. Because he was frustrated in the officialdom for a long time and moved to the middle and lower classes, his works expressing his feelings in this respect and the pain of losing his wife in middle age have achieved outstanding results.
Ouyang Xiu's poems mainly express his personal life experiences and feelings, and his achievements are the highest in his works in several periods. In addition, some of his poems, such as giving friends, discussing poems and praising things, also have many good chapters. The social content, life experience and ideological understanding they showed in their works surpassed Quincy, got rid of and corrected the bad influence of Quincy's poetic style, and laid the foundation for the realism of Song poetry.
As for the artistic style, Mei and Ouyang Xiu both admire Li Bai, Du Fu and Han Yu, and Mei also emphasizes that "the scenery that is difficult to write must be as before, and the implication is endless, and then it is the best." At the same time, they also advocate that their works should be innovative and energetic, not only to inherit the excellent traditions of Tang poets, but also to create a style of Song Ci different from Tang poetry.
In terms of artistic achievements, their modern poems absorbed the strengths of Wang Wei and Bai Juyi, with neat and harmonious syllables, changeable syntactic cycles and fewer difficulties and disadvantages. They add some prose skills appropriately to make metrical poems more natural and vivid; There are not many allusions, and the discussion is more naturally revealed in the lyrical description of the scenery. However, their modern poems are still more inheritance than innovation, and what really represents their poetic style is ancient poems.
Usually, the Mei Ou style or Wan Ling style mentioned by Song people refers to its five-character ancient poems. The main characteristics of poetic style are: paying attention to reciprocating circulation, reversing along the cloth and being rich in change; The language is concise and vigorous, and does not involve glitz; More casual cultural sentence patterns, pay attention to exercise the meaning and artistic conception of poetry. In Mei's poems, the achievement of five-year-old is the highest, and Ouyang Xiu's five-year-old is greatly influenced by Mei, but his achievement is slightly inferior to Mei's. His Ancient History of the Seven Dynasties was deeply influenced by Han Yu and Li Bai, and his works were mostly lyrical and lyrical, which has always been praised for its momentum and charm.
Concretely speaking, Ouyang Xiu's rhyme of seven ancient times has changed greatly, and he is good at changing rhyme with emotion. When changing rhymes, he often uses cushion rhymes and pays attention to the exchange of flat tones, resulting in cadence. The variety of sentence patterns creates ups and downs, and sometimes modern poems are mixed with them; Moreover, the structure and momentum of ancient poetry let the whole poem flow away. Mei's seven ancient poems are similar to those of Europe, but their verve is slightly inferior.
Mei and Ou had a great influence on the poetry circle at that time, and later generations spoke highly of them. On the whole, Mei's achievements are higher than Europe's. Ouyang Xiu is a great man, and he has made many achievements besides poetry. He appreciated Han Yu's attitude of "keeping the poet's true colors", and he did the same himself. He strongly recommended Mei as a leader in poetry and called himself a follower of Mei.
At the end of Song Dynasty, Liu Kezhuang also thought Mei was the "founder" of Song Dynasty. As for Ouyang Xiu, who has been in charge of the literary world of the League for more than 30 years, his creation and views on poetry have certainly played a great role. However, Mei Ou's poems also have some shortcomings. They wrote more social poems, and sometimes they pieced them together too reluctantly, which is also a common problem in later poets' poems. However, Ouyang Xiu once advocated that Han Yu take prose as poetry, and his followers inevitably became more and more fierce. Some of the poems written are like rhyming articles, even worse than Han Yu's, and they also have some adverse effects on Song poetry.