Qian Chi Bi Fu was written during Su Shi's relegation to Huangzhou, which was one of the most difficult periods in his life. In the second year of Yuanfeng (1079), Su Shi was arrested and imprisoned for "Wutai Poetry Case". "After several reconstructions", he was tortured. After being rescued by many parties, he was released in1February of that year and was demoted to deputy ambassador of Huangzhou Youth League Training, but "no official contract, no unauthorized placement." This is undoubtedly a "semi-prisoner" controlled life. 1082, Ren Xu and Su Shi wrote Qian Chi Bi Fu. In his poems in Huangzhou, he once painfully described the melancholy and depressed mood at this time. "I was in Huanggang for four or five years, and I was alone in the waves, so I stopped asking questions and suspected that I died of hunger and cold." . Qian Chi Bi Fu was written in an era when Su Shi was politically frustrated, unable to move freely, had a hard life and was extremely depressed. In his "Red Cliff Ci", it is clearly revealed that "one river does not return, and it is a romantic figure through the ages." However, in reality, I can only "grow up early" and sigh that "life is like a dream". Under this heavy mental pressure, Dongpo has a deep feeling in his heart. He began to feel more worried and nihilistic about the world than ever before, but if he just lamented the vicissitudes of human beings, he would not have our admiration for his literary talent and personality today. Dongpo became Dongpo's "old Dongpo" because he was good at "getting rid of the outside world" (which is very important). One's life can't be without a blow. The problem is the attitude towards the blow. Facing the cruel political struggle, Su Dongpo wants to be detached, but he can't be detached. He said at the back of the book Before the Ode to the Red Wall: "When Shi wrote this ode last year, he didn't show people lightly, but only covered one or two people. Qin Zhi (the word was stolen by Fu Yao) sent him a letter asking for a recent article, so he sent it himself. I am afraid of how difficult things are. If you love me, you will hide. " This postscript helps to understand the author's depressed mood at that time. Su Shi had to seek sustenance from Buddhism and Taoism. The landscape of Huangzhou evoked his nostalgia for the ancients, so he expressed his admiration for the heroes of his predecessors and his ambition to govern the world. In a word, Su Shi's mentality at that time was extremely complicated: passive retreat and positive progress, suffering from illness and carefree landscapes, but behind the idea of not competing with the world, he showed anger at the injustice of the world, enterprising spirit of being unwilling to compromise, contempt for wealth and broad-minded feelings of pride and independence.
Some people once thought that Su Shi's "cautious thing" when he regarded Huangzhou Chibi as a place of friends in Sun Bin was not very accurate. The Chibi visited by Su Shi is not the real Chibi where there was a great war in history. However, the focus of Su Shi's article is not Zhou Yu's act of breaking Cao Zhuang, but he only writes articles to express his feelings through things in order to get rid of them.
Throughout the whole paper, the author's feelings have experienced three changes: joy-sadness-joy, and the author's thoughts have also experienced a development process from calm to depression, and then from depression to liberation. And around the three changes of the author's feelings, the whole article is also cleverly unfolded. "Writing carries the Tao", if the author wants to make his thoughts and feelings clearly understood by readers, he must use good literary expressions. Su Shi's philosophical thoughts in this article are also conveyed through his new use of Fu. Qianchibi Fu is a ci fu, and the author's thoughts and opinions are often expressed in the form of subject-object questions and answers. This traditional format is obviously adopted in Qianchibi Fu. Ci pays attention to parallelism and duality, and there are many parallelism and duality sentences in Qian Chi Bi Fu, so it has the basic characteristics of Ci Fu. However, Su Shi's fu is not as gorgeous as that since the Han and Wei Dynasties, but only lays out things, with little philosophical infiltration. The reason why this article is enduring is that it has made new achievements in breaking through the old style of ci and fu, which we can call prose poetry today. The poet expresses the emotional waves in his heart with a flowing style, which makes his words more vivid, more sincere and integrated with words. We have to admire Su Shi's extraordinary ability to control words. To sum up, this article has two major contributions to literature:
First, it fully shows the characteristics of prose that "the form is scattered and the spirit is not scattered". This poem is poetic, picturesque and philosophical. As far as scenery is concerned, there are bright moons, rivers and autumn winds; As far as love is concerned, there are joys and sorrows. Sometimes boating in Qiu Jiang, singing while buttoning; Sometimes he becomes independent and immortal; Sometimes I ask questions and talk about philosophy. The change of scenery and the jumping of emotions are very frequent, but they are not messy, but run through the author's subjective feelings. Su Shi expounded the philosophy of change and invariance in his article. Although this argument originated from Laozi and Zhuangzi's relativism philosophy, it has idealistic elements, but at the same time it has dialectical elements. This is the idea that the author should concentrate on expressing and the "spirit" of the article. God gathers and scatters. With subjective feelings, the prose is full of ups and downs and interesting. The article is full of emotion in the scenery and has a high artistic appeal, which provides a successful example for later prose creation.
Second, the ingenious use and innovation of "Fu" style. Fu on the Former Red Cliff is a clever combination of prose and verse, and a unity of poetry and prose. The article is a prose style, but it is not limited to ancient prose. Its sentences are long and short, its prose is vivid and elegant, and it is a beautiful prose poem. The scenes visited by this article are constantly changing, and the poet's emotions are constantly changing, but his literary style is always a note. There are both the beauty of neat parallel prose and poetic beauty, the beauty of free and rambling, and the beauty of vivid reasoning. In such a prose poem, we can appreciate both the beauty of literature and the interest of philosophy, which is undoubtedly the perfect integration of literature and philosophy.