Ancient poetry refers to 1840 China's poems before the Opium War. From the perspective of meter, ancient poetry can be divided into ancient poetry and modern poetry. Taking the Tang Dynasty as the boundary, the previous poems were all ancient poems, and later, the ancient poems gradually declined and died out. Ancient poetry is also called ancient poetry or ancient style; Modern poetry is also called modern poetry. From the Book of Songs to Yu Xin in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, they are all ancient poems, but the poems after the Tang Dynasty are not necessarily modern poems, but they are distinguished according to rhyme.
There are many styles of ancient poetry in China, and there are different opinions on the classification and appellation of ancient poetry. Especially for Yuefu, ancient style and ballad poetry, it is even more confusing. Because, from the formal point of view, Yuefu style and ancient style are both five-character styles, and seven-character ancient poems and ancient songs are all seven-character styles, so it is difficult to distinguish them. But since ancient times, people have unanimously recognized their differences in content, technique and style, and established their names.
Chinese characters also have a very important influence on the form of China's poetry, which is mainly manifested in:
1. Concise sentences
Classical poetry, except words and songs, is mostly neat sentences. For example, The Book of Songs is basically four words, The Songs of Chu is generally six words plus the word "Xi", and most ancient poems and modern poems are five or seven words. For example:
Guan Guan sui dove,
In Hezhou.
My beautiful lady,
A gentleman would like to marry a good girl. ("The Book of Songs")
2. Peace and confrontation
"Ping" and "Nuo" are two major categories of Chinese tones. In modern poetry, poetry and songs, there are quite strict regulations on the use of flat and even words. Some posts must use plain language, and some posts must use plain language. For example:
Spread a tight knot and make it as long as possible. (Han Yu: "Chun Xue")
Antithesis means that in a couplet, words with the same position in the upper and lower sentences should belong to the same category, such as "green plums in the east garden and green grass in the west garden". East and West, Nursery and Garden, Plum and Green Grass, Development and Opening are opposites.
3. Words and grammar
Because each Chinese character is basically an independent unit with both form, sound and meaning, and many Chinese characters are polysemous, and the bonding relationship between words is varied, so the words in this bonding poem are extremely complicated and diverse. For example, adding a word after the word "wind" can form many words: charm, scenery, wind and thunder, wind and frost, wind and wind, etc.
Syntactically, due to the characteristics of Chinese (such as lack of morphology and flexible structure, etc. ) and the independence of Chinese characters, in classical poetry, two Chinese characters are often separated or some Chinese characters are moved from the back to the front. Typical is Du Fu's poem "Sweet rice pecks at parrot grains, phoenix perches on old branches". The normal syntax should be "parrot pecks fragrant rice, phoenix perches on old branches"
Knowledge related to ancient poetry:
Rhyme: rhyming words at the end of a verse sentence, such as the bright light at the foot of my bed, may there be frost already? Looking up, I found that it was moonlight and sank again. In Li Bai's Silent Night Thinking, I suddenly thought of home. The land of light and frost is rhyme. Usually the third sentence doesn't rhyme, but there are also poems with irregular rhymes (such as looking at Tianmen Mountain).
2. Rhyme: Poetry rhymes to make the tone harmonious and beautiful. For example, Li Bai's "Silent Night Thinking" uses rhyme.
3. The structure of metrical poems: * * eight sentences, with one or two sentences as the head couplet, three or four sentences as the parallel couplet, five or six sentences as the neck couplet and seven or eight sentences as the tail couplet.
4. The rhythm and rhythm of ancient poetry:
Judging from the sentence pattern, the four words of ancient poetry are generally two and two; Five words are two, two and one; These seven characters are two, two, two, one,
In a sense, sometimes there are special circumstances due to ideographic needs, such as: Shila | Wuyue | Gai | Chicheng, which becomes Type II, II, I and II.
Because there are no punctuation marks in ancient poems (punctuation marks were added by later generations), one line is one sentence.
6. Restore the inverted word order and grasp the poet's true intention and emotional focus.
A. the subject is postpositioned. Cui Hao's poem "Yellow Crane Tower": "Every tree in Hanyang is clear, and a nest of herbs in Nautilus Island." It means "Qingchuan (Shangqingyuanye) has vivid Hanyang trees (countable), and Parrot Island is thriving".
B. prepositional object. Du Fu's poem "Moonlight Night": "Clouds are fragrant and foggy, and jade shoulders are cold." In fact, it is "fragrant fog and wet clouds, cold and jade arms."
C. transposition of subject and object. Ye Mengde's "He Xinlang" words: "Autumn is getting late, and the frost letter reports yellow flowers." Obviously, it also means "returning yellow flowers to frost".
D. the location of the attribute.
(1) Attributive moves forward. Wang Changling's poem "Joining the Army" said: "There are dark snow mountains in Qinghai, and the lonely city looks at Yumenguan." The "lonely city" in the next sentence refers to Yumenguan, which is an appositive of Yumenguan, but now it is moved to the verb "overlooking", which is easily misunderstood as standing on another lonely city overlooking Yumen.
(2) After the attributive is moved. Li Bai's poem "Tianmu Mountain dreams of climbing high": "My heart and dreams are in Wu and Yue, and I cross the mirror lake on a moonlit night." It means "flying over Mirror Lake on January night".
E. adverbial in the form of object. "People don't know where to go, but peach blossoms are still smiling in the spring breeze." On the surface, "laughing at the spring breeze" is a verb-object phrase. In fact, "autumn wind" and "spring breeze" are not based on "moving" and "laughing", but mean "moving in the autumn wind" and "laughing in the spring breeze" respectively.
There are some words worthy of special attention in many poems, which usually add a lot of color to the whole poem and even become the eyes of the poem.
The poet Miracle wrote a poem "Early Plum", and there is a saying: "In the former village of Zita Law, a few branches opened last night." Zheng Gu changed the word "number" to "one" because the title was "early plum blossom". If a few branches are opened, it means that the flowers have been blooming for a long time, so it can't be regarded as "early plum". Miracle admired Zheng Gu and called him a "word teacher". The word "green" in Wang Anshi's Spring Breeze and Green Jiang Nanan, the word "see" in Tao Qian's "Seeing Nanshan leisurely", the word "de" in Zhang Xian's "Clouds breaking the moon to make a flower shadow" and the word "noisy" in Song Qi's "Red Apricot Branches Full of Spring" are all well known.
Verbs: When appreciating poetry, we should pay attention to verbs, especially those with "multiple meanings".
Example 1: You remember the Qingxi Banli Bridge, where there was no old red board and there were too few people in Qiushui. There is no one at sunset, leaving a weeping willow. The word "leftover" is prominent here, so the author doesn't have to "stay" or "see". The wonderful thing is that although the meaning of "leftover" and "stay" is similar, the word "leftover" is generally passive, with "residual" and "surplus"
Meaning; In addition, the word "leftover" is time-sensitive and gives people a sense of helplessness. "Stay" is not that meaningful. "Seeing" is only temporary, and it can't give people a sense of change by comparing the past and the present.
Modifiers: mostly adjectives, but also the focus of poetry appreciation.
Example 1: Young boudoir women don't know how to worry, so they put on Cui Lou in spring. Suddenly I saw the green willows, and I felt uncomfortable; Oh, I regret that I shouldn't have asked my husband to find Hou Feng. ("in my heart forever" Wang Changling) The first two sentences are written by a young woman who has finished dressing and rushed to Cuilou to enjoy the spring scenery. At this time, the author used a word "suddenly", which means casual and just right. Encounter: The willow color that broke into her eyes reminded her of the scene of seeing her husband off, and she couldn't help but feel sad when she thought of him. This is a young woman with a childish face. A word "suddenly" vividly describes this emotional change, which is also the intriguing place of this poem.
③ Special words: In poetry, some words are unique in themselves, and readers can find them quickly:
A. Reduplicated words: Reduplicated words have two functions: enhancing the sense of rhythm of language or playing an emphasis role.
The willows in Jiang Shuiping are green, and I can hear the songs on the Langjiang River. (《lt； "Zhuzhi Ci" Part I, "Liu Yuxi")
Looking around, lonely and sad. ("Slow Whispering" Li Qingzhao)
B Onomatopoeic words: Some onomatopoeic words are overlapping words, so they are listed separately because of their high frequency. It has a function: to make poetry more vivid and make people feel immersive.
Outside the curtain, the rain is gurgling, spring is fading, and Luo Can can't stand the cold. ("Langtaosha" Li Wei)
The endless trees are rustling leaves, and the Yangtze River is rolling unpredictably. ("Ascending the Mountain" Du Fu)
C. Words expressing colors: These words are sometimes used as predicates, sometimes as attributes, and sometimes as subjects or objects. But there is only one function. Color generally expresses mood, enhances the color sense and picture sense of description, and renders the atmosphere.
When you appreciate it, you can grasp the words that can express light colors, and realize the rich artistic meaning and distinctive rhythm of the poem: "Two orioles sing green willows, and a row of egrets go up to the sky", and the four colors of yellow, emerald, white and cyan are interspersed with each other.
Arrival is also from point to line, extending to infinite space. The picture is static and dynamic, full of distinct three-dimensional rhythm. Or grasp the word that can show sharp contrast and realize emotional color concentration in poetry: "Time is easy to make people."
Throw, red cherry, green banana. "Red and Greenway" shows Jie Jiang's "colored thought", that is, the time sequence is in a hurry and spring is fleeting. Even if we grasp the words expressed by a single color, we can appreciate the poet's deep affection: "Recalling the green clothes, we pity the grass everywhere." "Who is drunk in the frost forest at dawn, always makes people cry! "The feeling of pity is in Green and Drunken Red.