The play is composed of six quatrains
Author: Du Fu Era: Tang Dynasty Genre: Qijue Category: Unknown
Yu Xin’s articles have become more sophisticated over time, and Ling Yunjian’s writing style is full of vertical and horizontal strokes.
Today's people sneer at the spread of poetry, but they don't realize that the sages of the past are afraid of the younger generations.
The king of Yang, Lu Luo, was in a frivolous and frivolous style at that time.
Er Cao’s body and name will both be destroyed, and the rivers will not flow forever.
Even though King Lu was good at calligraphy and calligraphy, he was inferior to the Han and Wei Dynasties.
The dragon, the tiger, the spine are all under the control of the king, and I have seen you and Cao all the time.
It’s hard to praise many people for their talents, but who is the best among them now?
Or look at the emerald orchids and the whales in the blue sea.
Modern people love the ancients no matter how much they love them, and their clear words and beautiful sentences must be their neighbors.
Climbing Qu Song Yi Fang Jia secretly, fearing that he would follow in the footsteps of Qi Liang.
Don’t doubt it if you haven’t reached the level of the previous sages. Let’s tell the ancestors who came first.
Bie Cai’s fake body is elegant, Zhuan Yiduo is your master.
Li Chonghua, a native of the Qing Dynasty, commented on Du Fu's quatrain poems in "Zhenyizhai Poetry":
Qijue is a Tang Dynasty movement with the most workers. ...After Li Bai and Wang Changling, Liu Mengde should be the most popular. The fate is hazy and misty when I write it. It comes without reason and its departure is boundless. Du Lao Qijue wanted to part ways with other families, so he took a different path. His unique feelings are the most elegance of the poet. ...
He said that Du Fu "did not take a different path" and found a new path among the seven unique works of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. This is something that anyone who is familiar with Du Fu's quatrains can feel. Except for a few chapters such as "Giving Flowers to the Queen" and "Jiangnan Meets the Year of Li Gui", his Qijue is indeed unique.
First of all, it expands the field of quatrains in terms of content. He also wrote quatrains on all subjects, including current affairs, political discussions, art essays, and narration of trivial matters around him, which could be expressed in other poetic styles.
Secondly, related to this, in terms of art, this type of quatrain poem is not hazy and ethereal, and is known for its rhyme; it also lacks the sighing sound of being sung by orchestras. The unique beauty it creates is that it triggers interest, has many wonderful thoughts, and is full of emotion when reading, just like gossiping around the fire, cutting candles and discussing one's heart; whether it is sighing, laughing or cursing, it can give people a warm and sincere feeling. The sense of straightforwardness and sincerity makes people feel as if they see him and hear his voice. The unique style of simplicity and elegance is endless.
"Six Quatrains for Play" (hereinafter referred to as "Six Quatrains") is one of the specimens of Du Fu's quatrain poems.
The most common form of discussing poetry based on poetry is quatrains. Each poem can talk about an issue; many poems can be connected into a group of poems, and a complete artistic view can be seen. In the theoretical heritage of Chinese poetry, there are many famous quatrains on poetry, and the earliest and most influential one is Du Fu's "Six Quatrains".
"Six Quatrains" was written in the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (761). The first three poems comment on the writer, and the last three poems reveal the purpose of poetry. Its spirit is connected from front to back and interconnected, forming an indivisible whole.
The first poem of "Six Quatrains" is about Yu Xin. Du Fu once said in "Recalling Li Bai in Spring", "Refreshing Yu Kaifu". This poem points out that the style of Yu Xin's later articles (also referring to poems and poems) is more mature: "Yu Xin's articles are more mature with age, and Ling Yunjian's writing style is vertical and horizontal." The strong brush strokes reach the clouds, opening and closing vertically and horizontally, and is not only known for its "freshness". The "modern people" in the Tang Dynasty pointed fingers and sneered at Yu Xin, which fully demonstrated their ignorance. Therefore, "predecessors are afraid of future generations" is just a sarcastic irony.
The second and third poems discuss the four heroes of the early Tang Dynasty. The poems and prose of the early Tang Dynasty have not yet completely gotten rid of the remaining habits of algae painting in the Six Dynasties. In the second poem, "frivolous writing" was a term used by people at that time to ridicule the "Four Heroes". Shi Bing's "Du Shi Suo Zheng" explains this poem: "It was the fashion of the time to talk about the style of Si Zi, and those who ridicule it for being frivolous still continue to this day. I never knew that both your reputation and reputation were destroyed, but the writing of Si Zi was not abolished. Like rivers flowing through the ages."
In the third poem, "Even though" is Du Fu's tone, "King Lu's calligraphy skills are inferior to those of the Han and Wei dynasties" are the words of the four heroes who were laughed at at the time (in the poem) King Lu, generally refers to the Four Heroes). Du Fu quoted their words and refuted them, so the last two sentences have such a twist. It means that even so, the four heroes can use their vertical and horizontal talents to control the magnificent words like "a dragon's text and a tiger's spine", and their works can stand the test of time.
The purpose of these three poems is very obvious: the first one says that to look at people, you must look at them all, and you cannot only see one aspect and ignore the other. The second poem says that evaluating writers cannot be separated from the conditions of their times. The third poem points out that although writers' achievements vary in size, they each have their own characteristics and do not hide each other. We should evaluate appropriately and be good at learning from our predecessors from different perspectives.
These views are undoubtedly correct. But the meaning of these three poems goes far beyond that.
The Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties were the transition stage of Chinese literature from simplicity to splendor. Lici and rhythm developed rapidly during this period, and poets made great achievements in exploring poetic forms and language techniques.
This created conditions for the overall prosperity of poetry in the Tang Dynasty. However, from another perspective, the literature of the Six Dynasties had the unhealthy tendency of emphasizing form over content. Especially after the emergence of Qi and Liang Gong styles, the poetic style became even more obscene and weak.
Therefore, the acceptance and criticism of the literature of the Six Dynasties by poetry commentators in the Tang Dynasty is an extremely difficult and complex topic.
When Qi and Liang Yufeng still dominated the poetry world of the early Tang Dynasty, Chen Ziang first proposed the idea of ??restoring ancient times, and Li Bai succeeded him, completing the work of clarifying and destroying the fall. The trend of "serving China and discarding reality" has been reversed, but some "young people" and "Er Cao" people who have no fixed opinions and regard their ears as their eyes have gone to the other extreme of "loving the ancient and relics". Shadow actually wanted to completely deny the literature of the Six Dynasties, and targeted Yu Xin and the Four Heroes of the Early Tang Dynasty.
Yu Xin summarized the literary achievements of the Six Dynasties, especially his poems with neat sentence patterns and harmonious melody and lyrical poems written in poetic language. Parallel prose plays a direct leading role. In the minds of the people of the Tang Dynasty, he was the most representative modern writer, so it was easy for him to focus on him. As for the four heroes of the early Tang Dynasty, although they were dissatisfied with the "Shangguan style" that was "based on beauty, beauty, and beauty", their main contribution lay in the inheritance and development of the artistic skills of the Six Dynasties and the establishment and consolidation of the modern poetry system. And this also became the excuse for the attack by those who "love ancient relics" and claimed that it was "inferior to the modern style of Han and Wei Dynasties".
How to evaluate Yu Xin and the Four Heroes was the focus of debate in the poetry world at that time. Du Fu grasped this focus and expressed his views directly in the last three poems of "Six Quatrains".
The "modern people" in "Modern people love the ancients no less" refers to modern writers such as Yu Xin and the Four Great Masters. The reason why Du Fu loves the past and not belittles the present is because "pure poems and beautiful sentences must be neighbors". "Being a neighbor" means being in the same tone. In Du Fu's opinion, poetry is the art of language, and "clear words and beautiful sentences" cannot be neglected. What's more, Yu Xin and the Four Great Masters not only have "clear words and beautiful sentences", but also have a side of "Long Yun Jian pen" and "Dragon writing and tiger backbone". Therefore, he advocates an eclectic approach: advocating ancient tunes while adopting new sounds, and ancient , modern style poetry goes hand in hand and will not be abandoned. "People of today love the ancients no matter how much they love us, and their clear words and beautiful sentences must be our neighbors." This should be understood in this sense.
However, just studying the Six Dynasties and blindly pursuing "clear words and beautiful sentences" such as "the jade plays with the orchid, the appearance is more vivid" may be pleasing to the eye, but the style is soft and shallow after all; if you want to To surpass the predecessors, one must be magnanimous and let his talents go as far as he can, in order to control the whale in the blue sea; in the strict overall structure, see the wonderful movement of the rhythm; not be embarrassed by the length, not limited by the rhythm, calmly Within the law, the gods are outside the rules. In order to achieve this artistic realm, Du Fu believed that the only way to achieve this level was to "stealing from the Song Dynasty". Because of its brilliance and beauty, "The Songs of Chu" is an inexhaustible ancestor of poets throughout the ages. From the Six Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, one can, as Liu Xie said: "Appreciate the strange without losing the truth, play with the flashy without losing the truth, then looking forward can drive away the power of speech, and coughing can weaken the literary power" ("Wen Xin Diao" "Long·Bian Sao"), so as not to fall into the footsteps of Qi and Liang who were frivolous and sideways.
Du Fu's idea of ??both inheriting and criticizing the literature of the Six Dynasties is concentrated in the "different styles of pseudo-style" and "turning to multiple divisions".
Forefathers have different opinions on the last poem of "Six Quatrains". The "former sages" here generally refer to the accomplished writers of the previous generation (including Yu Xin and the Four Great Masters). "It is passed down by ancestors" means that it is a tradition that follows the tradition. "The ancestral narratives passed down from generation to generation" are the root cause of "failure to catch up to the predecessors". The crux of the fakeness of "pseudo-body" lies in replacing creation with simulation. If the true and false are mixed, the false can be confused with the true, so it must be "differentiated". Creation and tradition are Du Fu's dividing lines between true and false. Only by giving full play to creativity can we express our feelings, express our own temperament, and write true literary works. This is where Yu Xin’s “vigorous pen reaches the clouds” and the Four Great Masters’ “rivers flow through the ages”. On the contrary, if you pick up the wisdom of others and follow other people's doorsteps, you will inevitably have no vitality. The pile of words and phrases, following in the footsteps of Qi and Liang, is certainly a pseudo-style; but how can the excellent Mencius and Meng's clothes who talked about Han and Wei not be a pseudo-style? In Du Fu's mind, there is only the difference between true and false, and there is no prejudice between ancient and modern.
"Biecai pseudo-style" and "Zhuanyi Duoshi" are two sides of the same problem. "Bie Cai Pseudo Style" emphasizes creation; "Zhuan Yi Duo Shi" emphasizes inheritance. The relationship between the two is dialectical. "Teacher Zhuanyi is your teacher" means a teacher who knows everything but has no definite teacher. This saying has several meanings: I can learn from everyone, so I can draw on the strengths of others; I have no fixed teacher, and I am not limited to one family. Although I have inherited and learned from it, it does not hinder my creativity. This one. Only under the premise of "differentiating fake styles" to distinguish authenticity from falsehoods can we determine who and what we "teach", and we can truly achieve "turning to multiple teachers". This is the second one. To learn everything without having a fixed master, you must be good at learning from other people's achievements from different angles. While absorbing, you must also discard some. This is the third one. To create on the basis of both criticism and inheritance, to melt the past and the present into one furnace and forge great words, this is the spirit of Du Fu's "turning to many teachers" and "different styles".
Although "Six Quatrains" mainly talks about artistic issues, it is inseparable from Du Fu's creative spirit. In the poem, "stealing from Song Dynasty" and "being close to Fengya" are the guiding ideology of his creation and the purpose of poetry.
These six short poems are essentially a summary of Du Fu's practical experience in poetry creation and a general outline of his poetic theory; they involve a series of major theoretical issues related to the development of Tang poetry. It is unprecedented for such a big discussion to be made in this kind of small poem. The poet sees the meaning immediately, like a fountain gushing from the ground. He combines solemn writing style with lightness and humor, and talks eloquently, with a mixture of solemnity and humor. This is why Li Chonghua said that Du Fu's seven masterpieces "take a different path". Knowing this, the reason why this poem is labeled "Drama as Six Quatrains" is no trouble.