History of China's Poetry

On the Forms of Poetry Expression and the Development of Poetry

Poetry is an important category of literature. No matter what kind of national literature in the world, poetry is always the earliest literary genre. According to the requirements of certain syllables, tones and rhythms, it expresses social life and people's spiritual world with concise language, rich emotions and rich imagination. China is a country with a long history of poetry and literature. A large number of poets have emerged in history, leaving us a vast and magnificent chapter and becoming an important part of the excellent literary heritage of the Chinese nation. Poetry is undoubtedly the most representative China literature. Studying the development of poetry can basically grasp the development of China literature.

Poetry works can be roughly divided into two aspects: expression form and ideological content. Form of expression refers to the internal structure and means of expression of the content of a work, mainly including language, structure, means of expression and other elements. Ideological nature usually refers to the phenomena of thoughts, feelings and social life reflected in literary works, mainly including themes, themes, characters, feelings and other elements. Our thinking tends to focus on content rather than form. Here, after studying the development of China's ancient poetry, the author thinks that from the perspective of successful specific poetry works, the expression form and content should be perfectly combined and indispensable, but for the development of poetry itself, the development of poetry expression forms has promoted the progress of poetry creation. China literature pays attention to the form of expression, and the life of poetry lies in the beauty of form. Mark Scholler, an American theorist, thinks: "Modern criticism shows us that only talking about the content itself is not about art, but about experience; Only when we talk about the finished content, that is, the form, that is, the work of art itself, are we critics. The gap between content (or experience) and finished product content (or art) is skill. " (Discussion on Skills)

China's poems paid special attention to the beauty of form from a very early age. Legend has it that Playing Songs was written in the era of the Yellow Emperor.

Broken bamboo. Diptera bamboo flying soil Mi Zhu (meaning "meat" in ancient times)

Ancient folk songs and ballads quoted in Zhouyi, such as Tunliu II;

Swallow as fast as you can. Riding a horse is like this. Bandits, marriage.

Running on June 4th:

Ben Ru, Yi Ru. White horse, Han Ru. Bandits, marriage.

Swallow is still flowing:

Riding a horse is like this. Blood and tears, like ripples.

The Book of Rites Wax-like Words and Its Suburb Features;

The soil belongs to its house, the water belongs to its valley, the insects do nothing, and the vegetation belongs to its ze.

All these have begun to take shape in the formal beauty of neat sentences, rhymes and duality, which shows that the ancients have long had the shadow buds to explore and pursue the formal beauty of poetry.

From the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, four-character poems prevailed in the world and were basically preserved in the Book of Songs. A large number of pre-Qin four-character poems and songs included in The Book of Songs have four distinct characteristics: the organizational structure of the text; Overlapping and overlapping text syntax; Rhyme; Compared with the original two-character poems, duality has made a major breakthrough in form. Behind this breakthrough is the appreciation and pursuit of formal beauty by pre-Qin people. The pursuit of formal beauty was even reflected in diplomatic occasions during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. At that time, diplomatic envoys often quoted poems from The Book of Songs for conversation, and poems with neat sentences and beautiful melodies became the necessary language for diplomacy during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Confucius believes that only by reciting poems three hundred times can we "teach them politics", "make them everywhere" and "have nothing to say without learning poems". The poems in The Book of Songs quoted by diplomatic envoys and pre-Qin ancient books are often taken out of context and don't care about the meaning of the poem, because they want the formal beauty of the poem. Pursuing formal beauty in diplomatic occasions, just like using allusions in poetry, can not only make diplomatic rhetoric more gorgeous, but also show the speaker's self-restraint

In the late Warring States period, "elegant and silent, but full of strange words, its" Li Sao "is wonderful." [1] A little later than the Book of Songs, the Sao style in the Yangtze River valley changed from four words to seven words, six words, five words and eight words, and most of them were seven or six sentences. Sao style is a unique form of poetry in southern Chu, and its source is folk songs in southern Chu. Qu Yuan, a great poet, is a representative writer of Sao Style. He was "unbelieving, loyal and slanderous" and angrily wrote immortal poems such as Li Sao, Nine Songs, Nine Chapters and Jiu Si. Sao style has five remarkable characteristics: first, it breaks the neat pattern of four sentences and has flexible syntax; Second, I like to use the exclamation "Xi"; Third, the chapter structure is more grand than four words, such as the chapter of Li Sao, which reaches 2490 words; Fourth, the title of the poem appeared; Fifth, the local color is strong. As an upper-class aristocrat and senior intellectual of Chu at that time, Qu Yuan was quite familiar with the four-character poems popular in the Central Plains at that time, and his Tian Wen was written in four words. However, he wrote Li Sao and Nine Songs with the lyrics of Chu, which shows that this is also a pursuit and breakthrough of formal beauty.

In the Han Dynasty, Yuefu poems appeared. Yuefu poetry originally refers to folk poems collected by Yuefu organs in the Han Dynasty, and later includes folk works collected after the Han Dynasty, as well as works created and imitated by literati and musicians. Influenced by Sao style, Yuefu poetry broke the four-character style and created a large number of miscellaneous styles. It often appears between three words, four words, five words and seven words, but basically five words are the main ones, and there are many seven words. There are even some relatively complete five-character poems. Yuefu poetry occupies an important position in the history of China's poetry development and plays a great role in the development of poetry.

In the Han Dynasty, a new poetic style-five-character poem appeared. The appearance of five-character ancient poems is a leap in China's poetic art, with beautiful rhyme and neat sentence patterns but rich changes. In rhythm, its intonation can be "23", "2 12", "32", or even "14", which can form the odd and correct rhythm of poetry and achieve the effect of ups and downs of poetry. Syntactically, five-character poems can easily use monosyllabic words, disyllabic words or even trisyllabic words, and they vary greatly. "Five words are the essence of literary words, all of which are elegant, so the cloud will be vulgar. Not the most meticulous person will mention things and write things down with a bad feeling. " [2] Almost at the same time as five-character ancient poems, seven-character ancient poems appeared. Seven-character poems add two sounds in front of five-character poems to form the rhythm of "two-two-three-body". The appearance of "May 7th" poetry is the result of people's continuous exploration and experiment in the form of poetry and great achievements.

The consistent pursuit of formal beauty in China's ancient poems has evolved from natural temperament to artificial summary, regulation and implementation. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, with the gradual prosperity of poetry creation, the period of artificial summary came, which was marked by the appearance of Yongming style. "Biography of Lu Jue in Nanqi" records: "The late Ming Dynasty was an article, and the old article, Lang Xie pushed the hub with gas; Runan Zhou Qing is good at understanding sound and rhyme. The Covenant and other articles are all written by palace merchants, and the four tones are flat, up and down to make rhyme, which cannot be increased or decreased. It is called "Yongming Style" in the world. Finding the four tones and applying them to poetry creation becomes an artificial rhyme, which is the process of the generation of the eternal style. The appearance of Yongming style made China's classical poetry take a big step forward in the process of perfecting the beauty of artistic form, which laid the foundation for the formation of later metrical poetry.

In improving the artistic beauty of poetry, the palace poems popular in the Southern Dynasties also contributed. Palace poems originated from popular lyrics and literati poems, many of which are colorful. Because of the love of the rulers of the Southern Dynasties, these folk songs entered the court from the market, and then polished, transformed and further developed by the court literati, becoming court poems. Palace-style poems mainly describe palace life, and the specific themes are mostly poems about objects and descriptions of women, so they are hurt by light artistic conception and light style of writing. However, in the artistic form of poetry, Palace-style poetry developed the artistic form of Wu Ge's western music, continued the artistic exploration of Yongming style, and became more rhythmic. "Biography of Liang Shu Yu Jianwu" said: "The scribes such as Qi Yongming, Wang Rong, Xie Tiao and Shen Yue began to use four tones, thinking that they were new and even rhymed, which was beautiful and surpassed the past." This shows that palace poems have further developed in meter than Shen Yue and others. For example, Xiao Gang's Song of Picking Ling said, "When the ling flowers fall, the mulberry girl will stop the new silkworm. Return to the new boat and wander to the south of the lotus leaf. " Xu Yi's "Yong Bi": "It originated in Lingshan, and its name spread in Cao Rui. The fiber is moist at the end and has a weak fragrance. Write directly flying over the eaves and walking on the wall, and inherit the sheep horizontally. Every time I hold it, I would rather think of the donation from Zhongsheng. " Basically in line with the law. Poems like this abound in the palace. It can be seen that palace poems play an important role in the formation of later regular poems.

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the independence of literature became clearer. At that time, people had a clearer understanding of the system and style characteristics of poetry, and consciously pursued the aesthetic characteristics of poetry. At this time, Cao Pi's Classic Papers, Lu Ji's Wen Fu, Liu Xie's Wen Xin Diao Long and Zhong Rong's Shi Pin appeared, which formed the climax of literary theory and criticism. These works have great influence and guided the direction of poetry creation. In particular, Liu Xie's "Wen Xin Diao Long" not only discusses the external causes and internal laws of poetry development, but also summarizes many valuable experiences in poetry creation, reveals the mystery in poetry creation, and establishes a theory of poetry creation with China characteristics.

In the Sui Dynasty, completely in tune poems appeared, such as Xue Daoheng's Salt Yesterday:

Beyond the blue sky, Yaotai Road is on credit. Why not connect with the imperial garden? Don't have a fairy home. The back of this place is Luan, and the side stream is full of Cui Hua. It's a moonlit night in the cave, and there is haze in the window.

But there is no new summary in theory, and some problems (such as adhesion rules) have not been completely solved.

Court poets in the early Tang Dynasty, such as Du Fu, Song and Shen Quanqi. The pursuit of complicated and colorful decorative style in art, this style first attaches importance to dual rhetoric skills, then adds tuning skills, and finally combines dual skills with phonology technology, thus promoting the perfection and finalization of metrical poetry in form. At that time, these poets created a large number of poems that were balanced, harmonious and in line with the law of attachment, marking the complete maturity of five-character and seven-character poems. Yuan Zhen said in Preface to the Epitaph of Du Jun, a Yuan Wailang from the Ministry of Industry and Technology of Tang Dynasty: "Shen and Song studied and practiced hard, which is called metrical poetry. From right to bottom, the body of change is extremely embarrassing. "

After regular poems, the rise of long and short sentences, Yuanqu and even novels is also due to the literati's pursuit of formal beauty. Just as Wang Guowei said in "Ci on Earth": "Four characters have Chu characters, Chu characters have five characters, five characters have seven characters, ancient poems have laws, and laws have words. Guy's style has been popular for a long time, and he has done a lot of work on it. It's hard for a hero to come up with new ideas, so he ran away and set himself free. Because of this, all styles began to flourish and finally declined, so I dare not speak. However, in terms of oneness, there is nothing to say. "

Therefore, it can be said that the form of poetry expression is more important than the content from the perspective of stylistic development. After all, the changes of poetry content are limited, such as writing love, which is roughly the same through the ages, and the difference is only the difference in expression. Poetry contains nothing more than the universe, landscapes and pastoral areas, loyalty to the monarch and patriotism, heroes and beauties, personal experiences, and lyricism about history. And there are traces to follow. The change of poetic form is like "antelope hanging on the horn, without trace". From the perspective of the history of poetry development, it seems that there are certain rules, but in fact, the development of poetry forms is often unexpected. What is clear is that in the development of poetry, the only constant is change. Change and development are the life of poetry, but the basic point of this change is the pursuit of formal beauty of poetry. References:

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