Ye Jiaying
China's earliest collection of poems is The Book of Songs, which collected 305 poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period, fully reflecting the social outlook of the Zhou Dynasty. The poems in The Book of Songs vary from two words to eight words per sentence, but generally speaking, they are mainly four words. This is because the four-character poem sentence is the simplest and most rhythmic style in both syntactic structure and rhythm. If a sentence has fewer than four words, its syllables will inevitably be lost. Therefore, the works in The Book of Songs, as the earliest poems in China, naturally formed the simplest four-character form.
Following the Book of Songs, a new form of poetry-Songs of the South came into being. Songs of the South mainly focus on the works of Qu Yuan and Song Yu, and also collect some later scholars' imitation works of Qu Song. There are two forms that have the greatest influence on later generations, one is "Sao Style" and the other is "Chu Song Style". Poems in Sao style are named after Qu Yuan's Li Sao. Qu Yuan was honest and clean all his life, loyal to the monarch, but was slandered for his loyalty. Therefore, in Li Sao, he tells the sorrow of his suffering, shows his noble temperament and ideal, and shows his spiritual quality of narrow escape without regret. The content and emotional characteristics of Li Sao have a great influence on later poets. This feature is mainly manifested in the pursuit of ideals, the will to die without regret, the metaphor of beauty and vanilla, and the disappointment of autumn. I have discussed these contents in detail before, so I won't repeat them here. As for the form, the sentence in Lisao is relatively long, which is roughly six words before and after "Xi". Due to the expansion of syntax and the extension of space, this kind of poetry has a tendency of prose poetry. Therefore, the Sao style in Chuci gradually separated from poetry and developed into the forerunner of Fu.
Another form of Chuci is Chuci style. The style of Chuci mainly refers to the "Nine Songs" poems in Chuci. Originally, it was a witch song sung by wizards and witches in Chu when they offered sacrifices to ghosts and gods. It describes a romantic feeling of expectation and call in a loving tone, which can arouse people's association with ideals, politics and religion. In form, the sentence and length of Jiuge are shorter than that of Lisao, and the most common form is the word "Xi" before and after it. For example, "I feel sorry for others, but I feel sorry for others, knowing each other and being happy", the rhythm of each sentence is four or three, which is consistent with the rhythm of later seven-character poems. So "Nine Songs" became the origin of later seven-character poems.
In a word, Sao Style and Chu Ci represent two different forms in Chu Ci. The differences have been mentioned above. In addition, it is worth noting that modal particles such as "Xi" are widely used in "Sao Style" and "Chu Song Style". The pragmatics of modal particles adds a flying and elegant gesture to Chu Ci.
After the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Qin unified the world. Won Qin handed down from generation to generation for a short time, and there is nothing to describe in poetry. There are several types of poems in the early Han dynasty: one is to imitate the four-character style of the Book of Songs. For example, Wei Meng's satirical poems, Mrs. Tangshan's Songs in the Room, etc. This style is mainly used in the occasions of temple fairs, which is more serious and formulaic and has low artistic value. Another is to imitate the style of Chu songs. For example, Liu Bang's Song of the Wind, Xiang Yu's Song of Gaixia, and Autumn Wind Poem, which is said to have been written by Liu Che, the Emperor of the Han Dynasty, and so on.
Generally speaking, this kind of poetry is some impromptu lyric works that people "move in the middle and form in words".
Later, Yuefu poetry rose, which swept away the depressing atmosphere of poetry in the early Han Dynasty and made new explorations and achievements. The original meaning of Yuefu poetry was originally just a chorus. Yuefu poetry in a narrow sense began in the era of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty. In history, Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty once set up a Yuefu official office, and sent people to various places to collect ballads and then sang them with music. In addition, the scribes also wrote some poems that can be sung with music. These songs and poems were later called "Han Yuefu". As far as the style of lyrics is concerned, Han Yuefu inherited the four-character style, Chu ci style and ballad miscellaneous style that reflected the social reality at that time. The most striking thing is the five-character style gradually formed by the influence of new sounds. At that time, due to the contacts between the Han Dynasty and foreign nationalities in the northwest, Le Hu in the western regions was introduced to China. Influenced by foreign music, China's traditional music has produced a kind of music called "New Voice Change". At the beginning, this kind of "new voice change" song poem was the original five-character poem.
Take the Song of Beauty written by Li Yannian, the captain of Xielv during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty as an example.
There are beautiful women in the north, and they are peerless and independent.
Take care of the city first, then the country.
I'd rather not know the whole city and country, and it's hard to get another beautiful woman.
Except for the fifth sentence, the rest of the poem is five words, with three interlining words, which becomes a eight-character sentence. It is not difficult for us to see the signs of the gradual formation of the five-character style under the influence of the new sound, but this is only the five-character style of Yuefu poetry, because its form has not been fully finalized. Later, the style of the five-character poem was gradually improved, resulting in a relatively neat five-character poem, "Going up the mountain to pick Wei". Further development led to Nineteen Ancient Poems. After the appearance of Nineteen Ancient Poems, the five-character poems have a completely fixed style, so we call them "ancient poems" instead of "Yuefu". As for the influence of Yuefu poems on later generations, there are mainly the following points: First, it has a great influence on the formation of five-character poems; The second is to make many imitations of Han Yuefu appear in later generations. For example, Li Bai and other poets used the old poems of Yuefu to write new poems, while Bai Juyi imitated the style of Han Yuefu and pretended to write new poems, creating "new Yuefu" poems.
Since the formation of five-character poems in the Eastern Han Dynasty, its authors have gradually increased. During the Jian 'an period, Cao Shi and his son went from top to bottom, while Nakano philosophers went from bottom to top, which not only fully matured the five-character poem in form, but also expanded and improved its content in many ways because of the appearance of writers, and finally established its position, making it a poetic style that China poets have used for more than 1,000 years.
After the Han Dynasty, from the Wei and Jin Dynasties to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, China's poetry changed from ancient style to rhythmic poetry. This legalization is divided into two steps: one is duality, and the other is temperament. As far as duality is concerned, it has appeared in some very old books, and later there are some antithetical sentences in Nineteen Ancient Poems, but these are naturally formed and not consciously arranged by the author. During Jian 'an period, Cao Zhi began to intentionally use parallel prose to increase the momentum of poetry.
However, the duality in Cao Zhi's poems is only roughly commensurate, not very strict. During the Jin and Song Dynasties, the number of antithesis in Xie Lingyun's poems further increased and the form became more rigorous. It can be seen that the application of duality in poetry tends to be neat gradually. In terms of temperament, some scholars before the Northern and Southern Dynasties, such as Sima Xiangru in the Western Han Dynasty and Lu Ji in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, all noticed this problem, but they only emphasized the natural tone. After Wei and Jin Dynasties, Buddhism prevailed in the world, so the translation and singing of classics developed rapidly. The * * * of foreign culture makes some people begin to reflect on their own language, so the distinction between phonology and phonology is becoming more and more accurate. The name of four tones was established when Zhou Qing wrote four tones and Shen Yue wrote four tones.
It can be seen that the rise of duality and temperament is indeed the inevitable product of introspection and self-awareness of China's writing characteristics. With more and more emphasis on duality and temperament, China's beautiful writing has made great progress. This is mainly manifested in the formation of prose and the rise of metrical poetry. The so-called metrical poetry emphasizes the harmony of four tones on the one hand and the neatness of duality on the other. Its relatively disyllabic words must have the same syllables and the same inflections, and they should be even and the parts of speech should be commensurate. So later, it gradually formed two basic metrical patterns: flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat and flat.
If these two basic forms are changed again, they will form many forms, such as simultaneous rise, rhyming poems, quatrains and so on. These emerging formats became more refined in the Tang Dynasty and were finally established. Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties is a period when metrical poems gradually mature. From the poems of Xie Lingyun, Shen Yue, Xu Ling and Yu Xin, we can clearly see this evolution.
The influence of poetry in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties on later poetry has been roughly described above. As far as the subject matter is concerned, Cao Zhi in Jian 'an has repeatedly expressed his lofty aspirations and lofty sentiments of longing to go to the frontier fortress to make contributions to the country. For example, he said in "White Horse": "If the string is controlled to break the left, the right hair will urge the moon branch"; "Dragon drives Xiongnu, while Zuo Gu Ling is humble"; "I died in a national disaster and suddenly felt that I was going to die" and so on. Regardless of whether Cao Zhi himself can be as brave and good at fighting as he said in his poems, his narrative tone alone can give readers a powerful shock. In the Tang Dynasty, some poets, such as Gao Shi, Cen Can and Wang Changling, really boarded the Great Wall, experienced the frontier life deeply and wrote many frontier poems in the true sense. Although these frontier poems are better than the previous generation's works with similar themes, their heroic spirit of serving the country, making contributions and doing their best is undoubtedly influenced by the previous generation's poets.
In addition, the political struggle in Wei and Jin Dynasties was complicated and changeable, and social moral values completely collapsed. Many scholars can't display their ambitions in official career, so they turn to Hyunri. This social atmosphere influenced poets and writers, and later metaphysical poetry came into being. The authors of metaphysical poems advocate the metaphysics of Laozi and Zhuangzi, while those who advocate Laozi and Zhuangzi's thoughts are generally addicted to seclusion in the mountains. Therefore, the weight of describing mountains and rivers in metaphysical poems is increasing day by day. After the appearance of Xie Lingyun, this situation changed qualitatively, and Xie Lingyun became the pioneer of China Landscape Poetry School. Later, in the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei, Meng Haoran, Wei and others inherited the tradition of writing landscape nymphs and further developed it, writing many landscape poems with different styles and colorful colors.
Moreover, a very noteworthy author, Yu Xin, appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Yu Xin was born in the Southern Dynasties, and once served as a literary aide to Liang Wudi. Under the influence of the gentle poetic style at that time, Yu Xin created a large number of light and colorful palace poems. After the Hou Jing rebellion broke out, Taicheng fell, and Yu Xin also failed in the battle with Hou Jing. Later, he was ordered by Emperor Yuan of Liang to go to the Northern Dynasty, but he was deceived into being a courtier, and the Liang Dynasty finally perished.
During his imprisonment in the Northern Dynasties, Yu Xin expressed his sorrow and distress with the pain of the country's destruction and death. He combined the gorgeous style of writing in the Southern Dynasties with the vigorous style of writing in the Northern Dynasties to create fresh, mature and unique poems. Yang Shen once called Yu Xin's poems "the peak of Liang, the first voice of Tang" in Poems on the Temple of Sheng 'an. Indeed, Yu Xin was a small and complete author before the Tang Dynasty.
Above, we mainly talked about the influence of the previous generation of poems on Tang poetry from the perspective of the evolution of poetic style. It is not difficult to see that before the Tang Dynasty, the mainstream of China's poetry developed in the direction of meter. This is an inevitable trend, and the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties is a formation stage of China's ancient poetry. Of course, the coordination of duality and parallelism can form the special beauty of China language. However, at the beginning of any new style, when people can't use it fully and freely, this form often becomes a constraint on poetry writing. So is the development of China's metrical poems. Therefore, when Qi Liang and Shen Yue's theory of four tones and eight diseases rose, poets and scribes completely focused on binary equality. Although their poems are exquisite in form, their contents are relatively vague and lack a sense of strength and life. This situation did not change until the Tang Dynasty.
In the Tang dynasty, on the one hand, the poet inherited the ancient poetry Yuefu since the Han and Wei Dynasties, making it more expansive and innovative; On the one hand, it has completed some emerging formats since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, making it more refined and established. At that time, poets skillfully used meter, and meter was no longer the limit of poetry writing. So some poets write poems with rich and profound contents in this exquisite form.
Of course, the Tang Dynasty became an era in which China's poems and songs were composed of ancient and modern styles and North and South styles.
(Zeng Qingyu finishing)