The emergence of modern poetry

Great changes have taken place in modern China under the invasion of capitalist powers, from an independent feudal country to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, resulting in new class components, social thoughts and social contradictions. Therefore, modern poetry has also begun to break through the barriers of traditional poetry in the Qing Dynasty, and a new trend has emerged. Modern progressive poets are often thinkers and political activists. They used poetry as a weapon, closely focused on the major struggles in modern times, and profoundly reflected the course of the bourgeois old-democratic revolution and the contents of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution.

Under the situation before the Opium War, Gong Zizhen, a modern enlightenment thinker, exposed the crisis of feudal autocracy in Qing Dynasty with his unique sensitive and unique poems, called for changes, and expected the rise of talents who "vigorously transformed" decadent reality, which opened the prelude to the trend of modern progressive poetry and laid the foundation for the close combination of modern poetry and real politics. Wei Yuan, Lin Zexu, Zhang Weiping, Zhang Jiliang, Zhu Qi, Beiqing Bridge, Jinhe and other poets who experienced the Opium War, with deep patriotic worries and national indignation, highlighted the great historical event of the Opium War. Their poems attack aggressors, denounce capitulationists and eulogize heroic resistance to the enemy, leaving a glorious image and historical picture for the anti-imperialist struggle of the Chinese nation. Later, the people's revolutionary regime of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom put forward the anti-feudal cultural program of "abandoning the false and preserving the true". The poems of revolutionary leaders conveyed the aspirations of the broad masses of people by expressing their ideals, boldness and indomitable heroism of hanging people. In addition to Song Poetry School and Tongguang School, there is also the Poetry School of Han, Wei and Six Dynasties represented by Wang Jinyun. They deliberately imitated the ancients, making the syntax, tone and style look like the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties and become fake antiques. There is also the late Tang school represented by Yi Shunding, and the poetry research mainly tends to the magnificent songs of Wen, Li Shangyin and Han □ in the late Tang Dynasty and Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi in the middle Tang Dynasty. The style of poetry is brilliant, paying attention to the skills of antithesis, the precision of official duties and the freshness of words. These poetic schools continued after the Revolution of 1911. Although they were criticized by democratic revolutionary poets, they were not effectively swept away until the rise of the May 4th New Culture Movement.