Poetics of Mongolian Heroic Epic —— A Poetic Interpretation of Mongolian Heroic Epic
Professor Baburin Behe is a famous contemporary Mongolian poet and poetics theorist. He not only wrote many poems handed down from ancient times, but also published some monographs on poetic theory, such as Notes of the Explorer, Aesthetic Outline of Mongolian Poetry, Intuitive Poetics and so on. His "Poetics of Mongolian Heroic Epic" is a national eighth five-year plan philosophy and social science project. This study is the first academic masterpiece to systematically study Mongolian heroic epic from the perspective of poetics.
In the Poetics of Mongolian Heroic Epics, the author gives a three-dimensional and comprehensive interpretation of Mongolian Heroic Epics from the perspectives of cultural anthropology, folklore, sociology, religion, performing arts and other disciplines, and puts forward many new opinions, revealing the profound connotation of Mongolian Heroic Epics, mainly including the following three aspects:
(1) Discuss the characteristics of Mongolian heroic epic. Through the comprehensive analysis of the classic and representative epic works produced by different tribes and regions, Professor Ba Brinbeck believes that originality, sacredness and standardization are the common characteristics of Mongolian heroic epics. Primacy mainly refers to the motif of "marriage" and "expedition" associated with the emergence of family, private ownership and country, the combination of characters associated with mythical thinking and the traces of fetishism, animism and nature worship in religious concepts; The so-called sacredness mainly refers to the mystery of epic production (creative inspiration), the invariance in inheritance, the witchcraft expression contained in social function (praying for blessings and driving away disasters) and the ritual accompanying singing activities; The so-called standardization mainly refers to the typology of characters, the stylization of story plots and the modelization of description methods. Professor Ba Brinbeck pointed out that the Mongolian epic vividly describes the "three realms" (upper, middle and lower), time, space, orientation and quantity, and shows the unique world outlook of nomadic people. In epic, the nobility of the positive characters is linked to the upper bound, and the ugliness of the negative characters is linked to the lower bound. The middle boundary is the main "place" for their life and struggle. Blending, visualization and fuzziness are the main characteristics of epic space-time view.
(2) Explain the basic characters of positive characters in Mongolian epics, and sum up three basic forms of negative characters: beast, ghost and human. It is believed that the different combinations of human nature and divinity, individuality and individuality, greatness and innocence, honesty and cruelty constitute the basic characters of positive characters in Mongolian heroic epics. The images of villains, especially the image of Python Gus, are full of "ugly" characteristics from appearance to heart, from soul to body, from daily life to environment, and have high anti-aesthetic value. If the positive characters in Mongolian epic are the unity of humanity and divinity, and Python Gus is the unity of humanity and animality, then only the heroic mounted horse can be shaped into an artistic image with both animality, humanity and divinity, which shows that Mongolians worship and sanctify horses.
(3) Taking cultural changes as a frame of reference, dynamically observe the development, variation and decline of epic. It is believed that the development of Mongolian heroic epic has roughly experienced three stages, namely, the original epic stage, the developed epic stage and the variant epic stage. The primitive epic reflects hunting, nomadic economic life, clan social characteristics and primitive religion. Developed epics basically reflect the coexistence of Shamanism and Buddhism in nomadic economy and their cultural forms and religious concepts. The basic motif of marriage movement has been further expanded and new motifs have emerged. On the one hand, the variation epic (Horqin epic) inherits and retains the basic spirit and motif of Mongolian heroic epic; On the other hand, due to the strong influence of historical development, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist culture and agricultural culture, great changes have taken place in characters, story lines, work structure, language and poetry. It can be said that Horqin epic flourished in the transition from nomadic economy to agricultural economy and from Shamanism to Buddhism. If Willat epic marks the golden age and peak of Mongolian heroic epic, Horqin epic marks its decline and end.
Since the 20th century, internationally renowned Mongolian scholars, such as Russian Vladimirtsov, German Haissig, American Pope, Mongolian Xie Dandingsulun and Bo Renqin, have all studied Mongolian epics, but each has its own emphasis, either analyzing the historical and cultural background of the epic, or studying the motif structure, or discussing the form of the epic, or analyzing and summarizing a certain aspect of the epic, which respectively represents the level of their respective times and has a certain degree. However, it is rare to grasp and control Mongolian heroic epic from the perspective of generalized poetics. Professor Ba Brinbeck's Poetics of Mongolian Heroic Epic has formed its own poetic system from the characteristics of Mongolian Heroic Epic itself, further pushing the study of Mongolian Heroic Epic to a new height. (The author is a professor at Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities)
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Chen Ganglong:
The poetics of Mongolian heroic epics can be compared with the mythological poetics of Merle kinski.
In the study of China's epic, systematic poetics or aesthetics has always been a weak link. Professor Ba Brinbeck's masterpiece "Poetics of Mongolian Heroic Epic" just fills this gap, which represents the world's leading level in the aesthetic research of Mongolian Heroic Epic, and can be compared with Mel kinski's Mythological Poetics to some extent.
Poetics of Mongolian Heroic Epic is a 300-page book, which systematically discusses the aesthetic problems of Mongolian Heroic Epic in eight chapters. The first chapter "Introduction" points out that heroic epic is a literary phenomenon in a specific historical stage, and summarizes three characteristics of Mongolian heroic epic: primitiveness, sacredness and standardization. The second chapter "Cosmic Model" discusses the three concepts of time, space and number that constitute the cosmological model of Mongolian epic from the perspectives of human imagination, religious belief and thinking mode. Combining shamanism and Buddhism of ancient Mongolians, this paper discusses the three realms of the epic, and puts forward the chaos, visualization and fuzziness of the epic time and space, and puts forward the concept of "poetic geography" of the Mongolian epic time and space. And from the perspective of mythical thinking, this paper discusses the symbols of direction and numbers in epics. The third and fourth chapters "Black-and-white image system" discuss the aesthetic characteristics of the opposing images of the epic hero and Python Gus, especially pointing out that the image of Python Gus creates and expands the "evil aesthetics" of Mongolian epics, which is of great academic significance to the aesthetic research of Mongolian epics. The fifth chapter "Horse Image" describes the aesthetic course and destination of the horse image in the epic along the lines of the first two chapters. The sixth chapter "The Mysterious Relationship between Man and Nature" points out three levels of the relationship between man and nature in the epic: utilitarianism, aesthetics and religion. It is pointed out that the idealized description of nature shows the harmony between man and nature; The anthropomorphic description shows the analogy between man and nature; The description of supernatural power shows the expansion of man and nature. These three natures correspond to the three levels of the relationship between man and nature. The seventh chapter, "Cultural Change and Epic Variation", makes a dynamic observation on the development of Mongolian epics, paying special attention to the aesthetic characteristics of the variation epics and their different cultural influences. The eighth chapter "Image Poetic Style" discusses the lofty, vague and mysterious image, poetic style and lofty style of Mongolian heroic epic from three aspects: strength rendering, color contrast and mysterious description of numbers. With rigorous structure and poetic language, the book perfectly outlines the aesthetic characteristics of Mongolian heroic epics and the aesthetic course of Mongolian people through epics.
The poetics of Mongolian heroic epic is fascinating because of its rigorous structure and poetic narrative language. The author puts forward many novel viewpoints, which are of great guiding significance to the aesthetic exploration of Mongolian epics in the future. For example, in the eighth chapter of the book, the author puts forward: "If the motif is the smallest narrative unit of narrative literature, then we should regard the image as the smallest unit of lyric literature. Because the Mongolian heroic epic is both narrative and lyrical, combining the plot motif with the image will provide an important research way for us to fully understand the artistic integrity of the Mongolian heroic epic. " (The author is a professor of oriental languages in Peking University)
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Yu Ming:
Research on Ba Brinbeck's Poetics (Doctoral Thesis)
On the basis of a comprehensive summary of the previous studies on Ba Brinbieh's poetry works and poetry theory, the author of this paper takes Ba Brinbieh's poetry works and poetry theory as the research object, combines interviews with Ba Brinbieh, interspersed with text research and comparative analysis, and systematically studies Ba Brinbieh's poetry works and poetry theory, showing Ba Brinbieh's outstanding contribution to the construction of Mongolian poetic theory system and its due academic position in the theoretical circle.
Baburin Beihe is a famous contemporary Mongolian poet and poetics theorist in China, the academic leader of Mongolian poetics theory, and the first scholar who systematically established the theoretical system of Mongolian poetics. Ba Brinbeck is a poetic theory researcher who combines theory with practice. On the basis of summarizing predecessors' creative experience, his poetic theory system systematically puts forward unique poetic creation theory from the theoretical attributes and external factors of poetry, which is an important part of Mongolian poetry research. Although Ba Brinbohi's study of Mongolian poetics theory does not cover all types of Mongolian folk literature rhymes, it has made unprecedented achievements in three aspects: the poetics theory based on Mongolian characters rhymes, the poetics theory of Mongolian heroic epics and the aesthetics of Mongolian poetry. Therefore, it is of practical and long-term significance to summarize and sort out Ba Brinbeck's poetic theory system for the study of Mongolian poetics and the perfection and development of Mongolian literary theory system.
This paper consists of three parts except the introduction. The introduction comprehensively summarizes and generalizes the previous studies on Ba Brinbeck's poetry and poetics theory. The first part discusses the concept, basic forms, characteristics of poetry and its relationship with politics and life. , expounds the views of Ba Brinbeck. The second part makes a comprehensive study of Ba Brinbeck's poetry creation theory. The third part discusses the main characteristics of Ba Brinbeck's poetry research in detail and in depth, which can be summarized into three main aspects: first, Ba Brinbeck's poetry research always insists on taking Mongolian poetry as the main research object, in which Ba Brinbeck's research on Mongolian heroic epic poetics and Mongolian poetry aesthetics fills the gap in Mongolian epic and poetry aesthetics research; Secondly, Ba Brinbeck summed up his own poetry creation practice. Thirdly, Ba Brinbeck insists on a scientific academic attitude in his creation and research, carries forward the spirit of "bringing", refers to a large number of cutting-edge scientific research achievements at home and abroad, grasps the theoretical trends and enriches the theoretical system, so that his poetic theory not only has the highest level in the field of Mongolian poetics, but also has a high academic status in the national poetic theory circle. (Abstract of doctoral thesis of Inner Mongolia University in 2005)