Due to the long history and the lack of writing at that time, the truly primitive poetry in China has been passed down from generation to generation. However, some ancient books record some simple ballads, which are close to the original form from form to content. Although the number is small, the richness of the content can be seen. For example, in the Spring and Autumn Period of Wu Yue written by Zhao Ye in the Han Dynasty, there is a song "Playing a Song": "Break the bamboo and continue the bamboo; Flying on the earth, chasing husbands (the ancient word "meat"). " It used to be said that this song was written in the era of the Yellow Emperor. I'm afraid it's not credible, but from its simple and simple form, it may be closer to the original form. The song is about people cutting down bamboo, inheriting it and making it into hunting tools, which are used to eject projectiles and chase prey. It describes the hunting life of ancient people and their pleasure and desire. In addition, some songs close to the original form were also recorded and preserved for the need of the wizard to explain the Yi Gua. Such as "Swallow Six Children": "Swallow as fast as you can; Riding a horse, such as in class; Bandits (through "no"), marriage. " The content is that a group of men came around on horses of all colors, and only when they took the girl did they realize that it was not an invading enemy, but for marriage, which indirectly reflected the status of the ancient marriage robbery system. "Gui Mei Shang Liu" records a ballad that should take love as the theme: "Women carry baskets, which is untrue; A sheep, no blood. " The song says that young men and women are shearing and picking wool on the pasture, while men seem to be shearing sheep, but there is no blood; The girls seem to be in a basket, but there is nothing in the basket, which vividly depicts their absent-minded and emotional appearance. Another example is "Zhongfu 63", which records the scene of returning from the end of the war: "Defeat the enemy and win. Or drum, or stop, or cry, or sing. " After defeating the enemy, some people beat drums to celebrate, some people sat and rested, some people cried for the loss of their loved ones, and some people sang songs. In just a dozen words, it depicts a touching scene. As for the cruelty of war, it is also described in From September 4th: "Sudden, sudden, burning, dying and abandoning". The song says that the enemy suddenly attacked, causing houses to burn down, people to die and bodies to be abandoned everywhere. It can be seen that most of these songs are short and pithy, but they reflect many aspects of social life.
By the time The Book of Songs, the earliest collection of poems in China, appeared, poetry was the voice of the soul, and the tradition of expressing colorful social life and life feelings was more fully reflected. There are 305 articles in The Book of Songs, ranging from the origin, migration, war and decline of the Yi people and various social production and living conditions, to personal joys and sorrows, secular desires and even natural plants, animals, insects and fish. This tradition has been handed down in the hands of poets in past dynasties and finally became the torrent of poetry. It is worth mentioning that in China's long-term feudal society, some cultural concepts and social systems that adapted to and served it contributed to the torrent of poetry, and objectively created some other conditions for poetry to reflect colorful life content.
In the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, when the conscious literary concept was not established, people did not regard poetry as a literary work to express their feelings and ambitions at first, but regarded it as a practical tool to observe the current trend and politics in order to implement political rule and moral education. Therefore, the preface of Mao's poems in the Western Han Dynasty can be classified into "ruling the world with joy", "angry and resentful in troubled times" and "sad and thoughtful in the voice of national subjugation", and it is said that "gain and loss, moving the world and feeling ghosts and gods are all unlike poems. The late king was a couple, a filial piety, a good relationship, a beautiful education, and a change of customs. " It is precisely for this reason that poetry should truly reflect all kinds of social life conditions, that is, the so-called "hungry people sing about their food, and laborers sing about their affairs" (what is the style of the biography of the Spring and Autumn Ram in the Eastern Han Dynasty), which is both natural and inevitable for political rule. In the era of literary consciousness after the Wei and Jin Dynasties, although people have more knowledge of the literary features of "Poetry is beautiful because of emotion" (Lu Ji's Wen Fu), the tradition of "writing for the monarch, the minister, the people, the things and the things" has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people (see Bai Juyi's Collection of Changqing, Volume III, Preface to New Yuefu), and the imperial examination was established in Sui and Tang Dynasties. After Wang Anshi's political reform in the Northern Song Dynasty, although the regulations on Jinshi's poetry and fu were relaxed from time to time, a college of "macro-speech" was established. Although the imperial examination in Ming Dynasty didn't test poetry and fu, a poem with five words and eight rhymes was added in Qianlong period of Qing Dynasty. That is to say, from the 1200 years after Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, the imperial examination had to test poetry and fu, except for the Ming Dynasty, which lasted for more than 900 years. In essence, this system is guiding all intellectuals in China who are deeply influenced by the tradition of "learning to be excellent and becoming an official": everyone should be able to write poetry and write it well. When the number of people who write poems objectively includes almost all the literati who use the administrative system, and when everyone has their own feelings of "knowing the meaning of a leaf, the sound of insects is enough to attract the heart" ("Wen Xin Diao Long" by Liang and Liu Xie in the Southern Dynasties), the content of poetry is extremely rich and colorful, which becomes a foreseeable necessity.
As for the style of China's poems, Er Yan is the earliest one that can be found now, as mentioned above. This unpretentious style was suitable for people's production, life and cultural conditions at that time. With the development of social production and life and the progress of language and culture, the original two fonts can no longer meet the needs of expressing content, so Chinese poetry began to make a breakthrough in style. The two songs quoted earlier, Guimei and Li, are two words mixed into three words, and later expanded into four words. Four-word sentences, with twice as many words as two words, undoubtedly contain much more content, so they have been used for a long time. There are 305 pieces of The Book of Songs, including works from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period, but most of them are mainly in four words, which is proof. After the Warring States Period, China's poems appeared five-character, seven-character and miscellaneous words. From the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, there were finally "modern poetry" styles such as regular poems and quatrains, which need not be repeated here. However, in the development of China's poetic style, two important factors are worth mentioning, one is the gradual separation of poetry and music, and the other is the introduction of literati's creation. As we mentioned earlier, in the early days of literature, poetry, music and dance were trinity, and the situation was similar among all ancient nations in the world. As mentioned above, the combination of poetry, music and dance is the rhythm contained in people's labor production and social life: music is embodied by sound, dance by body and poetry by language. Because language must be expressed by means of sound and has more consistency with musical instruments, among the three, dance is the first to be separated, while poetry can often be sung, and songs often exist with music for a long time. Therefore, most of the 305 pieces of The Book of Songs can be enjoyed by people, but they can be danced together, mainly concentrated in more than 30 pieces of the three poems (the names of the poems have existed since ancient times, and there are explanations of "capacity" and "appearance". See Han Hui Di Ji and Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi, which quoted Han people as pure words in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and some scholars in Qing Dynasty and modern times.
The influence of the unity of poetry and music on poetry style is most prominently reflected in the overlapping of sentence patterns and the miscellaneous use of words. On the one hand, it cooperates with the melody of the music to create the artistic effect of singing and sighing, on the other hand, it coordinates the rhythm. This kind of poetry is common in The Book of Songs and Han Yuefu.
Although we don't know the exact time of the real separation between poetry creation and music, in the ancient books of Han Dynasty, since the late Western Han Dynasty, we have rarely seen that kind of poems with long and short sentences, which may mean that people have realized that poetry and music are not the same thing after all, and they no longer insist on the cooperation with music, but pay attention to the laws of poetry creation itself. With the emergence of five-character poems by literati in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it should be said that the separation of poetry and music has basically been completed. Compared with chorus poems, the style changes of this kind of poems are obvious: the original rhythm of singing and sighing has become straightforward and unremarkable, and in the end; The original miscellaneous words that often appear have become quite neat five-word sentences, which is of course caused by music. Since then, although there are many styles in China's poems, the style of flat rhythm and neat sentence pattern has been basically established. Literati sometimes write miscellaneous works when they are in the mood, but the titles are always nothing more than various Yuefu or Gexing, which just reflects that they are made by imitating the original chorus, rather than the later routines.
It should be said that although there are obvious traces of separation of poetry and music in the poems of literati in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it cannot be simply considered that the intermediary created by literati caused this situation. In fact, many literary styles of China were first produced among the people. Many stylistic changes of various styles first appeared in the folk, and the intermediary of literati only accelerated the speed of their changes and made them develop in a fine direction. Not only poetry, but also words, songs, novels and plays. Therefore, as far as the development of poetic style is concerned, from the collection of folk songs by the court in the pre-Qin and Western Han dynasties to the composition of music for them, the folk should have a tendency to separate poetry from music earlier, which is not the credit of literati. The really important change caused by the intermediary of literati's creation is that after the separation of poetry and music, the poetic style is guided to develop in a refined direction, which leads to the emergence of modern poetry that pays attention to meter. Modern poetry sprouted in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and was shaped in the Tang Dynasty. After more than a thousand years, it became the mainstream of poetry creation, and it was also the poetic style of imperial examinations in previous dynasties. Apart from the number of words and sentences, the basic features of this style of poetry are mainly the antithesis of meanings, the rigorousness of rhyme and the harmony of pronunciation. In a word, it improves the aesthetic connotation of poetry in form. Needless to say, the disadvantages of modern poetry here, but it makes poetry from the original "natural" art into "artificial" art, from simplicity into elegance and novelty, and ordinary people with little cultural knowledge obviously can't take this position. This is really an important change in China's poetic style caused by the intermediary of literati's creation.