The founder of the reform article is Lu Xun's high evaluation of Cao Cao. Cao Cao's poems are all Yuefu poems. Although these Yuefu lyrics follow the ancient theme of Han Yuefu, they do not follow the ancient meaning of ancient lyrics, but inherit the realistic spirit of Yuefu folk songs, showing new content and a brand-new look.
Cao Cao likes to express his political ambitions and reflect the sufferings of people's livelihood with poems. He is a representative figure of Wei-Jin literature and is praised by Lu Xun as the founder of transformational articles. At the same time, Cao Cao is good at calligraphy, and Zhang Huaiguan's Broken Tang Book rated Cao Cao's Cao Zhang as a wonderful work. Cao Cao's poems are all Yuefu poems. Although these Yuefu lyrics follow the ancient theme of Han Yuefu, they do not follow the ancient meaning of ancient lyrics, but inherit the realistic spirit of Yuefu folk songs, showing new content and a brand-new look. Some of his poems reflect the turmoil in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. For example, Hao described the fact that Yuan Shao and other warlords could not join hands to crusade against Dong Zhuo, but instead rallied for self-improvement and scuffled with each other, leading to chaos and the death of the people. From the big picture, he summed up a historical process and a broad social outlook with just sixteen five-character poems, which made his works look profound and powerful. "Going West" and "Going to Bitter Cold" express their sadness and homesickness in the tone of a soldier, which is equally touching.
Part of Cao Cao's poems shows his ambition and indomitable spirit of dominating the world. "Although I am Defending" expresses the author's magnificent feelings: once an old horse rides away from the dust, it aims at a thousand miles. The martyrs were full of courage in their later years. Become a famous sentence through the ages. Cao Cao's poems are very distinctive, with plain language and straightforward expression. He is a hero, disdaining to write trivial scenes and delicate emotions, and even disdaining to carve words. Therefore, his poems are characterized by sadness, generosity and grandeur.
Cao Cao's simple prose style shows the new characteristics of Jian 'an prose and has an important influence on the development of Wei and Jin prose. However, in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, these things are either not mentioned at all or perfunctory, and there is no other reason. Such a big thing is beyond the tolerance of the speaker's spiritual world, let alone the understanding of the secular spiritual realm.
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Cao Cao inherited the realistic spirit of Yuefu poems in Han Dynasty, created new contents with the old Yuefu poems, and created many refreshing works with the current situation as the writing theme. Cao Cao's poems can be divided into four-character poems, five-character poems and miscellaneous poems. Today, his four-character poems, such as Looking at the Sea, Though Returning to Life, and Short Songs, are well-known masterpieces, pushing China's four-character poems to a new peak.
Although the number of Cao Cao's five-character poems is small, they are extremely important. His poetic style is generous and sad. Five-character poems inherit the tradition of Han Yuefu and innovate, which opens up a more free world for the creation of Yuefu poems and makes an exploratory attempt for the creation of five-character poems. He is a romantic generation and has his own unique poetic style. Through the influence on Cao Shi Brothers and Seven Children of Jian 'an, it laid a good foundation for the formation of the literary era of Jian 'an in later generations.
In addition, Cao Cao emancipated his mind, encouraged literary creation, and tried his best to attract literati, so that many literati gathered in summer nights, which played a positive role in promoting the development of Jian 'an literature.