Ci arose in the late Tang Dynasty, developed in the Five Dynasties (907-960), flourished in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), and was derived from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Of course, this periodization is extremely simple and rough. Just to facilitate the explanation of the problem, we have to temporarily insert a few hooks on the big wall of history to hang some historical facts and clearly see its up, down, left, and right relationships, so as to avoid abstract assumptions that are difficult to grasp. It even makes anachronisms and historical facts wrong.
From the rise of Ci to the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, in about two centuries, Ci as a folk hobby and literary works written by literati have reached its golden age. It can also be said that the better half of all words were produced during this period. Later, during the Southern Song Dynasty, although factions grew and authors increased, the overall quality was no longer as good as the works before the Southern Song Dynasty. Those works and their authors were all written according to a tradition since the late Tang Dynasty. This tradition is simple and clear, which is what later generations called "minor tune". Minor tunes are songs sung in folk alleys: their content is also quite simple, mostly with themes about the love between men and women or praising local scenery and customs. This is originally an old tradition and an old theme that has existed for thousands of years since "Three Hundred Chapters". However, the Yuefu of the Han and Wei Dynasties, which "feels sad and happy, and arises from events", is even more prominent. The relationship between Song poetry and Yuefu is very close. Song poetry collections are sometimes called "Yuefu", such as "Dongshan Yusheng Yuefu", "Dongpo Yuefu", "Songyin Yuefu", "Chengzhai Yuefu", etc. Yan Jidao called his collection of poems "Supplementing the Death", and he explained: "The volume "Supplementing the Death" is to compensate for the death of "Yuefu"." This means that his poems are exactly the "Yuefu" of the Song Dynasty.
However, in the golden age of the word from the Five Dynasties to the Northern Song Dynasty, although famous artists emerged in large numbers and their works were flourishing, no one had ever divided them into factions, assigned names, or labeled them. The works of the Five Dynasties come from at least four different regions: Xishu, Jingchu, Southern Tang, and Dunhuang. But later, perhaps for the convenience of discussion, the name "Huajian School" was proposed, which is based on "Huajian School" edited by Zhao Chongzuo of Xishu. This is of course incorrect because the works of Wen Tingyun and Wei Zhuang selected in this collection are quite different. Either one of them is different from some of the works of Li Xun, who is of Persian origin. Very different. However, in the eyes of Northern Song Dynasty literati, "Flower Room Collection" was the collection and model of this new literary genre at that time, and it was the standard and authenticity for lyricists. Generally, the words used to praise someone are inseparable from "花jian" and are "true" words. This is a very high evaluation①. Chen Zhensun praised Yan Jidao's poems as "among all the famous places, they can only surpass "Flower Room". It may be better at higher places." It can be seen from this that connoisseurs, collectors or bibliographers of the Southern Song Dynasty regard the "Huajian" episode as the authentic one, and the poets regard "Huajian" as the canonical one. The style of "Huajian" became the standard for measuring the works of poets in the Northern Song Dynasty. Those who were not as good as "Huajian" would inevitably be ridiculed as "below Xi". How is it actually done? We look at the lyrics of several great writers in the Northern Song Dynasty, such as Ouyang Xiu, Fan Zhongyan, Yan Shi and his son, Zhang Xian, He Zhu, Qin Guan, Zhao Lingju, and Zhou Bangyan. Liu Yong is slightly different from them, but the only difference is that he writes about his personal feelings of separation and hatred, and the person he feels is still the same as his best friend and mistress. Regarding these works, no one of the word theorists or critics in the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties at that time divided them into factions. They just looked for chapters and excerpts to talk about their personal preferences and appreciation of certain words and couplets.
Here I would like to mention a famous poet in the Southern Tang Dynasty during the Five Dynasties, the eternal Ci Emperor Li Yu. Let's first look at a poem he wrote when he surrendered.
Breaking Time
In the past forty years, our country and our country have spread over three thousand miles of mountains and rivers.
The phoenix pavilion and the dragon tower reach the sky, and the jade trees and their branches are used as tobacco.
How many times have you ever known fighting? Once you become a captive, you will sink your waist and wear your temples. On the most hasty day of farewell to the temple, the temple is still playing farewell songs. Weeping to Gong E.
It can be said that starting from this poem, poetry really left the boudoir and changed from "the words of laborers" to "the words of scholar-bureaucrats". Wang Guowei’s comment on this is: “The vision is broad, and the emotion is deep.” In ancient times, an important criterion for a scholar-official was to have the mind and ideals to care about national affairs. Therefore, when Li Yu expressed his feelings for the country in his poems, his poems became "the words of a scholar-official". This change really improved the status of Ci, and actually gradually laid the foundation for the later Su Xin bold school. The styles of the great poets of the Northern Song Dynasty are mostly similar, which is not surprising, because they all inherited it from "Flower Room". Their works can be confused with each other (楮 chǔ, from the chapter "Han Feizi·Yu Lao", a metaphor for imitating lifelike), they can be confused with the works of "Flower Room", and they can even be confused with the works of the Southern Tang Dynasty. The works are chaotic because the living environment, cultural level, sentiment and taste of the writers of the Southern Tang Dynasty are basically similar to those of the writers of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the themes they chant are roughly similar. The feelings of feudal literati are not far different, and their expression methods are also similar. The similarities are inevitable. An obvious example is the fourteen poems "Magpies Stepping on the Branches" (i.e. "Die Lian Hua") in Feng Yansi's "Yangchun Collection". Among them, "Looking Back ②" was seen in Ouyang Xiu's "Six Words" and was renamed "Die Lian Hua". ③If these four poems are removed, Feng composed only ten poems. Another example is using "Six Words" as the basis for verification, and there are even more problems. Twenty-two "old engravings" of "Dieluan Flower" were collected, and only seventeen are left in the current Jigu Pavilion version. Mao Jin wrote in the title of "Die Lian Hua":
Twenty-two poems were originally engraved.
"Gao Leisure Walking in the Remote Night Pavilion" is the main work of Li Zhong, "Six curves of the railing nestled against the green trees", and "Bilingual Swallows in the Breeze Curtain" are all found in "Zhuyu Ci". "Lonely leaning on the dangerous building, the wind blows softly", and "Singing quietly under the curtain and outside the curtain" are both found in the "Collection of Movements". All deleted now.
Among the five songs that Mao Jin named for deletion, there are still two that he has not named. In addition, Mao Jin knew that the word appeared in two books, but he seemed to be afraid to determine who wrote it. He recorded the original word and noted that it had also appeared in other people's collections. There are four poems about this situation: "How deep is the courtyard?" In one poem, Mao's annotation goes: "When I saw "Yangchun Lu". Yi An Li called it "Six Words". "It shows that there is a basis for why he thinks this is Ouyang Xiu's work. The poem "The Pear Leaves Are Red at First Red and the Cicada Rhymes Rest" has a note in the title: "One moment I am with my uncle (Yan Shu), and one moment I am looking at him (Su Shi)." "Who knows? The poem "Abandoning leisurely feelings for a long time" has an annotation: "It is also recorded in "Yangchun Lu"". The poem "Where are the clouds going in a few days" has an annotation in the title: "It is also recorded in "Yangchun Lu"".
There are many other Northern Song Dynasty poets whose same poem appears in collections of two or three people, so there is no need to record them in detail here. I give these examples not to verify the author of these words in order to study the value of someone's work. Rather, it is to illustrate a historical phenomenon: from the Tang and Five Dynasties to the Northern Song Dynasty, the styles of poetry were very similar, and the works of each person were so similar that they could "mess with each other". If one person's poetry was dropped into someone else's collection, it would be impossible to compare it. They can be distinguished, so they cannot be divided into factions. In fact, the people of the Northern Song Dynasty themselves never realized which faction his works belonged to. If someone divided them into factions and put labels on them, they would definitely be unhappy. Generally speaking, in the Northern Song Dynasty, all the good lyrics originated from "Huajian". There is nothing wrong with you saying that they are all "Huajian School", but there is no need to mention it because this was known to all intellectuals at that time and was taken as a matter of course. You should specifically point out that someone's works in the Northern Song Dynasty were close to the "Huajian School". time" is like saying that sea water is salty. Therefore, if we say that there were no Ci schools in the Five Dynasties and Northern Song Dynasty, it is more consistent with historical facts than insisting that someone belonged to a certain school at that time. As for the word "graceful", it was first seen in "Guoyu·Wuyu": "So his words are graceful to follow the ambition of King Yi." It means to be humble and submissive to his words. In ancient times, women regarded obedience as a virtue, so it was used as a way of educating women. The preface to "New Odes of Yutai" says: "Reading poems to be polite is not like the self-matching of the east neighbor; being graceful and romantic is different from what Xi Shi taught." Sun Guangxian's "Huanxisha" in Volume 7 of "Flower Room Collection": "Half-stepping on the long skirt Wan Yue Okay, the curtains are sparse at night, and it is so clear that I can't help but hate my whole life." Also in Jiu Mao Xizhen's "Huanxi Sha", "Pretending to look down on people is empty and graceful, and the smiles and coquettish words are too rampant." Ibid. "Jiang Xian": "Slender waist and graceful steps like a golden lotus."
From the examples given above, we can see that this word has different meanings in different eras, but in recent times, it is used as an adjective opposite to "bold and unrestrained" , seems to specifically refer to the so-called "Qi Luo Xiang Yi", the implicit and restrained expression of the beautiful scenery. Once used in contrast to "bold" words, euphemistic words are regarded as conservative, unprogressive, and legalistic. Sometimes they even say that Wanyue Ci is dedicated to the love between men and women, the debauched life of separation and sorrow, and even goes so far as to say that their thoughts are empty, pale, etc. Obviously, this mechanical division method does not conform to the actual situation of the Northern Song Dynasty Ci world, and it is difficult to justify it. Therefore, sometimes it is not possible to strictly abide by the boundaries between the two factions, and there will be times when the bold faction begs for help from the graceful faction. For example:
Su Shi writes traditional love themes and is also known for his elegance. However, the poets of the Graceful School (who did not have this name according to Su Shi's time) mostly focused on the sincerity and delicacy of lyricism. His poems are particularly dignified and honest in the sincerity and delicacy. For example, in "Die Lian Hua": "The flower faded and became red." The green apricots are small, and the green water is surrounded by people. There are few willows blowing on the branches. There are no grasses in the sky. The people outside the wall are smiling gradually, but they are affectionate. Annoyed by ruthlessness ⑤ (See pages 594-595 of the second volume of "History of Chinese Literature" compiled by Wenyan)
What is dignity and what is honesty? The editor added words to explain the scriptures, but did not say what they are. What is dignified and honest? The editor didn't understand the main sentence in the poem "Wherever there is no grass in the world", so he had to recruit Wang Shizhen from the early Qing Dynasty to help. But Wang couldn't help much (because he didn't have much help either). (Understood) He had no choice but to look at the left and right and said: "I'm afraid that even a person like Liu Yong who is good at writing love poems may not be able to surpass this sentence. " And stay away from the key main clause "There is no grass anywhere in the world".
This example is very interesting. As soon as Su Shi is mentioned, the "bold and unrestrained" commentators will mention all his All the ceremonial guards that were believed to prove that Su Shi was a bold and unrestrained person were brought out, and it seemed that it was a grand and majestic event. In fact, very few people were directing it, and Su Shi, a general without soldiers, was allowed to perform a one-man show, not even a small part.
< p> Of course, when we say that there was no bold school in the Northern Song Dynasty, it does not mean that there was no bold poetry in the Northern Song Dynasty. There are a few works with a relatively high-spirited style and a relatively grand spirit, such as Fan Zhongyan's "Su Muzhe", "The Proud Fisherman" and Su Dongpo Even so, we cannot admit that they are a "bold and unrestrained faction" based only on these poems.Another example is that the terminology of Su Shi's poems "forms a kind of style." "Fresh, simple, fluent and smooth poetic language", so he concluded: "All these show the characteristics of the Bold Ci School. "I don't see the logical relationship between these two sentences.
It is necessary to mention Liu Yong here. He is a very important writer in the poetry world of the Northern Song Dynasty. His relationship with the "Huajian" tradition includes both inheritance and development. If we say, Su Shi It is right to expand the subject matter scope of "ci" and add the literati emotions that the predecessors only used to write poems, but this does not mean that he can use this to establish a "bold faction" or "opposition" or " Broad-minded." The addition of poetry-based lyrics to his works did not reduce the traditional works he originally inherited from "Flower Room". It can only be said that he expanded the subject matter of lyrics and possible new writing methods. But Liu Yong has already done this new way of writing. Liu Yong is a writer who specializes in writing about love between men and women, Qi Luo Xiang Ze, Jin Xin Xiu Mou, red love and green beauty, so he does not break away from the tradition of Huajian. But while inheriting this tradition, he also used the language and vocabulary used by Kabuki dancers. His works "look down" and use their language tools to write their thoughts, which Su Shi could not do. Because what he was dealing with and dealing with were bachelors of letters. Literati seek elegance and justice. Therefore, although he also wrote lyrics with an expanded vocabulary like Liu Yong, he "looked upward" instead of looking down, and did not learn from the common sayings of the market to write lyrics. Therefore, from China to Xixia, Liu Yong's lyrics will be sung wherever one drinks well water. Liu Yong's use of language is a mass line. It was Su Shi who was inspired by Liu Yong that he added some literati's emotions, complaints, mutual ridicule, chanting of objects and other themes that were rarely used or not used by predecessors⑥. His works therefore give the impression of rich subject matter. Liu Yong wrote his own emotional works, such as the famous "Eight Sounds of Ganzhou" and "Yulin Ring", which also reached a new level. But because he has a new realm. However, because he sometimes wrote about the life of prostitutes, Taoist teachers in the Song Dynasty disliked him, so the poet who talks about "bold and unrestrained" refers specifically to Su Shi and not to Liu Yong. The above discussion is limited to the Northern Song Dynasty. Great writers in the Northern Song Dynasty, such as Ouyang Xiu and Er Yan, all regard "Huajian" as the authentic style, as mentioned above, so everyone refers to the poets of the Northern Song Dynasty as the "Wanyue" school. The style of writing is related to the living conditions of the times. After the Zhao and Song governments were founded, in order to strengthen the centralization of power, they required the founding officials to retire in time. As a condition of exchange, the government encouraged them to buy good land and beautiful houses for their children and grandchildren, and to raise singers and dancers for their own entertainment, so as not to cause trouble⑦. Therefore, it is a relatively common phenomenon for literati to have singers and dancers in their homes. Northern Song Dynasty literati wrote for the sake of singers and dancers. Of course, they could only follow the tradition of "Flower Room Collection". Yan Jidao said in the postscript of his "Xiaoshan Ci":
At the beginning, Shen Twelve Uncle Lian. Chen Shijun favored him, and his family had lotus, Hong, Ping, and Yun, and he entertained the guests with his exquisite taste. Every time he gets a solution, he teaches the children with grass. The three of us held wine and listened to it, laughing and having fun.
This explains the circumstances under which Yan Jidao wrote his poems. This situation is proved by the situation described in "The Biography of Shi Shouxin". It can be seen that this is not an isolated situation. In this atmosphere of "singing and dancing to promote peace", they solicit songs and dances, which is a common trend among the upper class encouraged by the government. atmosphere. It will become clearer if we look at Li Qingzhao's poem "Yong Yu Le" recalling the cultural life of Kaifeng in the heyday of the Northern Song Dynasty.
But after the Jingkang Incident, the Northern Song Dynasty was subjugated and a large number of people fled to the south of the Yangtze River. The suffering of displacement, separation of wives and children, and the pain of the loss of the country aroused the tragic emotion of most intellectuals. Do you still want to "please entertain guests with quality products"? The works written under this situation are of course impassioned and indignant, so it is natural that there are many so-called "bold and unrestrained" poets in the Southern Song Dynasty. In fact, the word "bold and unrestrained" is not appropriate to use here. It should be called "angry faction", "encouraging faction" and "loyalty faction". The word "bold and unrestrained" also means somewhat freely, nonchalantly, and open-mindedly. Therefore, terms such as bold and graceful were not used by anyone at that time. Only commentators in later generations who were good at writing or labeling liked to use them to direct the ancients and listen to my arrangements. Moreover, the style and content of Ci at that time were mainly caused by changes in the political situation. It is certainly inappropriate to write about the beautiful scenery of feasting and feasting in the midst of war and chaos, and it is also inconsistent with the mood to write about people forgetting to have fun and having fun when the crisis is somewhat settled. The works of literati are mainly changed by the changes of the times. It is not that someone is born "graceful" or has been "bold" since childhood. We look at Xiang Ziyi's "Wine Side Poems" as the most appropriate example. Xiang Ziyi lived in the feasting and feasting Kaifeng for the first half of his life. His Ci is called "Jiangbei Old Ci", which is an authentic "graceful" style. When Bianjing fell during the Jingkang Incident (1126), he fled to Hangzhou. His subsequent works were called "Jiangnan New Ci" and he became an authentic "bold" school. Li Qingzhao's situation is similar, but her later works are not "bold" but tragic, which is natural. If the later works of Xiang Ziyi and Li Qingzhao are still full of joy, that would be completely heartless.
As for Xin Qiji, who led troops to fight guerrillas from enemy occupation and surrendered to the Southern Song Dynasty, his works are of course only the impassioned ones we see now. If Su Shi had lived into the Southern Song Dynasty, his works might have been more "bold" than what we see now. And if a writer like Zhou Bangyan, who was labeled as a "Graceful" or "Metrical" school, could have lived into the Southern Song Dynasty, I don't think he would have remained a "Graceful" or "Metrical" school throughout his life.
① Regarding "Huajian Ci", please refer to my humble work "A Brief Theory of Huajian Ci" in the 10th and 11th issues of this journal in 1982. ② That is, "Who knows how to abandon leisurely love for a long time", "Where will the clouds go in a few days?", "How deep is the courtyard", and "Six curved railings nestled against the green trees". ③According to the Siyinzhai version of "Yangchun Collection", the original version is the preface by Chen Shixiu of Song Jiayou Wucheng (1058) in the Jigu Pavilion of the Ming Dynasty.
④Chen Deng's "arrogance has not been eliminated". Because he has made great achievements in defeating Lu Bu and promoted General Fu Bo, he looks down on Xu Si. ⑤For the explanation of this poem, please refer to the article in the second issue of "Literary Heritage" in 1983. ⑥ Ode to things is a literary game that has existed since ancient times. The poems in "Xunzi" are of this type. "Youxian Cave" by Zhang Jiu of the Tang Dynasty has many pun-intended "chanting to things" words. ⑦See Zhao Kuangyin's advice to ministers in "History of Song Dynasty·Biography of Shi Shouxin". ⑧Of course, the name "bold and unrestrained" is not appropriate. To explain the problem, I will use this name. Please refer to Liu Yangzhong's "On Wine Side Ci".