Li Bai was a poet we were very familiar with when we were young, even the most familiar. Thinking at night, looking at Lushan Waterfall, making Baidi City as early as possible, making wine, and dreaming of climbing Tianmu Mountain. Collected in school textbooks, I have been full of reverence and yearning for this romantic poet since I was a child. Li Bai is a sage-like man, who has never called him "fallen immortal". The most prominent feature of his personality is independence and unruly, which is the product of personal awakening in feudal society since Wei and Jin Dynasties and the product of the spirit of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. Li Bai had high aspirations all his life, and he was looking forward to "flying high enough to shake eight people" until his death, and he could soar in the sky and travel everywhere. Li Bai also likes to travel far away, wandering between mountains and rivers, traveling around the world like a fluttering canopy, claiming that "all the five mountains are sacred, and I don't think far, according to my unchanging habit all my life." His poetic imagination is magical and magnificent, with endless changes, vertical and horizontal jumps in structure, and the length of sentence patterns is patchy and beautiful. No matter which of his famous ancient poems or quatrains, you can feel its artistic charm.
Du Fu's poems, which we didn't have much contact with when we were young, may be the only thing I remember in the primary school textbooks: two orioles singing green willows and a row of egrets soaring into the sky ... they are really rich in color, with four scenes and vivid images. Later, I don't know if I read it in a joke or a story book. Some people regard this poem as a dish, and it is full of chopped green onion and egg soup, which is also impressive. There are more and more contacts in middle schools, such as exposing society, feeling current affairs, sympathizing with hard work and rural life, and of course, there are simple lyric works such as Delighting in Rain on a Spring Night. Du Fu's poetic style is realistic and straightforward, but the language has been carefully tempered, very balanced and perfect, almost impeccable. Du was born in a family with literary and Confucian traditions, and is the grandson of the poet Du. Therefore, he studied literature since childhood and was deeply influenced by Confucianism, and formed his cautious and rigorous habit of writing for others. His poems pay attention to the blending of scenes, the beauty of melody and rhyme, and the beauty of text content. So many of his poems can be read as a history of poetry.
Because Du Li and his wife are both great poets, it is inevitable that someone will compare them. This comparison has always existed in history, forming three viewpoints. One view is that Li Bai and Du Fu are neck and neck. Yan Yu believes: "Du Li's two people are not good or bad; Taibai has one or two beauties, and the beauty of the son cannot be said; Zimei has one or two beautiful women, which is too white. " ; Another school thinks that Li is better than Du Gao, saying, "I know the formula is true, and the mountains and rivers are beautiful." At that time, Du Fu could also write poems, just like an old horse chasing a frost crow "; The third faction thinks that Du is superior to Li, and Yuan Zhen said, "If the story is laid out at the end, it will be bigger than temperament, as big as a thousand words and a hundred times ... Li Shang can't survive his Fan Han, and the situation is very grand!" Bai Juyi also commented on Du Gaoyou and Li.
These evaluations, more or less with the pursuit of personal preferences and styles, are not very accurate and objective. To make a comparison, there must be some standards. Below I try to make a simple comparison from several aspects.
In terms of output, there are nearly a thousand poems by Li Bai now, but many of them have been lost. There are more than 1,400 poems handed down from ancient times by Du Fu, which are equivalent in number. In terms of quality, or more accurately, high-quality products, some of Li Bai's poems are loose in content, repetitive in subject matter and imprecise in rhythm. Apart from entertainment, most of Du Fu's poems have substance in words and can stand the beating and scrutiny. Therefore, there is a cloud in Wang Shizhen: "Ten years ago, Shaoling was more difficult to enter; After a hundred songs, purple is more annoying. "
From the content point of view, Li Bai's life experience is rich, he has made a wide range of friends and dabbled in a lot, and his poems are also very rich in content, such as scenery writing, narrative, lyric, expressing his feelings and making friends. There are many poems from temples to rivers and lakes. He is especially good at writing the reality in vain, turning it into fantasy, and sometimes he is detached from the world and full of idealism. Du Fu's lifelong thoughts are "respecting the monarch" and "worrying about Li Yuan in poor years". His poems closely combine social reality with personal life, realizing the perfect unity of ideological content and artistic form, including current political poems, critical allegorical poems, military poems, poems about nature, poems about agriculture and industry, poems about remembering relatives and friends, and even some boring poems about service and entertainment. Generally speaking, Li Bai is vain, Du Fu is realistic, Li Bai's theme is richer, his personal color and idealism are stronger, and Du Fu's experience of social reality is deeper, his coverage is richer and his description is more profound.
In terms of literary talent and artistic conception, the two have their own merits. Li Bai's "reciting six classics at the age of five, reading a hundred books at the age of ten" and "reading strange books at the age of fifteen, and having a good impression on Ling Xiangru" are very knowledgeable. Some of his poems, at first glance, are dull, but they can still touch people's hearts because of their true feelings. If he uses passionate words and phrases, his artistic conception will be more open and his imagination will lead readers into the sky and the earth, which will be fascinating. Another part of his poems is characterized by sparseness, elegance, clearness and elegance, which can be made into poems even if written casually. Du Fu's family background, learning poetry at the age of seven, became famous at the age of fifteen, and was also a young genius. His poems pay attention to the choice of words and sentences, which can often bring forth the new and create new things. His poems are concise and rigorous, which makes people far behind. Such language makes Du Fu's poems mainly have rich and vivid artistic conception. On the whole, their literary talent is really neck and neck.
In terms of style, Li Bai's poems and songs have obvious personal style characteristics, some are vigorous, some are fresh and elegant, some are uninhibited, and some are unrestrained and Wang Yang. In short, they are elegant and unrestrained. Du Fu's poetic styles are also varied, but the most important feature is that he is famous for his melancholy, sedate, dignified and delicate, and he is good at refining strange words with rich feelings. Tan Heng of Ming Dynasty said: "Poetry is human, too white and indecent, so poetry is elegant;" Zi Mei is a heavy person, so poetry is heavy. " That makes sense. For example, when writing about friendship, Li Bai's "I'm worried about the bright moon, and the wind blows the west" is compared with Du Fu's "It's better to pile up a winding pond with tears", one elegant and the other gloomy, which embodies two styles.
Stylistically speaking, Li Bai is better at Yuefu classical poems and quatrains, which are written wonderfully. Although his Yuefu poems use the old Yuefu theme, they are innovative, and the seven-character quatrains are the best in the Tang Dynasty. Relatively speaking, he doesn't like to write metrical poems. The number of metrical poems is relatively small, but there are also fine works. At the same time, Li Bai also left some poems (early words) and essays. Du Fu's works, on the other hand, are mainly metrical poems and quatrains, plus some ancient poems with different lines, and his near-metrical poems, especially the four quatrains, are particularly outstanding. In addition, Du Fu's narrative poems broke away from the ancient theme of Yuefu and created many new themes of Yuefu, such as the famous Three Officials and Three Partings.
From the perspective of personal charm, it is obvious that Li Bai's personality is more in line with the ideal of China people. He despised Yao and Shun, laughed at him, bowed to the emperor, and made friends with princes. "I was a madman in Chu and sang a crazy song about Confucius." "The emperor didn't get on the boat and called himself Brewmaster" is obviously a model of arrogance. He is willing to get close to nature, praise mountains and rivers and publicize his nature. He is also good at fencing and likes drinking. Not only is he good at poetry, but Ren Xia also enriches his personal charm. However, Du Fu was in troubled times, his career was ups and downs, and his mood of writing poems was rather gloomy. The vicissitudes of life have made his sharpness more restrained, and sometimes he even appears crooked and flattering. Therefore, although Du Fu is knowledgeable and worried about his country and people, his personality is not as flamboyant and attractive as Li Bai's.
Li Bai and Du Fu are good friends. Du Fu has many poems commemorating or praising Li Bai. From breaking up with Li Bai to his later years, there were 15 poems about Li Bai. Among them, the most famous are Dreaming of Li Bai and Thinking of Li Bai in Spring. Du Fu's respect and admiration for Li Bai reflects the sincerity and modesty of Du Fu's character from one side, and also fully demonstrates the extraordinary charm of Li Bai.
Li Bai is a handsome swordsman, and Du Fu is a bitter poet in a thatched cottage. Li Bai is a Taoist and Du Fu is a Confucian. Compared with Jin Yong's martial arts novels, Li Bai is like Ling Huchong who was born with ups and downs, and Du Fu is like Guo Jing who is obsessed with joining the WTO. They all propped up a magnificent sky of Tang poetry with extraordinary poetic talents. Two people have their own strengths and are equally great. If you want to compare, it is really difficult, but it is quite interesting if you don't mix personal preferences, experiences and outlook on life.
It's rough, but it's only a brick and a jade