Why are the pastoral poems of Fan Chengda Tao Yuanming, Wang Wei and Meng Haoran different?

Tao Yuanming in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Wang Wei and Meng Haoran in the Tang Dynasty and Fan Chengda in the Southern Song Dynasty were all famous pastoral poets. The main reasons for the difference between their pastoral poems are as follows: Tao Yuanming's pastoral poems are mostly written after resigning from his post and retiring, showing the poet's noble moral integrity, his love for simple pastoral life, his understanding and friendly feelings for working people, and his pursuit and yearning for the ideal world. His language is simple and natural, with profound artistic conception. Wang Wei's pastoral poems were mainly written after middle age, and he became increasingly depressed, seeking sustenance in Buddhism and pastoral areas. They are characterized by fresh and distant styles, refined and refined, creating an artistic conception of "painting in poetry" and "Zen in poetry", which shows his leisurely life and quiet state of mind. Meng Haoran has been wandering in the contradiction between seeking an official position and retiring all his life. Most of his pastoral poems were written because of political difficulties and setbacks. His style downplays nature, ignores carving and is full of wonderful self-satisfaction, which mostly expresses his feelings of seclusion between mountains and rivers and pastoral areas. Fan Chengda's pastoral poems were written in the ten years when he retired from Shihu, among which Four Seasons of Pastoral Music is the most famous. Its language is natural and fresh, its style is gentle and euphemistic, and it describes all kinds of details of rural life comprehensively and truly, making pastoral poetry a veritable poem reflecting rural life.

The following is a brief description of the main styles of pastoral poems of the four poets:

Tao Yuanming's pastoral poems describe simple pastoral scenery and daily pastoral life, reflecting his quiet mood and interest after he retired. In the way of expression, these poems mostly use line drawing, and the language is simple and natural, which is rare and gorgeous, but this does not mean that it is dull and tasteless. The plain description of pastoral poetry contains Tao Yuanming's love for life and nature, which shows his beautiful personality and lofty ideals. At the same time, Tao Yuanming's pastoral poems are rich in artistic conception, and the selected scenery is distinctive, full of poet's feelings, reflecting the poet's personality characteristics. Tao poetry is also good at integrating profound philosophy into the images of poetry, so that ordinary materials can show extraordinary artistic conception.

Wang Wei is the most accomplished poet among the pastoral poets in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. His poems are poetic and picturesque. Su Shi, a great writer in the Song Dynasty, once spoke highly of them: "There are pictures in the poems, and they are full of charm". Since then, "painting in poetry" has become a comment on Wang Wei's poems. Wang Wei's pastoral poems are varied in style and mood. Sometimes the spirit is grand, the artistic conception is broad, sometimes the description is delicate and intriguing, sometimes vivid and realistic, and sometimes subtle and concise. Wang Wei is also good at using various colors to vividly express the scenes of nature.

Meng Haoran's pastoral poems are mostly written in the form of five-character poems. In his poems, there are descriptions of magnificent mountains and rivers, seclusion scenes of hermits in mountains, travel scenes and the life of rural farmers. Both Wang Wei and Meng Haoran are good at writing pastoral poems. Although both of them are good at landscapes and rural areas, they are also different. Meng's poems are accompanied by fresh and quiet natural beauty, but they often contain subtle sadness, while Wang's poems are different. It is a quiet and leisurely artistic conception, which often contains Zen. Poetry critics in Qing Dynasty praised Meng's poems as "light language but not light taste" and Wang's poems as "Zen without Zen". We can also read Meng Haoran's poems, while Wang Wei's poems are "empty" and permeated with Zen.

In his later years, Fan Chengda resigned due to illness and returned to his hometown. He spent ten years in Shihu, a leisurely and prosperous old age, and wrote the famous pastoral poem "Four Seasons Pastoral Music". This group of poems ***60 seven-character quatrains, with 12 poems as a group, is divided into rural life of wing chun day, late spring day, summer day, autumn day and winter day. Fan Chengda creatively combined the literati's self-expression of seclusion with the hardships of farmers' working life, successfully transformed the theme of traditional pastoral poetry, and comprehensively and truly described the details of rural life, with a simple, fresh and natural style. Qian Zhongshu called it "the epitome of China's ancient pastoral poetry" in Notes on Selected Poems of Song Dynasty.

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Baidu Encyclopedia Tao Yuanming, Wang Wei, Meng Haoran and Fan Chengda related entries.