Situkong lived in an era when eunuchs were fighting for power and profit, wars were raging and people were in dire straits. After decades of hard work in the sinister Guanhai, Situkong has experienced ups and downs. When he saw that "the imperial court was weak and the discipline was bad", the buildings in Li Tang were about to collapse irretrievably, so he lived in seclusion in the mountains and entertained himself with poetry and wine. When he calmed down, the Buddhist theory of relaxed spirit and spiritual selflessness gave him special enlightenment. In his poems, he tried to create a quiet and detached Buddhist spiritual realm to eliminate inner fear, sadness and pain as his spiritual sustenance. Si Kongtu's thought in his later years is compatible with Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. However, his poetics, especially "Shi Pin", has strong elements of old Buddhist ideas, and the old Buddhist philosophy is the main ideological source of "Shi Pin".
Si Kongtu put forward the "lasting appeal theory" of poetry. What is his ideological essence and theoretical significance? He inherited the theory of poetry criticism since the pre-Qin period, made a serious summary of the previous poetry creation, and made an in-depth discussion on the "taste" of poetry, thinking that it is difficult to write, but difficult to write poetry. There are many metaphors in ancient and modern times, and fools think that they are based on fun, and then they can say poetry "(On Poetry with Li Sheng). He believes that "interest is a special attribute that poetry must have, and puts the recognition of this attribute in the first place in creation and criticism." It is based on this understanding that he founded the "lasting appeal theory" for poetry theory.
Before Si Kongtu 369 years ago, Zhong Rong put forward the theory of "taste" in poetry. What is taste? The annotation of Shuowen said, "Son, you talk too much." Taste, interpreted as "taste" in Shuowen, also refers to the feeling of human organs on food or gas. Taste refers to the comprehensive pleasure of taste. Later, it was extended to refer to aesthetic pleasure and gradually introduced into the field of literature and art. Although there is only one word difference between taste and verve, the poetic theories of Zhong Rong and Si Kongtu are essentially different.
Zhong Rong looked for traces of theory in Kang, and regarded the "taste" of poetry as the aesthetic standard of art. He and Si Kongtu have different emotional transmission functions of aesthetic culture. As the most basic apparent function of aesthetic culture, emotional communication is determined by the perceptual essence of aesthetic culture and the performance characteristics of cultural forms. Zhong Rong said in Preface to Poetry: "The essence of five words is that many works are tasteful." It is not difficult to see through his own perceptual media that what he said has a little taste. He has subjective feelings, not stoic indifference. "Skantu" seems to blur the emotion, the taster's own creation and imagination, and emphasizes the charm of poetry as a poetic expression. Twenty-four items in his poems rigidly stipulate the poetic standards: vigorous, diluted, plain, lofty, elegant, refined, vigorous, beautiful, natural, subtle, bold, meticulous, wild, strange, tortuous, realistic, sad, descriptive, super-conceptual, elegant and elegant. Si Kongtu promoted the "taste" of poetry to a deeper level and had a meaningful connection with the theme. He emphasized that "emotion is based on things" and "things are based on feelings", that is, we often say "touching the scene and blending the scene". His Twenty-four Orders summarizes the methods of poetry and reveals the deep inner spiritual realm of human poetry. The subject mind coexists with heaven and earth and is in harmony with everything, that is, savoring the true meaning of life, understanding the mysteries of nature and feeling the world wholeheartedly. Although Zhong Rong also mentioned the poetic "taste", his deep excavation of subjective spirituality is far less than Si Kongtu's. He only judges the quality of poetry by the mellow taste he feels after chewing.
Si Kongtu and Zhong Rong have different views on the scope of poetry criticism. Zhong Rong's "poetry" is to comment on the poet, explore the origin, and determine the advantages and disadvantages of the upper, middle and lower levels. He believes that poetry expresses feelings through "chanting temperament" and pays little attention to the transmission of allusions. He is a theorist who insists on feeling and feeling. Later, Zhong Rong's thought was influenced by Lu Ji in Wei and Jin Dynasties, and he abandoned the shackles of Confucianism on poetry, and began to pay attention to the unity of poetry expressiveness and lyricism, trying to unify the beauty of art with the goodness of utilitarian function, thus reflecting the new progress in the study of poetry theory. It should be said that Si Kongtu further tasted the quality of poetry from an aesthetic point of view on the basis of Zhong Rong's poetic theory. Generally speaking, judging from the twenty-four articles, he distinguishes interest from the artistic conception and style of poetry. Every product depicts a poetic realm, which requires poetry to have good connotations and images, be broader and deeper than general consciousness and emotion, and pursue higher cultural wisdom and special philosophical realm. As far as artistic conception is concerned, his twenty-four works have the consciousness of "thinking for a thousand years", "seeing through Wan Li" and "wandering around Wan Ren with an eye on octupole", which makes clear the poetic nature and the motivation of poetic artistic conception. Therefore, his poetic theory is no longer a vague unity, but a rare transcendence in the time and space of thinking and imagination of thinking. These are all beyond Zhong Rong's power.
Si Kongtu's poetic theory obviously contains the Taoist thoughts of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and advocates a quiet and beautiful way of life and writing. Trying to get rid of the shackles of fame and fortune, forget everything, and nature and nature are completely integrated. I quietly enjoy my poor seclusion, regardless of the struggle for political power, and I am happy to live an idle life of "picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and seeing Nanshan leisurely". His temperament is wonderful. Speaking of the sky, Ling Ran's "Wang Yin" ("Shi Shi") is associated with the sky of a poetic country, which transcends the constraints of natural time and space; His "virtual existence" is nothing more than a seal. Huang and Tang were alone, but they fell in "("Poetry of the Ancient "), entrusting their spirit to a fairyland like a fairy, exposing the Taoist spirit to the fullest; His "falling flowers are silent and people are as light as chrysanthemums." When the book is old, you can read it "("Poetry and Elegance "), reaching the beginning of emotion is his profound understanding of nature; His "what is for me, what is for things, what is for me, what is for me? Very vivid, I can't tell the butterfly from Zhuang Zhou. "Taoist thought provided a comfortable development space for him to study poetics. The thought of the unity of Buddhism and Taoism, quiet and detached, far away from "the height of the temple" and noise, laid the foundation for his poetic theory. These understandings of poetry are beyond Zhong Rong's reach. Zhong found the spirituality of poetry from the soil of passion, which was limited by his thinking field of vision.
The poetic theories of Zhong Rong and Si Kongtu are not without similarities. First of all, we should admit that Zhong Rong's thought is the basis and path to find the source of poetry. Si Kongtu enjoyed the sweetness with his spirituality and the rain and dew of Zhong Rong's thoughts, and found a variety of poetic artistic conception in the spiritual realm of selflessness. Secondly, Zhong Rong's explanation of Fu, Bi and Xing, and his analysis of the relationship between emotion and things are also similar to Si Kongtu's. However, it is limited to the style and critical vision of poetry and fails to touch the essence of poetry theory.
To sum up, Zhong Rong's thought is the carrier of Si Kongtu's thought. Together, they improved the study of poetic theory, enlightened and guided the poetry and poetics of later generations, and opened up an ideological road for China's literary theory and aesthetic theory.