According to Hanshu, there are 138 folk songs of Yuefu in the Western Han Dynasty, not including Yuefu in the Eastern Han Dynasty, but only 34 exist. Guo Maoqian's Yuefu Poetry Collection divides Yuefu poetry into the following 12 categories: Jiao Miao Ci, Ci, Advocacy Ci, Transverse Blowing Ci, Harmony Ci, Qing Dynasty Ci, Dance Ci, Qin Ci, Miscellaneous Ci, Modern Style Ci, Miscellaneous Ci and New Yuefu Ci. Among these different kinds of music, symphonic songs, Sheyan songs and dance music belong to the movements used by the imperial court to praise, all of which are written by literati, and their ideological content and artistic skills are not satisfactory. Suburb temple songs can be divided into two types: suburban temple songs and temple songs. Suburbs worship heaven and earth, and temples worship ancestors first. There are three kinds of swallow-shooting songs: swallow-shooting songs, big-shooting songs and hanging food songs, which are used in swallow-shooting. Dance songs can be divided into three types: elegant dance, miscellaneous dance and casual music. Elegant dance is used for banquets in suburban temples, miscellaneous dance is used for banquets, Sanqu is a good song, and it is about writing various operas. Prose and Cross Wind are music imported from outland. Xuandaoge is a kind of music that was introduced to the north in the early Han Dynasty. It originated in China, but its lyrics came from the people. It is probably a song composed of folk songs and songs. The existing lyrics "Rao Eighteen Songs" are works of the Western Han Dynasty. Cross wind music was introduced by Zhang Qian from the western regions, and it is also a kind of military music. It is played on horseback, and the music is mainly drums and horns. Harmony is folk music collected from all over the country, among which Chu is the main music. At first, it was sung by one person and shared by many people. Shang Qing Qu is a folk song in the Southern Dynasties, which can be divided into six types: flat tune, clear tune, instrumental tune, Chu tune, lateral tune and Daqu. Shang Qing plays an important role in Yuefu. "Zaqu" is some music and lyrics of unknown origin and difficult to classify. They are compiled together and form their own categories. Zaju is a poem that cannot be entertained. Miscellaneous ballads are ballads, prophecies and proverbs from ancient times to the Tang Dynasty, which are rather messy, but they are attached to Yuefu poems. Strictly speaking, they are not Yuefu poems.
Although there are only 34 folk songs in Han Yuefu, they express rich social content and are very thoughtful. Among them, the prominent themes are: First, reflecting the people's painful life and resisting exploitation and oppression. For example, A Journey to a Sick Woman describes a tragic scene in which a poor man's wife died, his child was young, and he had no clothes or food, so he had to lock an orphan at home and beg in the street. It was sad and touching. A trip to the East Gate describes a poor man who can't survive under cruel exploitation and oppression and is forced to take risks. Poverty and despair led him to the road of resistance angrily. Through face-to-face struggle, Mo Shang Sang eulogized Qin Luofu, a mulberry-picking woman who resisted dissolute and shameless, and created a beautiful, hardworking, witty, brave and loyal female image. Second, it reflects the pain brought to the people by war and corvee. The Battle of the South of the City vividly describes the grim scene of no bones left on the battlefield and the neighing of horses, and expresses great indignation at the cruelty and ignorance of the ruling class. The tragic experience of a veteran in the Tenth Five-Year Plan reveals the cruelty of the military service system at that time, reflecting the destruction of production and the profound disaster brought to the people by the unjust war. "Ancient Songs" describes the miserable situation of the frontier, homesickness, emaciation and homelessness, which is very touching. Third, expose the decadence of the feudal ruling class. "Meeting" attempts to describe how young families prosper and reveal the honor and enjoyment of the ruling class. Yu Lin Lang created a beautiful, dignified, gentle, fearless, indomitable and rebellious image of minority women, showing the class hostility of working people to Yimen nobles. Fourth, it reflects marriage, love and women's life. Jiangnan is a lotus picking song, which describes the scene of a young and lively girl picking lotus. The ancients often used lotus as a symbol of love and fish as a metaphor for women. This is a love song that combines labor. Evil in Brother Rao is a folk love song that is rarely processed by literati. It is rough, warm, vivid and refreshing. It is about a woman who swears to heaven and expresses her unswerving commitment to love. Among these works, the most outstanding one is China's longest ancient folk narrative poem, Peacock Flying Southeast, with 353 sentences and 1700 words. It takes the true story that happened in the Jian 'an period at the end of Han Dynasty as the theme, expresses the young men and women's pursuit of love and happiness through the marriage tragedy of Liu Lanzhi and Jiao Zhongqing, and accuses the feudal patriarchal system of its evil.
The most basic artistic feature of folk songs in Han Yuefu is narrative, which is determined by its "something to do" content. In the history of China literature, the folk songs of Han Yuefu marked the development of narrative poetry to a new and more mature stage. The high artistry of Han Yuefu folk songs is mainly manifested in: First, the enhancement of narrative factors. There are many narrative poems in Han Yuefu folk songs, and even lyric works often contain narrative elements. Peacock flies southeast, Mulberry on the Stranger, Journey to the East Gate, Tenth Five-Year Conscription, Journey of Sick Women, etc. They all tell stories in the third person, create characters with distinctive personality characteristics, have relatively complete plot descriptions, and are relatively complete narrative poems. Second, explain things through personalized language, see the expression and express the theme. For example, at the beginning of Peacock Flying Southeast, Liu Lanzhi and Jiao Zhongqing poured out their grievances and demanded a divorce, and immediately launched a sharp conflict of this marriage tragedy; Later, it promotes the development of tragedy through the dialogue of various characters, and at the same time renders the character and tragic atmosphere in dialogue or interpolation. Others, such as the dialogue between a woman and peach blossom and plum blossom in Dongmen Ji and Dong Jiaorao, and Hu Ji's refutation of Feng Zi in Lin Yulang, all use the dialogue of characters to express the plot development and complete the characterization. Third, romanticism. The folk songs of Han Yuefu are mainly based on realistic creation methods, and some works have different degrees of romanticism, using romantic expression methods. For example, Qin Luofu, the hero in Shang Mo Sang, is not only a realistic figure from Winter Wheat, but also an ideal image with the democratic spirit of despising power and resisting violence. In her body, the people's good wishes and noble qualities are condensed. Without the organic combination of evil-hating realism and ideal-pursuing romanticism, and the mutual penetration of realistic accurate description and romantic exaggerated fiction, it is impossible to create the glorious image of Luo Fu.
Yuefu in the two Han Dynasties inherited the realistic tradition of ancient narrative poetry and developed into a special poetic style, namely Yuefu style, which enriched the literary treasure house of the motherland. Since Jian 'an, most accomplished poets have drawn artistic nutrition from the Yuefu of the two Han Dynasties, such as "Three Caos" and "Seven Zi" chanting current events with the old Yuefu, Bao Zhao's quasi-Yuefu songs, Du Fu's Yuefu poems and so on. The "New Yuefu Movement" initiated by Bai Juyi, Yuan Zhen and Shen Li, as well as the poetry creation of Nie, Du Xunhe and Pi Rixiu in the late Tang Dynasty also originated from Yuefu in the Han Dynasty, which shows its far-reaching historical influence.
Poems of literati in Han Dynasty
The number of literati poems in Han dynasty is not large, and their achievements are not great. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, poetry gradually developed in the direction of five-character poetry. The sonorous "five-character poem" consists of four words and exclamations, which shows that the four-character poem is trying to get rid of the predicament of the ancient Olympics. Ban Gu's Ode to History shows that in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, scholars began to write poems in the five-character style of folk songs. From then on, Zhang Heng's "Simultaneous Songs" became emotional. Cai Yong's Kingfisher, Poem of Wisdom, Poem of Sickness by Zhao Yi and Poem of Dying by Kong Rong are all good five-character lyric poems. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, an anonymous writer wrote a large number of ancient poems, which expressed the dissatisfaction of the lower-class literati, such as their unfulfilled ambition, leaving their worries and resentments, satirizing the world and stabbing the vulgar, and expressing their normal desire for career promotion, reunion, love loyalty and sincere friendship. Some of them represent the highest artistic achievements of the literati's five-character poems in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and also mark the new stage of maturity of the literati's five-character poems in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Anonymous "ancient poems" can be represented by 19 ancient poems. Nineteen Ancient Poems was not written by one person at a time, but was compiled by later generations. Its content is complicated, some are folk songs, some are homesick songs of wanderers, some are songs sung by teenagers, and some are sad songs of world-weary people pretending to be broad-minded, which have been polished by scholars more than once. Mainly lyrical, among which love songs account for 10, with sincere feelings and frank wording. Although the thoughts and feelings of Nineteen Ancient Poems are complicated, they share a common feature, that is, their sentimentality about the perishable life and the lack of order, and their anxiety about attracting people's attention to Huang Huang, which is the reflection of the contradiction and anguish of frustrated literati about real life and inner feelings on the eve of social love.
Nineteen Ancient Poems has narrow ideological content, low emotional appeal and rich feudal dross, but its artistic achievements are quite outstanding. In China's early five-character poems, such excellent works are rare. These anonymous poets have high cultural accomplishment. In artistic expression, they not only accepted the fine traditions of The Book of Songs and Songs of the South, but also absorbed nutrition from Yuefu folk songs, forming a unique artistic style, which is the representative work of early lyric short poems in the history of China literature. The main artistic feature of Nineteen Ancient Poems is that it is good at expressing emotions. For example, The Far-off Ox Star asks the weaver girl to think about her pain to express the sadness of the lovers close at hand. Niu Nv and Er Xing, originally two stars with no feelings in the universe, were endowed with thoughts and feelings by the poet, just like a couple who plan ahead in the world. The whole article is meditation, with feelings in it and scenes, which is really a wonderful work in chemical industry. Another artistic feature of Nineteen Ancient Poems is that it is good at using metaphors, such as "On the Green Mausoleum", which starts with "On the cypress in the mausoleum" and "On the stone in the stream", and then looks like gossip, but it is layered and contrasted sharply. In describing Wang Anyi's enjoyment and extravagance, he naturally reveals the meaning of praise and criticism. The conclusion is "Do your best to entertain people, why bother?" Another example is "Bright Moon at Night", which starts with sorrowful autumn, arranges bright moon and stars in autumn night, celebrates phenological changes in time, and exaggerates the cold atmosphere, and then points out that friends don't support each other, and the conclusion debunks friendship, so as to warn the world. Novel conception, care before and after, and proper opening and closing are also the remarkable characteristics of Nineteen Ancient Poems. For example, my eternal poem "Grass by the Green River" depicts the image of a homesick woman who lives alone, looks out of the window and misses her distant relatives. Yingying, Jiao Jiao, E E and Xian Xian describe the beautiful face of this homesick woman in detail. Why do you want her to be a window and make spring "empty"? Let the years pass? It turns out that the whole poem is for the last sentence, "It is difficult to keep an empty bed alone." Writing is always without a word of complaint in my heart. The image of ink is implicit, concise and unique.
Another example is "Picking Hibiscus on the River", in which a wanderer misses his wife. Let's start with Picking Hibiscus on the River. Only when the lotus was picked up did he realize that there was no one to send: the person he missed was far away, and his enthusiasm turned into ice water. At this time, he deeply felt the pain of staying away from acacia. "Concentricity" and "separation" are the basic contradictions in the artistic conception of this poem and the real source of the central idea of the last sentence. The idea is quite novel and the center is very prominent.
Poetry in the Han Dynasty inherited and developed the fine traditions of The Book of Songs and Songs of the South, reflected the social life and contradictions in the Han Dynasty, expressed people's thoughts, feelings and hopes, laid the foundation for the vigorous rise of five-character poetry, promoted the emergence of seven-character poetry and miscellaneous poetry, and opened up fertile artistic soil.