Yang
The Book of Songs and Songs of the South are two sources of my reading of ancient poems. Poetry criticism in past dynasties is either poetry or poetry. Although one is realism and the other is romanticism, both of them mainly express the idea of self-cultivation, so the idea of self-cultivation and self-discipline has become the mainstream of China's ancient poetry thought, while the others have been marginalized. If this poem fails to fully express the idea of self-cultivation, it will be rated as "unreasonable" Li He, a poet in the middle Tang Dynasty, is an example.
The theory of "irrationality" in Li He's poems began with Du Mu's evaluation of Li He's poems. Du Mu compares Li He's poems with Li Sao and concludes that Li He's poems are not as reasonable as Li Sao. Du Mu's "inferior" theory later developed into "unreasonable" theory. "I have a foolish taste for Li He's poems, and I admire his ability to avoid strange dangers. Although I doubt his irrationality, I dare not speak to the times. " This is the early development from what Du Mu called "less than" to "unreasonable". Lu You, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, also thought: "The congratulatory message is like a hundred flowers, showing off in colorful ways, which makes people afraid to be familiar with it. It is nothing to ask for its supplement." Of course, there are also "reasonable" theories that are in sharp contrast with "unreasonable" theories. Yao said: "Congratulations is a poem, and its words, meanings and propositions deeply hurt the disadvantages of this world and hit the point." Furthermore, it is considered that "it is possible to take congratulatory poems as the spring and autumn period of Tang Dynasty". Therefore, Yao Zhu used the indexes of two Tang Dynasty books to verify Li He's poems. However, there are too many far-fetched places that make people laugh. Qian Zhongshu criticized: "If you don't understand the empty space, you must be honest, especially effective, and cover people up. Will not understand the world, deliberately for the long luck of poetry. It is said that Qu Ping, who has been entrusted with the important task of poetry, wants to reverse his conviction of Mu Zhi's Preface, "With a little care, a slave will live in a coquettish environment". There are two books from the Tang Dynasty in my stomach, which have swollen my intestines and made me want to vomit. Nowhere to put it. Therefore, Chang Ji's poems, also known as historical theory, became cynicism. " On the whole, the "unreasonable" theory in Li He's poems was the mainstream in ancient China.
The reason why Li He's poems are so controversial is because China had a special rule about "reason" in his poems in ancient times, that is, the thought of cultivating one's morality, governing the country and leveling the world. When commenting on the "reason" of Li He's poems, Du Mu has already explained: "Sorrow and resentment, talk about the chaos between the monarch and the minister. Sometimes it's to inspire people. That's what he did. It's nothing. " Du Mu's "reason" here refers to the gains and losses of state affairs and the meaning of monarch and minister. That is, the traditional mainstream poetic thought of nourishing qi and governing peace. However, Yao couldn't find a new way to overthrow the "unreasonable" theory, and made a very far-fetched comparison between Li He's poems and history, trying to prove that Li He's poems were expressing the idea of self-cultivation and governing the country. Of course, this method cannot fundamentally establish the rationality of Li He's poems. So in China's criticism of ancient poetry. Irrationality is the main evaluation of Li He's poems.
The reason why Li He's poems are dismissed as "unreasonable" is not that his poems really lack ideological content, but that Li He's poems express marginal thoughts, rather than the traditional mainstream thoughts of cultivating qi and leveling the peace. The marginal thought of Li He's poems is the philosophy expressed in his poems, that is, "focusing on fate" and examining life and death, fame and fortune from the standpoint of fate.
To understand Li He's philosophy, we must first understand Li He's position of observing the world, which is the point of death. The ancients believed that people eventually had two ultimate destinations, one was to die, become a ghost and live underground, and the other was to die and become immortal. Live in the sky But Li He believes that ghosts will die, and so will immortals, including the supreme god. It can be seen that Li He first considers the life and death of individuals, and considers the life and death of all life. In the end, he found that there is no immortal life, death is objective and all life is inevitable. In Li He's eyes, it is equal to life and death. Death is no longer a personal problem, but a universal problem. Death is a kind of "fate". Change is beyond human power. Therefore, Li He used many words such as "death", "old", "decline" and "withering" in his poems to stimulate readers.
Start from the point of death and continue to follow the time. Li He found that human death and ghost life are successive in time and space, and he connected human and ghost, human and underground two different time and space. Song of Su Xiaoxiao by Gu Yuefu shows Su's little love story on earth, and the love story here ends with the death of people. But Li He's seeing death is not the final thing. He described the little love story after Sue's death with imagination, skipping the limit of death. Linking human love stories with ghost love stories, death is just the transformation of things from one state to another. Transform from one time and space to another. "Paint the torch to welcome the couple. Mysterious fireflies bother you, and "newcomers" are people who have just died. People on the ground die of old age, and ghosts in the ground are reborn. This is a simultaneous event. Death only transforms the life state of one time and space into another. In a word, Li He thinks that death has changed the state of life. But time and space are not broken, and "the sound is lost", so he turned his attention to infinite time and space. It can be seen that the formation of Li He's concept of time and space is based on the investigation of individual life and death, standing at the point of death, and then turning his eyes to infinite time and space. He regards death as a foothold to observe the world, and sees finite life forward and infinite time and space backward.
Although Li He's life is short, his concept of time and space has changed in different stages of his short life.
First of all, let's take a look at Li He's view of time and space before he became Li Lang and four years ago (809).
When the emperor is heavy, when the emperor is heavy.
72 people are waiting for the cycle to advance,
The jade tube of the heavenly official flies in ashes.
He Changlai is late this year,
The queen mother brought peaches to the son of heaven,
Our family and Shi's family are pedantic.
("Henan government tries December music words (and leap month) leap month")
This poem was written in the third year of Yuanhe (808), when he was working in Henan. At this time, Li He has realized the infinity of time and space, but judging from the words of "emphasizing light", "emphasizing time", "pushing back to the circle" and "walking around the dragon", Li He thinks that the infinity of time and space is only a simple cycle of time and space, and does not realize the one-dimensional irreversible operation of time and space. This is also reflected in Li He's other poems in the same period. For example, "Hao Ge" wrote: "The south wind blows the mountains and plains, and the emperor sends Tian Wu to move to Canghai. The Empress Dowager's peach blossom is red a thousand times, and Peng Zu Wu Xian died several times. " This poem was written in the fourth year of Yuanhe (809), after the scholar returned to Changgu in the east. From the words "a thousand times red" and "several times dead", it shows that Li He thinks that time and space are infinite, because time and space are repetitive and simple reappearance.