Injury to Spring and Song Dynasty Yang Wanli
I planned to have a lot of fun this year, but still failed to get an east wind.
If you don’t have dazzling eyes every year, you are either worried or sick.
: expected. (2) In vain: to let down. East wind: spring breeze.
[Translation] When spring comes, I expect that there will be a lot of fun to enjoy the spring this spring. I didn’t expect that this year, like previous years, I will live up to the beauty of this spring. Seeing that I never have the eyes to appreciate the blooming flowers every year. I am either sick or sad, so how can I be in the mood to see flowers?
Yang Wanli (1127-1206) (Note: According to the appendix at the end of the volume of "Collection of Yang Wenjie Official Documents", the "Yang Gong Epitaph" written by Yang Wanli's son Yang Changru says: "The late emperor was born in the ninth month of Dingweisui, the first year of Jianyan." He was born on the 22nd day... Bingyin died on May 8th in the second year of Kaixi at the age of eighty. The ages mentioned in other poems are also consistent. According to this, Yang should have been born in the first year of Jianyan (1127). The old theory is mostly from the "Biography of Yang Wanli in the History of Song Dynasty". "The record is incorrect because it is presumed that Yang was born in the sixth year of Xuanhe (1124)." His courtesy name was Tingxiu, his name was Chengzhai, and he was a native of Jishui, Jiangxi. He was a Jinshi in the 24th year of Shaoxing. He successively served as a local official in Zhangzhou and Changzhou. He became an attendant of the East Palace and became a bachelor of Baomo Pavilion. He repeatedly criticized the government and disobeyed the powerful Prime Minister Han Tuozhou, so he resigned from office and stayed at home for fifteen years, and died of sorrow and anger.
Yang Wanli, Fan Chengda, Lu You and You Miao are known as the "four great poets of the ZTE". At that time, Yang and Lu were particularly famous. There are very few works handed down by You Miao, and his achievements are not high. Although Yang and Fan are not as good as Lu You, they can escape the prison of Jiangxi Poetry School, have their own characteristics in thought and art, and are worthy of being outstanding poets of the Southern Song Dynasty.
The main difference between Yang Wanli and the Jiangxi School of Poetry is that he directly absorbs themes from natural scenery instead of renovating them from books and texts, so he said, "Don't listen to Chen's words, just listen to the sky." He has a particularly strong interest in the natural world. Everything in the natural world, from big mountains to mountains and flowing water, to small bees and butterflies, is all included in poetry. He believed that "things in the mountains are the subject of poetry", and "poems without mountains" also said: "If the wind and smoke are not good, why are the sentences new?" As for nature, he observed it carefully, understood it deeply, and described it well. It was so vivid and lifelike that Jiang Kui once joked that he was "afraid of seeing you everywhere in the mountains and rivers". Therefore, in terms of subject matter, most of his poems describe natural scenery, which best reflects the artistic characteristics of his poems. Yang Wanli is a poet who is good at change both in inheritance and creation. He started with the Jiangxi School in his early years. After his middle age, he turned to criticize the shortcomings of the Jiangxi School. He even wrote more than a thousand "Jiangxi style" poems when he was young, and he came up with his own ideas. He once talked about this transformation process in his "Preface to the Jingxi Collection": "In his poems, I first learned from the gentlemen of Jiangxi, and also learned the five-character rhyme of Houshan, and the seven-character quatrains of the old man of Banshan. Later I learned the quatrains of Yu The Tang Dynasty people... When he wrote poems in 1898, he suddenly had an enlightenment, so he thanked the Tang Dynasty people, Wang, Chen, and other gentlemen in Jiangxi for not daring to learn from it, and then he started to imitate the natural creation. He believes that "to learn poetry, one must be thorough and self-reliant" ("With Li Tianlin"); he no longer imitates the ancients, but wants to surpass them: "Huang Chen rests his feet under the fence, but Tao Xie stands out before he goes." ("He Li Tianlin") Postscript "Xu Gongzhong's Provincial and Qianjin Poems") thus formed his own unique style. This is what Yan Yu calls "Yang Chengzhai style" in "Canglang Poetry Talk".
One of the characteristics of "Chengzhai style" is its humor and humor. This is mainly inherited and developed from Tao Qian's "Responsibility", Du Fu's "Manxing", and the humorous and playful style of Su Shi and Huang Tingjian. Poem titles such as "Mocking Bees", "Mocking Dragonflies", "Mocking Children", and "Mocking the Stars and Moon" are rarely seen in ordinary poetry collections. But he often also combines anger and satire in humorous ridicule, such as "Mocking the Huai Feng": "Instead of clearing the northern fog, I only come to roll up the Langtou Mountain!" Another example is "Ant Viewing": "The tiny body is everywhere." How much food can I have? I’ll have a full cart after hunting!” Second, it’s a rich and novel imagination. He is good at capturing the characteristics and abnormalities of natural scenery, and uses anthropomorphic techniques to highlight them, making them vivid and interesting. For example, he used "a peak was suddenly stolen by the clouds" to describe the flowing clouds, "I worshiped and killed the reed flowers but refused to give up" to describe the strong wind, and "two embankments of willows served as guards" to associate with the soldiers on the frontier. Third, it is natural and lively language. He inherited ancient and contemporary folk songs, as well as the traditions of Bai Juyi, Zhang Ji, Du Xunhe and others. He strived to make his language accessible to the people and incorporated a large number of slang and ballads into his poems. Examples such as "sloppy", "hurriedly", and even "several cuts" are also unavoidable. This can be said to be a liberation compared to the Jiangxi School's search for obscure scriptures, use of new words, rhymes, and awkward sentences. These three characteristics are often intertwined. Let’s look at the following poems:
Wild chrysanthemums and moss each make money, gold, brass and green compete for beauty. The gods and the poor poets only buy the sorrow but not the land. -- "The Play"
The pole master just trusts the flow of the boat and does not make any plans of water and stone on the beach. However, it was spun three times by the turbulence, turning the stern of the boat into the bow. --"Looking down at the Jinhua Mountain from the Hengshan Beach"
The cliffs are filled with tigers breaking their mouths, and the bad beach is roaring with thunder. Yiliu takes the lead, like an ox's head supporting an iron ship.
"The Feng Bo persuades you to drink a glass of wine, why do the evil dramas shock the poet! Can you give me Jiwei?" - An Liu turned around and waved his hand! - "The Feng Bo"
The first poem is written The scenery in front of me and the second poem about daily life are all meaningful, but they are not sour or pedantic. The third song more concentratedly expresses the unique style of "Chengzhai Style". He said to himself, "I have never solved my sorrows in my life," and also said, "Poets have never been able to overcome their sorrows since ancient times." We should understand the poet's optimistic attitude towards life from this style of poetry.
Yang Wanli is also a poet who is more concerned about the fate of the country. "Who said that when you swallow the moon and eat in the clouds, your main intention will be when you are worried" ("Looking at Cloud Pictures by Liu Gaoshi"), this is exactly what he said. Therefore, he also has some works that directly express patriotic feelings, such as "Four Quatrains on First Entering the Huaihe River":
The boat leaves the Hongze bank and the sandy shore, and people arrive at the Huaihe River with a bad mood: Why should Sanggan be far away, north of the middle stream? That's the end of the world!
The boats on both sides of the strait are going in opposite directions, and it is difficult to negotiate with the waves. Only the gulls and herons were left, flying freely from north to south.
These two poems were written by Yang Wanli in the first year of Chunxi (1190) when he was ordered to welcome the Jin envoy. The author saw that the Huaihe River, which was originally the heartland of the motherland, has now become the boundary between the Jin and Song Dynasties. The people on both sides of the strait have also lost their freedom of communication and become enemy countries, so he feels extremely sad. Because it is combined with the objects in front of him, it can "contain inexhaustible meanings and can be seen beyond the words", which also shows his attainments in quatrains. In addition, such as "Snow and Dawn Climbing Jinshan Mountain" has "The substitute is ashamed at the end of the river, and the substitute is worried at the end of Jinshan", and "The Baigou used to be outside the divide, but the Yishui now moves to the Huaihe River" in "The First Mountain Southeast of the Xuyi Army" " and other sentences also reveal his patriotic mood.
Yang Wanli also wrote some poems that reflected the working life of farmers, such as "Planting Yangge" and "Poetry on Bamboo Branches". He also expressed deep sympathy for the farmers' suffering: "There is not even an inch of soil left in the barren mountains. How could Tian's father ever be there?" "Come full!" ("Journey to the Morning Cooking Paint Bridge in Fakong Town"). However, there are too few such works among his more than 4,000 extant poems, and they lack Lu You's impassioned and generous enthusiasm, and their exposure is not as great as that of Fan Cheng. So specific and profound. This may be related to his artistic point of view. He once said: "The poem has been exhausted but the taste will last forever, which is a good thing." ("Chengzhai Poetry Talk")
In general, Yang Wanli can be regarded as a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty. A writer with a face of his own. His main achievements and contributions were in the area of ??artistic style. He absorbed the line drawing technique of folk songs, went against the stiffness of the Jiangxi School of Poetry, and created a lively and natural "Chengzhai style", which is worthy of recognition. However, similar to the Jiangxi School of Poetry, although he also admired Du Fu, he failed to inherit Du Fu's realism spirit. What he loved most was the landscape and pastoral poetry written by Tao, Xie, Wang, Meng, Wei and Liu, especially Wang Wei's "Wangchuan Collection", and one-sidedly believed that "only Zhengxing's own poetry". Therefore, most of his poems are "Awesome in the mountains and rivers, chasing the wind and moon", which rarely reflect the social reality and are very inconsistent with the troubled times in which he lived. This also made it impossible for him to make a complete change in the Jiangxi School of Poetry in terms of ideological content and creative direction. Due to the trivial subject matter, his humor often became vulgar and boring, and his creative attitude of blindly following nature and abusing spoken language also led him to write many rough works. Poems like "one cup to three cups, one, two, three, four, five" are really not clever.