The Song Dynasty was a turning point in the development of China's classical literature, and both traditional poems and new characters, novels and operas were fully developed. Among them, after experiencing the insurmountable peak of Tang poetry prosperity, Song poetry did not stagnate, but developed and innovated on the basis of learning Tang poetry, opened up a new path of poetry development and formed its own unique characteristics. In the process of pioneering and innovating in Song poetry, many people in the field of Song poetry are working hard. During the Song Dynasty, Su Shi in the Northern Song Dynasty and Lu You in the Southern Song Dynasty had the greatest influence and the highest achievements. Among them, Su Shi, as one of the most influential writers in the history of China literature, with his superb artistic level and profound knowledge accumulation, coupled with the literati's conscious sense of innovation, formed his own unique poetic characteristics and created a poetic style. His poetry creation not only embodies the characteristics of the Song Dynasty, but also has few defects and drawbacks in the Song Dynasty, which formally established the Song tune with the characteristics of the times different from the Tang Dynasty, established the norms of poetry and songs different from the Tang Dynasty, changed the Tang Dynasty into the Song Dynasty, and created another glory in the history of China poetry after the Tang Dynasty. It can be said that Su Shi is a master of the formation of Song tune, and Su Shi's poetry is a model of Song Dynasty, and his poetry has its own unique artistic style.
First, the irony of things, borrow ancient irony today
Su Shi pays more attention to the social function of poetry, and advocates that poetry can "satirize things, pass them on to the top, and understand the meaning of saints." (Qi Jun Zazi) [1] Therefore, under the guidance of this thought, Su Shi also wrote some political poems. Although the number is small, they are all realistic, vividly exposing the social contradictions at that time, expressing a scholar's concern and sympathy for the people's sufferings, and exposing and criticizing the dark politics.
For example, in the poem "Litchi Tan", Su Shi used the historical fact that Yang Guifei's love for litchi caused waste of people and property, satirizing the arrogance and extravagance of today's dynasty rulers. In the first eight sentences of the poem, Yang Yuhuan, the imperial concubine of the Tang Dynasty, made great efforts with her love for litchi, which led to "shocking and bleeding for thousands of years", thus revealing that the extravagant enjoyment of the upper rulers was based on the oppression and slavery of the people. "So far, I want to eat Fu Lin's meat" shows the people's extreme anger at the upper rulers. The phrase "no one will show you around" implies that there are too few people who dare to tell the truth in real society. Therefore, Su Shi called on heaven to show compassion for people, and the upper rulers should stop being arrogant and extravagant, hoping that the people would have a good weather and avoid suffering, which showed the poet's sympathy for the people and his vision for a better society. The last eight sentences, from litchi to tea and then to flowers, directly point out the ugly face of the ruling class's powerful bureaucrats "seeking novelty and buying pets" to please the emperor. In this poem, Su Shi satirizes the cruelty of the ruling class of the dynasty by using the ancient times to satirize the present. Ji Yun commented on this poem: "There are many intersections, and there are things that the aftermath can't do. As far as he can't do it, he is the most important. He is magnificent and not too explicit. " [2]
Others, such as "except for the heavy snow at night, staying in Weizhou, it will be sunny on the first day of January, and then the snow will be half restored", describing the tragic life of farmers under natural and man-made disasters; "Lee's Garden" reveals the arrogance and extravagance of those feudal bureaucrats, regardless of the lives of the people; "To Wang Qingyuan" praises honest officials who care about people's sufferings. These political poems criticize the current disadvantages from different angles, pay attention to people's livelihood, and express Su Shi's noble personality by satirizing the past and present.
Second, flowing water, touching the place gives birth to spring.
Su Shi wrote a lot of poems about objects, which are beautiful, poetic and emotional. Just as Zhao Yi in Qing Dynasty commented on Su Shi in Ou Bei Shi Hua: "It's probably gorgeous, touching spring. There are a lot of books in the cupboard, enough for them to draw left and right, which is not satisfactory. Those who are particularly unattainable are born with a healthy pen, as cool as a sad pear, as fast as cutting at the same time, and there is no obvious difficulty. " Some of his poems, describing scenery, are as handy as flowing clouds, and need not be carved.
For example, one of the "Two Night Scenes of Hui Chong Riverside":
Two or three peach blossoms outside the bamboo forest and ducks in the water first noticed the warm spring. The beach is covered with wormwood, asparagus is beginning to sprout, and puffer fish are preparing to swim upstream from the sea back to the river.
This poem is a picture of a duck play painted by a monk in the Song Dynasty. However, when Su Shi wrote this poem, he was really "carried away" and did not break away from the original painting, but also created new ideas and artistic conception. This poem mainly describes the spring scenery of the water town. The first sentence begins with the peach blossom outside the bamboo, and then turns to the ducks playing in the water. Ducks swim freely and happily in the water, which makes people feel the vitality and warm return of spring, and makes readers feel a kind of sound, as if they can feel the warmth of spring water and the excitement and joy brought by spring. The last two sentences are about the spring scenery in which everything is reviving and competing for growth. Artemisia selengensis has sprouted all over the ground, and asparagus has just sprouted. This season is just the time when the puffer fish began to follow the upper reaches of the river, which just echoes the "Spring River Plumbing" in front, and conveys the poet's fresh aesthetic feeling to readers from another angle. Although he wrote a series of things such as bamboo, peach blossom, spring water, duck, Artemisia, puffer fish, etc., he skillfully combined these different images to construct a vibrant spring color map of water towns. As Wang Bomin commented on this poem: "He brought the scenery to life, making readers feel that there are pictures in this poem, which means endless."
Su Shi's poems are beautiful in words and profound in artistic conception, which makes people really feel that Su Shi's poems are "flowing" and "touching the ground to give birth to spring".
Third, philosophy into poetry, reason and interest.
When Su Shi wrote poems, he was good at integrating some philosophical emotions into his poems. From the scenery, we can see the poet's own philosophy of life or different views on things. When Su Shi writes this kind of poems, it looks interesting to combine sense with scenery, which is the innovation of Su Shi's poems. Su Shi wrote many philosophical poems, which have influenced the world so far and played an enlightening and educational role in the world.
For example, the second song of Drinking Rain on Lake Chuqing:
The water is bright and sunny, and the mountains are cloudy and rainy. If you want to compare the West Lake to the West Lake, heavy makeup and light makeup are always appropriate.
Other poems, such as Xilin Bi Ti and A Gift for Liu Jingwen, can always arouse readers' philosophical thinking in plain language. Cai commented on Su Shi in this way: "Dongpo's argumentative poems and philosophical poems are good at expressing their views skillfully through calm concern for natural and humanistic social phenomena, keen scrutiny, unique aesthetic angle, natural and popular language and simple expression.
Fourth, take words as poems, arguments as poems, and talents as poems.
Although Su Shi's poems also showed the characteristics of prose culture and discussion culture in the Song Dynasty, Su Shi overcame the shortcomings of insisting on using allusions, being completely reasonable and ignoring poetry in the Song Dynasty.
Su Shi pays attention to writing poems with ci as the body and pursues prose poems. However, he overcame the superficiality and tasteless of Ouyang Xiu and Mei Shi, and boldly wrote prosaic sentences into poems, breaking the traditional mode of poetry and making innovations, such as Moon Rabbit Tea.
The ring is not a ring, 17 is not 17, and there is a confused jade rabbit. Just like last month's beautiful dress, the full moon is still missing, so what year is it missing this month? Didn't you see that the tea fighting boy couldn't bear to fight a small group with double ribbons on it?
This poem completely broke the inherent form of previous poems, so that many people criticized Su Shi's works of this type as not poems at all. But this is indeed a bold attempt by Su Shi in poetry creation. This poem has different styles, but the language is easy to understand, the form is eclectic, and it is catchy to read, which makes people feel very cordial and natural.
Many of Su Shi's poems are also argumentative, but they are not completely argumentative or empty. But always rely on writing scenery or chanting things, or paying attention to reality and expressing their feelings with their own emotions, so as not to make poetry boring. For example, the poem "Haicheng" first tells that Haicheng is actually empty in the sea of clouds, and there is no real balcony. The so-called Haicheng is just an illusion in our hearts, but to comfort our hearts, we really want to see it. I didn't expect to really see such a strange thing as "frost on a heavy building", so I naturally commented on this "strange thing": many things are easy to get on earth, but who can dominate outside the world? And I just prayed to the gods by chance, and I realized my wish, which shows that I just met with bad luck in the world, not that God didn't help me. It can be seen that Su Shi's argument is not a simple reasoning, but a clever combination of emotion, reason and scenery, and there seems to be no sense of contradiction.
In a word, Su Shi's poetry creation is not based on one view, but integrates the strengths of Li, Du, Han and Bai, and finally forms his own unique artistic style. In Song Dynasty, Su Shi, as a great master, carried the model of Song Dynasty and became the immortal star of ancient poetry in Song Dynasty and even in China.