Luxurious school: Su Shi's "Shuidiao Tou" and "Niannujiao" expanded the theme of ci and enriched the expression content of ci.
Xin Qiji's "Xijiang Moon" (Bright Moon Surprises Magpie), "Broken Array" (Looking at Sword in Sin) and "Never Meet Happy" are mostly based on the national theme, expressing impassioned patriotic feelings.
Zhang's "He Xinlang" is desolate in artistic conception and heroic in style.
Zhang Xiaoxiang's Song of Six Kingdoms is close to Su Shi in style, tragic and desolate, showing the feeling that it is difficult to recover lost ground.
Graceful school: Liu Yong's Lin Yulin is clear and popular, mostly spoken, with sad feelings and harmonious melody, but some vulgar words.
Qin Guan's "Que Qiao Xian" has a gentle style and is good at depicting vivid images.
Most of Li Qingzhao's early works, such as Singing in a Slow Voice, Pruning a Plum, Dreaming Like a Dream and Drunk Flowers, express a leisurely life, charming and romantic, while his later works express a sense of life experience, with bitter and low feelings.
A comparison between graceful and unconstrained ci styles
Song Dynasty is the "golden age" of Ci. During this period, two strange peaks stood, competing with each other and setting each other off as an interest; This is the graceful school with the banner of Liu Yong and Li Qingzhao and the wild school represented by Su Shi and Xin Qiji. As the name implies, graceful school and bold school obviously represent two completely different styles of ci. So, what are their characteristics? What is the difference? Here, I think we should pay attention to a sentence commonly used by critics and writers in past dynasties to summarize the creative characteristics of Su Shi, the pioneer of the unrestrained school and the main representative of Su Shi, that is, "taking poetry as the word" (see "Houshan Poetry Talk" and so on). ). Both sides have the same evaluation of Su Shi, which shows that this statement is reasonable. For the understanding of this sentence, I quite agree with the statement in the History of China Literature compiled by Chinese Academy of Sciences: "Poetization of words does not mean the abolition of the system and meter of words as an independent style, but means the expansion of the theme of words, the more vivid presentation of writers' personality and the innovation of language. "Based on this, I want to add a breakthrough in melody, and try to make a shallow analysis and comparison of the different styles of ci between graceful and unrestrained school from the aspects of theme, form (including melody and language) and expression techniques. As for the influence of the life experience and intellectual temperament of the two schools of poets on the formation of their ci style, it is limited to space and omitted.
I. Theme: Before the Bottle, The Flower House, The Great Wall, Jiang Tian
The breadth and narrowness of the subject matter are the most remarkable differences between the bold school and the graceful school.
Over the past 300 years, from the originator of Graceful School to Wang, the so-called "Graceful School" poets have a large number of works with narrow themes, most of which are farewell, love between men and women, drunken songs, cherishing spring and enjoying flowers. Although Liu Yong and Li Qingzhao made some progress during this period, it was difficult to get rid of the shackles after all.
This bold school completely broke through the traditional barrier of the word "Ke Yan". With the courage of an innovator, Su Shi transformed Ci from a tool of "entertaining guests and people" into an independent lyric art; Push this word from "before the bottle" and "between the flowers" to a broader social life. "I don't want to enter, I have nothing to say" (Liu Zaixi's Art Outline), mountains and rivers, notes, farm scenery, feeling old, reasoning and lyric, all written between the lines. For example, Nian Nujiao (River of No Return) and Mink Head (When is the Bright Moon) are the best fairy works that can best reflect this feature. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Xin Qiji had a new development. I don't need to say anything here.
There are so many graceful poets, so many word collections and thousands of poems, but even if all of them are added up, I am afraid they are far less extensive than Su Shi's more than 300 poems in terms of social life and subject matter!
Second, the form: cutting the foot to fit the shoes and innovation breakthrough
In the form of words, graceful school and wild school also took two different paths.
Elegant poets generally pay more attention to the form of words. Regard the rules of musical rhythm (such as "five tones" and "six tones") as statutes, and regard the strict rules and regulations of language (such as "pearls are round and smooth" and "there are no words everywhere") as magic weapons. As mentioned above, their works are old and poor in content and narrow and monotonous in subject matter, so they are even more obsessed with homophonic, deliberately carving chapters and chiseling sentences to cover up their empty content in a gorgeous form. I'd even rather cut my feet to fit my shoes than cross the line. Take Li Qingzhao, the most accomplished graceful and restrained school. Obviously facing the harsh reality of poverty, she clung to the artistic prejudice of "different words" for fear of revealing a little in her own words. It is full of "sadness and sorrow". Although it makes people cry, it lacks the power to arouse people to rise. This greatly weakens the ideological significance of the work. Her poems of the same period (such as "I miss Xiang Yu so far and refuse to cross Jiangdong") were praised as bold and provocative.
In this way, the content defines the form, which in turn frames the content, and the elegant poet firmly binds his hands and feet. At this point, the school of metrical words represented by Zhou Bangyan and He Zhu reached its peak.
But the bold school is not bound by the form, but fully mobilizes the form to serve the content. The most prominent is Su Shi. In order to reflect the broad life, Su Shi broke the stereotype that "Ci must be consistent with law" and liberated Ci from the slave status of music. However, Su Shi didn't completely ignore or don't understand the melody, but because he was "outstanding, so naturally he couldn't be bound by the melody" (see what Chao Bu quoted in "Fu Zhai Man Lu") and "he was bold and didn't like to cut it to fit the melody" (see what Lu You quoted in poems of past dynasties). Su Shi gave full play to the advantages of Ci, a unique language and literary style, and used the scattered forms of long and short sentences to cause changes in rhythm, striving to make Ci-poetry sentences forceful. So as to achieve the artistic realm of harmony and unity of form, content and emotion. Lu You is an outstanding poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, who is proficient in temperament and excellent in poetry and prose. He once "tried to choose the songs of Dongpo's poems, and finally felt overwhelmed by the wind and rain" (see the quotation in Poems of Past Dynasties), which proved Su Shi's success.
In terms of language, Su Dongpo also broke the rules of the graceful school, absorbed the poems of Tao Yuanming, Li Bai, Du Fu and Han Yu in many ways, and occasionally used spoken English. As long as he can properly express his thoughts and feelings, he dares to use any words, forming a fresh, simple, lively and fluent language style, which embodies Dongpo's personality. For example, "When will there be a bright moon? I take my glass from a distance. -"("Water Tune ")" The swing in the wall is outside the wall, the layman is inside the wall, and the beauty inside the wall laughs. -"("recent love ") and so on, all understand, natural and fresh, vivid and accurate.
It can be said that it is precisely because of Su Shi's bold innovation that Ci broke away from the wings of music and became an independent style.
Third, the expression skills: "cyclic throughput" and "blurt out"
Speaking of which, I might as well quote a story:
Qin Shaoyou came to Beijing from Huiji —— (Dongpo) What did you ask? Qin Ju said, "The small building is connected with the garden, with embroidered hubs and carved saddles." Bo Yun said, "Thirteen words can only be said by one person riding in front of the building." When Qin asked Mr. Qin to be near, Po Yun said, "There are also words upstairs." The swallow is empty, where is the beauty? Empty lock Lou Yan. " Wu Chaoqiu said to the audience: "It's amazing that Zhang Jianshu sealed the swallow house in three words!" According to Selected Excellent Poems of Sages in Tang and Song Dynasties, this story can well explain the different characteristics of Su Shi and Qin Guan, and can also be extended to the creation of bold and graceful school.
Graceful school's scenery description is exquisite, the music form is full, the rhetoric is gorgeous, and the lyric is euphemistic and implicit; However, a big outline is sketched out, which is simple and lively, without rhetoric and straightforward. This can be seen by comparing Li Qingzhao's Sound Slow with Su Shi's Niannujiao.
If the bold school greatly surpasses the graceful school in the breadth of theme and content of ci, then in art, it should be said that the two schools have their own advantages and disadvantages. Specifically, the graceful and restrained school has its own uniqueness in image description, especially the use of line drawing techniques, which can achieve "one scene is difficult to describe, and one emotion is difficult to reach" (for example, Selected Poems of Sixty-one), and has made great contributions to enriching the artistic expression methods of ci. There are also some successes in the euphemistic implication of lyricism, which can create an artistic realm of blending scenes, which looks elegant and beautiful, but loses the lingering spirit.
The bold school combines scenery, lyricism and discussion in one furnace, and its structure is turbulent and unrestrained, resulting in an open and vigorous artistic realm. Although the style is clear and heroic, it is not as good as the graceful school, but it seems to be slightly inferior to the graceful school in the detail description and portrayal of specific images and the psychological state of characters.
Finally, I quote a passage from Yu Wenbao's Sword Blowing Record:
Dongpo, Yutang Day, monks sing good songs. He asked, "What is my handwriting like?" Yes, I said, "There were seventeen or eighteen women in Langzhong Ci, holding red fangs and singing' Yang Liuan Xiaofeng Canyue'; Bachelor degree, you must sing' Never Return' with a big man in Kansai, a copper pipa and an iron plate. "
This passage can be said to be an image summary and vivid explanation of the different styles of ci between graceful school and wild school.