Shi Yuntao, the eighth Tang poem read by a family.
Yang Guifei is a talented woman with many talents. According to historical records, she is good at singing and dancing, and is good at melody. She is good at playing piano and pipa. The Tang Dynasty is a country of poetry, and the whole country likes poetry. As the saying goes, if you are familiar with 300 Tang poems, you will steal them if you can't write them. In that environment, it seems normal to be able to write poetry, but it is abnormal to be unable to write poetry. Yang Guifei is no exception. She can write poems, and a poem handed down from ancient times was given to Zhang Zuowu for dancing:
The sleeves are fragrant, and the red fragrance lingers in autumn smoke.
The wind is shaking on the light cloud ridge, and the water is blowing by the tender willow pool.
This poem is included in the fifth volume of Complete Tang Poetry. How is the poem written? According to the previous evaluation, it is neither good nor bad. Lu Chang, a poetry critic in the Qing Dynasty, commented on this poem: the poem is not good, but it describes the state of dance every word, and the language is beautiful, which also shows that its style is gratifying. First of all, he defined this poem as bad. It is meaningless to evaluate a poem and say that it is good or bad on the whole. This Mr. Lu talks about poetry and likes to do so. His book Poems of Celebrities in Past Dynasties still has great influence, and it was handed down from generation to generation in the form of cable edition in Qing Dynasty. In this book, he commented on Li Qingzhao's poems and said: Qingzhao's poems are not very good, but they are good at using words, elegant and can be recited.
From the evaluation of Li Qingzhao's ci, we can see that Mr. Lu's comments on ci are quite harsh. Li Qingzhao's ci is cold and lonely, sad and sad, and his bold innovation has been widely praised, but he said: this is not a difficult point. I think he is a little harsh on Yang Guifei's poems. Yes, this poem by Yang Guifei may not be very good compared with Li Bai, Du Fu and other masterpieces handed down from generation to generation in the Tang Dynasty. However, if you think that as a woman, rather than an imperial concubine who specializes in poetry, it is very rare to write such poems. Of course, this is not a reason to praise her poem. More importantly, we admire this poem, or it can be said that it is beautifully written. Mr. Lu also thinks there are advantages, but only the language is smart, that is, the language is playful, and in our current words, the language is lively. From the lively language, we can know that Yang's style is gratifying, that is, her personality is pleasing. I think this function is available, but it is definitely not enough.
Judging from the title, this is a poem about dance, written as a gift.
Zhang is a servant of the imperial concubine, a maid in the palace, and can sing and dance well. This poem was given to her. On one occasion, Yang Guifei came to the palace with Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty and invited Zhang, a servant, to dance. In terms of singing and dancing, Zhang is a student of Yang Guifei, which is why Yang Guifei reported her performance to Xuanzong, letting Xuanzong know his achievements in cultivating actors. Later, Yang Guifei wrote this poem, recited Zhang's dance and gave it to her. Just like when you were dancing, I took a picture of you and developed it as a souvenir for you. Although this poem has only four sentences, it twists and turns to write scenes of music and dance, depicting the dancers' vivid dance, twists and turns, lifelike. In fact, only the first sentence of the four poems is written, starting with Luo sleeve. The music started. With the music, the dancer Zhang gently shook her sleeve and started her beautiful dance. So the poet first paid attention to her sleeve, and the poem was written from it. The beauty of this sentence lies in a verb, which is the result of refining words.
Move is a very common word, why is it not common in this sentence? Because it is a moving fragrance, the aroma is tangy. When the sleeves shake, flow and flutter, a fragrance diffuses. In the Tang Dynasty, women's cosmetics, clothes and materials were all smoked and dyed with spices. There is also a fragrant word overlapping in the poem, which plays an emphasis role and further deepens the reader's feelings and impressions. Another tonic was used, and the fragrance was not blown by a gust of wind, but filled the air on the dance floor for a long time, so the whole music and dance scene was colorful and delicious. Next, the poem goes from the close-up of Luo Sleeve to the overall description of the dancer's body. How does a poem dynamically express the dancer's whole body posture? If you can't do real writing, this poem will immediately become imaginary writing. The poet Zhang used a metaphor to describe the dance.
Red lotus is red.
Curl describes the dancer's graceful movements and reminds people of her graceful figure. Because of the ethereal posture, the audience can't see the details of the dancers' clothes, which produces a hazy beauty, so red-violet is like swaying in autumn smoke. Dance, like other arts, always needs preparation to reach its climax. After that gentle dance of autumn wind and red lotus, music and dance suddenly entered a high-spirited and intense stage. Poetry is still written in vain, and the dancer's strong movement is described by light clouds and high winds.
Shake the wind, whirlwind, storm. In the Southern Dynasties, Liang Jiangyan hated the clouds: the wind suddenly rose and the day disappeared.
The wind is stronger on the ridge, so put the wind and light clouds on the ridge to write.
At first glance, the word description comes suddenly. Later, in Li Houzhu in the Southern Tang Dynasty, there was a sudden gust of wind, which wrinkled the famous phrase of spring water. Li Qingzhao used it to warm up and sing Qiu Ge. Music and dance reached a climax, and dancers danced wildly, just like the wind on the ridge, which was dizzying and overwhelming. After the climax, the music and dance did not come to an abrupt end, but ended after a soothing music and dance. This part of the tail is like a willow brushing water by the pond, which gradually slows down with the music and finally stops. The tender character of this sentence has a unique taste and gives people a sense of freshness. In the poem, willow is used to describe people, tender and lovely willow is used to describe the dance, and wicker gently caresses the pool.
Gentleness also reminds us of the little girl Zhang, who is young, gentle and handsome. This poem depicts in detail the willow tree motionless, and finally stopped swinging as the wind stopped, making people imagine how Zhang slowly ended his performance.
There are some poems describing music and dance in Tang poetry, and this poem should be regarded as a wonderful one. This description is not only a certain language skill and artistic expression ability, but more importantly, the poet's actual impression. When Yang Guifei wrote this poem, she probably didn't deliberately arrange it as I analyzed, but just wrote down her actual feelings. Of course, Yang Guifei's artistic feeling is by no means comparable to that of ordinary people, because she is proficient in melody, good at singing and dancing, and is an expert in appreciating chanting and dancing. She vividly conveyed her aesthetic feeling, which made us watch a music and dance performance. If the appreciator does not go deep into the artistic conception of the poem, he will feel a straightforward narrative feeling. When readers regard the four poems as juxtaposition, they feel that the poet simply describes the dance posture without twists and turns, so it is not a good poem. Yang Guifei knows how to use a series of metaphors to describe things and artistic conception that are difficult to express in words, which shows that she must have read many poems and poems, and she can learn from the creative experience of her predecessors. My guess can't be said to be completely unfounded. Cao Zhi's Ode to the Goddess of Luo is the most famous one, which describes the beauty of human body completely by metaphor. I think, Yang Guifei must have read the Ode to Luo Shen, from which she learned the skills of virtual reality and metaphor, so she wrote the dance posture through three wonderful metaphors, appealing to the readers' imagination. The whole dance process, music and dance scenes and the beauty of artistic expression all made readers think. Another beauty of these three metaphors is that the poet does not simply compare the three things: red fragrance, light cloud and tender willow, but puts them in an environment of clear water and autumn smoke, windy hills and the shore of spring pool, thus creating three artistic conceptions, allowing readers' imagination to gallop in these different artistic conceptions and imagine the twists and turns of music and dance, thus containing inexhaustible meanings in the short 28 words of four poems.
This article was published in No.2012 of Knowledge of Literature and History, entitled "Yang Guifei's Poems of Music and Dance".