Characteristics of Meng Haoran's poems:
Living in seclusion and leisurely, wandering and thinking. The poetic style is light and natural, and he is good at five-character ancient poems.
Meng Haoran was the first poet in the Tang Dynasty who devoted himself to writing landscape poems. He mainly writes landscape poems and is one of the representatives of the landscape pastoral poetry school. In his early period, he mainly wrote political poems and frontier knight poems, and in his later period, he mainly wrote landscape poems. There are more than 200 of his poems in existence today, most of which are landscape travel poems he wrote during his wanderings. There are also some exhilarating poems he wrote when he visited Wanshan, Xianshan and Lumen Mountains in his hometown. There are also a few poems about pastoral and rural life. The geographical scope of the poem's material is quite broad.
Landscapes and scenery are the most important themes of poetry in the Southern Dynasties. After long-term development, they have made remarkable achievements. By Meng Haoran, landscape poetry has been promoted to a new realm. This is mainly reflected in: the relationship between emotion and scenery in the poem not only sets off each other, but is often as close as water and milk; the artistic conception of the poem has eliminated all unnecessary , disharmonious components, and appear simpler and clearer; the structure of the poem is also more perfect. Meng Haoran preferred water travel during his journey. As he himself said: "For the pleasure of many mountains and water, I often go boating." ("Jingqili Beach") His poems often write about the beautiful scenery and reasons he saw while roaming in the water towns of South China. The interest caused by this is like:
The clear light lingers on the setting scenery, and the stream and rivers are played lightly. If you love water clearly, how can you tolerate it in the presence of floods? A fisherman with a white head, a girl with new makeup and gauze. They looked acquainted, but couldn't speak. ("Roading on Yexi River")
Fishing and sitting on a rock, the water is clear and the mind is at ease. Under the trees in the fish pond, apes hang among the vines on the island. A wandering girl took off her pendant in the past and heard rumors about this mountain. If you can't get what you want, you can return it by singing songs along the moon. ("Wanshantan Zuo")
Poetry not only plays a documentary role, but also integrates the poet's fresh feelings and innocent reverie. In his eyes, everything he saw seemed to turn into a knowing and friendly smile, whether it was a figure bathing in the clear glow of the sunset or a fish and beast playing on the underwater shore. These poetic realms do have a crystal clear feel.
The artistic conception of Meng Haoran's landscape poems is mostly filled with vitality and tranquility. But he can also express the majestic country with magnificent writing style. For example, in "Looking at Mount Lu in Pengli Lake": "Taixu gives birth to the halo of the moon, and the boatman knows the wind of the sky. Hanging on the mat to wait for the bright hair, the vastness spreads across the lake. The middle stream is Kuangfu, overwhelming the Jiujiang River. The black and white colors are condensed, majestic When the sun rises, the incense burner lights up, and the waterfall sprays into a rainbow..." Pan Deyu of the Qing Dynasty took this poem and "Early Departure from Yupu Lake" as an example, saying that Meng's poems are "vigorous and full of energy" ("Yang Yang"). "Yizhai Poetry Talk"), which illustrates the important characteristics of its exuberant meaning.
Yin Fan, a famous poetry critic in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, liked to use the word "Xingxiang" to discuss poetry. When commenting on Meng Haoran's two poems, he also said that "regardless of the Xingxiang, it also restores the original reality" (see "Heyue Yingling") set"). The so-called "Xingxiang" refers to the poet's emotion and spirit controlling the objects, integrating them with the vibration of the poet's soul, thus gaining life, personality and vitality. Emphasis on "excitement" is actually a common feature of Meng Haoran's poetry. This can be seen more clearly by comparing several different works.
The August Lake is horizontal, but the water is too clear. The steam is rising over the Yunmengze, and the waves are shaking Yueyang City. If you want to help without a boat, you will live in the shameful sage. Sitting and watching the fishermen only envy the fish. ("Looking at Dongting Lake and presenting it to Prime Minister Zhang")
The mountains are dark and the apes are sad, and the Cangjiang River flows rapidly at night. The wind rumbles the leaves on both sides of the bank, and the moon shines on a lonely boat. Jiande is not my homeland, but we should reminisce about old travels. I will also send two lines of tears to the west of the sea. ("Reporting an old trip to Guangling on the Tonglu River")
Moving the boat to Yanzhu, the guests are worried about the new arrival at dusk. The trees are low in the open sky, and the clear moon on the river is close to the people. ("Su Jiande River")
These three poems all describe rivers and lakes, but they have different characters. The first poem was composed when Meng was hired by Zhang Jiuling shogunate. He was excited to have a chance to try out his ambitions. He once wrote, "I am grateful and I am able to hold on to my poverty." ("Shu Huai Yi Jingyi Fellows"), "My old friend is now in power, so don't delay returning when you have taken a wrong path." ("Sending Ding Dafeng Jinshi to the Examination to Present Zhang Jiuling") and other poems. It was this kind of excitement that made him write such a majestic and famous line as "The steam is steaming over the dreamland, and the waves are shaking Yueyang City." The second and third poems were all written on the day when he traveled south to Wuyue after being defeated. The former uses the exciting and turbulent scene of the wind and the rushing river to describe his sad inner turmoil, while the latter uses the quiet scene of the wild and clear river to describe the lonely wanderer's feelings. , their looks and charm are very different. The origin is "Xing" and the origin is "Xiang", highlighting the main emotional feelings and unifying the two to build a complete artistic conception. This is an important contribution of Meng Haoran's landscape poetry.
The language of Meng Haoran's poems is neither strange nor unusual but also free from the ordinary. "The language is light but the taste is not thin" (Shen Deqian's "Collection of Tang Poems"). Some of his poems are often neat and concise in their line drawings, but the dense latitude and longitude seem to be expressed inadvertently, showing high artistic skills. For example, in his famous poem "Passing Through an Old Friend's Village": An old friend brought chicken and millet and invited me to Tian's house. The green trees border the village, and the green mountains and hills slope outside. Open a pavilion to enjoy the scene, drink and talk about mulberry and hemp. When the Double Ninth Festival comes, there will be chrysanthemums.
The whole article is eloquent and narrated, as if talking about everyday things, and the style is similar to Tao Yuanming's "Drinking" and other poems. However, Tao wrote in ancient style, while this poem is in modern style. The couplet "Green trees surround the village, and green mountains slant outside" is the finishing touch to outline the typical environment of a village surrounded by green mountains and green trees. There is also the five unique poems "Spring Dawn" that women and children can recite, and it also uses language that is naturally unaware of its cleverness to express a subtle feeling of cherishing spring.
In addition, Meng Haoran often breaks through the limitations of inherent procedures in the use of poetic styles, which makes reading unique. For example, in the poem "Xiaowang in the Boat", the flat and oblique tones are all in the five-rhythm format, but the two couplets in the middle are not parallel, which is similar to the ancient rhythm. Hu Yinglin's "Poetry Sou" believes that this kind of poem "is from the short period of the Six Dynasties, and with the addition of rhythm, the charm is transcendent." Another example is "Returning to Lumen Folk Song at Night": the bells of the mountain temple are ringing, and the day has faded, and the fishermen are fighting for the ferry. People followed the beach to Jiangcun, and I also took a boat back to Lumen. The moonlight at Lumen opened the smoke trees, and suddenly I came to Pang Gong's hiding place. The pine path in Yanfei is long and lonely, with only lonely people coming and going.
This is a poem in the form of a song, but the whole poem just writes down the journey home at night without any extravagance. The scale of its chapter structure is similar to that of modern poetry, and it absorbs the simplicity of language in modern poetry. It also highlights the continuous syntax of song lines, which makes it read like flowing clouds and flowing water.
These ancient and modern physiques are full of freedom and ease, which is also one of the creative expressions of Meng Shi.