Only peonies are the true national beauty, and they move the capital when they bloom. "Peony Appreciation" by Liu Yuxi
Twenty days after the flowers bloom and fall, everyone in the city goes crazy. "Peony Fragrance" by Bai Juyi
Thousands of horses and carriages watch the peonies during the flower season. Xu Ning's "Peony Appreciation"
The beauty of peonies confuses people's hearts, and a country is crazy about spending money. "Appreciating Peonies" by Wang Hub
China has a tradition of chanting things since ancient times, and poems about flowers are an important category of poems about things. The image of "flower" is rooted in the soil of Chinese culture and has unique aesthetic connotation and spiritual value. The huge "Flower Shang" custom and the craze of chanting cranes in the Tang Dynasty promoted the rise of China's spiritual experience through the emergence of the national flower.
The aesthetic and spiritual value of the "flower" image
China's flower-chanting poems first emerged from the "Book of Songs", and "Chu Ci" initially established the concept of "flower" as a symbol of personality. Imagery connotation. Tang poetry inherits the poetry of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and pushes the writing of "flower chanting" poetry to the extreme. Flower style refers to the style of Tang and Song Dynasties, which showed different atmospheres due to the political, economic, social and cultural trends of the times. Subjective and objective reasons such as individual literati's misfortunes, promotions and demotions, and personal happiness and sorrow caused their writing of "flowers" to incorporate strong personal characteristics, giving rise to a swaying and diverse cultural style. From multiple perspectives such as the history of aesthetic culture, the history of literati’s ideological mentality, and the history of painting, we can get a glimpse of the cultural heritage and personality form accumulated in the Tang Dynasty, and reveal the evolution of the Tang humanistic spirit, cultural mentality, and literati’s aesthetic taste. The spiritual temperament of the national flower peony reflects the potential cultural fission and reintegration, showing a new realm formed by the dialectical unity of the Chinese cultural spirit as a whole.
2. The historical and cultural opportunity for the peony to become the national flower of the Tang Dynasty
The fashion of "shanghua" reflects and affects the climate of the times. The fashions of different times are consistent with the characteristics and image connotations of different flowers, so that certain flower shapes and gods carry the ideal personality pursuits of the literati at that time, demonstrating the atmosphere of the times, the style of culture, and the spiritual world of the literati. .
Peony flowers are large and colorful, layered in layers, with graceful and plump beauty, conveying the majestic momentum of spring, and therefore have the potential to become the best symbol and carrier of the spirit of the prosperous age. There are records of admiring peonies in the Sui Dynasty, but it was not until the prosperous Tang Dynasty that peonies truly replaced the tradition of praising plum blossoms in the Six Dynasties and became the "national flower" occupying the status of the new favorite flower chanting. It is no accident. After nearly four hundred years of division and turmoil, the Tang Dynasty saw a social situation with comprehensive economic and cultural prosperity, becoming the most powerful empire in the entire Eastern world. The integration of cultural exchanges between the north and the south, the developed trade and transportation between China and foreign countries, and the smooth introduction of foreign culture through the "Silk Road". Exotic clothing, music, dance, art, religion, etc., all became the fashion of Chang'an. The coexistence of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism gave the Tang Dynasty a vivid trend of diversified cultural exchanges and integration. This unprecedented exchange and integration put the Tang Dynasty in a position of venerable worship from all directions, and was filled with a spirit of positivity, high-spiritedness, and magnanimity.
This spirit of prosperity and glory is also reflected in architecture. There were three major palaces in the Tang Dynasty, namely Taiji Palace in the west, Daming Palace in the east, and Xingqing Palace in the south. The Daming Palace is the largest and is located on Longshou Plateau southeast of the North Forbidden Garden of Chang'an City. It is famous for its grand scale. Daming Palace was built in October of the eighth year of Zhenguan (634) by Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty and completed in April of the second year of Longshuo (662). It was a summer palace built for the Supreme Emperor and was originally named Yong'an Palace. In the ninth year of Zhenguan, it was renamed the Daming Palace and served as the administrative center of the Tang Dynasty for more than 200 years. There are the majestic court halls Hanyuan Hall, Xuanzheng Hall, and Zichen Hall, the country's highest government offices Zhongshu Province, Menxia Province, Yushitai, History Museum, Hongwen Hall, Mingfuyuan, and Jixianyuan, as well as rippling clear water and beautiful scenery. The Taiye Pond in the painting, the Linde Hall among the many harem annexes in the city, and the Hanlin Academy where literati gathered. Famous literati Li Bai, Du Fu, Cen Shen, Wang Wei, Zi Juyi, Han Yu, Liu Yuxi, etc. all worked in the Ming Dynasty officials and left many literary works describing the Ming Dynasty Palace. Emperor Gaozong moved into the Daming Palace (called Penglai Palace at this time) in April of the second year of Longshuo (662), and built the first main hall in the Daming Palace, the Hanyuan Hall. "Qiankun Shuo" said: Han Hongguangda. Also said: Yuan Henry Zhen, including all things as a respect, "This hall has long been used as a place to hold important ceremonies such as winter solstice and Yuan Day, as well as enthronement and canonization ceremonies. It is the national power of the Tang Dynasty. The symbol carries the turbulent atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty for more than two hundred years.
Correspondingly, the religious and secular annual celebrations in the Tang Dynasty were also unprecedented in scale. Buddhist worship flourished in the Tang Dynasty. During the Zhenguan period, Master Xuanzang traveled west to obtain Buddhist scriptures and after returning to China, he translated a large number of scriptures and classics with the support of the imperial court. What was even more unprecedented was that the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty held grand events seven times at the Royal Temple Famen Temple to open a pagoda to welcome the Buddha's bones. In the fifth year of Zhenguan (AD 631), Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, taught the Buddha's finger combination for the first time. From then on, the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty welcomed the Buddha's bones every 130 years, which became a grand ceremony attended by the whole country. The "Old Book of Tang Dynasty" records the spectacular scene of welcoming the Buddha's bones: "From the far gate to Anfumen, there are colorful sheds along the road, and the sound of reciting the Buddha shakes the ground. We go up to Anfumen to greet him, and for three days we welcome him into the inner monastery, leaving the capital. . The temples and ladies gathered together in a majestic manner, which is unparalleled in ancient times."
In the Tang Dynasty, the court held many grand events for the emperor to "enjoy with the people" to celebrate the Lantern Festival. In 713 AD, the palace organized a team of thousands of women to sing in the brightly lit capital for three days and three nights.
According to the "Old Book of the Tang Dynasty": "On the day and night of the Yuan Dynasty, the emperor went to Anfumen to watch the lanterns. The people who went out walked hand in hand and sang songs, and hundreds of officials watched them, which lasted all night. ... At the beginning, a monk and a woman asked to open the door and light the lanterns at night. Hundreds and thousands of torches, for three days and three nights, the emperor spent three days and nights watching lanterns at the Yanxi Gate. "Zhang Hu's "Lamps on the Fifteenth Night of the First Month" says: "Thousands of doors are opened and thousands of lanterns are lit, and in the middle of the first month, three hundred concubines come to the imperial capital. Dance, with the sound of lyrics in the sky for a while. "The splendid and grand scene of "ta song" shows the glory of the prosperous age. The folk sports of the prosperous Tang Dynasty were also very impressive. The Qingming tug-of-war flourished in the Tang Dynasty, and Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty Li Longji actively promoted it in the army. The opera garden inside the palace was moved to the square outside the palace, and it became a grand gathering for national celebration. "Tang Yulin" records that "the emperor of the Ming Dynasty set up this play in several imperial towers. There were more than a thousand people performing, and the noise moved the place, and the crowds of foreign guests and common people watched. Everyone was shocked. Jinshi Hedong Xue Sheng wrote "Tug of War Ode", which was very beautiful and was widely praised by people at the time. "The rope used for tug-of-war in the Tang Dynasty had hundreds of small ropes attached to both ends." More than a thousand people pulled out, and the scene was magnificent. Spectacular and majestic.
The flourishing atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty, which was popular among both the court and the public, injected great courage into its pursuit of the "national flower". The momentum and magnanimity of EMI reflect the kingly style of the Tang Dynasty. When we talk about peony, we mean the magnanimity and grace of the Tang people.
As soon as peony appeared in the Tang Dynasty, it was loved and favored by the monarch. It was highly praised and regarded as a wonderful reward, and it soon became famous in both the government and the public, making "peony appreciation" a national craze. Every spring, when the horses and carriages are running wild, it is a shame to go around the temple and plant them for profit. This "peony craze" lasted until the Northern Song Dynasty. Two generations. During this period, literati in the Tang and Northern Song Dynasties even competed to sing.
Here we must talk about the great poet Li Bai. In the Kaiyuan Dynasty, peonies bloomed in front of the Chenxiang Pavilion in the east of Qingxing Chi. Concubine Yang took a night tour to enjoy the scenery and invited Li Bai, who was waiting for an imperial edict, to compose a poem to cheer her up. Li Bai, who was in his prime and full of majesty, used flowers to describe people and peonies to describe Yang Yuhuan, and wrote three chapters of the eternal masterpiece "Qing Ping Tiao":
(1)
The clouds are like clothes, the flowers are like faces, the spring breeze is blowing the threshold, and the dew is rich.
If you don't see it on the top of the jade mountain, you will meet under the moon at Yaotai. p>
(2)
A branch of red dew is fragrant, and the clouds and rain in Wushan are heartbreaking.
May I ask who is like it in the Han Palace? The poor flying swallow is leaning on the new makeup.
p>(3)
The famous flowers in the country love each other, and the king often smiles.
Explanation: The spring breeze is infinitely hateful, and the agarwood pavilion leans against the lantern.
p>
As for the formation process of these three poems about peonies, the records in ancient books are roughly the same, except that "in the Kaiyuan Dynasty, the first heavy wood peony was banned, which is today's peony. There are several red, purple, light red, and common peony. The white one was transplanted in front of the Agarwood Pavilion in the east of Xingqing Pond. The flowers were blooming in full bloom, and the night was shining brightly. The concubine walked in a chariot, and ordered Li Guinian, a disciple of Liyuan, to hold a sandalwood board in front of the crowd and sing a song. "When appreciating famous flowers and treating concubines, why should I use the old music poems?" Then he ordered the turtle year to hold a golden flower note and announce three chapters of "Qing Ping Diao" to Li Baijin, a scholar of the Hanlin Academy. Bai Xin accepted the imperial edict, but he still had to wake up from the pain and wrote a poem..." Compared with this statement, the record in "Tang Poetry Chronicle" seems to be more consistent with Li Bai's genius as a "poetic immortal": "The Ming Emperor sat in the Agarwood Pavilion, The intention is felt, and the desire is in vain. Call in and get drunk. Sprinkle the noodles with water on the left and right sides for a while. The writing is written in a tactful and precise manner without any thought. "When Li Bai was deeply intoxicated, he did it with one stroke without thinking. This is what an ancient genius must be like. These three poems use flowers as metaphors for people, and cleverly capture the characteristics of Yang Yuhuan and peony - grandeur and grace, fat body, The beauty of the crowd and the supreme status of the favored queen are integrated into one, and the body and soul are integrated, reaching the perfect state of human and flower integration.
The peony becoming the "national flower" is intrinsically linked to Yang Guifei's favor. . From the early Tang Dynasty to the early prosperous Tang Dynasty, the cultural aesthetic consciousness and the spirit of literati were still immersed in the old dreams of the previous dynasties. Plum blossoms inherited the legacy of the Six Dynasties and were still sought after by literati. At this time, it was another beauty related to Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty. ——When Concubine Mei Jiang Caiping was favored. "The Biography of Concubine Mei" says: "Concubine Mei, whose surname is Jiang, is from Putian. His father, Zhongxun, was a doctor all his life. The concubine was able to recite "Er Nan" when she was nine years old. She said to her father: "Although I am a woman, this is my ambition." 'My father was surprised and named him 'Caiping'. During the Kaiyuan period, Gao Lishi sent a concubine to Fujian and Guangdong. Seeing that she was young and beautiful, he chose her to serve the Ming Emperor, and she was greatly favored. There are tens of forty thousand people in the three palaces of Damei, Daming and Xingqing in Chang'an and the two palaces of Dongdu and Shangyang. They are proud of their concubines. They regard them as dust, and the palaces also feel inferior. The concubine is good at literature, and she is better than Xie Nu. She has light make-up and elegant clothes, and her posture is bright and beautiful, which cannot be described with a pen. I like plum blossoms by nature, so I plant several of them on the balcony where I live, and the day on the list is 'Plum Pavilion'. When the plum blossoms bloom, I am rewarded with rewards. At night, I am still in love with the flowers and cannot go under them. Because of her favorite, the play is called "Mei Fei". "It can be seen from the records that in Mei Fei, plum blossoms and beauties merge into one, the flower is the person, and the person is the flower. Mei Fei, who has "light make-up, elegant clothes and a bright posture" and extremely high inner cultivation, received the special attention of Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty at that time. The pure and elegant beauty of plum blossoms is still widely recognized, and Yang Yuhuan replaced Mei Fei as the favorite in the harem, which also made peony accompany her to the pinnacle of historical human feelings and aesthetics, becoming the favorite of the generation. There is a certain metaphor behind the replacement of plum and Yang, which declares the arrival of the radiant Tang Dynasty. A kind of grand and graceful cultural spirit that dominates the world begins to dominate. This is the most prominent symbol of the Zen Dynasty in history and culture.
Li Bai's creations fulfilled this cultural choice. It was through the three chapters of Li Bai's "Qing Ping Diao" that Peony became associated with the highest political center of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. These three poems and their allusions have been passed down as legends through the ages. They have concentrated too many elements of the most beautiful things in the world and brought together several "firsts" - Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, Li Longji, ranked among the top 95, for The authority is first; Yang Yuhuan is the beauty; Li Bai is the poet; Li Guinian is the singer at that time; Gao Lishi is the internal official. Several firsts came together because of the "peony", and together they raised the peony's status as the "national flower" and its kingly spirit.
A carnival of appreciating the national flower among the three elegant and popular people
When it comes to the exquisite poems about peonies in the Tang Dynasty, of course we have to talk about Liu Yuxi’s romantic and suave "Peony Appreciation", which was created with line drawings The realm of deep emotion expressed in words, the inexhaustible meanings are all reflected in the images:
The peony demon in front of the court has no character, and the hibiscus on the pond is pure in emotion.
Only peonies are the true national beauty, and they move the capital when they bloom. The first two sentences focus on the shortcomings of two stunning flowers, peony and hibiscus, and then the two sentences "Only the peony is the true national beauty, and it moves the capital when it blooms." The word "moving" makes the peony the king of beauty. The beauty of the poem, as well as the sensational scene of Chang'an's city-wide viewing and crowded streets when the peonies are in bloom, "beyond the imagination and caught in the surroundings" "instantly throws readers into endless aesthetic associations." The enthusiastic chants of literati in the Tang Dynasty gave birth to many celebrities Yicai's masterpieces handed down from generation to generation vividly highlight the kingly beauty of peony as the "national flower", such as Xu Ningzhi's "Peony": "Who doesn't love peonies? They occupy the best things in the city." Suspected to be the work of a goddess from Luochuan, it is so charming that it breaks the morning glow. "Pi Rixiu wrote a poem with the same title: "When all the remaining red leaves are gone, the fragrance begins to bloom, and the good name is called the King of Flowers. Competing to boast that it is unparalleled in the world, it has the best fragrance in the world. "And Xu Weizhi's "Peony Flower": "The best among thousands of flowers, the light clouds lightly dye the tender silver. He can make Qi Mo a thousand pieces of gold, and also confuse thousands of noble families. The morning sun shines open with wine in hand to watch, the dusk wind blows it down and wraps around the fence. The shelves of poems and books were covered with dust, and no one even raised their heads for the whole day. "Another example is "Thousands of households and thousands of cars are watching the peonies during the flower season on three strips and nine roads" (Xu Ning's "Send to Bai Sima"), "The beauty of peonies disturbs people's hearts, and a country is so mad that it does not waste money" (Wang Rui (one work is Wang Hub) ("Peony") "), "A peony is worth a thousand gold, and it will be said to be the deepest ever" (Zhang Youxin's "Peony"), "The flowers bloom and fall for twenty days, and everyone in the city is crazy" (Zi Juyi's "Buying Flowers"), "Jin Ruixia" "The colorful incense is stacked with flowers, and the girl who first doubts comes out of the orchid house" (Zhou Yao's "Looking at Peonies as a Gift to Duan Chengshi"), "The beautiful clouds should fade in the morning sun, and the Qing Emperor's eyes will be sad when they fall" (Tang Yanqian's "Peony").
People chant flowers, and flowers reflect people. They show grace, splendor and majesty to each other, and constitute the spirit of the era of self-confidence, high spirits and magnanimity. The sentence represents the image of peony in people's minds at that time: "This flower ranks first in my list of flowers. It has shed the group and dominates the spring. It is large and full of fragrance, and its fragrance fills the room. The leaves are like green feathers, embracing the comb. The stamens are like gold dust. , embellishment and beauty. The rose dies of shame, the peony disappears, the peaches fade away, the plum blossoms grow ashamed, the wandering flowers collapse at night, the magnolia retreats, the hibiscus loses heart, the crape myrtle kneels - let them all go first, dare to be jealous!" Song Dynasty Gao The book "Shi Ji Yuan" further explores the strong and strong character of peony, which is the most fragrant among all the flowers: "Empress Wu ordered a tour of Houyuan, and all the flowers bloomed, but the peony was the only one late, so it was demoted to Luoyang. Therefore, Luoyang peony is the best in the world. This is not special. The beauty and beauty of the flowers are equal to those of the flowers, and the strength and strength of the heart are higher than those of thousands of flowers. An can be summed up in the word "wealth and honor"!" This shows that in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the peony flower was superior to thousands of flowers. Definitely.
The peony mood is both elegant and popular, but its spiritual core contains the poetry and wine style and personality spirit represented by Li Bai, as well as the political culture of that era on this personality behavior. Double tolerance. Peony dares to defy the orders of Empress Wu, and its independent and unyielding character is just like the unrivaled pride of Li Taibai who dared to let the imperial concubine hold an inkstone and the powerful man take off his boots to laugh at the prince. There are only twenty days before and after the peony flowering period. In this short period of time, he has performed the most glorious and glorious life, just like Li Taibai's enterprising and high-spirited character of being determined to make contributions in the long wind and waves. When the spring flowers wither, they harvest all the spring glory independently, which can quite arouse Li Bai's "Looking up to the sky laughing and going out, how can I be a Penghao man"? The demeanor of a self-proclaimed celebrity is the same tune; the peony is demoted but does not give up, is ready to go, and finally Luoyang is uniquely named "Flower". Doesn't it remind people of Li Bai's broad-minded and open-minded attitude that "I am born with talent that will be useful, and I will come back after all the money I have spent" when he never met his talent?
< p> What "peony" symbolizes is the spirit of the prosperous Tang Dynasty that perfectly blends the beauty of sound and temperament, and is also the main style of Tang Dynasty literature. Zhang Chao said in "Youmengying": "Peony is awe-inspiring. "The people of the Tang Dynasty, with their surging and grand openness, free thoughts and open and healthy enterprising spirit derived from the true nature of life, "introduce and absorb without fear and scruple, create and innovate without restraint and nostalgia" . In this way, the image of peony is nourished, and the image of peony is used to nourish people's will and character. The inner spiritual connection point is the word "Hao". Even after the Anshi Rebellion, the national destiny declined. However, the status of peony as the "national flower" has not been shaken. Literati and poets continued to write about peonies, but there was a change of tone, from blindly praising peonies to reflecting on the prosperous Tang Dynasty through allegory. A series of poems, represented by Bai Juyi's New Yuefu, inherited the allegorical tradition of The Book of Songs, reflecting on the prosperous Tang Dynasty with the awareness of satirizing the world and discussing politics, and also taking Yang Guifei's mischief to the country as a warning.His poem "Buying Flowers" goes: "A clump of dark flowers is a tribute to ten households." His poem "Peony Fragrance" goes: "Twenty days after the flowers bloom and fall, everyone in the city will be crazy. I would like to ask for good fortune for a while. The power of the poem reduces the beauty of the peony. The scholar's love for flowers is the same as my husband's concern for farming. "The creative intention of the two poems is related to the meaning, not to the text. The first sentence marks the purpose and the final chapter." To show one's ambition is the meaning of "Three Hundred Poems"...To write for the king, for the ministers, for the people, for things, for things, not for the sake of writing." This kind of realistic and satirical creative intention is for the purpose of writing. Bright peonies are painted with a layer of melancholy color. By the end of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, poems about peonies no longer even contained allegorical metaphors, becoming a vague distant memory. Enter a personal appreciation. Chen Yuyi's "Peony" expresses the emotion of rise and fall and the thoughts of hometown through chanting peonies:
Since Hu Chen entered Hanguan, the road to Yiluo has been long for ten years.
On the bank of Qingdun River, visitors watch peonies in the east wind.
In the process of privatization in the Five Dynasties and Song Dynasty, the image of peony was associated with the worries of troubled times and also touched the personal sense of rural life. The publicization of this national flower in the Tang Dynasty, and the privatization in the Five Dynasties and Song Dynasty, make it profound and long-lasting in pulling people's heartstrings.
The Tang Dynasty court broke the political and electoral monopoly of the aristocratic clans since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and the common people's scholars got a broad space for development, and their hearts were filled with the joy of dreams. At the same time, the development of urban economy, urban expansion, and prosperity of people's livelihood have also created cultural and aesthetic needs among the ordinary people in the city. In this way, the preferences of the princes and dignitaries coincided with the joy of the scholars and the needs of the public, forming a cultural and psychological scene of the era in which "peonies" were in full bloom. However, the scene was lively and impetuous, and it was generalized and shallow, so the "peony" image had to be deeply tainted with the "custom" of the social culture of the Tang Dynasty.