Biography of the author: Yang Wanli (1127-1206), courtesy name Tingxiu and nickname Chengzhai, was born in Jishui, Jizhou (now part of Jiangxi). Emperor Gaozong became a Jinshi in the 24th year of Shaoxing (1154). He once served as Dr. Taichang, Guangdong Tidian Prison, Shangshu Zuosi Langzhong, Prince's Attendant, Secretary and Supervisor, etc. He advocated resistance to gold and was upright and outspoken. Ning Zongshi resigned from office because of his treacherous prime minister's power, and eventually died of sorrow and anger. He is as famous as You Miao, Fan Chengda and Lu You, and is known as the four schools of poetry in the Southern Song Dynasty. The idea was novel and ingenious, the language was popular and clear, and it became a style of its own. It was called "Chengzhai style" at that time. The style of his lyrics is fresh, lively and natural, similar to poetry. Author of "Chengzhai Collection".
Commentary on the work
Yang Wanli (1127-1206), whose courtesy name was Tingxiu and whose name was Chengzhai, was born in Jishui and had the "Chengzhai Collection". The "Four Great ZTE Poets" highly regarded in the Southern Song Dynasty were four friends who admired each other, You Miao, Yang Wanli, Fan Chengda and Lu You. Yang and Lu were particularly famous, as if they were equal to Li Bai and Du Fu in Tang poetry. However, ten fingers also have different lengths, and two writers who are equally famous at the same time are like Li Bai and Du Fu. Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi will gradually differentiate themselves. After the Song Dynasty, Yang Wanli's readers were not only far smaller than Lu You's, but also not as numerous as Fan Cheng's. At that time, Yang Wanli was the main hub for the transformation of poetry, creating a fresh and vigorous writing style that contrasted with the conservative or steady styles of Lu and Fan. Therefore, the "Poetry Style" section of Yan Yu's "Canglang Poetry Talk" only lists "Yang Chengzhai style" and does not mention "Lu Fangweng style" or "Fan Shihu style".
Yang Wanli's creative experience can be seen in the prefaces of "Jianghu Collection" and "Jingxi Collection". According to him, he first studied the Jiangxi School, then Wang Anshi's quatrains, and then turned to the late Tang Dynasty quatrains. In the end, he "suddenly had an enlightenment" and didn't learn from anyone. Turn over the flowers and bamboos, and everything will come to an end, leaving only the remaining material for poetry." From then on, it was very easy to compose poetry. At the same time, people also praised his "how to survive", his ability to "bring a dead snake back to life" and "capture it alive". This passage can be explained in three aspects.
First, Yang Wanli and the Jiangxi faction. As soon as Jiangxi poetry became a sect, Li Gefei, Ye Mengde and others hated it for being "rotten and stolen", "lifeless", "written with difficult words" and "plagiarized word for word". Yang Wanli's teacher Wang Tinggui was also opposed to the Jiangxi faction, although he, like Ye Mengde, liked Huang Tingjian very much. Yang Wanli did not express his criticism of the Jiangxi School clearly. Judging from his creation, he was probably not very satisfied with those points, so he kept his book bag and abolished the classics, so that he could really make it easy and natural, close to spoken language. However, he always admired Huang Tingjian and Chen Shidao. Although he burned all the "Shaozuo Qianyu" who were influenced by the Jiangxi School, the habits of the Jiangxi School were never eradicated and would break out if there was an opportunity. After he was sixty years old, he not only In writing a preface to the general collection of the Jiangxi School, Lu Benzhong’s "School Map" should be supplemented and a "Jiangxi Continuation School" should be added. He also believed that the Jiangxi School is like "Southern Zen" and is the highest realm in poetry. People in the Southern Song Dynasty often counted him among the Jiangxi sect, which is not nonsense. We further investigated and found that although one of Yang Wanli's poems and Huang Tingjian's poems are easy to understand, embellished with some common sayings, and the other is erudite and profound, Yang Wanli does not jump out of Huang Tingjian's theory of "no words, no origin" in theory. "The trap. Please read his own words: "Poetry is inherently both vulgar and elegant, but it must also be melted by predecessors, so it can be inherited, such as Li's 'Naike', Du's 'Zhamo', and Tang Dynasty's 'Li Xu' If this is the case... He is not willing to lead his wife to sit among the sons of Prince Ping and the wife of Marquis Wei. This is exactly in line with Chen Changfang's record: "Every time he speaks in the world, there is no such thing as This word has no origin, and this is the poetic method of Chen Wuji and Huang Luzhi." In other words, Yang Wanli is still very snobbish about common sayings and does not treat them equally and absorb them widely; he only chooses old brands and big backgrounds. The spoken language has been used by poets and literati since the Jin and Tang Dynasties - at least as recorded in official histories, novels, and Zen quotations. It is true that he no longer piles up the classics, but the common sayings he uses are all from classics, and they are more "elegant" in the vernacular. " part. Readers only see that he is free and unrestrained, but do not know that he is so cautious and not sloppy. Just like when we meet a sophisticated communicator, we only think that he is generous and hospitable, but do not know that he spends money and treats others in a measured way, without any ambiguity. This Just like Tang Seng Hanshan's poems, they seem very popular, but he boasted: "My poems are elegant." Later scholars also discovered that his words and phrases were "extensive".
Second, Yang Wanlihe. Late Tang poetry. He said that when he got tired of studying the Jiangxi school, he switched to Wang Anshi's quatrains, and then transitioned to the late Tang poetry. We know that Huang Tingjian looked down on the late Tang poetry: "Learning from the old Du poetry means that you can't do it without carving a bird." It is also like "Shang Lei Wu"; I learned from the poems of people in the late Tang Dynasty that "the method is in the cold, but I am still greedy, the method is in greed, what will happen to me!" '" Therefore, a poet who studies Jiangxi style must first oppose late Tang poetry; however, if he gets tired of learning Jiangxi style and wants to find another way, he will easily follow the law of pendulum movement and tend to become late Tang poets. Yang Wanli said: "Poetry is not a literary comparison...but it may be based on his profound knowledge and Wei Jun's writing, so he implicitly summarizes his great words as poetry." This reveals the reason for his change. You can use Liu Kezhuang's words as a footnote: "Old poetry comes out." In terms of emotional nature, this poem is just based on memory and knowledge. Du Zimei has not been immune to this disease. So Zhang Ji and Wang Jian tied up their books, scratched out the complicated tapes, and got closer. The world likes its simplicity and strives to be effective. So it was called ‘late Tang style’.”
Except for Li Shangyin, Wen Tingyun, Pi Rixiu, Lu Guimeng, etc., poets in the late Tang Dynasty generally rarely use classical poetry, and quatrains are the least suitable genre for "complicated" poetry in five or seven character poems, just like those of Wen, Li, Pi, Lu and others. The quatrains are also clearer than their ancient style; in the poetry of Wang Anshi, who pays attention to "use", the quatrains are also clearer. Yang Wanli clearly intended the ethereal and lilting quatrains of the late Tang Dynasty to be a cure for the stuffed Jiangxi body. As mentioned earlier, Xu Fu wanted to break away from the Jiangxi School and write "easy and natural" poems. He said: "Jing Gong's poems are mostly learned from those of the Tang Dynasty, but a hundred poems are not as good as one from the late Tang Dynasty." Another poet who wanted to break away from the Jiangxi School, Han Ju, He also said: "Although the style of poetry written by people in the late Tang Dynasty was humble and shallow, it is impossible to say that it is not poetry. Although the poetry written by people today has majestic sentences, it can be heard from a distance, and its rationale cannot be studied." It is conceivable that they all have the same idea as Yang Wanli, and they want to overturn the ironclad case established by Huang Tingjian. Starting from Yang Wanli, Song poetry has been divided into two schools: Jiangxi style and late Tang style. This point will be discussed in detail when commenting on the "Four Spirits". He was not like the "Four Spirits" who were narrow-minded and rigid in studying the poetry of one or two writers in the late Tang Dynasty: he admired many writers, including Du Mu, Lu Guimeng, and even Huang Tao and Li Xianyong, and he did not imitate them. They just borrowed their help, accepted their inspiration, and freed themselves from the stereotypes of the Jiangxi School. His purpose was to write lively and natural poems, so whenever he later found someone with this style, he liked it, whether it was Tao Qian of the Jin Dynasty, Bai Juyi of the Mid-Tang Dynasty, or Zhang Lei of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Third, Yang Wanli’s living method. "Living method" is a slogan put forward by Lu Benzhong of Jiangxi School, which means that poets should not break the rules, but also be able to change unexpectedly, giving readers the impression of being round and "effortless". Yang Wanli's so-called "living law" certainly includes this unity of law and freedom, but it is more than that. According to his practice and his words such as "everything is coming together" and "catch alive", it can be said that he tried hard to re-establish the flesh-and-blood relationship between mother and child with things - mainly nature - and to restore the innocent state of hearing and seeing. The good romantic sentences of ancient writers or the famous anecdotes of ancient people in various situations in life can become the colored glasses through which later poets see things, or even alienate their close relationship with reality and dominate their perspective of observation. It limits the range of their feelings and makes their works "rigid", "conventional" and "formulaic". It’s as if they put on masks to smell things and gloves to touch things. For example, when composing poems while appreciating the moon, they did not write about their direct impressions or personal love affairs, but instead were caught up in ancient famous sayings and anecdotes. Instead of thinking of Du Lao's "Looking at the Moon in Liaozhou" or Zhang Sheng's "Waiting for the Moon in the West Chamber", they thought of "I I want to ride the wind back home, but I am afraid that the beautiful buildings and jade buildings will be too cold at high places." Or "It was originally a bright night, but it turned into a gloomy and sad night." Their minds have lost their innocence, and they are not in close contact with things, so they do not find them fresh. They only know how to confirm and agree with the descriptions of the ancients. They are not "happy to meet new acquaintances" but just "meet old friends in a foreign land." Many poems since the Six Dynasties often make us doubt: did the author really understand the scene written in the poem? Or does he have a good memory and remember the classic idiom about this scene? Volume 67 of Shen Yue's "Book of the Song Dynasty" says: "Zijian's "Hanjing" work, Zhongxuan's "Ba'an" chapter, Zijing's "Lingyu" chapter, Zhengchang's "Shuo Feng" sentence, and Zhizhi Expressing feelings is not based on poetry and history." Zhong Rong's "Poetry" also said: "'Thinking of you is like running water', it is just what you can see; 'There are many sad winds on the high platform', it is only what you can see; 'Climb the Longshou in the morning', the Qiang has no reason; 'The bright moon shines on the snow. ', Reveal the Classics and History?" Yang Wanli also realized this truth and did not let lively things become the victims of dead books. He scraped off the film on his eyes caused by reading too many ancient books, and used agile and dexterous techniques to He described all kinds of scenes that had never been described before and that were difficult to describe. Therefore, Jiang Kui praised him and said: "Everywhere in the mountains and rivers, I am afraid of seeing you" - the fear of falling into his eyes was meticulously described by him in the poem. There are many works of this type in Yang Wanli's existing poems from the beginning, just as Jiangxi style still appeared in his poems in his later years; he described his creations as too neat and uniform, which is a bit inconsistent with the reality. .
Yang Wanli's main interest is natural scenery. His works that care about national affairs are far less numerous and good than those of Lu You, and his works that sympathize with the people's suffering are not as many and good as those of Fan Chengda. In comparison, the content is not as good as those of Lu You. Trivial.
His poems are clever, labor-saving, and interesting, but they cannot penetrate the soul; his "instantaneous" writing style also caused him to write many hasty works