Shang Liang Yong
Bai Juyi (772-846), whose real name was Lotte, was originally from Taiyuan, then moved to Xia 'ao (now Weinan, Shaanxi) and was born in Xinzheng (now Xinzheng County, Henan). At the age of eleven or twelve, he moved to Vietnam to escape the war, and then moved to Xuzhou, Xiangyang and other places to live a wandering life. Zhenyuan was a scholar in the 16th year (800). Three years later, he was awarded an excellent degree in calligraphy in China and the title of provincial school secretary. In the first year of Yuanhe (806), he and Yuan Zhen spent many months discussing various social and political issues at that time and wrote 75 articles, many of which were related to Bai Juyi's political attitude and poetic views in the future. That year, he was awarded the title of "the top scholar in the imperial examination", and the following year, he was a bachelor of Hanlin.
In three to five years, Yuanhe was awarded Zuo Shiyi as a bachelor of Hanlin. During this period, Bai Juyi, with great enthusiasm for participating in politics, said, "If there are mistakes, there must be rules, and if there are violations, there must be remonstrations" ("The Book of Receiving Legacy"), and repeatedly mentioned Chen, advocating paying taxes, refusing to serve, releasing maids and restraining eunuchs, and folding the imperial edict before the emperor. At the same time, he also wrote a lot of satirical poems, such as Qin Zhongyin and New Yuefu, which dwarfed them all.
In the fifth year of Yuanhe (8 10), Bai Juyi changed his official position to Cao, joined the army, and remained a bachelor of Hanlin. Yuanhe returned to his hometown from April of six to winter of nine because of his mother's funeral. With the change of living environment, Bai Juyi has leisure to seriously think about his past actions and his life. His long-standing Buddhist and Taoist thoughts gradually gained the upper hand, and his enthusiasm for politics began to decline. The so-called "I am very fast when I am straight, but it is not my ambition when I meet." Within ten years, I will eliminate my arrogance "(the second part of" Two Clothes "). It can be seen as evidence of his psychological changes. In the 10th year of Yuanhe (8 15), Bai Juyi returned to the DPRK as a doctor of Prince Zuo Zanshan. Because the Prime Minister Wu was stolen and killed, he was the first to ask for an urgent arrest of the thief. As a result, he was accused of exceeding his authority and some trumped-up charges, and was demoted to Jiangzhou (now Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province) Sima. This demotion shocked Bai Juyi's heart beyond description. He re-examined this extremely sinister political struggle with the pain of the skin, and made up his mind to retreat quickly, avoid disasters, and take the road of "being alone." "This year, he wrote the famous Nine Books with Yuan, which clearly and systematically expressed his philosophy of life and poetic ideas.
At the end of Yuanhe 13th, Bai Juyi moved to Zhongzhou as a secretariat. After Mu Zong ascended the throne in the 15th year of Yuanhe, he was recalled to North Korea and successively served as a doctor, imperial edict and calligrapher in China. In the second year of Changqing (822), Hangzhou was stabbed. Since then, he has served as Suzhou secretariat, secretary supervisor, assistant minister of punishments, Henan Yin and Prince Shaofu. In the second year of Huichang in the fifth case (842), he became an official with the minister of punishments and lived in Luoyang Road, calling himself "Mr. Zuiyin" and "Xiangshan Jushi". Huichang six years (846), died at the age of seventy-five. There are "Bai Changqing Collection" with more than 2,800 poems.
Bai Juyi was an outstanding poet in the middle Tang Dynasty. His poetic thoughts and creations, which emphasize popularity and realism, occupy an important position in the history of China's poetry. In Jiu Shu Tong Yuan, he clearly said: "Servants aim to help the two, and they are independent. Always serve the Tao, and invent poetry. Calling it a satirical poem is also aimed at helping others; It's not bad to call it leisure poetry. " It can be seen that among Bai Juyi's four kinds of poems, satire, leisure, sentimentality and miscellaneous law, the first two poems are the most valued, because they embody his "serving the people and always being kind". His poetic thoughts are mainly based on early satirical poems.
As early as the early Yuan Dynasty, Bai Juyi showed a tendency to emphasize realism, popularity and irony: "If there is no textual research on today's praise and demotion, there is a lack of punishment and persuasion;" If the poem "The Beauty Sting" does not test politics, then the significance of the make-up test will be abolished. ..... Those who give ci and fu with admonition and irony are wild in nature. "The role of poetry is to punish evil and persuade good, and make up for current politics. The means of poetry is praise, criticism, admonition and satire, so he advocates: "Set up officials to collect poems, make sarcastic remarks, examine their gains and losses, and understand their feelings." (Poetry Sixty-nine) He opposes the simple pursuit of "high palace rhythm" and "strange writing" without content, and even more opposes the gorgeous poetic style of "mocking the wind and making flowers" since Qi and Liang Dynasties. In the preface to new Yuefu, he clearly pointed out that the standard of writing poetry is: "the quality and path of his words are easy to distinguish for those who want to see;" "His words are straightforward and he admonishes those who want to listen; Its business is nuclear and true, so people who use it can send messages; Its body is very smooth and can be played in music songs. " Here, "quality and diameter", "straightness and tangent", "core and reality" and "smoothness and smoothness" respectively emphasize that the language should be simple and popular, the discussion should be straightforward and exposed, the writing should be absolutely false and pure, the form should be smooth and fluent, and it has the color of ballads. In other words, poetry must be authentic, easy to understand and easy to sing in order to be considered the ultimate.
Bai Juyi's above requirements for poetry have only one purpose, that is, to make up for current politics. So he went on to say: "In short, for the monarch, for the minister, for the people, for things, for things, not for writing." (Preface to New Yuefu) In Nine Books of the Same Origin, he reviewed his early creation and said, "Since I came to Korea, I have grown older and read more. Every time he talks to others, he asks more current events; Every time you read history, you should seek truth and Tao, and you will know that articles are written in time and songs and poems are written in things. " The first thing to do for time is to show it to the king. He also said: "I don't know when to avoid it" (the second of two painful poems about Tang Qu), and created a large number of satirical poems reflecting the sufferings of people's livelihood, but the general direction is "only songs make people sick, hope the emperor can know" (sent to Tang Sheng). Because only when the people's feelings are heard in heaven, the emperor opens the door and reaches the people's feelings, will politics tend to be calm.
From emphasizing realism, popularity and satire to advocating writing for the monarch and the people, Bai Juyi put forward a systematic theory of poetry, and his satirical poems such as Qin Zhongyin and New Yuefu were created under the guidance of this theory. This theory, with its outstanding realistic pertinence and popularization tendency, may make poetry closer to social reality and even interfere with politics. This theory is a direct inheritance of Confucian traditional poetics and a further development of Du Fu's creation of current affairs. Judging from writing current events, Bai Juyi and Du Fu are the same; But Du Fu only wrote what he saw and felt, and the sufferings of the people were integrated with his own sad feelings. Although he always talks about it in realism, it contains irony, but it is not based on irony. The difference between Du Fu's poems and Bai Juyi's lies in his thought of "being the king", which highlights the practical utilitarian color of poems and leads them to a narrow road. Because of paying too much attention to the ironic function of poetry, poetry is equated with exhortation and commemoration, and the images of many poems are replaced by ironic reasoning and discussion. Due to the narrow and strict evaluation criteria of poetry, a large number of outstanding writers and works that do not meet this standard in history have been excluded. All these have had a certain negative impact on that time and later generations.
(Selected from the History of China Literature, Volume II, edited by Yuan Xingpei, Higher Education Press, 1999 edition)