As we all know, China's pre-Qin poetry was the golden age for the development of four-character poetry from the early Western Zhou Dynasty (1 1 century BC) to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period (6th century BC). This "Zuge" was collected by Zhou people and compiled into the first book of poetry in ancient China. Three hundred years after The Book of Songs, China's literary world is almost shrouded in the glory of prose, and poetry is in a silent period. It was the talented poet Qu Yuan and his later scholar Song Yu who broke the silence. They created a new poetic style with the local characteristics of Chu State. This poetic style is "Chu Ci". There are great differences between The Songs of the South and The Book of Songs. It is not a collective singing, but a personal creation. Unrealistic but romantic; Do not pay attention to natural realism, pay attention to subjective lyricism; Not the northern scenery, but the southern scenery; It is not a single metaphor, but a symbol of the whole; Sentence patterns are not rigid four words, but clever miscellaneous words; Chapter is not a short chapter, but a giant system with a grand structure; Style is not natural and simple, but magnificent and elegant. The distinctive local characteristics of Chu Ci are summarized by Huang in the Preface to the Correction of Chu Ci in Song Dynasty: "Gai Qu and Sao in Song Dynasty are all written in Chu language, so they are called Chu Ci, because they are Chu sounds, auspicious places and famous Chu objects." (See Song Wenjian, Volume 92) Because the representative work of this new poetic style of Chu Ci is Li Sao, it is "a poem that is inspiring and magnificent" (Lu Xun's Outline of China Literature History), so it is also called "true Sao poem" by later generations. In the history of China literature, "Feng" and "Sao" are often referred to as "Feng", in which "Feng" refers to the Book of Songs and "Sao" refers to the Songs of the South. The textual research on the name of "Chuci" was first seen in the period of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty. Sima Qian's "Historical Records Biography of Liang Guan and Biography of Zhang Tang" contains: "Fortunately, I bought ministers with Chu Ci and helped them, and I used doctors with Tai Zhong." When the Han Dynasty became emperor, Liu Xiang sorted out ancient documents, and compiled the Sao poems written by Qu Yuan and Song Yu of Chu State and the quasi-Sao poems written by Jia Yi, Huainan Xiaoshan, Yan Ji, Bao Wang and Liu Xiang in Han Dynasty into a collection, which was named * * * Sixteen volumes. From then on, Songs of the South became the name of a collection of poems. In the early Yuan Dynasty of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wang Yi annotated the Songs of the South compiled by Liu Xiang, and added an article written by himself, naming the whole book "Songs of the South", with a total of 17 volumes. Liu Xiang's Sixteen Volumes of Songs of the South have long been lost, and only Wang Yi's Seventeen Volumes of Songs of the South have survived to this day, which is the oldest annotation of Songs of the South. The Songs of the South is a classic of ancient China literature, which occupies an extremely important position in the vast historical documents of ancient China. According to the traditional classification of Jing, Shi, Zi and Ji, Chu Ci belongs to Ji Department and has always been called "the ancestor of Ji Department". Open the largest series of books in ancient China, Sikuquanshu, and the first book in the category of "Ji Bu" is Chuci. Therefore, the official of Siku Library said, "Chu Ci is the oldest in the collection." Because the book "Songs of the South" occupies an important position in the history of China literature, the study of "Songs of the South" has a long history, and there are countless works on "Songs of the South", thus forming a special knowledge-the study of songs of the South.
As a poetic style, Chuci originated from "Chusheng" and "Chuge". During the Spring and Autumn Period, the music and folk songs of Chu State were called "south wind" or "southern sound". According to "Zuo Zhuan Qi Huangong Nine Years", Zhong Yi, a Chu man, played "Nanyin" on the golden guqin, which is known as "fond of playing the local customs and never forgetting the past". During the Warring States Period, Chu local music such as Shooting the River, Picking Ling, Lao Shang, Jiu Bian, Jiu Ge, Autumn Dew, Yangchun and Snow White can also be seen in Chu ci works. Qu Yuan's "About the River", "Nine Songs" and Song Yu's "Nine Arguments" are all new poems written by borrowing old topics. Among the Chu folk songs before Qu Yuan, there is a famous love song "Song Yue" sung by a Yue fisherman in the era of King Kang of Chu (reigned from 559 to 545) in Liu Xiang's "Talking about Yuanshan": "What's the matter today?" What day is it today, and you want to help the prince in the same boat? I'm ashamed. I don't deserve my humble opinion. Confused mood can not only satisfy the prince. There are trees on the mountain, but there are branches on them. My heart says (yue) that Jun Jun doesn't know much. Decades later, the Children's Song quoted by Mencius and Li Lou appeared, and Confucius heard it: "The water in the surging waves is clear, so I can stand on the tassel. The water in the rough waves is turbid and can lick my feet. " Both poems use the modal particle "Xi", which is the same as the basic form of Chu Ci in later generations and is the predecessor of Chu Ci. However, this folk tune is like a trickle. If Qu Yuan, a great poet, hadn't studied and adopted and created poems such as Li Sao, Nine Songs, Nine Chapters, Tian Wen, etc., it would have been impossible to form the long river of China's poems. It is no exaggeration to say that the appearance of Qu Yuan is a brilliant sunrise in China's poetry circle.
However, this talented poet has experienced ups and downs in his life, with great joy and great sorrow! Let's go through the clouds of history, walk into this great poet and feel his legendary life!
Qu Yuan, surnamed Mi (mǐ mi), whose name is Qu, is a primitive man, and is the ancestor of the King of Chu. Dong Fangshuo in the Western Han Dynasty said in his Sao poem "Seven Commandments First Release": "I was born in the countryside and grew up in Yuan Ye." The "country" here is the national capital, which refers to the capital of Chu. Qu Yuan's "Nine Chapters of Mourning" also contains some poems, such as "Returning to my hometown and going far away", "Ascending to the capital and going to Shandong" and "Returning to my hometown and going away", which clearly shows that my hometown is Yingdu. According to the poet's self-report and the records of the Han people, it can be concluded that Qu Yuan was a native of Jin 'an City, jiangling county, Hubei Province. According to Li Sao, it can be inferred that Qu Yuan was born in Chu State.
In the seventeenth year of Wang Xuan (353 BC), the 23rd day of the first month.