The so-called poems of Qi and Liang refer to the poems of Qi (479-502) and Liang (502-557) in the Southern Dynasties. The predecessors called poems with double temperament and beautiful appearance Qi Liang style, which was used to refer to the ups and downs of poetic style and also contained derogatory meanings. Although Qi Liang's poetry has a low position in the history of literature, it has a direct influence on the formation of the style of Tang poetry. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish its advantages and disadvantages, so as to understand the development track of China's classical poetry more objectively.
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The reason why Qi Liang's poems were relegated to floating is because of empty content, poor thinking and listlessness. However, the criticism of the poetics of the past dynasties against Liang's poems is usually mixed with the prejudice of traditional ideas. According to the political standard of Confucian poetry teaching, poetry can change customs, educate the United States, be ethical and moral, and should be a tool of politics and religion, reflecting the chaos of the times. Wang Dao's eulogy can prove that politics is clear and the world is peaceful; The plaintive wailing indicates the chaos of the world and the decline of the country. Therefore, only the voice of praising beauty, which symbolizes Wang Hua's political success, can be called an elegant voice; Those poems that are not conducive to education, such as abstinence from drinking and feasting, romantic landscapes, love between men and women, have become Zheng's heartfelt wishes. The basic content of Qi Liang's poems is nothing more than the dew on the moon, the scenery of mountains and rivers, homesickness, and the amorous feelings that are always in my heart. Therefore, predecessors accused Qi Liang's poems of being frivolous, mainly from their theme contents, such as "mourning", "worshiping long and annoying lewdness" (Wang Sengqian's Yue Biao) and "satirizing snow and gardening" (Bai Juyi's Nine Books with the Same Yuan).
The lack of ideological content in Qi Liang's poems is indeed related to the lack of major themes reflecting social reality. However, from the perspective of poetry development, the changes in the content of Qi Liang's poems are of positive significance in expanding the scope of subject matter, and also contain reasonable factors for in-depth understanding of literary characteristics. Since the Jin Dynasty, there have been many excellent writers and works, but the trend of rigid poetry is also very serious. The western Jin dynasty advocated Confucianism and learning, and vigorously advocated the elegance and pronunciation of praise. Scholars generally believe that praise is the most beautiful poetic style. Odes at ceremonies and public banquets fill the poetic world with the same greetings and boring sermons. Metaphysical poetry in the Eastern Jin Dynasty has been popular for a hundred years, and Buddhist metaphysics has replaced elegant ode style, making poetry a tool to publicize metaphysics. This kind of poetic style, similar to morality, still had considerable influence in the Qi and Liang Dynasties. For example, Pei's "On Insect Carving" criticized the trend of "slandering and breaking the canon" since Liu and Song Dynasties, and demanded that literature be included in the framework of Confucianism. At that time, the style of writing in the capital was imitated by Pei, and the style was "elegant, plain and unusual" (see Xiao Gang's Book with the King of Xiangdong). Scholars such as Shen Yue, Xiao Gang and Xiao Yi in the Qi and Liang Dynasties, in order to change the style of Song poetry in the Jin Dynasty, pointed out that the basic characteristics of poetry are "chanting love" and "lingering", and should not imitate works such as The Book of Rites, The Book of Changes and Zhou Shu. In his creation, he deliberately deviated from the "elegant way" of praising virtue, reasoning with sages and virtue, and looked for poetic materials with "excellent temperament and new charm" from daily life, which broadened the themes of tourism, landscapes, banquets and boudoir feelings that had appeared in poems before Jin and Song Dynasties. The appearance of a large number of landscape farewell poems, object-chanting poems and erotic poems has pushed reasoning, persuasion and moral poems to a secondary position. In fact, they started with changing the content and asked to introduce the spirit hidden in the preaching of praising saints. Therefore, it not only reversed the tendency of confusion between literature and scholarship in Jin and Song Dynasties, but also opened up a broad road for later poems to draw materials from daily life. This is the merit of Qi Liang's poetry, not the fault.
The ups and downs of Qi and Liang's poetic style do not lie in rejecting the Six Classics and chanting feelings, nor in taking mountains and rivers as poetic materials. It lies in the mediocrity and superficiality of its feelings. The strength of Han and Wei dynasties has been lost in Jin and Song Dynasties, and Qi and Liang dynasties are weaker, mainly because Jian 'an poems lack life ideals and positive generosity. Xiao Yan, Xiao Gang and Xiao Yi, who presided over the style of writing, were emperors, and Shen Yue, Fan Yun and Jiang Yan were also prominent figures in the two dynasties. If ordinary literati are gentry, their political and economic privileges can be guaranteed through the gate valve system; If it is cold, because the emperor loves literature, people with literary talent can often receive special courtesy. Like Shen Yue and Jiang Yan, they were born in poverty or were lonely and poor, and later they all became Hou Bo. They don't have such a keen sense of reality as Zuo Si and Bao Zhao, and they are weak even if they complain a little about the poverty at home. At the same time, from the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Southern Dynasties, usurpations occurred frequently, and the gentry class also changed with the transfer of political power. Han people can get high officials and high salaries through political speculation. Shen Yue and Fan Li became officials in the Liang Dynasty by persuading Xiao Yan to usurp Qi. Scholars are used to usurping chaos and become insensitive. No matter the gentry of Han nationality, they no longer think seriously about the meaning of life and their responsibilities to society like Jian 'an literati. Xie Tiao, the most accomplished poet in the Qi Dynasty, repeatedly lamented the ideological contradiction of being grateful to the emperor, content with being honest and upright, and staying away from the noise and avoiding disasters. He Xun's thoughts about traveling are mostly tired of being an official. The poet's thoughts and feelings are so mediocre that it is naturally impossible to produce the generous singing in Han and Wei poems. The ups and downs of Qi Liang's poems should be understood mainly from this aspect.
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The themes of Qi Liang's poems are mostly mountains and rivers, chanting things and eroticism, while the poems that express ambition and lyricism are greatly discounted. Brought a series of changes in artistic expression. Among them, the most outstanding achievement is embodied in the landscape poems with the theme of "walking, serving and parting". Landscape poetry was born out of metaphysical poetry in Jin and Song Dynasties, and did not get rid of Hyunri's influence at first. The scenery is only an objective object of appreciation during the tour. Xie Lingyun never forgets reasoning and metaphor when writing landscape, so emotion and landscape are divided into two parts and cannot be blended. First of all, Xie Tiao's landscape poems expand the scope from boarding to tourism and daily life, paying attention to the tailoring of scenery and blending into the image of the lyric hero. For example, "The sun is setting, and the pillow is under the east window." Cold Huai is like a bunch, and autumn chrysanthemums are doing business "("Disappointment in the Sunset "). Writing about Xiaosan's interest in sitting in the county town and village can naturally reveal the mind of traveling and the feeling of saving money in daily scenery. In Xuancheng from Xinlinpu to Banqiao, "The river road is always southwest and flows to the northeast. The words "Homecoming to the Sky Boat, Clouds Distinguishing River Trees" send homesickness to the river flowing eastward, faint as ink returning to the boat and leaving the river trees, all of which are lonely people's eyes looking back at the sky, feeling that "a man full of deep affection is ready to come out" (Selected Ancient Poems by Wang Fuzhi), which has since turned the rigid description of landscape poems in Jin and Song Dynasties into a living scene. He Xun further combined landscape with farewell, and paid more attention to capturing the scenery characteristics at a specific moment to set off parting. For example, there are two sentences in "A Farewell to the Temple Night": "The grass is exposed in the cold pond, and the moon shadows clear the Huaihe River". It seems that even the traveler's thoughts are saturated with dew and moonlight. The realm created by the scholars in Qi and Liang Dynasties made the landscape completely free from the shackles of Hyunri and become a combination with emotional spirit. It is no longer the embodiment of the natural way, but the witness of the traveler's parting feelings and the sustenance of the wanderer's homesickness. This solved the big problem that the scenery of landscape poems in Jin and Song Dynasties could not be blended. Until then, landscape poetry was fully mature in art.
Poems about objects also occupy a considerable proportion in Qi and Liang Dynasties' poems, which is related to the atmosphere of valuing officials over things at that time. The upper class regarded the number of Confucian classics and historical stories as the standard to judge the level of knowledge. For example, Wang Jian of the Qi Dynasty often took out several boxes of clothes packed in towel boxes and asked the bachelor to tell relevant stories. Whoever knows more will take things away. When Xiao Yan became emperor, he competed with Shen Yue for the story of chestnuts, and he was also very concerned about the outcome. "Finger-shaped" poems about objects are produced in this game of referring to the number of objects. Shen Yue was an early poet who wrote poems about objects. Many of his poems about famous things only regard poetry as a tool of competition. Some poems chanting things respond to imperial edicts and try to hint at allusions in the description of the state of things, which is shallow and boring. After the mid-Liang period, the poems about objects developed rapidly under the advocacy of Xiao Gang, and most of them caught up with the new in describing things and had nothing to say. However, due to the combination of chanting things and writing scenery, a lot of trivial interests in daily leisure life are put into poetry, thus creating an era environment that makes daily life generally poetic. The ancient poems before Jin and Song Dynasties focused on expressing ambition and expressing emotion, and the content was more solemn and serious. The interest in daily life in Tao Yuanming's pastoral poems still revolves around the theme of expressing poverty. On the other hand, the poets in Qi and Liang Dynasties mostly express leisure, warmth and even eroticism in their daily lives. They focus on capturing the subtle dynamics of the moon dew, chanting fallen flowers, butterflies, swifts, mosquitoes, fireflies, thin bamboo shoots and light moss, and writing interesting stories such as walking in spring, enjoying the cool in summer, listening to cicadas in autumn and Xun Mei in the snow, which are almost all poetic materials. The beauty of various sounds in nature has aroused their delicate aesthetics and sensitive imagination. If they write more, they will also have some ingenious works with profound descriptions. For example, Xiao Gang's "A dense-leaved bird flies on the road, the wind is light and the flowers fall late" ("Folding Willow") describes the feeling that spring comes late from the place where the bird flies and the details of the flowers falling due to the dense-leaved breeze, and the wind and scenery are charming. The meticulous artistry of artistic expression is unprecedented in ancient poetry before Jin and Song Dynasties. Qi Liang's poems about scenery and chanting things are complicated because of their narrow life and endless articles. It is worth noting that many sentences in this kind of poems are ingenious in conception and context, which provides a basis for re-creation in Tang Dynasty. From Xiao Yi's "Lotus Noodles are Messy and Lotus Leaves are Fragrant" ("Lotus Picking Song") to Wang Changling's "Lotus Skirt Cut One Color, Lotus Blossoms Open Two Sides" ("Lotus Picking Song" II); From Liu's "Returning to the Scenery and Entering the Pond Forest, Yu Guangying" (Waiting for the Feast to Gather Immortals) to Wang Wei's "The sunshine there enters a small forest and shines back on me from the moss" (Chai Lu); From "Tears flow eastward and my heart hangs on the west oblique moon" by Wang Sangru ("I don't care about worrying and chatting to show my distance") to "The strong wind blows my heart and hangs Xianyang trees in the west" by Li Bai ("Jinxiang sends Xijing"), "I care about my bright moon and the wind goes to the west" ("I heard that Wang Changling moved to Longbiao Kiln with this news"), from He Xun's "
Erotic poems appeared in the works of Bao Zhao and Tang Huixiu in the Liu and Song Dynasties, but Shen Yue was the first to be popular in the Qi and Liang Dynasties, followed by Xiao Gang. At first, erotic poems were more common in Yuefu. Because Yuefu folk songs in the Southern Dynasties are mostly love songs, the literati copied their contents and artistic forms into Wu Sheng's western songs. The main reason of Qi and Liang scholars' emotional interest in wind lies in the extravagance of social customs. For example, all scholars and doctors in the Liang Dynasty kept prostitutes regardless of rank, and the expenses for officials to feast on women's music could reach billions. A considerable part of erotic poems are written for mocking prostitutes. Xiao Gang's admiration for eroticism is also related to his literary view. Although he flaunts the importance of his position, he thinks that articles can be debauched and should not be treated as classics. Love is obviously the most suitable theme to express "lingering sadness" and make "emotional soul sway". Decadent palace life determines that the nobles can only find fresh feelings in my wife's trivial things such as sleeping during the day, making bedding, beautiful women watching paintings and morning makeup, and what can shake their hearts is nothing more than "waist in the shadow" and "good face in the mirror". Therefore, when Xiao Gang was in the East Palace, he wrote "clear pronunciation and mellow voice, wonderful workmanship" and "carving vines and painting algae", and he could only "stop at the dinner and think about the boudoir" (Sui Shu Jing Ji Zhi). The proliferation of erotic poems is an important feature of Qi Liang's poetic style. Although some colourful songs were combined with frontier fortress themes, which became the prototype of long-tune songs in Sui and Tang Dynasties, there were also some excellent works in Tang Poetry that borrowed colourful styles and had no other sustenance, but in Qi and Liang Dynasties, it was mainly to meet the needs of emperors and nobles for lewdness, and few people took it.
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During the Qi and Liang Dynasties, the eternal Ming style appeared, emphasizing the duality of sound and rhythm, which was a major turning point in the development of China's poetic form. The formation of temperament is inspired by the emphasis on cadence in the transformation of Buddhist scriptures. In the seventh year of Yongming, Wang Xiaoliang Zi of Qi Jingling attracted a famous monk to talk about Buddhism and created a new voice, which was a great event at that time. The literati "based on the three tones of the Buddhist scriptures on the same day and imitated them, which were respectively defined as three tones of the upper level and four tones combined into four tones, so it was called the four-tone theory". Shen Yue also studied the coordination of poetic rhythm according to the four-tone and two-tone rhymes, and pointed out that eight kinds of phonological diseases should be avoided. Wang Rong, Xie Tiao, Fan Li and others, under his advocacy, combined this melody with antithesis and antithesis developed since Jin and Song Dynasties, and created a new poetic style-Yongming style, also known as new style poetry. Poetry since the Han and Wei Dynasties also emphasizes the beauty of rhyme, mainly the natural tone of "clear and smooth", and does not consciously formulate melody according to the four tones of Chinese characters. Although the rhyme in Yongming Style is incomplete, it only talks about the coordination of rhyme within two sentences, with single and double rhymes and irregular format. Every poem has four, eight or ten sentences, but China's metrical poems have just begun.
The characteristics of Yongming style are not only the norm of temperament, but also the change of conception, artistic conception and style. The ancient poems before Jin and Song Dynasties were mainly lyrical ways to express one's aspirations and feelings. This style is solemn and simple, and the integrity of the text often depends on a meaning. However, since its birth, new poetry has shown the characteristics of paying attention to specific situations and expressing infinite meanings beyond images. Comparing Xie Tiao's new style poem Thinking with Master Wang with What is the Moon in Nineteen Ancient Poems, it is not difficult to see the differences between them. Both of them are writing about the feeling of missing women and looking forward to wandering. The heroine in the ancient poem went in and out of the house, lost her owner, and sighed again and again: "The moon is so bright, take my bed." Too sad to sleep, wandering around in clothes. Although the guests are happy, it is better to turn back early. Who should you complain to when you leave home alone? Take him back to his room with tears all over his clothes. "Think I say it, say what you want, and there is nothing left. However, there are only four lines in Xie Shi's poem: "I didn't return to the ceremony, so I looked at the bell. "Traveling eastward, there are fewer people every month." Just let people realize her anxiety, disappointment and resentment from her constant movements of getting off the plane and wandering under the moon. Therefore, it is an important change that the new style poetry brings to the art of poetry to refine the image to the extent that it can accommodate a large capacity as much as possible in concise language and omit the repeated and incisive feelings and comments in ancient poetry.
After the mid-Liang period, most of the new-style poems express superficial and trivial meanings with beautiful language, graceful feelings and ingenious ideas, and pay more attention to words and sentences. A large number of five-character eight-sentence poems and five-character four-sentence poems are similar to metrical poems. Several poems have been in harmony with later metrical poems in rhythm.
In addition to the Yongming style, Qi Liang poets also reformed the old Yuefu and created a new Yuefu. He also exhibited seven-character poems that were regarded as "small but vulgar" in Jin and Song Dynasties. May 7th quatrains and lines of songs were also initially formed in this period.
Poets in Qi and Liang Dynasties realized the relative independence of artistic forms by advocating temperament and pursuing diverse poetic styles, and opened up a large number of poems beyond the ancient poetic styles in China, which is of great significance in the history of poetry. However, due to the ethereal nature of Qi Liang's poems, it is a simple pursuit of formal beauty to blindly pay attention to the duality of temperament. Especially at the time of Liang and Chen, the new style and the ancient style have been coupled, and a lot of coupling has caused the common problem of complicated and lengthy ancient poetry. In Sui Chen's period, it even reached the point where there were no sentences or articles, which was inevitably referred to as a floating life by later generations.
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There is another important change in the art of poetry in Qi and Liang Dynasties, that is, consciously criticizing the style of Song poetry in Jin Dynasty, drawing lessons from Yuefu ancient poems and Yuefu folk songs in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, refining new poetic language from contemporary spoken language, vigorously advocating smooth and natural style, and promoting the transformation of poetry from difficult to easy and from deep to shallow.
In the early stage of learning and processing the folk songs of Han Yuefu, Han Wei literati poetry can still maintain its plain language style. By the time of the Western Jin Dynasty, it was divorced from the nature of Li Lv ballads, with the beauty of classical and elegant poems and refined language. In the Jin and Song Dynasties, except for the works of a few writers such as Tao Yuanming and Bao Zhao, most of the ancient poems were written, and they were ancient. Some poets even invent and create poems, making them obscure. For example, Xie Zhan's poems such as "repay kindness with kindness" and Xie Huilian's poems such as "calmly sending widows to leave coffins and gently closing dragons" all lead the poems to a dead end. There are fresh and natural beautiful sentences like Xie Lingyun's "Spring grass grows in the pond" in Jin and Song Dynasties, but there are not many. The poets in Qi and Liang Dynasties are keenly aware that only by developing in a simple, smooth and clear direction can poetry be reborn. Therefore, it is clearly advocated that poetry should be "easy to read, easy to read", "mixed with folk songs, and easy to kiss", that is to say, it is necessary to absorb the light and smooth language of folk songs, and only use commonly used words and easily recognized words to make it easy to be popular. In order to create new poetry vocabulary, they extensively studied the tones of Yuefu folk songs in the Southern Dynasties, the oral sentence patterns of Yuefu ancient poems in Han and Wei Dynasties, and some simple poems of scholars in Jin and Song Dynasties, and processed and improved them on the basis of imitation. Many quasi-Yuefu poems and new-style poems in the Qi and Liang Dynasties can combine the ancient meaning of the Han and Wei Dynasties with the simple language and naive expression of Yuefu folk songs in the Southern Dynasties, and their artistic expression is superior to that of folk songs, such as Xie Tiao's Song on the River: "Spring grass grows and the sun sets. Lotus leaves are sweet, and water can't be crossed. May Zi sink into the Guangxi boat and travel on Wan Li Road at the same time. Thousands of miles together, Guizhou boat is full of beauty. The river can be taken from the mausoleum, and the southern Chu in the Qing and Song Dynasties. " In the poem, the allusions of Yi Yang and Shang Qi, which were used by predecessors, were inserted into the sentence "He Tian Tian's Lotus Leaves" in Jiangnan by Han Yuefu, which not only concentrated the common content of Wu Sheng's "Western Songs" in which men and women stopped to pick lotus flowers to express their love, but also won the melodious charm of the people's lyrics. The artistic conception is ethereal and lively, full of fun, and completely takes off the rigid shell of Jin and Song poetry.
Yuefu style poems and new style poems in the Southern Dynasties were greatly influenced by Yuefu folk songs, so the language generally turned to simplicity and benefit. At the same time, the ancient poems of Qi Liang gradually became simple and fresh, and Xie Tiao made the highest achievement in this respect. Classical poems in Jin and Song Dynasties often use elegant and simple written words, such as "pouring water", "welcoming the sun" and "feeling anxious" to describe the wandering people. Although the rhetoric is gorgeous, it can't directly give people a real and clear impression. While getting rid of this kind of language, Xie Tiao focused on excavating several beautiful sentences that understood nature in Jin and Song Dynasties. He said, "Chengjiang is as quiet as practice, and the sunset shines into splendor." "The sunset shines on the green hills, and the cold fog opens the sky. See you in Nuanhe Village, leaving trees in the sea. " The sun rises in the river and the scenery floats in the grass. "The north wind blows and rains, and the river comes up in the depression." Generally speaking, Xie Lingyun's "Clouds and the sun set each other off, the empty water is fresh" and "Spring Festival Evening is beautiful, the rocks are high and the clouds are high" has developed all the way, which can also be extracted from common spoken English.
Scholars in Qi and Liang Dynasties not only opposed the stiff and formal language of Confucianism in Jin and Song Dynasties, but also disapproved of the tendency of "carving flowers, lewdness and dazzling souls" in some poems of Bao Zhao. They advocate "speaking naturally" (Xiao Gang's Letter to the King of Eastern Hunan), and pay attention to expressing feelings directly found in life with easy-to-understand words. Allusions should be novel, as unobtrusive as telling the truth, so that people can see them at a glance. Therefore, although Qi Liang's poems mostly use parallel prose and singular language, they can "wash Zhu with powder and express the quality of youth alone" (Chen Ruoming's Selected Ancient Poems of Caijitang). The predecessors said that Qi Liang's poems are "elegant and elegant" and "original and elegant", which means that their descriptions, colors and antithesis are different from Liu Song's poems, but the emphasis is on the lightness of words and the freshness of thoughts. It can be said that the literati in Qi and Liang Dynasties changed the language style of poetry from profound elegance in Jin and Song Dynasties to simple elegance, which not only revived the rigid literati poetry, but also laid the basic style of poetry language from Qi and Liang Dynasties to the prosperous Tang Dynasty. The influence of this change cannot be underestimated.
Generally speaking, the quantity of Qi Liang's poems is greater than the quality, and there are a considerable number of writers and works, but not many outstanding achievements. However, the pursuit of formal skills has improved the artistic level of the whole era on average and slowly. Thoughts and feelings are mediocre and superficial, life vision is narrow, literary thinking is lost in complexity and detail description, and many poems exist in name only, forming a floating tendency in Qi Liang's poems. The contribution of Qi Liang's poetry lies in the understanding of the literary noumenon, the efforts to consciously learn the language of folk songs, the formation of various new genres of poetry, the reorganization of the old Yuefu theme and the creation of new themes, the conception becomes implicit, the description of scenery emphasizes the meaning beyond images, and the expression techniques become more and more detailed and concrete. The innovation of Tang poetry is completed in the process of taking its essence and removing its dross.
(1) see my book "On the Basic Features of Poetry Innovation in Early Tang Dynasty", published in China Social Sciences, No.2, 1985. (2) See my book "On the Achievements of Scholars in Qi and Liang Dynasties in Innovating the Poetic Style of Song Poetry in Jin Dynasty", Journal of Peking University No.3, 1985. (3) There is a line of chanting in Buddhism, which promotes Buddhist classics in the form of chanting and praising. Western songs and hymns with orchestral strings are called Brahma. In China, chanting is called reading, and chanting is called Bai Fan. After western praise was introduced into China, the original tone gradually dispersed. In order to make up for these lost tones, the rhyme of chanting is reconstructed with reference to Sanskrit, which is called the newly-created tone. (4) See Chen Yinque's Four Tones and Three Questions, which contains four volumes and three issues of Journal of Tsinghua. ⑤ See my book "On the Achievements of Scholars in Qi and Liang Dynasties in Innovating Song Poetry Style in Jin Dynasty", Journal of Peking University No.3, 1985.