Idealism is the title of Yuan Mei's view on poetry. Zhao Yi, Zhang Wentao and others later held the same view. Yuan Mei believes that poetry must be written in a unique way. The basic view of the theory of soul is that poetry must be true in order to express personal temperament. He said: "Poets are born of emotions. If you don't understand, you will have a poem that doesn't rot. " Advocating that poetry should have "self". Zhu Tingzhen further elaborated the "self" in Xiao Yuan's Poetry Talk: "The so-called poetry has me, which does not rely on the predecessors' portal, nor does it imitate the predecessors' shape. Express your temperament without prejudice. As far as contentment is concerned, it is self-proclaimed. Don't say that big articles and short chapters are all made on impulse, so the meaning stops here. I have my spiritual structure, I have my artistic conception, I have my face, I have my financial scale, and I will never pick up people's wisdom and fall into an unusual way, that is to say, I am in the poem. I will retire (Han Yu) the so-called' words must have been born' and' Chen has gone'. " Yuan Mei has a quatrains said:
A vine alone is invincible for thousands of years; If you want to learn poetry from the garden, who will do it in the Tang and Song Dynasties?
Yuan Mei's theory of soul is a brief summary of poetry. Even ancient poetry should be measured and evaluated by this. He believes that poetry can only distinguish between temperament and non-temperament, but not between "Tang poetry" and "Song poetry". He said: "Poetry is divided into Tang and Song Dynasties, and people still abide by it. I don't know about poets, human nature. Tang and Song Dynasties are the titles of emperors. Will a person's temperament change because of the country name? " Even people of the same era write poems and compositions according to their own ideas. People have different opinions, so it is. "He believes that the poems of the previous generation should be used for reference as long as they express temperament. Otherwise, neither Tang nor Song should worship blindly.
Spirituality has always refuted the retro tendency of "poetry must flourish in Tang Dynasty". They asked, who did Don learn from? If all the people in the Tang Dynasty learned 300 poems of The Book of Songs, how could they have the style of the Tang Dynasty? Song Xiang has a quatrain poem:
Does the 300 poets have a teacher? Being a swan song is refreshing. Today, people don't talk about the source water, just ask who the school is.
Song Xiang's "flowing water from the source" is the true feelings in the poet's heart. Don't Tang poetry and Song poetry also come from this? Poetry without true feelings is passive water. Zhang Wentao's quatrains point out this truth:
The sound of rules and the sound of partridges, the sound of good birds singing in spring is still affectionate, so why bother to write a few words without comments?
Zhang Wentao (1764— 18 14) was born in Suining, Sichuan. During the Qianlong period, he was a scholar, a doctor in the official department and a magistrate in Laizhou. After resigning from his post, he lived in Huqiu, Suzhou, and his works include Poems of Chuanshan. Zhang Wentao is good at painting, especially writing poems. He is very much in favor of Yuan Mei's idea of writing poems with true feelings. Hey: confused and unreasonable. In another quatrain, Zhang Wentao used his own poetic experience to laugh at those poems without true feelings, which can only be posturing, neither vitality nor appreciation value:
I think that the ethereal pen has a god. Every time I get naive from the game, I laugh at him for talking about elegance with positive color, obeying the crown and facing beautiful women.
Some critics of orthodox ethics deliberately cover up when talking about the need for true feelings in writing poems, thinking that those affectionate palace poems are "gentle local language" and "harmful to people's hearts" and will not be accepted when choosing poems. Yuan Mei thinks that "the palace style of colourful poems is the poet's style". The true feelings advocated by the spiritual school naturally include the love between men and women, which is also very valuable.
Since ancient times, China has said that "poetry expresses ambition". It seems that without ambition, it is not a poem. In fact, there are many lyrical poems in the 300 poems of The Book of Songs that do not express their aspirations. There is no need to rigidly stipulate what poetry can and cannot write; What subjects are good and what subjects are not; What to say and what not to say. There are many interesting people and things in all aspects of life that can be included in poetry. Yuan Mei's assertion that "Yanshi Palace is unique" is undoubtedly very correct today.