Chapter 11 9. Preference

Preference is often used person-to-person.In Yuan Zhen's poem: "Mr. Xie is the youngest and takes pity on daughters. Since he married Qianlou, everything is good." This means that Mr. Xie does not treat his children equally, but especially likes the youngest one.Thinking about it, Xie Po must be even more like this.Is it the same for reading poetry?I think not only "could" be so, but "must" be so.Also "should" be true.When it comes to poetry, whether you have a preference or not is not a big deal.Even on a deeper level, bias is not a big deal.However, since there is a bias, it will inevitably lead to controversy, which will involve issues of right and wrong, at least which one is better and which one is worse.Right and wrong, good and bad are matters within the scope of evaluation, so if it becomes a problem, the problem is not simple.So you might as well spend some pen and ink and talk about it.

It is still limited to poetry, and there are differences in the scope of preference.It can be so big that there is a preference among poems. For example, it is also lyrical, and some people are particularly interested in softness, so you might as well read more "holding hands and looking at each other (read flat tone) tearful eyes", "the setting sun is at the place where the willows are heartbroken" and so on. And sing three sighs.Both poetry and Ci can have a preference for a certain style, for example, poetry especially likes close styles, and Ci especially likes long tunes.The style can also be refined, until you like the Qilu, which is close to the style, and the long-tune "Manjianghong" and "Congratulations to the Bridegroom".What you prefer can also be the era, such as the prosperous Tang Dynasty for poetry, and the Northern Song Dynasty for poetry.The era can also be narrowed down to people, for example, the prosperous Tang Dynasty especially liked Lao Du, and the Northern Song Dynasty especially liked Xiaoyan and so on.The more common preference is concentrated on works, such as poetry, Du Fu's "Eight Poems of Autumn Xing", Ci, Liu Yong's "Yu Linling", He Zhu's "Sapphire Case" and so on.This aspect can also be narrowed down. For example, poetry can pay special attention to the word "green" in "the spring breeze is green on the south bank of the river", especially the word "nao" in "the red apricot branches are full of spring".The differences in these various preferences are of course just examples. As far as the vast majority of readers are concerned, they are more or less followers of Mozi, (conditional) universal love, just like for beautiful women, slim ones, Zhao Feiyan, plump ones, Yang Yuhuan, All feel good.Then it’s okay to say that reading poems takes a long time and there are too many articles. It’s always inevitable that I prefer these, don’t favor those, and among the pile of non-favorites, there may be some, not even very few. is disgusted.Is this good?

I don't think there is anything wrong with it.There are both subjective and objective reasons.Subjective is what readers say, each has its own nature, just like eating and drinking, some people like sweet food, some people like spicy food, there is no need to force it, and force is difficult to work.Take poetry reading as an example, between Tao poetry and Xikun style, if it is allowed to break the constraints of the times, people like Chao Fu and Xu You must choose the former, and people like Xu Ling and Jiang Zong must choose the latter.There is no right or wrong in this kind of thing, life is complicated, and under the principle of truth, there should be a variety of small freedoms.Objectively speaking, speaking of works, a large number of unreasonable works from ancient and modern times are not counted, only those floating on the water surface and above, such as Zhu Qingyu's "Recent Examination on Zhangshui Department": "The red candles were stopped last night in the bridal chamber (reading the tone), and we waited before Xiaotang. Pay homage to uncle and aunt. After putting on make-up, ask husband-in-law in a low voice, whether the thickness of thrush is fashionable or not?" Li Shangyin's "Send to Linghu Langzhong": "Songyun Qinshu has been away for a long time, and the two carp are far away with a paper book. Don't ask the old guests of Liangyuan, Mao The wind and rain in the mausoleum are similar to each other." Both poems can be found in "Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty", and they were both written to please a certain person. Feeling nauseous, the last song has no begging and flattering attitude, and I can get by without punishing my heart.It can be seen from this that there are indeed good and bad works, at least high and low. Corresponding to good and bad, high and low, it is natural to have a preference, although the bias may not necessarily be appropriate.

Furthermore, when reading poetry, there are preferences and advantages, which can prove that it has gone a step further.The reason can be imagined.First, preference comes from comparison (except for sexual proximity), and stubborn preference comes from multiple comparisons.Children started to get in touch with poetry, for example, they only read three or five quatrains, such as "Moonlight in front of the bed", "Two orioles singing green willows", etc., and they felt a little bit tasteful, which was not enough to be a preference, because they didn't think it was better than anything else. it is good.I read a lot, such as before the Tang Dynasty, especially in the Southern Dynasties, I read a lot of five-character poems, and I feel more and more that it is still good, because the language is simple and the feelings are sincere.This is a preference based on comparison. Compared with the child's shallow taste, the gain is increased, so it is a step deeper.Second, preference also comes from a deep understanding, or in other words, breathing with the author's poetic feelings (the feelings contained in the work), and sharing the pain and joy.Tao's poem "All the birds appreciate you (read the tone), and I love my house too", and Du's poem, "The candles are held at the end of the night (read the tone), relatively like a dream", all use simple pen and ink to write about ordinary things, but this love is Born from ups and downs and a philosopher's appreciation of life, there are reasons and tears in it. If we read it and feel partiality, it proves that we have read the words, and we have reason in our hearts and tears in our eyes.In the words mentioned earlier, this is the transformation that has already entered the poetic realm, or obtained the realm.

As mentioned above, what is preferred may not necessarily be appropriate.Appropriate is better than inappropriate, but it is not easy to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate, because there must be standards.Preference is chiefly derived from feeling, but feeling alone cannot serve as a criterion, at least not as a basic or stable criterion.So it is better to go deeper and ask why the preferred work is worthy of preference, or to find the basic or stable standard to support the preference.In my experience, such deep thinking is like digging a well, which can be layered, and the most powerful source is always on the lower layer.Or take reading poetry as an example.Compared with Du Fu, Li Bai is good at writing quatrains. Let’s compare his two quatrains:

Clouds think about clothes and flowers, and spring breeze blows Revlon.If it wasn't for Qunyu Mountain, I would meet Yaotai under the moon. (One of the three poems of "Qing Ping Diao") The old man Xici to the Yellow Crane Tower (the word "person" has a flat tone, not qualified), and the fireworks will go down to Yangzhou in March.The lonely sail is far away, the blue sky is gone, only the sky of the Yangtze River can be seen. ("Send Meng Haoran to Guangling") The first one is about beautiful women, and the second one is for poets.A beautiful woman can easily arouse a man's heat, but this beautiful woman has a master, and the master is not an ordinary person, but an emperor with the power of life and death, so the possible heat is rarely heated up.But such poems must be eulogized and beautified. They are powerless and have to pretend to be powerful, so Queen Mother Lasi has to join in the fun.This is not the case in the latter song, "We only see" Yunyun, which expresses the extreme unwillingness to say goodbye and finally has to say goodbye. There is not only heat, but also tears.In this way, comparing the two songs, the latter one is true and the former one is false, or to put it more euphemistically, using wine as a metaphor, the latter song is alcoholic, while the former one is watered.Alcohol is good, water is not good, this is a deeper reason than feeling.The deeper principles can also be expressed in other aspects. Take the two poems as examples:

Today is a good banquet, and the joy is hard to describe.The zither is playing vigorously, and the new sound is wonderful.Let De sing high words, recognize the music and listen to the truth.We are of the same mind and wish, and the meaning is not declared.Life is sent for a lifetime, dying suddenly like flying dust.Why don't you plan to be a high-ranking student and take Lu Jin first?Doing nothing to keep the poor and the lowly, it is hard work for a long time. (fourth) The Altair is far away, the Han girl of the Jiaojiao River.Slender hands are pulled out, and the sticks are used.All day long, weeping like rain.The Milky Way is clear and shallow, how much is it different?The water is full of water, and the pulse is speechless. (Ten)

Both poems have true feelings, but, at least in my opinion, there is a difference between superior and inferior.The previous poem is about the shortness of life, which almost everyone will feel, the difference lies in how to treat it.A positive attitude is young and hardworking, or retreat into a negative, "singing to wine".This poem is not the case, but "preemptive", seeking to be the best.The last poem is about the unattainable longing, the pain of wanting to speak but not being able to speak, which seems to come from the destiny of life, so it is universal, unbearable but finally unbearable, so it has a long-lasting nature.Comparing the two songs, although the feelings are true, the former one is shallow and the latter one is deep.Deep is good, shallow is not good, this is another deeper principle.This principle can also be expressed in many aspects, such as Xie Lingyun's poem, "Spring grass grows in the pond, and willows in the garden turn into songbirds". The upper couplet is better than the second couplet because it is natural and there is no trace of patchwork; "Long Yi (reading the tone) chants" is also better than the lower couplet because the image is vivid and the artistic conception is clear and distant. As for the dragon, no one has seen it before. Adding the chanting, it is difficult to know what is going on.It is good to be natural, and it is good to have a clear artistic conception. These are also deep-seated principles.Others can be analogized.

Can such multifaceted principles be unified into a deeper level of principles?I think it is possible, and it should be.But this is rather far-fetched, so I want to briefly talk about my understanding.My half-baked ideas come from my superficial understanding of morals and aesthetics.Morality studies the nature of good and evil, and aesthetics studies the nature of beauty and ugliness. I am used to running a small business, and I am always willing to draw Wuji and Taiji (even if there is one) on my chest or back. In other words, it is human-oriented, so I think, No matter how subtle the two ends of good and evil, beauty and ugliness seem to be, if you explore them, the root must always be within the great desire of eating and drinking men and women.To put it bluntly, what people love and respect is always beneficial to life.What is "profit"?In a word, it is nothing more than making life (referring to the general, minor details not necessarily) upward.This "top" includes many aspects, and it is difficult to cite them in categories, so I only cite two aspects as examples.On the one hand, it is to oneself, richness is better than barrenness, freshness is better than chaos, etc. The good side is upward.On the other hand, with people, love is better than hate, getting together is better than getting together, etc. The good side is also upward.The reason why good poetry works are good, in my opinion, also has the power to make life uplifting, so it is expressed as emotion, to be true, to be manifested as environment, to be clean, the general spirit is to be persistent in life, or to simplify it into a The word, "thick".This is a deeper reason. When reading poetry, it may not matter if you don’t know it, but since you can’t avoid partiality, it’s better to be able to ask why, than not to know it?To pursue a deeper level of truth, we must rely on thinking.Confucius said, "Thinking without learning will lead to peril", so thinking must be based on learning.Any high attainments in thinking are climbed up by the thinking of predecessors.Therefore, before thinking, we must first consult the opinions of others.As far as poetry is concerned, other people’s opinions are general, such as the ethics and aesthetics mentioned above; there are also professional or close ones, which are narration and discussion about poetry, which are more important because they are direct.Take Wang Guowei's two articles as examples:

Nietzsche said: All literature, I love those written in blood.The words of the postmaster are really the so-called ones written in blood.Emperor Song Daojun's "Yanshan Pavilion" is also slightly similar.However, the Taoist monarch is only a relative of his own life experience, and the latter master has the meaning of Sakyamuni and Christ bearing the sins of mankind, and the size is different. The main poem in the Southern Tang Dynasty, "The fragrance of the stalks sells the remnants of the green leaves, and the west wind worries about the green waves." Blowing through the Yusheng Han", so knowing and understanding people is not easy to come by.

This is all seen deeply and can inspire us to go deeper and understand. However, this discussion on the main words in the Southern Tang Dynasty will lead to a problem, which is: different opinions, not all correct, how can we avoid mistakes?My thinking is that it won't be serious enough to make a mistake.There are two reasons.One is that you are not afraid of not knowing the goods, but you are afraid of comparing goods. If you read too much, good goods will naturally prevail over time.Second, if there is a small mistake, such as seeing something that is not very beautiful as beautiful, it is presumed that it is always a small virtue that can come in and out, so you might as well relax a bit.As for being lighter, if some people like "Handou Xiangpin", and some people like "Drizzle Menghui", it means that the public says the public is right, and the mother-in-law says that the woman is right, and so on, and you can do whatever you want. Finally, there are two other kinds of "benefits" that coherently arise from preference.One is conducive to "cooked".Because I can't bear to explain it because of love, so I can't help humming a few words casually in front of the window on the road in frosty mornings and moonlight evenings. As time goes on, many poems are printed on my memory.This will lead to another kind of advantage, as the saying goes: "If you read three hundred Tang poems by heart, you can chant poems even if you don't know how." That is to say, it is not so difficult to imitate.The ingenuity and prosperity of the language come from the dismantling and modification after familiarity. If you read a lot of poems and become familiar with them, it will not be difficult to dismantle and modify them.Large-scale demolition and modification are made of parts, and there is no trace of misappropriation, which is not a problem; small demolition and modification, such as "Flying Egrets in Water Fields" became "Flying Egrets in Momo Paddy Fields", the ancients also allowed it, and even called it enlightenment .These will be discussed later and will be omitted here.