Chapter 29 Wu Wenying

The poets of the middle and late Tang Dynasty were already under great pressure to write poems, because the poets of the prosperous Tang Dynasty were too high-ranking, especially with people like Li and Du in charge, so they had to find new ways and seek innovation and change.Han and Meng are strange, Yuan and Bai are popular, Li He is eccentric, and Li Shangyin is obscure.The situation faced by poets in the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty is somewhat similar to that faced by poets in the middle and late Tang Dynasty.In front of them, there are also peaks, not to mention far away, graceful as Zhou Bangyan, bold as Xin Qiji, flamboyant as Jiang Kui, all of which are difficult for them to surpass.If you want to succeed, you must make a breakthrough, and Wu Wenying is considered to be relatively successful among these poets.

Wu Wenying (about 1200-about 1260), named Junte, named Mengchuang, and named Jueweng in his later years, was born in Siming (now Ningbo, Zhejiang).He originally came from Weng's surname, and later he came from the Wu family.He never served as an official in his life, but served as a servant and staff member of some powerful people, mainly in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.He doesn't have Xin Qiji's broad-mindedness, nor Jiang Kui's talent. He can't have Xin Qiji's boldness, nor can he have Jiang Kui's emptiness. The rest can only be a breakthrough in artistic skills. Wu Wenying's words have peculiar thinking and vague images.It often turns the imaginary into the real, and the real into the imaginary.For example, the well-known "Eight Sounds of Ganzhou·The Lords of the Yumu Tour Lingyan":

In her thirties, Wu Wenying lived in Suzhou for about ten years and worked as a staff member for Cangtai. This poem was composed at that time.Lingyan is a famous scenic spot in Suzhou, and it is also the place where Fuchai, the king of Wu, favored Xi Shi. There are Guanwa Palace, Qintai, Xiangxi Corridor, etc. built specially for Xi Shi on it, and there is a ten-mile fragrance picking trail in front of the mountain.But Wu Wenying did not write it down, but imagined Lingyan as a star falling from the blue sky, blurring the reality.History has become a thing of the past, and the romance of the old days has been blown away by the rain and the wind.But Wu Wenying chose to describe the illusory realm realistically. In the corridor, there seemed to be the sound of Xi Shi walking around wearing wooden clogs.The scene in front of you and the scene in your heart are intertwined, forming an artistic conception that is both real and illusory.

In terms of composition and structure, it subverts the logical order of thinking that people are accustomed to. The imagery develops and changes in leaps and bounds, the combination of virtuality and reality, and the intricateness of emotion and situation.For example, his so-called first long-tune in Ci, which is divided into six pieces, a total of 240 verses, "Ying Cry Preface", the six pieces are crossed and jumped, and there is a complete logical connection. Still rare. Another major innovation in Wu Wenying's Ci is language.One is to create some new words, such as "Hua Xing" and "Xing Xing" in "Eight Sounds of Ganzhou" cited above.The second is the novel collocation, which constitutes some brand-new artistic conceptions.For example, in "Eight Sounds of Ganzhou", "Wake up while fishing alone", "Autumn and Yunping" and so on.

These changes in the structure of images will inevitably lead to obscure problems; excessive jumps will naturally cause dazzling phenomena.Therefore, Zhang Yan's "Etymology" said that Wu Wenying's words are "like Qibao towers, dazzling the eyes, broken down, not fragments", which has always been considered the most accurate evaluation of Wu Wenying's words. "Summary of Wu Mengchuang's Poetry in the General Catalog of Siku Quanshu" said that "literary poets have literary English, just as poets have Li Shangyin", probably because they saw some similarities in their art.