Chapter 11 Chapter 5 Poems of the Tang Dynasty
This was the preparatory period for the prosperity of Tang poetry. Important poets included Wang Bo, Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaolin, and King Luo Bin, known as the "Four Great Masters of the Early Tang Dynasty", as well as Chen Ziang, Shen Quanqi, and Song Zhiwen.The poetry of the Tang Dynasty at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China still developed along the inertia of the poetry of the Southern Dynasties, soft and delicate, lifeless. The emergence of the "Four Heroes" began to change this atmosphere.They are full of talent, dissatisfied with the status quo, express their indignation and heroic embrace through their poems, and broaden the subject matter of poetry.Such as Yang Jiong's "March in the Army":
This provocative and heroic style brought a new wind to the poetry world in the early Tang Dynasty.The poem expresses the young people's unwillingness to be lonely, and their eagerness to join the army and make contributions to the frontier.I would rather be a low-level officer (centurion) than a scholar who dies under the window.Following the "Four Heroes" came Chen Zi'ang, who theoretically criticized the weakened style of poetry since the Southern Dynasties, believing that this type of poetry only played with flowery rhetoric, the content was empty, and he abandoned the tradition of emphasizing ideology.He was very concerned about this and advocated learning the "Han and Wei style character" and restoring the poetic style of the Jian'an era.His 38 "Gan Yu" poems practiced his own ideas and had a great influence.His "Taiwan Song of Dengyouzhou": "I don't see the ancients before, and I don't see the new ones after; when I read the world, I feel sad but weep."Han Yu once said: "The country's dynasty is full of articles, but Zi's ambitions are high", and he evaluated his important role in the development of Tang poetry.The contributions of Shen Quanqi and Song Zhiwen are mainly in the aspect of poetry rhythm.They summarized the achievements of poets in exploring the rhythm of poetry since "Yongming style", and promoted the finalization of "modern style poetry" with their own poems.
To appreciate Tang poetry, one must first have a general understanding of the difference between "modern style poetry" and "ancient style poetry". If you master their respective characteristics, you will be able to better appreciate their beauty.
Ancient poetry, also known as ancient poetry or ancient style.This concept is different from the usual "ancient poetry", it is a special term, specifically referring to a style of poetry that was popular before the Tang Dynasty and continued to be popular in the Tang Dynasty, and exists relatively to the modern poetry formed in the Tang Dynasty.The characteristics of ancient poetry are: there is no limit to the number of sentences in each sentence, and there is no limit to the number of words in each sentence. It can rhyme or not, and rhyme can also change rhyme. There is no requirement for parallelism between sentences and words.In a word, ancient style poetry is relatively free in terms of rhythm, which is different from modern style poetry which has extremely strict requirements in terms of rhythm.Ancient poems are divided into two categories: five-character ancient poems and seven-character ancient poems (or Wugu and Qigu for short).In addition, there are ancient poems with different sentence patterns, which are generally classified into Qigu.Some ancient style poems have the same number of lines and words as regulated poems, but the rhyme, flatness and antithesis are different from the requirements of regulated poems, so they are still ancient poems.The poems mentioned above and the poems of Tao Yuanming and others are all ancient poems.
Modern style poetry, also known as modern style poetry ("near" and "modern" both refer to the Tang Dynasty), emphasizes strict rhythm.There are four basic requirements for modern poetry: one is that the number of sentences and words are stipulated; the other is that the rhyme rhymes according to the regulations; Use words in opposition, that is, nouns against nouns, verbs against verbs, adjectives against adjectives, and so on.
Modern poems are divided into two categories: (1) Rhythm poems, which are composed of eight sentences, five-character sentences are called five-character verses, and seven-character sentences are called seven-character verses. (2) Quatrains are composed of four sentences, five-character sentences are called five-character quatrains, and seven-character sentences are called seven-character quatrains.Let us illustrate with examples.For example, Wang Zhihuan's "Climbing the Stork Tower" that everyone is familiar with:
This is a five-character quatrain, and it must be four sentences with 20 characters.Secondly, the words "liu" and "lou" in this poem belong to the rhyme of "Eleven You".Thirdly, the characters it uses must conform to the prescribed flat and oblique format, so that it can be read in a harmonious and pleasant way.The format of this poem is:
Zhe [·] Zhe Ping Ping Zhe, Ping Ping Zhe Ping.
Ping [·] Ping Ping Ping Ping, Ping [·] Ping Ping Ping Ping.
The characters marked with [·] can be flat or flat, and the rest of the characters cannot be changed.Ping——refers to the Ping tones in ancient Chinese; Zhe——refers to the Shang, Qu, and Ru tones in ancient Chinese.According to modern Chinese, the characters Yinping (first tone) and Yangping (second tone) belong to Ping; the characters Shangsheng (third tone) and Qusheng (fourth tone) belong to Zhe.The upper and lower lines of a quatrain poem may or may not be antithetical.This quatrain is full of confrontations, and the last two sentences "want to be poor" versus "more up", "thousands of miles" versus "one floor", and "mu" versus "lou".
Let's take the poem "Climbing the Guanque Tower" to illustrate the most basic metrical requirements of modern poetry. In addition, there are three flat and flat forms of five-character quatrains, a total of four forms.Seven-character quatrains, five-character regulated poems, and seven-character regulated poems each have four flat and flat formats.As for the flat and oblique format of modern poetry, I only give some hints from the above examples, and will not introduce them in detail.If you don't want to create this kind of poems, but just appreciate the works of predecessors, then it doesn't hurt to have a rough understanding of the requirements of meter.
For the seven-character quatrains, let’s take Meng Haoran’s "Send Du Shishi to the South of the Yangtze River" to see:
It expresses the feeling of nostalgia and melancholy when seeing off friends on a long journey.There are four sentences in the whole poem, 28 characters, which rhyme with "Qiyang", and the tones follow the rules.Because the quatrains allow no antithesis, there is no antithesis in this poem.
For the five-character verses, let's look at Dai Shulun's "Day Night at the Stone Posthouse":
This is a poem about staying away from home and traveling alone with relatives on New Year's Eve to express my feelings about my own experience.There are eight sentences in the whole poem, 40 characters, and they rhyme with "Eleven Trues", which are smooth and regular.The one or two sentences of the regulated poems are called "the first couplet", the three or four sentences are called "the jaw couplet", the five or six sentences are called "the neck couplet", and the seven or eight sentences are called "the tail couplet".The jaw couplets and neck couplets of the verses must confront each other.For example, in this first couplet, "One Year" is to "Wanli", "To the End" is to "Not Returning", and "Night" is to "People"; The past" versus the "this body".
For seven-character verses, let's look at Liu Zongyuan's "Bie She Di Zong Yi":
Notes: