The Origin of Tang Poetry
Ye Jiaying
The earliest poetry collection in China is the Book of Songs, which collects about five hundred poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period. There are 305 poems written over many years, which relatively comprehensively reflect the social outlook of the Zhou Dynasty. The number of words in each poem in the Book of Songs ranges from two to eight characters, but overall, it is dominated by four characters. This is because the four-character poem is the simplest and initially rhythmic style in terms of syntactic structure and rhythmic beats. If the number of words in a sentence is less than four, the syllables will inevitably lose force and urgency. Therefore, as the earliest poetry in China, the works in the Book of Songs naturally formed the simplest form of mainly four words.
After the "Book of Songs", another new poetry style emerged in southern China - "Chu Ci". "Chu Ci" is mainly composed of works by Qu Yuan and Song Yu, and also collects works imitated by Qu Yuan and Song Yu by some later generations of literati. There are two styles of "Chu Songs" that have the greatest influence on later generations, one is "Song Style" and the other is "Chu Song Style". Sao-style poetry is named after Qu Yuan's "Li Sao". Qu Yuan's life was characterized by integrity and honesty, and he was loyal to his country. However, "his faith was met with suspicion, and his loyalty was slandered." Therefore, in "Li Sao", he tells the sorrow of his troubles and expresses his noble temperament and ideals, as well as his spiritual quality of staying upright and not regretting even after nine deaths. The content and emotional characteristics of "Li Sao" had a great influence on future generations of poets. This characteristic is mainly manifested in the pursuit of ideals, the will to die without regrets, the metaphor of beauty and herbs, and the lamentation of failure in autumn. I have discussed these contents in detail before, so I will not repeat them here. As for the form, "Li Sao" has a longer sentence, which is roughly the six characters before and after the word "xi". Because the syntax is expanded, the length is also extended, which makes this kind of poetry have a prose trend. As a result, the Sao style in "Chu Ci" gradually separated from poetry and developed into the forerunner of Fu.
Another form of "Chu Ci" is the Chu Song style. Chu song style mainly refers to the group of poems "Nine Songs" in "Chu Song". It was originally a witchcraft song sung by male and female shamans when offering sacrifices to ghosts and gods in the Chu region. It often uses the tone of love to describe a romantic feeling of expectation and summons, so it can arouse people's associations with ideals, politics, religion and many other aspects. In terms of form, the sentences and length of "Nine Songs" are shorter than those of "Li Sao". The most common form is three characters before and after the word "xi". For example, "When there is no sorrow, parting comes; when there is no joy, there is new acquaintance." There are seven words in a sentence, and the rhythm of each sentence is four or three, which is consistent with the rhythm of later seven-character poems. Therefore, "Nine Songs" became the origin of seven-character poems in later generations.
In short, Sao style and Chu song style represent two different forms in "Chu Ci". The differences are as mentioned above. In addition, it is worth noting that both "Sao style" and "Chu song style" use a lot of modal particles such as "xi". The occasional use of modal particles adds a flying and elegant appearance to "Chu Ci".
After the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Qin unified the world. Ying Qin's life was short, and he had nothing to say about his poetry. In the Han Dynasty, its early poetry fell into the following categories: one was a four-character style imitating the Book of Songs. Such as Wei Meng's "Poem of Admonishment", Mrs. Tangshan's "Song in the Room", etc. This style is mainly used for temple sacrifices. It is more serious and formulaic, and has low artistic value. There is also a type of Chu song style that imitates "Chu Ci". For example, Liu Bang's "Song of the Great Wind", Xiang Yu's "Song of Gaixia", and "Autumn Wind Ci" said to be written by Liu Che, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, etc.
This kind of poetry is generally some impromptu lyrical works that people "move in their emotions and express themselves in words".
Later, the rise of Yuefu poetry swept away the depression in the poetry world in the early Han Dynasty, and made new developments and achievements. The original meaning of Yuefu poetry was just a kind of music lyrics. Yuefu poetry in the narrow sense began in the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty. According to historical records, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty established an official Yuefu office and sent people to various places to collect ballads and then set them to music to sing. In addition, scribes also wrote some poems that could be sung to music. These poems were later known as "Han Yuefu". As for the style of lyrics, Han Yuefu has a four-character style that inherits the Book of Songs, a Chu song style that inherits the Songs of Chu, and a miscellaneous style that comes from ballads and reflects the social reality of the time. The most noteworthy one is the five-character style gradually formed under the influence of new sounds. At that time, due to the exchanges between the Han Dynasty and foreign peoples in the northwest, Hu music from the Western Regions was introduced into China. Chinese traditional music was influenced by foreign music, resulting in a kind of music called "New Bian Sheng". The original songs and poems that matched this "new voice change" were the original five-character poetry.
Let’s take the song “Beauty Song” written by Li Yannian, the Xielu Captain during the reign of Emperor Wu, as an example:
There are beauties in the north, peerless and independent.
First look at the Qingren city, then look at the Qingren country.
I would rather not know the beauty of a beautiful city or a beautiful country. It is hard to find a beautiful woman again.
Except for the fifth sentence, which became an eight-character sentence due to the addition of three lining words, the other sentences in the whole poem are all five words. It is not difficult to see signs that the five-character form was gradually formed under the influence of new sounds, but this is just the five-character version of Yuefu poetry, because its form has not yet been completely fixed. Later, the five-character style gradually improved, and relatively neat five-character poems such as "Going Up the Mountain to Collect Weeds" were produced.
Further development led to the production of "Nineteen Ancient Poems". After the appearance of "Nineteen Ancient Poems", five-character poetry had a completely fixed style, so we called it "ancient poetry" instead of "Yuefu". As for the influence of Yuefu poetry on later generations, there are mainly the following points: first, it had a great influence on the formation of five-character poetry; second, it caused many works that imitated Han Yuefu to appear in later generations. For example, poets such as Li Bai used the old titles of Yuefu poems to write new poems, while Bai Juyi imitated the style of Han Yuefu and created new titles and poems, creating "New Yuefu" poems.
Since the formation of five-character poetry in the Eastern Han Dynasty, its authors have gradually increased. In the Jian'an period, the Cao family and his son were at the top, and the scholars in Yezhong followed suit. Not only did the five-character poems reach a fully mature state in form, but the content was also expanded and completed in many aspects due to the emergence of many writers. , thus ultimately establishing the status of five-character poetry and making it a poetic style that has been used by Chinese poets for more than a thousand years.
After the Han Dynasty, from the Wei and Jin Dynasties to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, there was a period of transformation of Chinese poetry from ancient style to rhythmic style. This kind of rhythmization is divided into two steps: one is duality, and the other is rhythm. As far as parallelism is concerned, it has appeared in some very ancient books, and there are also some parallel verses in the later "Nineteen Ancient Poems", but these are all formed naturally and are not consciously arranged by the author. During the Jian'an period, Cao Zhi began to deliberately use parallel couplets to increase the momentum of his poems.
However, the parallelism in Cao Zhi's poems is only roughly proportional and not very strict. Between the Jin and Song Dynasties, the number of dualities in Xie Lingyun's poems further increased, and the form became more rigorous. It can be seen that the use of duality in poetry is gradually becoming neater. Regarding the aspect of rhythm, some scribes before the Southern and Northern Dynasties, such as Sima Xiangru in the Western Han Dynasty, Lu Ji in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and others paid attention to this issue. However, what they emphasized was only the natural intonation. After the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Buddhism became popular in the world, and businesses such as translating and singing scriptures developed rapidly. The introduction of foreign culture has caused some people to begin to reflect on their own language and characters, and the distinction between pronunciation and rhyme has become increasingly sophisticated. When Zhou Yong wrote "Four Tone Rhymes" and Shen Yue wrote "Four Tone Score", the name of the four tones was established.
It can be seen that the rise of duality and rhythm is indeed the inevitable product of reflection and awareness of the characteristics of Chinese characters. And when duality and rhythm are increasingly emphasized, Chinese beautiful writing will make a great progress. This is mainly reflected in the formation of Siliu Wen and the rise of rhymed poetry. The so-called rhythmic poetry, on the one hand, must pay attention to the harmony of the four tones, and on the other hand, it must pay attention to the neatness of the antithesis. The opposite couplets must have the same syllables, the same rhythms, and opposite tones, and have the same parts of speech. So later on, two basic rhythms of 廄廄平廄, 平平仄廄平" and "平平平任仄, 任仄廄平平" were gradually formed.
These two basic forms are further modified to form various forms such as Pingqiqiqi, Rhymed Poetry and Quatrains. These emerging styles became more refined in the Tang Dynasty and were finally established. The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were a period when metrical poetry gradually matured. We can clearly see this evolutionary trajectory from the poems of Xie Lingyun, Shen Yue, Xu Ling, Yu Xin and others.
As for the formal influence of the poetry of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties on the poetry of later generations, the above has been roughly stated. In terms of subject matter and content, Cao Zhi during the Jian'an period expressed his ambition and pride in many poems about his desire to go to the frontier and make contributions to the country. For example, he said in "The White Horse Chapter": "Those who control the strings and break the left will send out the moon branch from the right"; "The long-term drive to the Xiongnu, the left to care about Ling Xianbei"; "Sacrificing one's life to the national calamity, seeing death as a sudden return" and so on. Regardless of whether Cao Zhi himself would be as brave and good at fighting as mentioned in his poem if he really went to the battlefield, the tone of his narrative alone can give readers a powerful deterrent. In the Tang Dynasty, when some poets such as Gao Shi, Cen Shen, Wang Changling and others went far beyond the fortress and had in-depth experience of frontier fortress life, they wrote many frontier fortress poems in the true sense. Although these frontier fortress poems are more developed than the works of similar themes by the previous generation of poets, the heroic spirit of serving the country through the army, making contributions, and looking forward to death is undoubtedly influenced by the previous generation of poets.
In addition, during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, political struggles were complicated, the situation was changing, and social moral values ??completely collapsed. Many scholars could not realize their ambitions in official career, so they turned to talking about mystical principles. This social atmosphere influenced poets and authors, which led to the emergence of metaphysical poetry. The authors of metaphysical poems advocate Lao and Zhuang's mystical principles, and those who advocate Lao and Zhuang's thoughts are generally more obsessed with a life of seclusion in the mountains and forests. Therefore, the importance of describing landscapes in Xuanyan poems is increasing day by day. After Xie Lingyun appeared, this situation changed qualitatively, and Xie Lingyun became the founder of the Chinese landscape poetry school. Later, in the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei, Meng Haoran, Wei Yingwu and others inherited this school's tradition of writing about landscapes, forests and springs, and further expanded it, thus writing many colorful landscape poems in different styles.
Furthermore, a very noteworthy author appeared during the Southern and Northern Dynasties—Yu Xin. Yu Xin was born in the Southern Dynasty and once served as a literary attendant to Emperor Wu of Liang Dynasty. Influenced by the soft poetry style at that time, Yu Xin wrote many frivolous and flashy palace-style poems. After Hou Jing's rebellion broke out, Taicheng fell, and Yu Xin also failed in the battle against Hou Jing.
Later, he was sent as an envoy to the Northern Dynasty on the order of Emperor Yuan of Liang Dynasty, but was deceived into becoming a detainee, and the Liang Dynasty eventually perished.
During his stay in the Northern Dynasties, Yu Xin expressed the pain of losing his country and his family, and wrote words of sorrow and danger. He combined the gorgeous and elegant writing style of the Southern Dynasty with the majestic and vigorous writing style of the Northern Dynasty, thus creating fresh, mature and unique poetry. Yang Shen once said in "Sheng'an Poetry Talk" that Yu Xin's poems and poems were "the best among Liang Dynasties and the first to enlighten the Tang Dynasty." This is indeed the case. Yu Xin can be said to be a small-scale author before the Tang Dynasty.
Above, we have briefly discussed the influence of previous generations of poetry on Tang poetry, mainly in terms of the evolution of poetic style. It is not difficult to see that before the Tang Dynasty, the mainstream of Chinese poetry developed in a metrical direction. This is an inevitable trend, and the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were a formative stage for the metricalization of ancient Chinese poetry. Of course, the coordination of duality and obliqueness can form a special beauty of Chinese language and characters. However, at the beginning of the formation of any new writing style, when people are not fully comfortable using it, this form will often become a limitation for poetry writing. This is also the case with the development of Chinese metrical poetry. Therefore, in the Qi and Liang Dynasties, when Shen Yue's theory of the Four Tones and Eight Diseases emerged, poets and scribes focused entirely on aspects such as duality and equality. Although their poems were exquisite in form, their content became relatively vague and lacked the power and life to inspire. This situation was not changed until the Tang Dynasty.
In the Tang Dynasty, on the one hand, poets inherited the ancient poetry and music styles since the Han and Wei dynasties, expanding and innovating them; on the other hand, they completed some emerging styles since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, making them more sophisticated. It is established because of its exquisiteness. At that time, poets had become more proficient and comfortable in the use of meter, and meter was no longer a restriction on poetry writing. As a result, some poets used this exquisite form to write poems with rich and profound content.
The Tang Dynasty naturally became the era when Chinese poetry was a collection of ancient and modern styles as well as northern and southern styles.
(Compiled by Zeng Qingyu)