The Geography of Poetry builds an "entrance" for today's people to return to 3,000 years ago

"Poetry geography" book cover Sanlian Bookstore Publishing House courtesy of the picture

Beijing, December 15 (China News Network) (Reporter Ying Ni) "Book of Poetry" is China's earliest collection of poetry, including poems from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, reflecting all aspects of social life at that time. But the era it describes is too long ago, what can bring the reader back to that era of chinese culture?

If the things described in the Book of Poetry are still traceable and can be compared, it is likely that only mountains, rivers and plants are left. They are not only relatively constant natural objects, shaping the life form of a place, but also participating in shaping the spiritual world and cultural core of a place. So the mountains, rivers, and plants became three veins, like a skeleton, setting up the main structure of the entire book of "Poetry and Geography". As qiu Lian, the author of the book, said: "What is unchanged in ancient and modern times is humane and there are rivers." ”

Recently launched by the Sanlian Bookstore Publishing House, the "Geography of the Book of Poetry" is a collection of cover stories written by the reporter of "Sanlian Life Weekly", the whole book mainly tells the topic of mountains, water and plants related to the "Book of Poetry", taking the classic document records of the "Book of Poetry" as a clue, taking the geographical elements mentioned in it as the entry point, combining the history of the pre-Qin era with the documentary records, and at the same time constantly switching lenses, from history to reality, reflecting on history from reality.

The whole book is based on the text of the Book of Poetry, the objects chosen are the mountains, water, and plants in the Book of Poetry, and the method of methodological support is to visit. The creative team has an important criterion for the choice of place to visit, that is, it is not a simple landscape geography, it must have a human life in the past and in the present. In the end, in the mountains described in the Book of Poetry, Shouyang Mountain, Taishan, Wanqiu, Zhongnan Mountain and Suizao Corridor were selected, while the rivers were selected as Qishui, Hanshui, Weishui, Wenshui and Fenhe. In addition to the visits, the reporters also did a lot of historical reading and scholar interviews, but the starting point of the landscape pattern and human story presented in the text has undergone a fundamental change: it comes from the current and real environment that the reporter enters from an objective perspective, rather than simply the text and its interpretation.

Dong Mei, a scholar of classical Chinese literature and associate professor of the School of Humanities of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, is also on the road of visiting the Book of Poetry. She believes that "the content of words and personal imagination lead to another kind of limitation, the physical environment has a spatial and temporal dimension, which can greatly enrich the understanding of poetry." Professor Tang Xiaofeng of Peking University's Chenghuan College agreed: "From poetry to the environment, rediscovering poetry in the environment is a logical extension of reading poetry." The search for modern venues for ancient poetry is a time-space expansion of ancient poetry culture. ”

The three themes that the Geography of poetry focuses on are all naturally existing things, but what the authors really care about, and what the readers care about, is the people who lived with these mountains, waters, and plants that have lived and are now, their thoughts and feelings, their way of life, their understanding and transformation of nature... At the same time, readers can also compare ancient and modern times to discover how the former "we" have gradually become the current "we".

As the book says, the world changes like floating clouds, but mountains and water are relatively constant natural objects that can be found and perceived. They have shaped the material civilization of one side of the water and soil, and built the spiritual world of humanity in the place. Even though the surface objects have changed beyond recognition, we can still find the entrance to the era of the Book of Poetry from the landscape pattern. (End)