Asking questions in the poetic imagination - reading "Goodbye to the Shining Stars: Twenty Houses of Tang Poetry"

What Professor Jing Kaixuan has retained in the public eye in recent years is the image of a researcher of Eastern European literature and thought. Coupled with his appearance in the 1990s as one of the translators of Milan Kundera's works, it's easy to overlook his old line of ancient Chinese literature. He is a disciple of Cheng Qianfan, Bian Xiaoxuan, and Zhou Xunchuzhu, and is also a scholar who never sets limits for himself in today's increasingly refined professional division of labor.

In my impression, in addition to the "Examination of Tang Dynasty Literature" published earlier, the book in front of me, "Goodbye to the Shining Stars: Twenty Families of Tang Poetry", is Jing Kaixuan's second ancient literary monograph (he calls himself "Poetry Essay"). In addition to the "wish to repay debts", the author mentioned in the "Afterword" of the book that his aesthetic taste is more inclined to the Chinese style, "Every time I think about what I read in my life, although I have read a wide range of foreign literature, I have more resonance in ancient Chinese poetry. In essence, Tang poetry has its own eternal value, and it wants to become an intention, idealistic travel poetry, and communicate with the spirit of the ancients."

Great traditions can be constantly awakened, constantly explained, and also need to be constantly awakened and explained. Tang poetry can be said to be exactly such a tradition. In recent years, there have been many relevant works by professional scholars and popular writers on the market, with different angles, which is enough to confirm the eternal charm of Tang poetry. This is also the eternal charm of Chinese culture.

Jing Kaixuan's work can be said to be unique. After reading the "Examination of Tang Dynasty Literature", it can be seen that he has a profound foundation in examination, but he is not proud of this, and it seems that he is not willing to bear another fruit on the big tree of "Under the Zhanghuang Gate", what Jing Kaixuan is more willing to do is to gaze at and measure the poet's mentality, thinking consciousness, poetic text and its value in the basic research of the predecessors, with the dimension of transcendence.

For example, when writing about Chen Ziang, of course, he can't avoid his timeless masterpiece "Dengyouzhou Tai Song". Jing Kaixuan linked the "Dengyouzhou Taige" with Qu Yuan's "Long Journey", believing that Qu Yuan's sorrow was still the way of thinking of the primitive myth, until Chen Ziang, poets always showed a collective "helpless sentimentality" side in the face of the passage of natural time, "only Chen Ziang placed the current self in infinite time and space, and issued a question about the time of heaven and man."

"He was the first poet of the Tang Dynasty to break free from the group consciousness. The loneliness he cried out in the wilderness has cultural historical significance, it is not the sentimentality of life, but the awakening of self-consciousness. Later poets want to write outstanding works, and whether there is a self in the poem becomes an important criterion. Jing Kaixuan spoke highly of Chen Ziang and placed him in the first of the twenty tang poems to expound, and the poet's "awakening of self-consciousness" is an important factor, which is also a refreshing place in this book.

When discussing Chen Ziang, Jing Kaixuan talked about the gradual secularization and rationalization of the concept of sacredness in ancient Chinese society to the pre-Qin Zhuzi era, and the relationship between heaven and man is neither biased toward the confrontation between heaven and man, nor is it the confrontation between god and man in Western culture, and the two worlds are not separated, but also more inclined to the human side. "This cosmology dilutes the dualistic division of the two worlds and standardizes the path of life of the ancient Chinese scholars—the pursuit of immortality through human deeds, and the attribution of poverty and honor to the Destiny of Heaven, so as to comfort themselves with the tragic fate of clinging to reality."

In essence, Chinese lyric poetry is a poem of time. Since the emergence of "The Deceased Is Like Sifu, Not Giving Up Day and Night", Chinese poetry has constantly changed its form from various angles and asked about the mystery of time. Whether it is "such as the morning dew, going to the day is more bitter", or "the birth year is less than a hundred, often with a thousand years of worry", or "the generations of life are infinite, the rivers and moons look similar every year", or even "the face does not know where to go, the peach blossoms still smile in the spring wind", "the sand and iron are not sold, and the self-will be polished and washed to recognize the previous dynasty", poets and bards of all generations will give birth to endless sighs whether they face natural time or historical time, so that to some extent, they have shaped China's cultural character and shaped the spiritual world of Chinese.

Jing Kaixuan repeatedly mentioned two poems on many occasions to compare the way of thinking and time concepts of poets from different cultural backgrounds: one is Tao Yuanming's "Drinking And Five", and the other is Milosz's "Gift". These two poems can be called "ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign", and it seems difficult to think of them together, but it does not affect the significance of comparing them.

Tao's two famous sentences of "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, leisurely seeing the South Mountain", this kind of "quiet" and "faint and distant" were once considered to be the labels of Tao poetry. Milosz's poem is full of quiet, idyllic atmosphere, "Such a happy day / The fog clears early in the morning, I work in the garden". Jing Kaixuan believes that the two poems are also far-reaching, which makes people have unlimited reverie. The "Nanshan" in Tao's poem is both a real scene and a physical barrier, and the gaze to the South Mountain represents a kind of finite thinking; and the last sentence of Milosz's "Gift", "Straighten up, I see the blue sea and the sail shadow", and there is a poetic thought that turns the finite into the infinite. This is the difference between the two.

Referring to the famous poet Li Shangyin of the late Tang Dynasty, Jing Kaixuan once again made a similar comparison with Western poets. Any reader can appreciate that "the sunset is infinitely good, but it is near dusk", which means that the poet feels the twilight of life under the sunset, a faint sentimentality of the passage of time, and in the face of the same sun, the ancient Greek poet Nonnus wrote: The west sinks forever is this same sun. Due to the ancient Greeks' indifference to historical awareness, the circular view of time dominated the Greek world of thought. The cyclical view of time holds that time begins and returns in a circle, and there is also a desire for eternity and immortality. Under the illumination of this view of time, it is not difficult to understand that the poet highlights the "same sun".

Of course, there is no difference between these two life consciousnesses, but the difference is significant. No one is willing to do nothing in a lifetime "only near dusk", in the flow of time, the immortal consciousness of the Chinese scholars is "realized through the existence and continuation of group life", in other words, through entering historical time to realize their own value. For example, Liu Yuxi, who boldly said that "I say autumn and victory over the spring dynasty", seems that nothing in his life can really hit him, in Liu Yuxi's poetry kingdom, he is always full of spirit, even in the face of continuous political blows, it can not consume his heroic spirit, "he can always see the new side of things from the passage of time, rather than the side of extinction, so as to always maintain a high mood."

Today, when the number of Tang poems is increasing, Jing Kaixuan presents us with another way of reading and writing Tang poems. "Goodbye to the Shining Stars: Twenty Schools of Tang Poetry" not only has an overview of the poet's life, but also a wonderful description and meticulous detective of the moments with the characteristics of destiny in the poet's life, as well as the overall grasp of the characteristics of the times, coupled with the author's profound poetic text analysis ability, excellent thinking with philosophical depth, the vision of Chinese and Western comparative poetics and the unique sense of problems, making this work a small window to understand Tang poetry, ancient Chinese scholars and even Chinese cultural characteristics.

In addition, the professionalism and popularity of good poetry reading materials are a major feature of this book. Purely evidence-based works may be limited to people in the academy, and works that are purely casual will be lacking in professionalism due to the lack of solid materials. "Goodbye to the Shining Stars: Twenty Tang Poems" solves both of the above problems and takes care of the reader's interest in the readability of the text. For example, whether it is to explore Li Shang's hidden emotional world or to explore Wen Tingjun's pioneering and innovative artistic work, the author can tell the story in plain and vivid language, as if an old friend is telling a story by the red clay small fire, which is both intimate and fascinating, making people unconsciously indulge in the paper smoke cloud of Tang poetry.

"Goodbye to the Shining Stars: Twenty Tang Poems", by Jing Kaixuan, Nanjing University Press, November 2021, 1st edition