Bai Juyi is a famous poet in the Middle and Tang Dynasties, his poetry is loved and widely praised, if you use household names, women and children to describe the popularity and spread of Bai Juyi's poetry, it is pertinent and appropriate.
As the saying goes, "high and low, clever tricks are difficult to work." Bai Juyi's poetry just breaks through the embarrassing situation of qu gao and widowhood. What is popular is popular and popular. In the creation of poetry, Bai Juyi strives to understand and understand, so as to form his own unique style.
Literature records: "Shu and Taiyuan Baiju are friendly, work for poetry, good style, looking for color, at that time the reader called Yuan Bai Yan, from the crown of the people to the lower classes, all of them were ironic." From the records of the literature, Bai Juyi was on a par with Yuan Shu in the poetry circle at that time, and called "Yuan Bai", and one of the characteristics of their poetry was that the poetry was easy, popular, and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
In a letter to Yuan Shu, Bai Juyi once talked about the popularity of his poetry: "From Chang'an to Jiangxi for three or four thousand miles, there are often servant poets in all township schools, Buddhist temples, reverse travels, and boats; there are always servant poets in the mouth of scholars, monks, widows, and virgins. It can be seen that Bai Juyi's poems had a great influence and spread widely at that time.
It can be said that Bai Juyi has introduced poetry from an elegant and esoteric temple of art to the public and popularity, opening up a new situation in poetry creation that is easy to understand.
So, the question is, just like the landlord's question, why is Bai Juyi's verses more understandable? A passage from Mencius's Ten Thousand Chapters: "Praise his poems, read his books, do not know his people, can you?" It is also about its world. It is Shang Yuya. ”
The gist of this passage is that appreciating poetry, or tasting an article, and understanding the author's creative motivation and the background of the times, is of great benefit to appreciating poetry articles. In other words, appreciating poetry and understanding the author are two parallel things.
Bai Juyi, the character Lotte, the number of Xiangshan resident, also known as Mr. Drunken Yin, ancestral home of Taiyuan, Shanxi. Bai Juyi was born in Xinzheng, Henan Province, a "Shi Dun Confucian" scholar Xiang Mendi, he began to study Confucian scriptures from an early age, accepted the influence of Confucianism, and was also deeply influenced by Confucianism, adhering to the Confucian idea of "reaching the world and helping the world, and the poor are alone".
In addition, Bai Juyi is also an optimistic and open-minded poet, he is optimistic and contented, and this peaceful mentality is reflected in the poetry, which is a clear and clear language, indifferent to the distant mood. In the process of creation, Bai Juyi strives to express profound truths in simple language, and his poems are popular and smooth, catchy.
The main reason why Bai Juyi's poetry became famous at that time was due to his poetic aesthetic pursuit and creative orientation, that is, to express profound ideas in simple language. Bai Juyi's poetry is small and big, and his poetry comes from life, reflects the social and people's livelihood with the small things in life, reveals the profound reasons hidden behind it, and thus forms an easy and shallow poetic style.
In my opinion, the reason why Bai Juyi's verses are more understandable is roughly the following three points.
First, Bai Juyi often composes poems because of trivial things in daily life, and captures the inspiration for creation in ordinary things, and the variety of techniques of Bai Juyi's poetry creation is also an important factor in his easy-to-understand poetic style.
When he saw the old man who cut wood and burned charcoal, he sketched the image of the charcoal seller in concise language: "full of dust and smoke, two sideburns and ten fingers black", when Bai Juyi saw an old man with folded arms in Xinfeng, he also portrayed the image of the old man in plain language: "The old man of Xinfeng is eighty-eight, and his head and eyebrows are like snow." Xuan Sun walked towards the shop, his left arm folded on his shoulder and his right arm folded. "Bai Juyi uses plain language, describes closely, and creates a clear character image.
When he looked in the mirror one day, he found that he had grown white hair, and these simple and trivial things in life were also recorded by the poet in plain language. He wrote in the poem "First Sight of White Hair": "White produces a stem, coming towards the mirror." Don't say a few stems, a full head from this beginning. Aoyama Fang is far away, and Huang Shouchu is from Shi. Unexpectedly, between the sideburns, it suddenly came to this! ”
Bai Juyi's granddaughter was full moon, and the poet was very happy, so he wrote a poem for this purpose, in which he said: "Things are rare and precious, and love is more kind because of old age." This is a warm moment for Bai Juyi to enjoy the joy of heaven, and it is also the poet's perception of life. The language is clear and easy to understand.
Bai Juyi's poetry reflects the commonplace things in real life, and he expresses life with the feelings of a poet and the language that is easy to understand. No matter how magnificent life is, it will eventually be wrapped in a small scene full of life.
Bai Juyi has a poem "Village Snow Night Sitting", in which it is written: "The south window sits with the back light, and the wind and thunder are dark." Lonely late at night in the village, smelling of residual geese in the snow. "This poem is written by the poet in the silent cottage late at night, the cold to the cold and snow flying, quietly hearing the geese struggling in the snowy night, revealing the poet's loneliness, the poet's thoughts in loneliness. The poems are written because of snow, but they are not only written about snow.
The second point is that Bai Juyi's lyric poems and travel poems are straightforward and rarely carved, giving people a sense of simplicity, and the feelings expressed are deep and sincere.
For example, one of his famous poems, "Ask Liu Nineteen": "Green ants are new wine, red clay small stove." Late to the day want snow, can drink a cup of nothing. ”
Liu Nineteen was a friend of Bai Juyi when he was in Jiangzhou, and this poem is written by the poet who has brewed a new pot of fine wine, the fire in the house is booming, and the sky outside the house is gloomy, and it is about to snow. Bai Juyi suddenly remembered his good friend Liu Nineteen, so he wrote to him and asked him: Friend, can you come and have a drink with me?
The poem contains the breath of life, without any carving, and it is easy to come by hand, and it becomes a wonderful chapter. The language is bland and full of emotion. Savoring it is better than alcohol, and it is intoxicating.
Another example is his "Twilight River Yin": "A remnant of the sun paves the water, and the half river is half red." Poor three nights in the beginning of September, dew like a pearl moon like a bow. "The beauty of the whole poem is that it takes two beautiful pictures of nature and combines them. One is a gorgeous scene of sunset and sunset reflecting the river, and the other is a hazy night with the moon rising and dew crystals. The two look at each other separately, and when read together, it is more wonderful, and the poet appropriately adds a figurative writing method to the verse, making the scenery more vivid.
Third, the ease of understanding of Bai Juyi's poetic language is also manifested in his initiative to absorb the spoken language of the time, and he does not avoid vulgar words when writing poems but adopts folk spoken language.
For example, in the poem "He Guo Jun Wolfberry Poem", the poet wrote: "I don't know that the elixir can become a dog, and I smell the barking of the night when I am strange." In the poem "Spring Hope of Jiujiang", the poet wrote: "Why don't you end up in this place, for example, Yuan is a Jiujiang person." The words "weird" and "for example" here are colloquial, and they all mean the same thing.
From Bai Juyi's specific poems, it can be seen that he deliberately pursues a simple and simple poetic style, that is, to reflect profound truths or express sincere feelings in clear and clear language. This subjective and deliberate pursuit did not limit or reduce his artistic expression of poetry, but on the contrary, it became a self-contained and had a huge impact on later generations of poets.
Bai Juyi consciously absorbed the language in folk songs, and he imitated the poems written by folk songs to be fresh and natural, and natural, such as "Two Absolutes on the Pond" described the scene of the moment: "The little baby supports the boat, steals the white lotus back; does not solve the hidden trace, and the duckweed opens together." ”
The poems that best represent Bai Juyi's easy and shallow artistic style are his narrative poems "Long Hate Song" and "Pipa Line", which were sung by people at that time as soon as they were written.
Both poems have achieved great success both in terms of artistic level and acceptance, but it is worth noting that the language of these two poems is easy to understand, because the poet is expressing poetry in a narrative style.
Bai Juyi's long narrative poems "Long Hate Song" and "Pipa Line" were called "Changqing Body" and "Happy Heavenly Body" by later generations. Ouyang Xiu said in the "Poetry of June 1": "In the Renzong Dynasty, there were several officials who were famous for their poetry, and often admired the White Heavenly Body, so it was easy to speak more than that. This is a high evaluation and the greatest affirmation of Bai Juyi's poetry contribution.
Bai Juyi has such a passage in his poetry collection "Bai's Changqing Collection", "However, in the past twenty years, there have been no books on the walls of forbidden provinces, temples, and postal waiting, and princes, concubines, cow boys, and horses. As for the written Moule, those who sell it in the market or hold it to deliver wine and tea are everywhere. ”
The gist of this passage is that as soon as his poems were written, they were sung by people and became popular songs throughout the country. From the princes and nobles to the public, Bai Juyi's poetry is regarded as "classic songs", annual "pop songs", and top 1 in the pop song list. Moreover, his poetry collection was also printed by booksellers, entered the market circulation, and became a bestseller. Such popularity is only comparable to that of Liu Yong in the Song Dynasty, "where there is well water, that is, he can sing willow words".
Bai Juyi worked hard to learn the ideas and artistic skills of his predecessors, thus forming his own unique style, so he advocated that "articles are written for the times, and songs and poems are written for the sake of things".
Bai Juyi was a born poet, and his whole life was born for poetry. At the age of sixteen, he rose to prominence in poetry with a five-sentence poem. As soon as this poem came out, it was sung by people and became famous. To this day, the poem is still one of the classic poems that people recite. Finally, let's enjoy Bai Juyi's easy-to-understand masterpiece "Farewell to the Ancient Grass":
Away from the grass on the original, one year old and one withered away.
Wildfires burn endlessly, and spring winds blow again.
Yuanfang invaded the ancient road, and Qingcui took over the deserted city.
He sent Wang Sun to go again, and he was full of affection.