Opening remarks:
In 1989, Mr. Ye Jiaying taught a new round of courses on the history of Chinese poetry at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. From the "Book of Poetry" to the end of Li He, Mr. Ye spent one semester systematically telling the history of poetry from the pre-Qin to the Tang Dynasty. At the end of the course, Mr. Ye retired, which can be called Mr. Ye's final work at UBC.
Mr. Ye Jiaying's poetry has a special "magic", some people describe that all those who have listened to her lectures are unforgettable to her unique charm of enthusiasm and radiance, whether it is Tang poems or Song Ci, every word in it is accompanied by her clear and full unique chanting, swaying in the classroom, the afterglow is endless.
Recently, this dusty course recording for many years has been sorted out one after another, and the "Meadow" weekly magazine has obtained the authorization of Mr. Ye Jiaying to open a column of "Jialing Classroom", which intends to be a lesson per week and publish all the course essentials. Poetry is Mr. Ye's favorite, she once said, "My love and understanding of poetry can be said to be all out of an instinct in my own life." Let us follow this "instinct", listen to Mr. Ye's poetry together, immerse ourselves in the world of poetry together, and understand the beauty of China's excellent traditional culture together.
In July 2020, Mr. Ye Jiaying's 96th birthday was photographed at the residence of Nankai University. Photo by Wei Chengjin
Mr. Ye Jiaying inscription.
Everything has a beginning, what are the characteristics of poetry, especially classical Chinese poetry? Why write a poem? How to write poetry? How to judge the quality of a poem? Before I start talking about poetry, I will give a brief introduction to some of the most basic concepts of Chinese poetry.
What is poetry?
First of all, I would like to talk about the principle of "poetry" word creation. "Poetry (poetry)" word, left from the word. Under the word is a mouth, the meaning of the human mouth. The Han Dynasty Xu Shen's "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Texts" says that the word "poetry" is "congyan", that is, "poetry" is the language spoken by people, and the "temple" on the right is the sound, and the sound of the temple is from the word. The more ancient word "poetry" is not "from the temple of speech". What does the word "poem" look like in ancient Chinese? The "poem" in the ancient text is from the word, and the right side is from the "zhi". Judging from the oracle bone pictures, "zhi" is the toe of the person, that is, the person walking. "Zhi" means "to also", to go somewhere.
So, what does "poetry" mean? What does it mean to "follow one's word"? The ancients said, poets, where the aspirations are. The content expression of the poem is "zhi". "Zhi" is the affection of the heart. Affection is the feelings, thoughts, and their activities, and "zhi" is the direction in which your feelings and thoughts are moving, so poetry is the activity of your feelings, the "place of the will."
One of the earliest collections of poems in China was the Book of Poetry, sometimes translated into English as Book of Songs. Later, many people gave it notes, one of them was surnamed Mao, and the annotation he made was called "Mao Chuan", which means "commentary". The "Mao Biography" of the Book of Poetry is preceded by the order that it is a whole order, so it is called the "Great Order".
The "Preface to Poetry" says that the "poet" is "the place of the will" and "the emotion is in the middle and the form is in the word". Your feelings move in your heart, your emotions move in, and then you form, you express, you express them in words, and you form poetry. This is the beginning of the conception of poetry.
So, why does affection come into motion? What makes feelings come alive? There is also a book in ancient China called the Book of Rites, of which there is a "Book of Music", which is about ancient music, saying that "the movement of the human heart makes things natural.". How can your heart move? It's because of the foreign object. So, what kind of external objects make people move in the human heart? Why do people's inner thoughts and feelings move?
The sensation of objects in nature
The development of Chinese literary theory is moving forward step by step, becoming more and more complex. By the time of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, two well-known works of literary criticism had been produced: one was called "Poetry", written by Zhong Rong during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (which can be pronounced róng or hóng); and the other is "WenFu", written by Lu Ji of the Jin Dynasty.
Chinese poetry began in the Zhou Dynasty, and by the time Zhong Rong wrote "Poetry", there was a more careful observation and a clearer way of saying how Chinese poetry came into being. The "Poetry" says: "The animal of qi, the touching of things." Therefore, the swaying temperament is shaped and danced. "What moved you?" It is "gas". What is "qi"? The operation of the universe and the emergence of all things are all because of the two qi of yin and yang. Draw a tai chi diagram, this side is yin, that side is yang. There are two kinds of qi between the universe, yin and yang, which operate in reincarnation. When winter comes, the yin is more and more. But when the yin qi develops to a pole, to the "solstice", to the highest time, the yang begins to return. When the yang develops to its highest, the yin returns. In this way, the two qi cycles of yin and yang, the grass and trees germinate and blossom in the spring, and the grass and trees fall yellow and wither in the autumn. The operation of yin and yang has touched everything in the universe. "The touching of things", people rejoice when they see the growth of grass and trees, and they are sad when they see the yellow fall of grass and trees.
"Wen Fu" said that people are "sad leaves fall in the autumn, happy soft strips in the spring". "Strength" is fierce, intense, and severe. In such a cold, cold, and solemn autumn, the leaves fall, and people are sad when they see the leaves falling, so "the leaves fall sadly in the autumn." "Happy soft stripe in fragrant spring", you see that soft branch, in the fragrant and beautiful spring sprouting long leaves, you rejoice.
Therefore, "the animal of qi, the touching of things." "Shake your temperament" and make your feelings shake. So what about after the human heart is moved? So "shape", you express, you express in poetry. Zhong Rong originally wrote about the motivation for composing poems, but later he said "Shape and Dance", what does he mean? The "Preface to the Poems" says that when you are moved in your heart, you are in the form of words, but sometimes your heart is too moved, and you are "insufficient to say", and you feel that you have not yet expressed your feelings, "words are insufficient, so you sing songs". So why did the ancient Chinese shake their heads and chant poetry? You feel that just by looking, the inner feelings cannot be expressed. No sound text, rigid, that's not enough. You have to turn it into a voice, use your voice, combine your feelings to express. "Words are insufficient, so chants.". "The inadequacy of chanting", you think that it is not enough to make a sound. What about "The Inadequacy of Arias"? It is "the dance of the hands and the feet of the feet". So I read the poem and shot it in my hand. "Foot-to-step", "foot-to-step" is to step on the beat.
The "Poems" says, "Spring wind spring birds, autumn moon autumn cicadas, summer clouds and summer rain, winter moon Qi Han, Si Si Hou sense of the poets also." Lord Li Hou's words: "Xiao Lou (is) the east wind last night, (my) homeland (is) can not look back (in) the moon." The spring breeze touched him, and when spring came, "how many things, last night in the dream", "still like the old time to swim in the garden, the car is like a flowing water horse like a dragon". In the spring of the homeland, when he was emperor, shouldn't the spring go to the Shangyuan to swim in the spring? But he was now captured, imprisoned, and when he looked back, it was "unbearable" that he could not bear, especially on such a moonlit night. This spring wind and autumn moon make people move, and it is the external object that moves people.
When I went back to the mainland to give a lecture on poetry, some students asked me, your class sounds very interesting, but what is the use of our poetry? I said to them, "The movement of the human heart" is "things make things come naturally", and it is external things that move you. Poetry is "emotional in the middle and shape in words", the poet is moved by external objects, if it is a good poet, he can fully express his inner feelings, not only himself, but also our readers for thousands of years, after reading it, will have the same feeling, and we can think of his own touch from his touch. So poetry is about conveying this feeling. I gave this feeling a name, that is, the life of feeling. This kind of touching can make us move, can make us have a kind of hair, so it is the life of feeling, I think this life is born endlessly, it is always growing, it does not stop.
So I told them that the greatest benefit of reading poetry is to make people's hearts immortal. We say, "Sorrow is greater than death of the heart," and there is no greater sorrow than the death of a person's heart. Poetry is that the poet writes down his inner feelings, conveys them, and can cause people thousands of years later to be moved, and there is a life of endless feelings.
The Song Dynasty Xin Jiaxuan had two sentences, "A pine and a bamboo true friend, a good brother of mountain birds and mountain flowers". He said that when I walked down the road, I saw every pine tree and every bamboo and thought it was my friend. When I heard the cries of mountain birds and saw the blossoming of mountain flowers, I felt like brothers with me. If a person sees pine trees, bamboo, birds, and flowers, and if you associate all the phenomena of different kinds of grass, trees, birds, and beasts with your heart, your heart is immortal.
We are now talking about traditional Chinese literary criticism, in fact, there are some Western modern philosophies or literary theories that have something in common with us. Western phenomenological theory that in the external world, there are many objects, such as mountain birds and mountain flowers, a pine and a bamboo, and a soft strip of fallen leaves. When your subjective consciousness comes into contact with the objective phenomenon, it gives rise to conscious activity. And this activity, according to phenomenology, has a kind of intellectuality with direction and the tendency of the main idea, that is, the phenomenon of external objects makes your inner activity. This is the most basic activity of human beings to understand the universe, and it is also the beginning of poetry.
Therefore, the movement of the human heart is "things that make you come to be", and it is external things that move you. But are you only touched by the grass, trees, birds and beasts? In addition to "falling leaves" and "soft strips", what else moved you?
The feelings of events in the personnel world
Further, if a person, a person whose heart is not dead, sees the moon, sees the flowers bloom, and hears the birds, he will be moved. You are touched by the grass, trees, birds and beasts that are different from you, so are you indifferent to the phenomena in human society that you have seen and experienced? No. That's why Du Fu wrote such a poem: "Poor years worry about Li Yuan, sighing intestinal heat." "In such a poor era, when there was war everywhere, when the people were not happy, I was sad for those "Li Yuan" who were suffering in suffering. "Li Yuan" is the people. Why are the people called "Li Yuan"? "Yuan" means good. The ancients said, "At the beginning of man, nature is inherently good," and the human heart is inherently good. "Li" means black. Our Chinese is black hair, so during the Qin Dynasty, the common people were called Qianshou, which means blackhead. I saw the displacement and hardship of the common people, and I was sad about it, not only sighing in my mouth, but also thinking of the suffering of our country, and my heart was warm, so I "sighed and felt heat in the intestines."
What we have just talked about is "Poetry", "the animal of qi, the touching of things, so the swaying temperament, the form of dances". "Touching things" this "thing", "Poetry" gives many examples. The first type of example is the object of nature, which is what I just said: "Spring bird in spring, autumn moon and autumn cicada". But as a human being, when you see the grass, trees, birds and beasts, are you moved, and are you not touched by human beings? Confucius said, "Birds and beasts must not be with the flock, and the disciples of the Wufei people are with whom." You see the flower blossoming, you can be moved, but you are not the same as it. Do you talk to birds and beasts? Will the birds and beasts come back to care for you? No, it won't. Therefore, "birds and beasts cannot be in the same group." "Uphiss disciples with", "I" am me, "disciples" are of this category, "with" are together, if I am not with human beings, who am I with?
So a greater force that moves us is the things in our human world, and the Poems give many examples of this.
In the "Poetry", it is said, "Jia will send poems to relatives, and leave poems to complain", "As for Chu Chen's going to the realm, Han concubines resigned from the palace." Or bones across the wilderness, souls flying. Or negative go out, murderous male side. The satin's clothes are in tears. Or the soldier has xie pei out of the dynasty, once gone and forgotten, the woman has a moth into favor, and then hopes to fall into the country. Vance is all kinds of things, and the heart is touched. Why do non-Chen poems show their righteousness, and why do non-long songs show their feelings? ”
I wrote this large paragraph to make a comparison, the previous paragraph, "Spring wind spring bird, autumn moon autumn cicada, summer cloud summer rain, winter moon Qi Han", spring, summer, autumn and winter, every season is a sentence is finished. In contrast, Zhong Rong wrote more about the events in the personnel world and carried more weight.
Truly great poetry, great poets, unlike some small poets, who are sad all day long, sad about the moon, you have to really have a broader relationship with the world and with mankind. Poetry is a kind of emotion in the heart, and the size, depth, and thickness of the life you feel are related to whether you become a big poet or a small poet. Not only poets, but also the difference between great novelists and novelists in general is also here. Some of the novels written by Edgar Allan Poe are also very fresh and attractive, but compared with Tolstoy, the size is immediately separated. A writer, whether a poet or a novelist, is concerned with the life of feelings. Of course, the natural world of the fourth hour moves us, and what makes us care even more is the joy and sorrow of mankind, the joys and sorrows of the whole human race.
Moreover, in Zhong Rong's account of the events in the personnel world, there are also levels of language. "Jia will send poems to kiss, and outliers to hold poems to complain", which means that your own life, your own sorrow and joy make you move. You have a good party, you meet a good friend, you write a poem to express this joy of your being together, so "Jia will send poems to kiss". Ouyang Xiu has two sentences that he says very well, he said, "Life is a lover, and this hatred is not related to the wind and the moon." The wind and the moon itself have no sorrow and joy to speak of, and the wind has nothing to say about sorrow and joy. You grieve and rejoice because of the wind because you yourself are sentient beings. "Life is a lover", the ancients said "people are not grass and trees, who can be ruthless", "the love of the bell, is in my generation", so who is life who makes you have such feelings, "life is a love obsession". "This hatred is not related to the wind and the moon", the wind and the moon make you have the joy and sorrow of sorrow and joy, because you are "born with love".
The modern poet Wen Yiduo once said that the meeting between Du Fu and Li Bai is a major event in the history of Chinese literature, just as the sun and the moon meet together, and they should be celebrated by beating the three-way gong and the three-way drum. When Du Fu and Li Bai met, Du Fu gave Li Bai a poem that said, "Beg to return to you and give permission, and meet my beloved." At that time, Du Fu was still unknown, Li Bai was already famous all over the world, and the emperor personally invited him to the imperial court, invited him to sit on the bed of the Seven Treasures, and personally gave him soup.
Although Li Bai was appreciated by the emperor, he would not be an official, so he resigned and did not work, "begging", and asked to let me go home. It was at this time that Du Fu and Li Bai met. Li Bai felt that the emperor only regarded him as a person who could compose poems for Yang Guifei to sing, and he did not want to be such a person, so he asked for dismissal. When he was dismissed, the emperor issued an edict to him, giving him good preferential treatment, a good "pension", and rewarding him with many treasures. Du Fu is a good poet, just five words, Li Bai's heart, his pride and frustration, and his setbacks are all written out.
It was at this time that I Du Fu met you, and I Du Fu could feel this frustration and pain in your heart. So "begging for your blessings, meeting my beloved relatives", the two of us met, this is really a good saying, you meet me, it is "dreaming of relatives", we are so close, we seem to have known each other for more than a lifetime. Although I just met you, I felt that I was so close to you in my heart, as if I had met you a few lifetimes ago. Jia Baoyu saw Lin Daiyu and said that I seemed to recognize this sister, and that she had a fate in her previous life. "Jia will send poems to kiss", if life really meets a confidant, is it not joyful? Du Fu wrote such touching poems.
"Isolated poems to complain", you can also write poems to express your sorrows and grievances, there are many such poems. Wang Weishi "alone in a foreign land as a stranger", I am alone in a foreign country, no one knows, I am a wanderer as a guest, there is no place to belong. Therefore, I "think of my relatives every festive season", and whenever there is a festival and a New Year, I double my nostalgia for my relatives in my hometown. I can speculate from afar, "The Haruka brothers ascended to the heights, and there was one less person planted everywhere." "I think when my brother ascended to the heights, "planting zhu zhu everywhere", the ancient Chinese custom, September 9 is the Chongyang Festival, there is a custom of ascending, everyone planted zhu zhu flower. You all ascended to the top, and the family rejoiced, but I was not at home. When I miss you, when you planted one less me, you must also miss me.
I have given two examples to illustrate that this large paragraph, which writes about the events of the human community, and the sadness and joy of the preceding two sentences, write about the poet's experience of being moved by himself. But is a poet indifferent when he sees the lives of others? Many external phenomena in the personnel world are also touching. Therefore, Du Fu would say that "Zhumen wine smells of meat, and the road has frozen bones", that Zhumen wine and meat is not Du Fu's life, that "the road has frozen bones", Du Fu did not fall to such a point at that time. "Zhumen wine meat" is the life of others he sees, and "frozen bones" is also the life of others he sees. So in addition to your own life experience that moves you, other people's life experiences are also the factors that move you.
The lives, experiences, and encounters of others will move you, and Du Fu saw Tianbao's chaos with his own eyes at that time, and saw with his own eyes that there were frozen bones on the road he walked at that time. Have you ever seen someone freeze to death? You haven't seen it, I've seen it, I grew up in Peiping when I was a child, I went to school in the morning, walked on the road, a corner, a corner, a snowy night in winter, the next morning a person froze to death there, I saw it with my own eyes. It is the life experience of others that moves you, du Fu personally saw that "the road has frozen bones".
In addition, the historical figures, their lives, their experiences, their encounters, also move you, which is why there are so many works of Yongshi in China. Jin Shengsi once criticized Du Fu's poem, saying: "The eyes of the poet look up at a thousand years and look down at a thousand years." "The poet has a kind heart, not only the things in front of him move him, his imagination allows him to think of the past as if they were in front of him, and he can speculate on the future with his poet's keen feelings.
Xin Abandoned Disease wrote a poem about the moon, "Poor moon, where to go, to go leisurely?" It is someone else's world, only to be seen over there, and the light and shadow are on the east side." When the poet sees the moon, "looking up at the bright moon and looking down at his hometown" is spatial, thinking of that space from this space, from the foreign land where he is to his hometown, the distance of space cannot block the poet's imagination. "Poor this sunset and moon", this "pity" has the meaning of touching, and "poor" also has the meaning of cuteness. Such a beautiful and brilliant moon, I watched it sink from the east to the west. "Where to go, to the leisurely", where does it sink? There is another world on the other side, "only seen over there", when we disappear here, they see "the east end of light and shadow" there. At that time there was no theory that the earth was round, and the poet thought of this principle in his imagination. Therefore, "the eyes of the poet, looking up at the millennium, looking down at the millennium", anything can be moved.
In addition to his own "Jiahui sends poems to relatives, outliers entrust poems to complain", there is also the history of "Chu Chen went to the realm, Han concubines resigned from the palace". "Chu Chen Goes to the Realm" is about Qu Yuan, Qu Yuan is "loyal and jealous" and "believes and doubts", he is very loyal to the country, but he is jealous of others, he is very honest and sincere with the monarch, and he is actually suspected, and the word "see" has a passive tone. He was so loyal but jealous, he was so honest and honest but he was suspected, he was exiled, and later came from Shen Miluojiang.
One year during the Dragon Boat Festival, I spent it in miluojiang, and it is said that this is where Qu Yuan sinks himself, the day of self-sinking. Qu Yuan was a man of the Warring States period, and when Jia Yi of the Han Dynasty crossed the Miluo River, he wrote a tribute to Qu Yuan for the sake of endowment. What does Qu Yuan have to do with him? Therefore, historical figures also moved poets.
The "Han Concubine Cigong" refers to Zhaojun, a palace maid of the Han Dynasty, who married the Xiongnu. Zhaojun not only moved people during the Han Dynasty, until modern times, Cao Yu also wrote the drama "Wang Zhaojun". Therefore, "Chu Chen went to the realm, and the Han concubine resigned from the palace", and the life encounters of historical figures also touched you.
"Or bones across the wilderness, souls flying in the air" "Saike clothes list, widows and tears", the husband went out to fight, his bones have been exposed on the battlefield in the north, and his soul has disappeared with the flying grass. "Cypriot" is the person who guards the border, "Saike's clothing list", and the soldiers guarding the edge outside are so cold. The "widow" was lonely and widowed, and the bride's wife had her tears dried up. There is also a poem that says, "Poor and uncertain river bones, like people in the dreams of spring girls." The poor husband had become a pile of white bones by the banks of the Wuding River, but his wife did not know that he was dead and dreamed of him every night. There are many people who write poems about Zhengfu or Siwu, and they are not necessarily Zhengfu and Siwu themselves. That is to say, it is not necessarily a personal experience, but as a poet, there is a caring heart. We must slowly understand the literary heart of the ancients and the subtle inner activities of the ancients when they wrote articles.
We are human beings, "disciples of the Wufis and whoever they are with", and human beings move us even more. And human emotions have layers: "Jiahui sends poems to kiss, and outliers to ask poems to complain", which is your own experience; "Chu Chen goes to the realm, Han concubines resign from the palace", which is the encounter of historical figures; "Saike's clothing list, widow's tears", is someone else's life experience, irrelevant people's life encounters - all of which make you move. It has a level, write it down step by step, be sure to pay attention to this text.
Moreover, "The soldier has the solution to the pei out of the dynasty, once gone to forget to return; the woman has the moth into favor, and then hope to fall into the country", from the previous so many personnel portraits written, and finally summarized here, one is "the soldier has the solution to the pei out of the dynasty, once gone to forget to return." Scholars are readers, China says "learning and excellence", the ancients can not be scientists, engineers, the only way out is to be an official, and the responsibility of being an official is to govern the world, so the really good readers should have an ideal of governing the country and the world. However, those monarchs sometimes only want to have fun, and the readers cannot get the credit of the monarch, so they "untie the emperor", untie the seal worn on their bodies when they are officials, be degraded, and banished, and after this, there is no day to come back.
Why do Chinese like to talk about Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang so much? Because Liu Bei looked at Zhuge Liang three times, Zhuge Liang "bowed to the monarch and died." Some Chinese people who read books and eunuchs have always been so envious of the "encounter" between kings and subjects, and lament the encounter between Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang. There is also "no encounter", "a soldier has a solution to the dynasty, once gone and forget to return", people degrade you and exile you, in contrast to "encounter".
"A woman has a moth into favor, and then looks forward to the country", this "woman" is a metaphor, and the Chinese tradition believes that the relationship between the monarch and the subject is similar to the relationship between husband and wife, men and women. So "female" ostensibly refers to a woman, but in fact hides another situation. Some women think that they are beautiful, "the moth into favor", the moth is the moth eyebrow, "looking back at a smile and a hundred beautiful students, the six palaces are pink and colorless", entering the dynasty will get the emperor's favor, and "look forward to the country again". This poem of "Falling to the Country", written by Li Yannian, was a musician during the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, who said that his sister was very beautiful, "There are beautiful people in the north, unique and independent." One look at the city of the people, and then look at the country of the people. Ning does not know the fall of the city and the fall of the country, and it is difficult for a beautiful person to get it again." She looked at you, pouring people into the city, and the people of a city were dumped by her. Look at you twice, pouring people into the country, and people all over the country are fascinated by her. This is about the beauty of a woman. "Dumping the country" originally meant that the people of the whole country were overwhelmed by her beauty, but "raising the moth into favor, and then looking forward to the country" means that how many chaotic courtiers and thieves, with their own flattery, have won the favor of the emperor and subverted the country in the blink of an eye.
Therefore, "Vance all kinds", the phenomena of human beings in the cosmic world, "feeling the heart", "feeling" is the inner touch, "swing" is shaking. With such a touch, so "Chen poems" is to narrate, if you do not use poetry to tell, "why show its feelings", "exhibition" is expression. How can you express such inner feelings as you? "Why do non-Chen poems show their righteousness, and why do non-long songs show their feelings?" If it is not such a long song, how can you "gallop", "galloping" originally means that the horse ran out, but also the meaning of expression, it can also be said to show, express, express, if it is not a long song, how to "gallop its feelings". This is another reason why poets write poetry.
The most important thing about poetry is to feel the origin of life, it is your heart to feel all things. External objects have the phenomenon of the natural world and the phenomenon of the human world. The phenomenon in the personnel world can be your own experience, it can be the experience of others, it can be history. These factors moved the poet and are the reason why the poet writes poetry.
There are so many factors that make poets write poems. You say we're all touched, how do you write a poem? How to write is another question, and we will talk about it in the next lesson.
(Ye Jiaying taught Yu Jiahui and Li Xiaonan, edited by Zhang Haitao This article is one of the results of the major commissioned project of the National Philosophy and Social Science Foundation "The Inheritance of 'Chinese Poetry Education' and Excellent Traditional Culture" (project number: 18@ZH026). ）
Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph