【What the Reader Says】
Author: Xie Yan (Professor, College of Literature, Beijing Normal University)
The newly published treatise "The Road of Chinese Poetics: Between History, Culture and Aesthetics" by Mr. Jiang Yin, a well-known classical literature researcher, is "inevitably a little bit of summary" ("Self-Introduction") for the author himself, and for the classical literary community, it not only condenses the academic pursuits and contributions of a generation, but also highlights the key academic issues of the present and the future, which is worth carefully reading and in-depth consideration.
The basic content of "The Road of Chinese Poetics", from the perspective of surface structure, is divided into four parts, namely "Research on the History of Mentality", "Study of Tang Poetry", "Research on the Basic Concepts and Propositions of Classical Poetics", and "Research on the History of Poetics in the Qing Dynasty". From the perspective of internal theory, it can be divided into three aspects, namely, "poetry theory research", "poetry creation research" and "poetry history research". Since Mr. Jiang Yin adheres to the master's saying that "theoretical research" is understood as "studying ancient literary theory" and "studying ancient literature theory", his "poetics" actually includes all classical poetry-related research with theoretical speculative overtones, whether its core research object is writer's works or poetry theory. On the other hand, he attaches great importance to the discussion of "creation" in the clues of "history", or puts the perspective of "history" back into "creation" for reconsideration, thus leading to new theories, so that from the perspective of deeper integration of reasoning, his "study of poetry creation" and "study of history of poetry" can be merged into "poetry history" research. It can be seen from this that the internal rationale of "The Road of Chinese Poetics" can in fact be summarized into two major aspects: "poetics" and "poetic history": the former rejects abstract aesthetic research or literary and artistic research, while trying to historicize and process theoretical problems; the latter rejects simple historical research and textual research, and strives to value and criticize the factual problems, and ideologically and spiritually the problems of language art.
The poetics of the process and the history of poetry that are critical are the two points that the author felt most deeply when reading the book "The Road of Chinese Poetics".
"Yuanming Drunken Return" [Ming]
Zhang peng
Photo from The Road to Chinese Poetics
1. Process-oriented poetics
Process-oriented poetics means that strong theoretical sensitivity complements the spirit of historical restoration that seeks truth from facts.
The historical restoration of this book basically does not involve sociological retrospectives, but the temporal construction of the thinking level. In "The Road of Chinese Poetics", form, paradigm, method, fixed situation, and concept are high-frequency words, reflecting Jiang Yin's accurate grasp and theoretical sensitivity to the thinking mode of writers and critics. For example, the study of "situational blending" is obviously not a study of poetic history in the general sense, but to reveal the core characteristics and formation process of the expression paradigm of classical Chinese poetry, "imageization". Jiang Yin interpreted "situational blending" as a "function", rather than "composition" as previous scholars have understood. In this way, a mode of thinking is cleared out of a confused account: any work that uses scenery as the object of description, whether it is continued, embellished or infused with distinct emotions, is not considered "imagery"; only by processing the scenery as a lyrical medium, scenery and emotion are completely inseparable, which gives birth to "imagery". It is precisely from the beginning of the Great Calendar poets that this model is truly established, not only becoming a creative paradigm, but also forming theoretical consciousness.
In fact, when Jiang Yin wrote his doctoral dissertation and the papers about Xie Lingyun, Liu Changqing, Jia Dao and others in previous years, he always secretly held a strict standard for judging the relationship between situations in poetry, and used this standard to constantly grind with various works, and finally sublimated a "poetic history" problem into a "poetics" problem. The emergence of the formula "imagery = scene fusion = transformation of the function of writing scenes" condensed his thirty years of thinking process, fully demonstrating the fundamental difference between theoretical and speculative literary research and philosophical research that also attaches importance to speculation: the results of the latter come from the deduction of logical structure, and the results of the former must be examined in the empirical world. In other words, literary studies need to maintain a double vigilance against simplicity and metaphysics, and can neither be satisfied with describing historical facts, nor can they be complacent about theoretical propositions themselves. It is precisely because we have always walked on the path of neutralization between the sense of theory and the sense of history that we can not only abstract the "theory of ancient literature", but also re-examine the "ancient literary theory" that has been abstracted. For example, in this book, "The Concept of "Qing" in Classical Poetics, first clarifies that "Qing" is both a constitutive concept and an aesthetic concept, repositions an ancient concept from the height of the entire classical poetics system, and then systematically combs the conceptual history of "Qing" from the ideological world to the literary world, and then summarizes many "positive price parts" and some "negative price aspects" of the aesthetic connotation of "Qing" from the synchronic level, thus finally demonstrating the core position, inclusive characteristics and derivative ability of the "Qing" concept. Obviously, the author focuses not on the concept itself, but on the historical context of the concept. If we consider concepts to be the highest stage of the mindset, then this article examines the "pattern of patterns." In the same way, the article "The Expression of Aesthetic Perception and Its Linguistic Form in Ancient Chinese Literature" cleans up almost all the important aesthetic concepts in ancient literature and divides them into four categories: "absolute positive price", "limited positive price", "negative price" and "neutrality", which summarizes the diversity of its expression forms respectively. This article fully demonstrates the inseparable relationship between conceptual types and conceptual representations, and it can even be said that the "pattern of patterns" helps us understand the "patterns" themselves. This article also shows the author's ability to analyze the pattern like a cocoon, and such a patient and precise theoretical appeal is a quality that is extremely lacking in the contemporary classical literary world.
The Road to Chinese Poetics
Jiang Yin
The Commercial Press
2. Critical poetic history
Critical poetic history means implementing superior artistic intuition within the scope of analysis.
The so-called artistic intuition contains two directions: one is sensitivity to language, and the other is the understanding of human nature. Generally speaking, people who are overly sensitive to language are suitable for themselves to be poets, not to critics. If a literary researcher is limited to the endless study of the rhetoric, sound rhythm, syntax, and meaning of a single work, he is only suitable for being a selector and critic in the traditional sense, and is not qualified to become a critic in the modern academic sense. Jiang Yin's artistic intuition is closer to that of a critic than a poet or critic; although he has a high sensitivity to language, he does not form a situation of concentration and self-appreciation, but calmly integrates the results of appreciation into a larger value framework, that is, the understanding of human nature.
In The Road of Chinese Poetics, spirit, will, and consciousness are also high-frequency words, and they highlight a critical vision that regards the poet as a complete, unique, and self-aware spiritual subject. For example, the article "Excessive Rhetoric: The Artistic Spirit of Li He's Poetry" understands the main features of Li He's poetic style as "rhetorical strategies guided by a specific artistic will" rather than "the natural presentation of feelings". Obviously, when the critic's explanation stops at the "way of feeling", it can only be used to list some specific poems and make some fragmentary analysis on the premise of acquiescing to some physiological predestination. Only by shifting the focus from "feeling" to "rhetoric" will Li He's personality become three-dimensional and autonomous, and his "peculiarity" and "self-replication" will be rationalized and systematically explained. In the same way, the article "The Evolution of Liu Changqing and the Paradigm of Tang Poetry" conducts a review of the comment of "sharp thinking and narrow talent" with "sympathy for understanding", arguing that Liu Changqing "is a person with strong self-awareness and strong emotions" and that "a strong emotional tendency leads to a freehand nature, and the freehand nature brings stylized characteristics". He locked the advantages and disadvantages of Liu Shi and the starting point of the analysis of the position of literary history on a strong and conscious human characteristic, and thus derived a systematic explanation.
Perhaps it is precisely because the interest in human nature itself sometimes exceeds the interest in works of art that Jiang Yin has written a series of papers on the "history of mentality" or "spiritual history", in which the contemplation of human nature will be more direct and more comfortable. He would examine the hearts and deeds of the ancients with a broad mind, sometimes extremely compassionate, sometimes quite harsh; he often had an eternal perspective, so as to connect the ancient and the modern, and the ultimate human heart. In his view, "seclusion" can be noble and transcendent or self-deception and limited responsibility ("Tao Yuanming's Hidden Spiritual Historical Significance"), "stealing life" can obtain grand but needs to be repeatedly argued for reasons ("The Only Death in The Difficulty of Eternity"), the writing of "poetry" actually contains many social communication functions ("The Writing Method and Social Function of Qing Poetry"), and "poetry" itself has become the meaning of life or the sublime or ordinary sustenance ("Ancient Chinese Understanding of the Meaning of Poetry in Life").
The meaning of literature, in the final analysis, is to help us understand the complexity of human nature, and if literary research can reveal the necessity and possibility of this understanding, then research itself will become precious literature. In today's classical literary papers, the lack of beautiful writing is a secondary matter, and the lack of critic's temperament is a really fatal problem; the lack of keen observation of human nature will make literary research lose the confidence and ambition of value judgment, and detach from the soil of human nature and blindly carry out artistic criticism at the language level, which will make value judgments narrow or even subjective. The "Poetic History" in "The Road of Chinese Poetics" is full of discussion, temperament, and ancient and modern, setting an example for critics.
Mr. Jiang Yin is not only known for his theoretical sensitivity and artistic intuition, but also for his literature. Behind the "poetics" and "poetic history", there is an extremely strong data reserve. The Road of Chinese Poetics is particularly evident in the diligent search and depth of skill in the Qing Dynasty's literary criticism materials. For example, "The Historical Development of the Theory of Ancient Poetry Tone" and "The Turning of feng ban and the concept of Lefu in the Qing Dynasty" have taken a unique path from data possession to viewpoint formation. Another example is the "History of Discovery and Criticism in China" mentions that Lu Feng's commentary on the "Ten Methods of Cutting Poems in the Trial Of The Immortal Collection" is the ultimate work of perusing the text. Mr. Cheng Qianfan's academic idea of "trying a method of basing criticism on evidence" is presented in this book.
Guangming Daily (2022-01-20 11 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily