Su Shi's Nanxuan Dream Language Post is 28.4 cm long and 56.3 cm wide, collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Today, Chinese characters are the world's most ancient script, a system of modern characters developed from the pictographic system. Its creation began with people's imitation of objects, full of pictographic meanings, full of the wisdom and energy of our ancestors has been passed down to this day. With the development and change of characters, the original pictographic traces gradually decreased, and Chinese characters gradually evolved into a symbol of the language of description, and calligraphy with Chinese characters as the carrier continued to promote the development of characters.
Calligraphy is an abstract plastic art that is perceived and accumulated from objective nature, which exists at all stages of the development of Chinese characters. At the time of the Qin and Han Dynasties, various calligraphy styles continued to change, inheriting the Qin Dynasty seal book and the Lishu (guli) and the wei and Jin new styles, from the unique pictographic seal book to the creative, abstract cursive, calligraphy, and writing, and gradually transitioned from the ancient script system to the modern writing system. With the emergence of a large number of calligraphers who write calligraphy and cursive, calligraphy theory and human objects have also come into being, and calligraphy has gradually established a conscious aesthetic consciousness and developed into an independent art category. In this process, the form of calligraphy began to distance from the "pictogram", but people's feelings for nature are growing day by day, from the simulation of natural forms to the laws closer to nature, the Han Dynasty calligrapher Cai Yong proposed "FuShu originated from nature" to clarify the relationship between calligraphy and nature. Therefore, in addition to the practical function of describing language, Chinese characters are also continuously inherited because of their unique aesthetic taste and artistic value, and have the particularity that no language in the world has.
Huang Tingjianbao, Li Gonglin, "Five Horse Diagrams"
1. Pictograms in calligraphy
Xu Shen explained in the "Explanation of Words and Words" that the "Six Books" are pictograms, pointing things, meeting intentions, shape sounds, transpositions, and false borrowings, the so-called pictograms, that is, "painting into their objects, interrogating with the body, and the sun and moon are also." "Creating words by simulating the shape of physical objects is the basic method of creating words, such as the words "day" and "month", which are created according to the shape of natural objects. He also said: "Cangjie's first book, Gaiyi hieroglyphs, is called a text; after that, the form is beneficial, that is, a zigzag." ...... The author is also. Cangjie zizhi said that it simulates the image of natural things, and uses the basic laws of the change of things to create words and books, although it is full of mythological colors, it is consistent with the concepts in many later generations of books.
At the end of the Han Dynasty and the beginning of the Wei Dynasty, with the awakening of the art of calligraphy, Chinese characters are no longer simply symbolic of natural things, after experiencing the transformation from complex to simple, from figurative to abstract, from random to standardized, slowly evolved into a medium of calligraphers' expressions, Yang Xiong's "book, heart painting", Xu Shen's "book, such as also", Cai Yong's "booker, scatter also", etc., are all comparisons to the inner feelings of the bookmaker, the essential attribute of Chinese artistic expression, such a way of expression is somewhat similar to the empathy in Western aesthetics. Through the perception of nature and their own inner world, artists perceive society and life in a sublimated way, and achieve the integration and unity of self and external nature. And no matter how the scribe expresses his intentions, what he cannot do without is the carrier of Chinese characters. In the process of calligraphy evolution, the taking of different fonts has achieved changes in the shape of Chinese characters, including "gestures", "character postures", "calligraphy postures", "postures", and so on. Therefore, Kang Youwei said in summarizing the book discussion of his predecessors: "When the ancients discussed books, they took 'potential' as the first. Zhonglang is known as 'Nine Postures', Wei Heng is known as 'Book Posture', and Xi Zhi is known as 'Stroke'. Cover books, metaphysics also. Tangible is powerful. Indeed, since calligraphy moved towards self-consciousness, the discussion of "potential" has never lacked in literature and is widely used in book theory: Cui Yan's "Cursive Posture", Cai Yong's "Nine Trends" (Chuan), "Seal Book Potential", Suo Jing's "Continuing Cursive Writing Posture", Wang Xizhi's "Pen Gesture Theory" (Chuan), Cheng Yaotian's "Book Posture", etc. The wide application of "potential" in ancient calligraphy also shows that the writers attach importance to form, tangible must have potential, there is bound to be tangible, and the two live and breathe, which returns to the argument of this article. That is, the aesthetic concepts arising from materialization in the process of calligraphy's emergence and development.
Xu Wei's "Spring Garden Twilight Rain Poem"
However, when reading ancient documents, the author found that calligraphy about feelings about nature or people's lives was more common before the Song and Yuan dynasties, and even enshrined as a kind of divine enlightenment. For example, Wei's book is like a dragon and a tiger, the sword is tense; the Suo Jing book is like a fluttering wind, and the bird flies; the disciple of The Grand Lady of the Gongsun Dynasty dances with the sword weapon Wu Dao, Xia Yun Qifeng, the flying bird out of the forest, the snake fight on the road, the flowing water and flowers, etc., all of which are the artistic creation concepts of "looking at things and living in books", which is also the thinking and expression of "shape" produced by the writer in the process of writing, showing a "shape" full of vitality and vitality. But this kind of artistic thinking was gradually ignored by scholars after the Song Dynasty, and the Song and Yuan dynasties can be described as a watershed in this concept. Before the Song Dynasty, the writing state of the calligraphers was mostly in harmony with everything in nature, and after the Song Dynasty, the leading figures in the book world mostly advocated retro and respected the law, and under the social atmosphere of "retro", calligraphy showed the loss of the enterprising and innovative spirit, and gradually returned to the plain and went to the road of retro.
Second, the Tang and Song Dynasties practiced the practice of "looking at things, alluding in books" examples
Since the Tang and Song dynasties, many calligraphers have been good at taking inspiration from the natural world and objectifying them in calligraphy creation in abstract forms, which are not simply superficial pictogram extractions, but artistic reproductions that give emotions. From the perspective of creative aesthetics, the social consciousness of "book taking nature" is the deep social and cultural psychology of ancient writers, as the main body of creation, the influence of nature and all things is reflected in the writing and creation of major books to varying degrees.
Han Yu's article "Sending Gao Xian to the People" not only makes an excellent analysis of Zhang Xu's cursive writing, but also reveals the fundamental law of calligraphy as art:
In the past, Zhang Xu was good at cursive writing and did not cure other skills. Mood, poverty, sorrow, pleasure, resentment, longing, drunkenness, boredom, unevenness, moving in the heart, will be in cursive writing. Looking at things, see mountains and rivers, cliffs and valleys, birds, animals, insects and fish, flowers and trees, sun and moon stars, wind and rain, water and fire, thunder and thunder, song and dance battles, changes in heaven and earth, gratifying and shocking, all in a book.
Su Shi's "Zun Zhang Ti" book on paper, 26.3× 19cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei
Zhang Xu is a representative calligrapher of crazy cursive calligraphy, and it can be seen from Han Yu's "Sending Gao Xian to the People", Zhang Xu presents natural objects, changes in heaven and earth, and even joy and sorrow in his calligraphy creation when writing. According to the descriptions of people at that time, the writing speed of his wild grass was extremely fast, and the emotions when writing and creating were also extremely exciting, such as: "Zhang Xu's three cups of grass holy legend, before taking off his hat and revealing the crown of the prince, waving the paper like a cloud of smoke" "The roof of the bed, long shouting three or five." Sprinkle the plain wall, stroke the pen like a shooting star" and so on. Zhang Xu completely integrated his own creative feelings into the writing, so the face presented by his book is also a state of vertical and horizontal, ups and downs, taking the "Four Ancient Poems" as an example, the lines are rich and changeable throughout, the gestures are like dragons and snakes running, continuous, the writing rhythm is clear, and the non-luck pen is skilled and thoughtful.
Tang Cai Xizong's "Treatise on the Book of Laws" records Zhang Xu's "Or ask the magic of calligraphy, how can you get the Qi ancients?" A: 'The magic is in writing... Servant taste Chu Henan (Chu Suiliang) with a pen such as printing mud, such as cone painting sand, thinking about it for a long time, because of the reading of the river island between the flat sand fine, people want to book, compound a sharp edge, then take the book, dangerous and bright, natural beauty, Fang Wu Qianzhi. The words "ink mud" and "cone painting sand" are mentioned in this text. If you have never heard such a word for the book learner, I am afraid it is difficult to understand the meaning, the text contains that when Zhang Xu experienced the use of the pen on the fine sand, the natural resistance appeared under his hands, only to realize the meaning of these two words, so that this is also a kind of fit of the book writer's perception of nature in the process of learning, the calligraphers in the long-term practice of calligraphy and creative thinking, often because of a little touch in natural things, breaking through the original inherent mode of thinking or writing. There are countless records of such a realization in history, such as: Xia Yun Qifeng, flying birds out of the forest, snake fighting on the road, flowing water and flowers, etc., which have all been the way for scholars to feel the epiphany. There are many examples of calligraphers in the Tang and Song dynasties on "looking at things and living in books", such as:
The subject hears the form of the image, the book, the dharma image also.
Lei Taijian heard the sound of the river and wrote in a penmanship.
Yu studied cursive writing for decades, and finally did not get the method passed on by the ancients with a pen. Later, because he saw the snake fighting on the path, he got his magic, but he knew that each of them had some understanding, and then he came to this ear.
Huang Tingjian's "Mountain Pre-Post" Book on Paper 31.2×26.8cm Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
From the above book theory, it is not difficult for us to see the ancient writer's emphasis on natural things, and this nature exists in two ways: one is static nature, which mostly exists in the stage of word creation; the other is rhythmized nature, which is more of an inner realization of the bookmaker, and is a creative feeling that lurks in the heart of the bookmaker, just like music, which is full of rhythm and rhythm. For example, Wu Daozi of the Tang Dynasty asked General Pei to dance the sword to help the strong spirit, Zhang Xu made great progress in calligraphy because of the sword dance of Gongsun Daniang, and the Song Dynasty calligrapher Lei Jianfu was inspired to write by listening to the sound of the Waves of the Jialing River, etc., showing a free and rhythmic creative state. In other words, the sense of rhythm in calligraphy is also the support and expression of the internal spatial structure of calligraphy, which is the so-called "external teacher creation, the source of the heart", that is, after the artistic conception of natural things, it is presented to the world in an abstract form. Even if we carry out the art of calligraphy today, it is on the basis of the extraction and sublimation of natural objects by predecessors, and it is precisely hegel who says that "constitutes the soul of each next generation, that is, the substance, principle, prejudice and property that the next generation is accustomed to." Therefore, the concept of nature and rhythm have been passed down from the ancients, and the aesthetic concept of "looking at things and living in books" is deeply rooted in the creative concept of the writer, and has established an extremely important aesthetic character.
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