Opening the Treasure House of Tang Poems: From Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty to Three Hundred Years of Tang Poems

Text/Huang Tianji

In the mainland, anyone with a little knowledge will know the word "Tang poetry" and know that it is not only a general term for works of a historical era, but also a treasure of the traditional culture of the mainland. Its overall dazzling brilliance has illuminated the literary world for thousands of years. Especially in the history of mainland poetry, it has an insurmountable position.

If you open the treasure house of Tang poems, you will find that inside is a mirage of treasure, a burst of birds and flowers, colorful, endless changes, making you dazzled and dazzled. You will suddenly see a picture of magnificent mountains and rivers, and suddenly see a quiet and quiet building. He will watch the soldiers go to the iron horses and soar to the sky, and they will see the people tossing and turning in the ravines and mourning everywhere. You will see some poets singing generously, or majestically, or boldly; some poets singing in a low voice, or implicitly, or diluted. You will hear people who are miserable and compassionate, and who are too interested in "the room has money in exile"; you will also hear people with lofty ambitions and hao songs "hanging on the clouds and sails to the sea". In terms of artistic skills in poetry creation, the poets of the Tang Dynasty generally reached an unprecedented height. In short, Tang poems make you proud of the excellent cultural traditions of the motherland. Familiar with Tang poetry, understanding Tang poetry, or understanding a little Tang poetry, can also allow you to wash your soul, enhance your cultivation, optimize your temperament, and become a person with aesthetic taste, which is different from the roles of the stupid donkey and the three sisters and six wives.

The Analects records a sentence that Old Master Kong said to his son Kong Liyu: "If you don't learn poetry, you can't speak." ("Analects of Ji Shi") means that if you do not study the Book of Poetry and do not apply the verses in it to political occasions, you will not have a voice. Similarly, today, intellectuals, large and small in science and liberal arts, who do not understand or are not familiar with several Tang poems, cannot really be said to be Chinese intellectuals. Because, the essence of traditional Chinese culture has been immersed in Tang poetry. Familiar with Tang poetry, its style and charm will also be in your bone marrow, into your language to talk, improve the cultivation of writing, optimize the quality of thinking. Obviously, if you don't read a little Tang poetry, for the Chinese people, there is really a distinction between literature and wilderness, thickness and fineness, and elegance.

The Quan Tang Poems compiled in the early Qing Dynasty have more than 48,900 poems. After the addition of kaoso by later generations, it is estimated that the existing Tang poems should be about 55,000. This poem is so full of sweat that it may not be read through. Fortunately, in the Qing Dynasty, sun su, a retired soldier of The Tang Dynasty, compiled and selected the "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" during the Qianlong period. According to his preface, this anthology was compiled "specifically on the most popular works in Tang poetry, and selected the most important ones.". He chose various genres of Tang Dynasty poetry, such as ancient poetry, five laws and seven laws, five absolute seven absolutes, music and so on. As far as the content and art of the selected works are concerned, the level is also higher, so after the "Three Hundred Tang Poems" came out, Luoyang Paper Gui, "familiar with the three hundred Tang poems, can not write poems but also chant", "familiar with the three hundred Tang poems, will not be able to steal when they do not chant", but also became a proverb for a while. To this day, I think that the "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" by The Retired Scholar of Tang Tang is still the most suitable enlightenment reading for us to study Tang poetry.

Three Hundred Years of Tang Poetry: Poets and Their Poetic Creations, by Huang Tianji, Oriental Publishing Center, March 2022

The poems selected in "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" are actually 113 in total. There are 78 ancient poems, the others are absolute poems and rhythmic poems. My small book is basically surrounded by the well-known "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty", plus some famous poems that have not been selected by the residents of Yutang, but are still relatively popular today, according to the representative poets of different periods, select their representative poems, and communicate with the readers, hoping that readers can see the state of the tang dynasty poets' creation, see the changes and development of the poetic style, and analyze the rhythm of the poet's soul and the techniques and mysteries of creation.

Life in the world, just like the grass and trees that grow on the mountain, always experience spring wind, summer, autumn rain and winter frost. If you are a thousand-year-old pine, you will also grow from a young seedling to a thick branch and a strong leaf, and gradually grow old and decay. The course of life also includes adolescence, prime- and middle-aged and old age. The tides of history, always rising from high, and falling from high, splash into another ripple different from the first menarche.

The Tang Dynasty poet Meng Haoran wrote a poem "Climbing the Mountain with the Sons":

Personnel have metabolism, and the exchanges between ancient and modern times;

The country and mountains have left a trace of victory, and my generation has returned to the landing.

The water falls on the fish beam shallow, the cold dream is deep;

The sheep monument is still there, and the reading is stained with tears.

Da Nang Mountain, in present-day Xiangyang, Hubei Province, the famous general of the Jin Dynasty, Yang Hu, the word Uncle, known as "Uncle Yang is the main general of Siwen", he did many good things for the people, and often went to the mountain to enjoy in his leisure time, often sighing "Since there is a universe, there is this mountain", but he also thinks of the sages who have come to this mountain, most of them are obscured, and they are overwhelmed with emotion. After The death of Yang Hu, the people of Xiangyang built a "Yang Gong Monument" on Da Nang Mountain to commemorate this famous general. Meng Haoran and his friends came here, looking around at the surrounding scenery, the water was shallow, the cold was overwhelming, only the Yanggong Monument still stood in the loneliness, he touched the scene and wrote this poem.

This poem, which is also included in the "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty", on the whole, appears smooth and clean, naturally blended, which has always been considered to be the characteristic of Meng Haoran's poetry. But the most shocking thing about this poem is that it splits its head to say an unbreakable truth: "Personnel have metabolism, and exchanges have become ancient and modern!" He perceived all kinds of things in the world, and as they changed, they became history from generation to generation. This poem, which directly expresses the laws of history, contains a philosophical reason that makes people suddenly surprised; the gentle and sparse verses that follow it become the contrast to this famous saying.

"Personnel have metabolism, and exchanges have become ancient and modern", the process of development and change of the poetry circle in the Tang Dynasty is not so!

Poetry is the externalization of people's thoughts, feelings and vitality. If the poetry of an era, which is formed by the accumulation of a group of poets, is regarded as a flesh-and-blood entity like man, then in the life course of the poetry world, from ancient times to the present, changes and changes, it is also like people, with several stages of development in adolescence, prime-age and old age.

Huang Tianji, professor of the Department of Chinese of Sun Yat-sen University and a well-known expert in classical literature

According to the situation in which the social economy and cultural development and changes of the Tang Dynasty affected the content and style of the poet's creation, many scholars compared the metabolism of the Poetry Circle of the Tang Dynasty to life, and distinguished it into four stages: "beginning, prosperity, middle and late". Its approximate age limit is:

Early Tang Dynasty: 618-712, early Tang Dynasty to Tang Xuanzong's first year of the first century;

Sheng Tang: 713-765, from the beginning of the new century to the first year of The Tang Dynasty Zong Yongtai;

Middle Tang Dynasty: 766-826, the first year of the Great Calendar to the second year of the Tang Jingzong Bao calendar;

Late Tang Dynasty: 827-904, Emperor Wenzong of Tang and the first to the end of the Tang Dynasty.

Of course, Tang Dynasty poets often lived in a cross-generational period, and the social atmosphere and cultural trends of different eras would also intersect in their works. Therefore, it is not necessary to say that so-and-so is a poet of so-and-so's time. My small book "Three Hundred Years of Tang Poetry" is only arranged in rough order according to the time of the poet's birth. This book selects more than thirty famous poems of the Tang Dynasty, except for li bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei, who are three great poets who each select two works, and the other poets only choose one. The selection ranges from ancient and near-body poems. Considering the love of modern general readers, most of the selected poems are also the rhythmic poems and poems in the near-body poems.

In the poetry circle of the Tang Dynasty, the trajectory of the development of the poetry of the previous generation was carried forward, and there were changes and innovations.

Related to the social form of the agrarian economy in Asia Minor, since ancient times, Chinese culture has attached great importance to the concept of "the unity of heaven and man". The agrarian economy depends on the heavens for food, and it is believed that what man does and what he feels will must and can communicate with the object of "heaven". The expression and catharsis of people's feelings are an important channel for achieving harmony with "heaven". In ancient times, people sacrificed to heaven, and they would definitely sing and dance, express their feelings, and pray for protection. Existence determines consciousness, so in the feudal era of relying on the agrarian economy to survive, that is, from the Zhou Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, when the commodity economy sprouted, in line with the economic form, the creation of lyric poetry has always been in the mainstream of the literary world.

In the history of lyric poetry creation, poets have also been pursuing how to make this genre more refined and moving in form. In the beginning, it was known that the sentences were neat and the ends rhymed, which were easily accepted by aesthetic receptors. Therefore, during the eight hundred years of the Zhou Dynasty, except for some places in Jingchu, the popular four-character poem, that is, in a poem, the number of verses is not limited, the whole poem is four words per sentence, and most of the sentences must rhyme the same. Eight hundred years later, it was found that in addition to rhyming, monosyllabic and two-syllable words were combined with each other, and poetry would appear more flexible and beautiful, so five-word poems and seven-word poems appeared. See, the progress of the literary form is so strange, the breakthrough in format, adding only one word or adding three words, it takes hundreds of years of work. It can be seen that the reform and innovation of art forms have not always been easy.

Secondly, after the Han Dynasty, the Piao script became popular. In this style, the number of words between two sentences is generally neat. The part of speech of the corresponding sentence is either the same or relative, which constitutes the dual beauty of the unity of opposites. Like Cao Zhi wrote about Luoshen's appearance in "Luoshen Endowment", he said: "Its shape is also like a frightening, graceful like a dragon." Rong Yao Qiu Ju, Hua Mao Chun Song. The hair is like a light cloud covering the moon, and the fluttering is like the snow returning to the wind. The sentence patterns of these puppets have also had an important impact on the exquisite pursuit of poetic forms by authors after the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the form of "legal poetry" has emerged.

More importantly, in the Northern Dynasty, the literary scholar and phonologist Shen Yue recognized that Chinese belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family had several tones of flat, up, go, and in, and had different pitches. These four tones, flat breathing smooth, can be collectively referred to as "flat"; and up, going, into the three sounds, the vocal part and the vocal method are different from the flat sound, the pitch is also different, so the "up, go, in" collectively referred to as "仄", "仄" is also "side", and the tone of the flat voice is opposed. If in the rhythm of the verses, proper arrangement and prescribe changes in the level can greatly enhance the musicality and rhythmic activity of the poetic language. Poetry, poetry, "poetry" and "song" are closely related, enhancing the musicality and rhythm of this genre, making it more perfect and more moving.

On the basis of his achievements in phonology, Shen Yue put forward the idea that poetry creation should pay attention to the "four voices and eight diseases", which led to a major reform in the form of poetry in the poetry circles of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, stipulating that poetry should have a certain format. After a long period of exploration and practice, people have formulated the poetic forms of the Seven Laws, the Seven Absolute Laws, the Five Laws, and the Five Absolutes.

Of course, since the Han Dynasty, the five-character poems and seven-character poems that only emphasize rhyme and do not emphasize the rhythm of the flat can still exist in the poetry world, and people call them "ancient poetry" or "ancient style", making it different from the "near-body poetry" that pays attention to the level. Throughout the Tang Dynasty, which lasted until the late Qing Dynasty, for thousands of years, "ancient poetry" still occupied a place in the poetry world. Since "ancient poetry" does not have a limit on flatness and the number of sentences, the author can write straight and straight, seemingly "free". The "near-body poem" has a distinct sense of musicality and rhythm, and the whole poem has only four or eight sentences, which is relatively short and easy to remember. Coupled with sonorous syllables and harmonious rhythms, it is easier to knock on the window of the mind of aesthetic receptors and easier to burn in people's minds. In the early Tang Dynasty, many poets wrote in this new poetic form. Even when creating some long poems with unlimited sentences, such as Lu Zhaolin's "Ancient Meaning of Chang'an" and Zhang Ruoxuan's "Spring River Flower Moon Night", he also noticed the use of pingshu in sentences.

However, the laws and poems of the early Tang Dynasty were, after all, new things, and people's mastery of them was not mature, and the boundaries were still wide. This point is clearly reflected in the creation of the early Tang Dynasty poet Wang Bo.

As far as the poetic form is concerned about the refinement and attention to musicality, it should be said that the traditional poetry of the mainland has taken a new step. Of course, some people think that poetry should let people's feelings be freely expressed, and set up a grammar for it, is it not to add iron shackles to the expression of feelings? Indeed, there are two sides to everything, and the poetic grammar will have more or less constraints on the poet's imagination. But if it is equivalent to making people dance with iron shackles, it is not possible. Because, this needs to see whether the dancer really knows how to dance, and the person who can't dance adds iron shackles to him, which naturally hinders his hands and feet, and the smart dancer can use the iron shackles, or wave, or throw, which will make it more helpful to enhance the charm of the dance. If you can skillfully use the rules of poetry, this "iron shackle" will also make your creation colorful. (This article is a "small introduction" to Huang Tianji's book "Three Hundred Years of Tang Poetry: Poets and Their Poetic Creation", the title is added by the editor, slightly deleted.) ）