The modern value of Tang poetry classics

The modern value of Tang poetry classics

Speaker: Wei Jingbo Speech Venue: Shaanxi Normal University Outstanding Forum Speech Time: June 2021

Wei Jingbo is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the College of Literature of Shaanxi Normal University, mainly engaged in the scientific research and teaching of Tang and Song Dynasty literature, and concurrently serves as a director of the Du Fu Research Association of China, an expert of the Shaanxi Normal University Base of the "National Training Program" primary and secondary school pilot project of the Ministry of Education, and a researcher of the Shaanxi Collaborative Innovation Center for the Development of Cultural Resources. He has published more than 40 academic papers, published one academic monograph, participated in the compilation of four textbooks, and presided over a number of various scientific research projects such as the planning project of the Humanities and Social Science Fund of the Ministry of Education.

Du Fu's hometown in Gongyi, Henan (drone photo). Xinhua News Agency

Why Tang poetry has become a classic

The framework of today's lecture begins with how Tang poetry became a classic.

From a quantitative point of view, there is a compilation of Tang Dynasty poetry from the Qing Dynasty compiled "Quan Tang Poems", known as the "imperial system" of the Qing compilation of "Quan Tang Poems" was Kangxi forty-five years (1706 AD) Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin was ordered to set up the Quan Tang Poetry Bureau in Yangzhou, selected 10 hanlin led by Peng Dingqiu at that time. They edited the book in a hurry, and it took just over a year to complete it, with a total of more than 48,900 poems, involving more than 2,200 people. Of course, this number may not be particularly accurate, the Japanese scholar Takeo Hiraoka re-counted, 49403 and 1555 sentences, the author of 2576 people (excluding the gods and ghosts). Since the birth of "Quan Tang Poems", with the archaeological excavation of underground cultural relics, especially after the founding of New China, the strengthening of our country's cultural soft power, many foreign Chinese books circulating overseas have returned to the embrace of the motherland, in these cultural relics and these ancient books, scholars have found a lot of Tang poems that are not included in the "Quan Tang Poems", according to Mr. Chen Shangjun's estimation, the number of Tang poems (including five generations) is about 53,000, and the author is about 3,000. This set of figures far exceeds the sum of all the poems in the long historical years from the Book of Poetry to the Sui Dynasty: the poems before the Tang Dynasty are collectively called the pre-Tang poems, and the total number of poems in existence is less than 10,000, involving more than 1,000 authors. The Tang poems we are talking about generally refer to the five dynasties of Tang poetry, and generally regard the five dynasties as a continuation of the Tang Dynasty, that is to say, the scale of Tang poetry is 5 times that of pre-Tang poetry, and the scale of Tang Dynasty poets is also 3 times the number of pre-Tang poets.

In terms of authors, from the emperors and generals to the three religions and nine streams, many people have written poems for generations. Fifteen of the twenty emperors of the Tang Dynasty have written poems, the most famous of which are Tang Taizong and Tang Xuanzong, both of whom have written very well, and one of Xuanzong's poems has also been selected for the "Three Hundred Poems of Tang", and Tang Taizong Li Shimin once wrote "Imperial Capital", describing the majestic weather of Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty. The rest of the poems of Emperor Zhongzong, Emperor Xuanzong, and Emperor Zhaozong are also not bad. In fact, writing poetry almost became a national literary and artistic activity in the Tang Dynasty at that time, and there were poems from all walks of life that were handed down, and even many wonderful poems of unknown names were left behind. In the 1980s, the Tang Dynasty porcelain excavated in the ancient town of Tongguanyao in the Wangcheng area of Changsha, Hunan Province, was inscribed with a poem: "I was born before I was born, I was born and the king is old." Jun hates me for being born late, and I hate jun for being born early. Although the author of this poem is no longer available, it is still widely circulated today. This poem actually comes from a Buddhist saying: "The body is born of wisdom, and the wisdom is born of the body." The body hates the wisdom of the late, and the wisdom hates the body that is born early. "It was originally a philosophical poem, and the people at the bottom of the Tang Dynasty adapted it into a love poem and circulated it in the Tang Dynasty." Another example is Zhang Shuo, Zhang Jiuling and others, who are not only famous people of a generation, but also leaders and famous poets in the literary world. Therefore, from the perspective of the identity of the author, the number of poems and the number of poets, the poetry of the Tang Dynasty has reached an extremely brilliant level, which can be called the golden age of poetry in Chinese history.

Of course, the quantity is only one side. The Quan Song Poems contain more than 200,000 poems, four to five times the number of Quan Tang poems. There were more poems in the Qing Dynasty, and the Qianlong Emperor alone wrote more than 40,000 poems. The reason why Tang poetry has become a classic of ancient literature is mainly because its artistic attainment has reached its peak. That great era not only gave birth to poets who enjoyed world reputations such as Li and Du, but also emerged a number of accomplished masters, such as the four masters of the early Tang Dynasty, Wang Meng, Gao Cen, and Xiao Li Du of the late Tang Dynasty.

Not only that, the style of Tang poetry is also very diverse, including great poets like Du Fu who describe reality, poets with a more romantic style like Li Bai, and some poets who are deeply influenced by Zen thought. Moreover, the development of various genres of classical Chinese poetry reached a heyday in the Tang Dynasty. Mr. Lu Xun once said: "All good poetry has been done by the Tang Dynasty." After that, if qi tian taisheng could not turn out the palm of Rulai's palm, he would not have to do it. I wonder what Mr. Lu Xun means by this, probably because if we want to write poems to express the meaning in our chests, we may as well quote a poem by a Tang Dynasty poet directly, and we don't have to do it ourselves.

We say that the reason why Tang poetry is classic, in addition to its own brilliant achievements, rich connotations, diverse genres, and complete content, there is also a factor that the classics have to be tested for a long time, and Tang poetry has a strong time penetration. Taking stock of the history of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign literature, we often see that some writers' works were very famous at that time, but with the passage of time, they gradually became more glorious or even obliterated; while other classic writers' works, although they may be difficult to find in their time, can be reinterpreted with the development of history, and finally win the status of "not abolishing rivers and rivers and ancient streams".

The Northern Song Dynasty writer Su Shi once had a "Shuzi Mei Ping Trace Poem", he copied du Fu's "Screen Trace" poem twice, and then said to himself: "This Poem of the Dongpo Resident." Someone asked him: "This Du Zimei screen trace poem also, the resident Ann has to steal it?" Su Shi responded that although the poem was written by Du Fu, he read the poem "All the characters are recorded by the lay people, and the poems of the lay people are also", that is to say, every word of Du Fu's poems has been written to his heart. Therefore, Su Shi said that this poem is Du Fu's poem, and it is also his Su Shi's poem. "Zi Mei An de forbidden me to have it?" Although Su Shi and Du Fu, two literary giants, are more than 300 years apart, they can carry out "dialogue in the clouds" through the medium of poetry. From the perspective of later generations, it seems that Su Shi's intellectual property awareness was relatively lacking, but from another aspect, it also shows that in the process of circulation, classic poetry can allow many readers to have an air dialogue with the author and resonate with their hearts.

In the process of circulation, classics will be constantly interpreted and accepted, will be integrated into many factors of the times, and become a public space for authors and readers, and the author will leave blanks when writing, waiting for readers to fill in. When the reader reads a poem, at a certain point in time, suddenly enlightened, understands the true meaning of the poem, then at this time we have a resonance with the author, which is to accept the time travel in the process of literary dissemination. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", there is a fragment of "Xiangling Learning Poetry", and Dai Yu recommends a "poetry textbook" to Xiangling: "I have here the Complete Works of Wang Mojie, and you have read a hundred of his five-word poems and carefully pondered them thoroughly." That is to say, first thoroughly understand Wang Wei's poems, "and then read one or two hundred of Lao Du's Seven Laws of Speech", because Du Fu's Seven Words and Laws poems were outstanding after the Sheng Tang Dynasty, "li Qinglian's seven words and sentences were read one or two hundred times", and Li Bai's seven absolutes were the third textbook designated by Dai Yu to XiangLing. Dai Yu believes that with these three "textbooks" at the bottom, and then go back to reading Tao Yuanming's poems, reading yu xin and Bao Zhao's poems, there will be a foundation, and after a period of time through their own diligence and efforts, Xiangling can become a poet. This view is not only Cao Xueqin's view, but also the common view of many writers and scholars in the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, since the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, countless poetry readers, including professional readers and non-professional readers, have taken Tang poetry as the main object of comment when commenting. And when they were learning poetry, just like calligraphy copying, when they were posting, they also followed the example of Tang poetry. Therefore, tang poetry for more than a thousand years, passed down from the Tang Dynasty to today, is a process of continuous efforts and classicization by generations of readers.

In the process of classicization, Tang poetry not only has the traversality of time, but also the leap of space, becoming the cultural heritage of all mankind and the whole world. Many foreign readers have come into contact with Tang poetry. In the Tang Dynasty, many envoys from outside the Tang Dynasty came to China to study, and they not only learned the culture and laws of the Tang Dynasty, but also took away the poetry of the Tang Dynasty. To this day, there are still many sinologists in Europe and the United States who study Tang poetry and study Tang poetry.

The cognitive value of Tang poetry

Let's look at the value of Tang poetry.

First of all, the cognitive value of Tang poetry, when we read Tang poetry, we can appreciate the reproduction of the spirit of the Tang Dynasty. When Du Fu was wandering in the southwest, he wrote a retrospective poem "Remembrance of the Past", Du Fu was a writer who grew up in the "Kaiyuan Dynasty", and he fondly recalled that "recalling the heyday of the Kaiyuan In the past, Xiaoyi still hid in the ten thousand family rooms". Sheng Tang not only achieved economic prosperity, but also embodied the light of prosperity in politics, culture, military, transportation and other aspects, so we can look back at the Tang Dynasty through Tang poetry.

The poetry critic Yin Fan of the Flourishing Tang Dynasty left a poetry anthology, the Collected Works of Heroes of Heyue. A poem by Wang Wan was copied in the "Collection of Heroic Spirits of Heyue", the original title was "Jiangnan Yi", and later the title was changed to "Subbei Gushanxia". There are two sentences in the middle: "The sea is born in the sun and the night, and the river spring enters the old year." I think these two poems are particularly capable of summarizing the spirit of the times of the Tang Dynasty, when the poet conveyed the weather of the rising sun and the dead night, the early spring and the old, the alternating of new and old things, and the flourishing of new things through poetic pen and ink. Zhang Yangongzhang, the prime minister at the time, said that he wrote this poem in the government affairs hall, that is, the office of the prime minister, and he told his colleagues and subordinates that such a poem is a good poem, "every time you show the text, you will make it in italics." This poem not only reflects Wang Wan's depiction of the spirit of the times, but also represents the group identity of that era. In the Ming Dynasty Hu Yinglin's "Poetry", he evaluated the relationship between the spirit of the times and literary works, and used a very famous thesis, saying that the Sheng Tang sentences such as "The sea is born of the sun and the night, the river spring enters the old year", the Middle Tang sentences such as "the wind and the snow rise, the river belt breaks the ice flow", the late Tang sentences such as "Chicken sound Maodian Moon, human footprint Banqiao Frost", these three poems describe the scenery, wonderful eternity, followed by a sharp turn, "and the boundaries between the sheng, the middle and the evening are cut", although the three capitals are good poems, but the spirit of the times they contain is not the same. So he concluded: "I know that the article is about luck, not manpower." The "article" here refers to a literary work in a broad sense, which cannot be influenced by the writer's own ability alone, and it will inevitably be branded with the times. Therefore, when we read Tang poems, we are not only reading the works of individual writers, but also reading the spiritual refraction of an era. The Tang Dynasty was in the ascendancy of ancient Chinese culture, and its plasticity and inclusiveness were reflected in the poetry of this period.

Secondly, we can also understand the images of those Tang Dynasty scholars with colorful personalities through Tang poetry.

For example, the three great poets of the Sheng Tang Dynasty, Li Bai, Wang Wei and Du Fu, Li Bai and Du Fu had close exchanges, and Du Fu and Wang Wei also had close exchanges. Li Bai, known as the "Poetry Immortal", was greatly influenced by Taoist and Taoist thought, and his poetry was full of fiction. Du Fu was known as the "Sage of Poetry", and his master said that he was "serving Confucian officials and not falling into suye". Du Fu XIII Zu Du pre-annotated the Zuo Chuan, a figure of the Jin Dynasty who was both literate and martial, who was an idol in Du Fu's heart and the source of Du Fu's thought. And Wang Wei, whose name is "Vimalaksha", whose name and the word are connected together, is the name of a famous layman in Buddhism. Wang Wei's poems are full of Zen meaning, and he is known as the "Poetry Buddha". Different writers and poets of the Tang Dynasty can choose different beliefs and different ideological tendencies according to their personalities and hobbies, so we can understand the rich and concrete and distinctive images of more than 3,000 poets in the Sheng Tang Dynasty and even the entire Tang Dynasty from Tang poetry.

Again, we also want to talk about the portrayal of Chang'an by Tang poetry. Our Shaanxi Normal University is located in the ancient capital of Chang'an, Chang'an was the political, economic and cultural center of the Tang Empire, and it was also the most magnificent and magnificent capital city in the world at that time, with a population of as many as one million, and was an international metropolis at that time. There are many poems about Chang'an in Tang poems. Most of the poets of the Tang Dynasty came to Chang'an. Either roaming or entering Beijing to catch the examination, they traveled thousands of miles to Chang'an, which was not only the center of poetry creation, but also the center of poetry dissemination, and some activities were carried out among the literati at that time, such as poetry singing, poetry salons, poetry competitions and other activities. Poets of the Tang Dynasty usually had a "trilogy of life" of reading, wandering, and examining the imperial examination: in the early years, they painstakingly read the books of the sages, roamed the world after the weak crown, and befriended the world's heroes; after both theoretical accumulation and social experience, they entered the career path through the examination of the imperial examination. The wanderings and examinations in this trilogy were centered on Chang'an, so the "famous moving Jingshi" was the goal of many Tang Dynasty poets at that time, many poets went to Chang'an, and left behind famous poems depicting the magnificent scenery of the capital.

In the spring of 758 (the first year of Emperor Suzong of Tang's reign), several famous poets Wang Wei, Du Fu, Cen Shan, and Jia Zhi went to the Ming Palace. At that time, Jia Zhi was the highest official among the four, so he first wrote a poem "Early Dynasty Daming Palace Presents Two Provincial Staff Friends", and the other three colleagues wrote and wrote. Among these works, it is recognized that the best written works are Wang Wei and Cen Shan. Among them, the momentum of Wang Wei's poem is very broad, especially the jaw link part, at that time, it was the Chaos of An Shi, the Tang army had just recovered Chang'an, and the courage of the Tang Dynasty was still left in the tall and majestic Daming Palace, "Nine days to open the palace, all nations dressed in crowns and crowns", the momentum of the Daming Palace, the momentum of the King's Coming to the world, was fully reflected through Wang Wei's poem. Another example is Han Yu, who wrote about the scene of Chang'an Avenue, and his "Tianjie Light Rain is As Crisp as Crisp" in his "Early Spring Presents the Water Department Zhang Eighteen Members Outside", with a fresh style. There are also Lu Zhaolin's "Chang'an Ancient Meaning", Luo Binwang's "Emperor Jing", etc., which are all famous articles written about Chang'an.

The emotional value of Tang poetry

Poetry itself is the crystallization of emotions. Tang poems contain rich emotional value, which we have summarized in general, including nostalgia, family affection, friendship and love, and of course, there are many other emotions.

First of all, let's start with the family affection and nostalgia in Tang poems. Li Bai's famous article "Quiet Night Thinking" is very familiar to everyone, and I want to talk about the version of Li Bai's "Quiet Night Thinking".

The earliest Song engraving of Li Bai's poetry collection, "Quiet Night Thoughts", is written like this:

Looking at the moonlight in front of the bed, it was suspected that it was frost on the ground.

Look up at the mountain moon and look down at your hometown.

Examining several versions of the Song Dynasty, this poem is written as "Look at the Moonlight" and "Look at the Mountain Moon", until the middle and late Ming Dynasty, when Li Panlong quoted "Quiet Night Thoughts" in the "Ancient and Modern Poems", changed the third sentence to "Look up at the bright moon", and this change of his, I personally speculate that he may have been influenced by Du Fu's "Dew from tonight white, the moon is the hometown of Ming", And Li Du's poems were integrated through his processing or modification. He later compiled the "Selected Poems of Tang Dynasty", and changed the first sentence of "Quiet Night Thoughts" to "Bright Moonlight before the Bed" and changed "Look at the Moonlight" to "Bright Moonlight". In the Qing Dynasty, when Sun Su, a retired scholar of The Tang Dynasty, compiled the "Three Hundred Poems of Tang", he followed this version of Li Panlong, and the "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Poems" had a great influence in later generations, and women and children knew it, so the version of "Quiet Night Meditation" that we read today became like this. From this process, we can see that in the process of the development of the times and in the recognition of nostalgia, scholars and poets of different periods have participated in the creation of "Quiet Night Thoughts". Why was this change by Li Panlong accepted by most readers in later generations? Because Li Bai's original "Mountain Moon" is actually Li Bai's unique memory of his hometown. When Li Bai was five years old, he followed his father Li Ke to Jiangyou in Sichuan from the broken leaf city in Central Asia, and lived in Jiangyou until he was twenty-five years old before leaving Sichuan, and there were many mountains next to Jiangyou, among which the mountain he studied in his early years and searched for immortals was called Kuangshan. Therefore, for Li Bai, "Mountain Moon" is a unique memory of his hometown, and later he also wrote "Emei Mountain Moon Song", which is the hometown moon color with Li Bai's personal memory. The "bright moon" is more in line with the hometown symbol in the hearts of ordinary readers, so the process of "other hometown bright moon - hometown bright moon - homesickness" is more in line with the psychological expectations of most readers, so the modified version is more popular than the original version. There are still many classics in Tang poetry, in the process of dissemination, from the title to the author's signature and words and sentences, there have been some changes, contemporary scholars have also accumulated a lot of research results in this regard, if you are interested, you can pay special attention to this topic.

Secondly, I would like to talk about the friendship and love in Tang poetry. Among the poets of the Tang Dynasty, the friendship between Li Bai and Du Fu is a good story that has been praised throughout the ages. In 744 AD, Li Bai, who had left Chang'an, and Du Fu, who was preparing to enter Beijing to catch the examination, met in Luoyang. At that time, Li Bai was 44 years old and already famous all over the world, and in the eyes of the 33-year-old Du Fu, Li Bai was the big brother of the literary world, the two were like each other, and Du Fu when he was young was like another version of Li Bai, the two loved to drink, like to hunt, the same bold words, love to talk big, leaving a good story of literary friendship that has been recited through the ages. Mr. Guo Moruo once wrote "Li Bai and Du Fu", stating a situation: Du Fu's degree of alcohol addiction is actually even more powerful than Li Bai, and we now know that Li Bai is not only a poetry immortal but also a wine immortal, in fact, Du Fu's love of drinking is even more than Li Bai's.

The works describing love in Tang poems are also very moving. For example, Li Shangyin's untitled works, as well as although they are titled, they are untitled, like "Jinse" directly grabs out the two words of the previous poem, as its title, it is said to be difficult to understand, the so-called "a "Jinser" solves people's difficulties", the so-called "poets always love Xikun well, and hate no one as Zheng Zhi". There are four poems in the middle of the code: "Zhuang Sheng Xiao dreamed of a butterfly, and Wangdi Chunxin trusted the cuckoo." There are tears in the pearls of the sea and the moon, and the warm jade smoke of the blue field. "Whether Zhuang Sheng Xiaomeng or Lantian Sun Warm, it has built us a dreamlike artistic conception." When we look back at life, we will always feel that life is like a dream, but in the life of a dream, there are always some unforgettable and unforgettable things, just like "Wangdi Chunxin", just like "the vicissitudes of the sea and the moon". The allusion of "Canghai Yueming" is beautiful and sad, it is the South China Sea Fish People or the East Sea Fish People, saying that its tears turn into pearls, and there are still tears hanging on the side of the pearls, how sad it is! The poem uses an enhanced version of this allusion. We use a sentence from Li Shangyin's "Untitled" to explain it, that is: "The silkworm in spring is not exhausted until the silk is dead, and the wax torch turns into gray tears and does not dry." This emotion in the poem is unforgettable, it goes beyond the concentration of the emotion of the untitled poem, and it makes readers under a thousand years old thrill.

There is also a part of the emotional work in Tang poetry, which is the intertwining of family and country feelings and personal consciousness. Du Fu went to Sichuan in his later years, built three huts next to Huanhua Creek in Chengdu, and lived a relatively stable life. The hospitable people of Sichuan, the beautiful Bashan Shushui, accepted the poets in distress, so that Du Fu could temporarily let go of the heavy psychological burden of worrying about the country and the people, and enjoy the joy of being with his family. During this period, Du Fu wrote a lot of poems, and the mood was very pleasant, and everyone may have read "two yellow orioles singing green willows, a line of egrets on the blue sky", and "good rain knows the season, when spring is happening" and other poems, which are very different from the poet's "heavy depression and frustration" poetry style in the Chang'an period.

Du Fu also had a poem "Jiangcun" during this period:

Qingjiang is a song hugging the village stream, and Changxiajiang Village is quiet. Since going to the hall on the swallow, blind date close to the water gulls. The old wife draws paper for the chess game, and the child knocks the needle as a fishing hook. But there are deceased people who offer Lu rice, and the micro body is even more demanding.

What we want to focus on is these two sentences: "The old wife draws paper as a chess game, and the child knocks on the needle as a fishing hook." These two literal sentences mean that Du Fu's wife took a piece of paper to paint as a chessboard, and when Du Fu wrote about his wife in his poems, he always used "thin wife" and "old wife", and his wife followed him upside down and drifted away, and suffered a lot. When I arrived in Chengdu and built a grass hall, I finally had a shelter, and I could relax and play chess. "The child knocks the needle to make a fishing hook", that is, the children in the family bend the needle to make a fish hook, which reflects the natural happiness of Du Fu and his family, and expresses Du Fu's personal feelings.

Next, we look at how the Song Dynasty critics interpreted this "Jiangcun": the Northern Song Dynasty poet monk Huihong said that the poem", "the old wife draws paper as a chess game, and the child knocks on the needle as a fishing hook", the "wife" here is a metaphor for the courtier, and the "husband" is a metaphor for the monarch, because the chess game is a straight road, which is a metaphor for being a courtier to be a righteous minister; the fish hook is curved, and the "childish" implies a satire on the young jun at that time, and the "bend" is dim. HuiHong interpreted Du Fu's poem describing the joy of his family as the political loyalty and treachery of the feudal dynasty. Critics of the Song Dynasty may have thought that each of Du Fu's poems was a small word and a sense of family and country, but they did not believe that Du Fu could occasionally let go of a very heavy social responsibility, so they interpreted his scenes with alluable meanings. Later, Chen Yu refuted Huihong's point of view in "Tibetan A Word yu", but his starting point for interpreting this poem was still based on political implications, he believed that Jue Fan (referring to HuiHong) now compares his wife to a courtier, a child to a jun, a wife to compare a courtier, a child to a monarch, if this is an analogy, then the consequences are very serious, resulting in "then the subject is the mother", the minister becomes the mother, the monarch becomes the son, and the relationship is chaotic, so "Can it be?" Why not look into the physical humanities to this point? Why not examine human ethics to such an absurd point? Chen Yu believed that Huihong was absurd. However, the starting point of his explanation is also untenable.

Comparing the poem "Jiangcun" to the great righteousness of loyalty and treachery is too deep and there are some chisels attached, but it is too shallow to say that this poem is only to express a happy mood and record the beautiful scenery of Huanhua Creek near the caotang. Moreover, there is also the sentence "But there are deceased people who offer Lu rice, and the micro body is more demanding", "what is more to ask for" is to want something and can't ask for it, obviously Du Fu is a little helpless and at the same time a little unwilling. To some extent, du Fu's poem reveals that under the circumstance that he is far from the political center and it is difficult to do anything, his heart is still full of concern for state affairs and concern for the people, but these have quietly become the unspoken meaning and taste of the purpose of this poem.

The ideological value of Tang poetry

Finally, let's talk about the ideological value of Tang poetry.

First of all, Tang poetry is full of a sense of worry about self-responsibility. Ancient Chinese scholars had a core ideal, that is, to take the Tao as their own responsibility and the soldiers to the Tao. Like Du Fu's poem "To Jun Yao Shun, then make the customs pure", and "poor years and worry about Li Yuan, sigh the heat in the intestines", are all concentrated embodiments of the sense of distress and the sense of responsibility. When Du Fu was difficult to achieve in politics and the times did not give him a stage, he reinvented himself in the world of literature. For example, the "three officials" and "three distinctions" that everyone is very familiar with were written in 759 AD (the second year of Emperor Qianyuan of Tang Suzong), which was a peak period for Du Fu's creation. When we mention Du Fu today, without thinking, four words pop up in our minds: Worry about the country and the people. The representative works of worrying about the country and the people are the "three officials" and "three distinctions." The representative work in the "Three Officials" and "Three Distinctions" is "Stone Trench Official", and the Qing Dynasty scholar Qiu Zhao'ao's "Detailed Notes on Du Shi" has a wonderful evaluation of this poem:

The ancients had brothers and sent one to join the army. Now drive away the strong, and the old and the weak. Shi Yun: Three males, two male deaths, Sun Fang's milk, daughter-in-law without skirts, Weng over the wall, women's night. In the family, fathers and sons, brothers, grandchildren, and aunts and daughters-in-law are so miserable that the people are not happy! At that time, Tang Zuo was also precarious!

It can be said that the family's encounter on this night is a microcosm of the tragedy of the era in the Anshi Rebellion. In particular, "the night is long and the sound is absolutely silent, such as smelling and crying", which literally means that the night is already very deep, and the sound of shouting and the sound of the old woman crying have long disappeared. Put yourself in the shoes of a poet who has been running around for a day, finding a family to stay in, and being woken up in the middle of the night by the shouts of the stone trench officials, after some tossing, he can finally calm down. According to common sense, if he had no feelings about this matter, he might have fallen asleep long ago. However, witnessing the human tragedy of three generations of this family in Shi Trench Village, Du Fu tossed and turned and could not sleep. So the point of these ten words is not who is crying, but who is listening. If we read this poem thoroughly, "ruwen" is "as if we heard", when we use the word "as if", the subtext is negative, he did not hear any crying, he only heard the sound of wind and rain, but for Du Fu, who has the feelings of the bottom and pays attention to the fate of the bottom, the wind and rain in Shi trench village are the cries of the common people in the ears, so there is a way to write "like smelling and crying". Through such a detail, du Fu's sense of distress can be reflected, compared with Du Fu's "Thatched Houses Broken by the Autumn Wind", such a straightforward and lyrical poem as "Ande Guangsha Tens of Millions of Rooms, Sheltering the World and The Cold Soldiers Are Happy", I personally prefer the poems full of thought and feelings in the quiet and objective description of "Stone Trench Official".

Secondly, we can also read the personal dignity of poets from Tang poems. The poets of the Tang Dynasty not only had a strong desire for fame, but also had a distinct sense of individuality. Li Bai "An can crush the eyebrows and bend the waist of the magnates, so that I can't be happy." When Li Bai first entered Chang'an, there were many stories attached to him, such as the emperor seeing him descending to greet him, the imperial hand spoon, and of course, some may be fabricated, such as "Lux taking off his boots", but although these are not in line with historical truth, they are very much in line with the truth of Li Bai's personality. People like Li Bai should play a trick on the eunuch Gao Lishi, who was in a position of power at that time, and show the evil spirit in the hearts of the people towards those feudal dynasty magnates who are high above. Therefore, in Li Bai's body, his poetry can not only read the dignity of the upright and upright person, but also the stories of later generations have magnified such ideological feelings and spread it continuously.

Finally, there is the ideal spirit of ascending to the horizon. Many famous passages in Tang poems are works that ascend to the heights and look far ahead. Professor Wang Zhaopeng made the "Ranking list of Tang poems", found some classic works in more than 50,000 Tang poems, sorted them according to their popularity and influence, and calculated a list. In this list, Cui Hao's "Yellow Crane Tower" ranked first. When the ancients climbed high and looked far, when they climbed the mountain and approached the water, they always imagined it, and a lot of inspiration burst out. Legend has it that when Li Bai climbed the Yellow Crane Tower, he saw the picturesque scenery and was full of excitement, so he was ready to write poetry with a pen, but when he looked again, the Yellow Crane Tower had already left Cui Hao's poems, and Li Bai was very impressed after reading it, and he said two sentences: "There is a scene in front of you, and Cui Hao's inscription poem is on the top." This is of course a legend, but in a way it adds a lot of points to Cui Hao's poem. In addition to cui Hao's "Yellow Crane Tower" in the "Ranking of Tang Poems", there are also the fourth place Wang Zhizhuo's "Climbing the Stork and Bird Tower", the fifth Du Fu's "Dengyue Yang Tower", and the sixth place Liu Zongyuan's "Dengliu Prefecture City Tower Sending Zhangting Fenglian Four Prefectures Assassination History", all of which are works of ascension. These lofty works have had a great influence on future generations of readers. When we say that the ideological value of Tang poetry, in fact, we do not always need to interpret it deeply, mainly to understand its one realm, one spirit, one feeling, and its subtle influence on us.

The Tang Dynasty has passed more than 1,000 years ago, and the stars have shifted and the vicissitudes of the sea, but the value contained in the Tang poems, its cognitive value, emotional value and ideological value, is full of the power of life, which is worth reading and researchers to think about.

Guangming Daily (2021-09-18 10th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily