Using Mr. Shi Yucun's own analogy, he opened four windows in his life: the east window is for literary creation, the south window is for the study of classical literature, the west window is for the translation of foreign literature, and the north window is a unique tablet arrangement. Following Mr. Shi's train of thought, the author described the characteristics of "100 Words of Tang Poetry", which studied Tang Dynasty poetry, as "in all directions", and thought that it was appropriate rather than an exaggeration.
"100 Words of Tang Poems"
One
Why did you write this "Hundred Words of Tang Poems", the original intention is interesting. After 1937, Shi Yucun stopped writing novels and engaged in teaching for a long time, "always living in a classical book city." "I have a strange temper and don't want to write any "pedantic" research papers. After 1976, invitations to various meetings came one after another, and there was an opportunity to "fill out the form". Most of his original published collections were novels and essays, "It's time to write a little book on classical literature to flesh out and enrich the form, right?" At that time, I hoped to complete it in one year, but when I started writing, there were many problems, and it took me eight years to get this "Hundred Words of Tang Poetry".
Shi Yucun's generation of scholars, who have practiced the traditional classical "Tongzigong" since childhood, coupled with more than 40 years of literature teaching, and the practice of translation and creation, it seems that it will not be much trouble to write a book that is appreciated by Tang poetry. At that time, the target audience of this book was set at the level of liberal arts college students. When interpreting poems, he encounters many "extra-poetic" contents, "If you want to talk about the origin of a poem, you must talk about the literary history of poetry, the introduction to literature, and the basic knowledge of literature before talking about a poem, or at the same time." "Because of my long-term teaching experience, people read this book as if they were listening to a lecture: every poem, its content form, its ins and outs, is clear and vivid. The author believes that this should be an important factor in the praise of "100 Words of Tang Poems" after its publication and the continuous reprinting of it.
Not only Tang poetry, but almost all ancient poetry, is not an easy task for today's readers. First, there are many changes in ancient and modern terms. The words and phrases we read today do not necessarily mean ancient times; in addition, the events and figures circulating in society were well known at the time, but today's readers may not be aware of them; in addition, the ancient literati liked to show off their knowledge, and often used allusions in their works. These allusions come from a much older source, and the average reader will not know what to know without the guidance of scholars. In addition, there is the evolution of the inner form of the poem, the detailed requirements of the rhythm, and so on. All this is probably the reason why Shi Yucun thought it was not easy to read Tang poetry.
Two
According to Shi Yucun, the word "absolute" in quatrain originated from the concept of "four sentences and one absolute" of Jin and Song poets. However, poets after the Song Dynasty believed that "absolute" was "intercepted", and the quatrain was formed by cutting off half of the poem. This view is wrong, it is not, and the formation of quatrains predates the lyric poems. Shi Yucun believes that in the concept of the Tang Dynasty, all poems that abide by the laws of duality, harmony, and co-rhyme are all rhythmic poems, including quatrains. He cited Bai Juyi's own compilation of "Bai's Changqing Collection" and Wang Anshi's "Wang Linchuan Collection" compiled by the Song people as examples. Later, scholars divided the quatrain poems into volumes, and "since then, almost no one knows that quatrains are also rhythmic poems." In this way, we can often read in "A Hundred Words of Tang Poems" to clear up the mysteries of history and disseminate knowledge that is relevant to the facts.
Today, we call the poems written in accordance with the rhythm "grid poems", but Shi Yucun according to the "Bai Changqing Collection" volume compiled by Bai Juyi himself appeared "grid poems" and "half grid poems" introduction, "Tang people use the word grid rhythm is different from our usage today" "grid poems are ancient style poems, and rhythm poems are the emerging near-style poems of the Tang Dynasty." ...... If there is no catalogue of Bai's poetry collections, we may not know that the Tang people used the word Gelu, which originally referred to the two types of ancient and modern poetry. Continuing this concept, Shi Yucun also made a clearer distinction between the characteristics of ancient and near-style poems: ""The Secret Mansion of Wenjing: The Meaning of the Treatise": "Where the body of poetry is written, the meaning is the grid, and the sound is the law. The meaning is high, and the voice is clear. The rhythm is complete, and then there is a tune. It can be seen that ancient poems focus on content, so they are called grid poems, and grid is style. Near-body poetry focuses on the beauty of sound and rhyme, so it is called rhythm poetry, and rhythm is rhythm. From this point of view, if the ancient style poems are only "high in meaning" and the rhyme is not beautiful, or if the near-style poems only pursue the sound rhyme and "not in high meaning", they are not perfect, so the "rhythm" is required to be comprehensive. Only poems with "high rhyme and clear rhyme" can be called poems with "tone". Shi Yucun further explained: "Tone is the style, which is what we now call style or style. These are all places that the ancients could see at a glance, but it is difficult for people today to comprehend, and it is very helpful for us to explain them.
Bai Juyi's "Farewell to the Ancient Grass", everyone is familiar with it, and in the "Three Hundred Tang Poems", which was widely circulated after the Qing Dynasty, the compiler Lu Tang Huishi said when criticizing one or two sentences of the poem: "The poem is a metaphor for the villain." In the third sentence, he criticized: "There is no end to it." In the fourth sentence, he commented: "When the time comes, it is born." The fifth sentence says, "Committing a crime is on the right path." The sixth sentence: "The decoration is ugly." The last two sentences are "but the most touching".
Seeing the criticism of the retreatees, Shi Yucun immediately responded: in Bai Juyi's self-compiled "Bai's Changqing Collection", the title of this poem is obviously "Farewell to the Ancient Plains Grass", but unfortunately later "the Song people deleted the word 'farewell', and the Ming people deleted the four words 'Endowment Ancient Plains', so there is only one word 'grass' in the poem title." And "the retreat did not know the original title of this poem, and after a cursory reading, he very subjectively decided that its theme idea was to use grass as a metaphor for villains." ”
Bai Juyi wrote a poem to say goodbye, using grass as a metaphor...... Although it is now burned by wildfires, when the spring breeze blows, it will immediately prosper. There is a sense of comfort here. Interpreted in this way, not only Bai Juyi's farewell friend was inspired, but even our readers thousands of years later also perceived the meaning of this deep life.
Three
This kind of pointing out the shortcomings of the ancients is very much in "One Hundred Words of Tang Poetry".
Du Mu's group of three poems "Quatrains of the Qing Palace" is quite famous, the third of which is:
Wan Guosheng sang drunk peace,
Leaning on the sky, the palace and the moon are distinct.
Shoot the Lushan dance in the clouds,
Laughter under the heavy wind.
According to Shi Yucun's interpretation: "The third song is about the time when An Lushan was favored by Xuanzong and the concubine when he was in Chang'an, it was like the song of all countries, and he was intoxicated by the peace. At that time, An Lushan also participated in dancing in the mountain palace, and their laughter could be heard even under the mountain. Then he commented: "There is only one word 'drunk' in this poem that reveals irony, and the other words are relatively plain, and the third sentence is especially rude." Final conclusion: "Therefore a poem that has been written unsuccessfully".
Readers who have read some of the ancient poetry appreciation articles (especially the whole book) have the impression that, in the eyes of most connoisseurs, almost all of them are good poems. After reading this kind of article, it is often full of confusion. A connoisseur must establish a standard of judgment. Mr. Shi Yucun's work has been cherished by readers for a long time, because he has a brilliant aesthetic and expressive ability, or he has the sensitivity and courage to point out the "failure" of the great poet's poems.
Shi Yucun also introduced a number of Wei Yingwu's poems, one of which is "The Taoist Priest in Jiaoshan Mountain":
This morning in the county 斋cold,
Suddenly miss the mountain guest.
At the bottom of the stream,
Return to boil Shiraishi.
If you want to hold a scoop of wine,
Far from the storm.
Fallen leaves full of empty mountains,
Where to find the trail?
The gist of the poem said that it was very cold in my county today, and I suddenly thought of a Taoist friend in the mountains. I thought of him chopping wood in the col and going home to cook. "White stone" is an allusion, saying that in ancient times, there was a Taoist priest who became an immortal, and cooked white stone as rice, which is used here to describe the cold life of friends. I wanted to take a scoop of wine with me to visit the Taoist priest on a stormy night. But in the empty and leafy mountains, where can I find his whereabouts?
The couplet at the end of this poem has long been praised. For this reason, Shi Yucun specially quoted the words of the Song Dynasty scholar Hong Mai: "The last two sentences can be reached by thinking about non-complex language." ("Rong Zhai Essays") said these two sentences are wonderful, unexpected, but very natural. Su Shi, the great poet of later generations, also liked this poem. He remembered a Taoist priest surnamed Deng in the mountains, so he used the rhyme of the poem to imitate a poem and send it:
A cup of Luofu Chun,
Far Away Rose Pickers.
遥知独酌罢,
Drunk and lying on the stone of Panasonic.
The ghost is invisible,
Qingxiao hears the moon and the sunset.
Talking about the people in the opera,
There is no trace of flying in the air.
Regarding Su Shi's poem, someone later commented: "Dongpo deliberately learned it, but in the end it was not the same." Cover the east slope hard, Wei Gong (Wei Yingwu) does not use force; Dongpo is still meaningful, Wei Gong is not still willing, subtle also. Shi Yucun agrees with this statement: "The so-called force, no force, Shangyi, not Shangyi, is really natural and unnatural, Dongpo poems use the words 'remote knowledge', 'drunk lying', 'invisible' and 'no trace', is to try to use descriptive techniques to express Deng Daoshi." This kind of syntax, Wei Yingwu disdains to use. Dongpo's poem, which looks passable on its own, is not natural enough compared with the object of imitation, and not only falls behind, according to Shi Yucun's definition: "At this end, Dongpo has failed." ”
With only the above limited quotes, we can also see that Mr. Shi's work has many new and reasonable insights. But it's easy to read and attracts people more than that. Shi Yucun had read almost all of the relevant notes of the Tang people. This not only allows him to draw on the beneficial views of many predecessors, but also constantly quotes anecdotes from them, so that we can perceive Tang poetry more interestingly. For example, he also found out that many poets "stole" other people's works, and pointed out the originators of novels, dramas, and poems in Chinese literature that exclusively depict pornographic themes, pointed out a hidden allusion that no one has explored for thousands of years, and Cui Hao's "Climbing the Yellow Crane Tower" or Li Bai's "Climbing the Phoenix Terrace in Jinling" is higher?...... It can be said that it is "in all directions" - as long as the Tang poems can be told well, the author will work hard and dedicate, so when the reader flips through it, it is like entering the vagina of the mountain, the grass and trees, the stream, the wind and leaves, a bend and a scene, which is really dizzying.
Source: Beijing Evening News