Song poetry is another peak in the history of the development of mainland poetry, and it has always attracted much attention.
At present, everyone believes that the "Song tune" was formally formed in the period of Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, but many characteristics of the "Song tune" have already begun to emerge in Mei Yaochen's poems.
Can Mei Yaochen, who has devoted his life to poetry and has about 3,000 poems, be regarded as the pioneer of "Song Tune"?
"If you have no intention, you can't enter the poem, and if you have nothing to do, you can't enter the poem" is the prominent feature of Song poetry, and this characteristic has been comprehensively displayed in Mei Yaochen's poems.
Whether it is Mei Yaochen's practice of "one poem per day" or the innovative problem of "Song life after the Tang Dynasty", or the huge gap between reality and ideals, Mei Yaochen has paid more attention to daily life, showing a tendency of "everyday". Poetry is becoming more and more connected to life, and the common content of life has also been poetically enhanced.
He uses poetry to sing about common things, to describe what he encountered, and to express his physical and mental state. From farm tools, incense burners, and tea cakes to watching cockfights, hawkers selling plum blossoms on the street, to the sudden graying of his beard and the sudden loss of his teeth, all became the objects of his poetry. He also uses subtexts such as long poem titles, poem prefaces, and self-notes to supplement the background information of the poems, which further highlights the "sense of everyday".
The trend of "everyday" since the Middle and Tang Dynasty has been inherited and developed by Mei Yaochen, and a large number of daily life contents have entered poetry, and the scope of subject matter has been expanded. The development of the "everyday" of poetry has also caused "anxiety of influence" for future generations.
Just like the sigh of "after the Song Dynasty was born in the Tang Dynasty, it was really difficult to open up", the Song people explored the road of "daily writing" of poetry to the Qing Dynasty and was also written by the predecessors, and as poets of different levels competed to sing, "daily writing" obviously showed the disadvantages of "mediocrity".
In Mei Yaochen's time, his poetry also highlights humanistic characteristics and the spirit of the world. This kind of humanistic characteristic is manifested in humanistic themes and humanistic imagery, that is, in the writing of literati objects such as pen, ink, paper, and inkstone, as well as in spiritual and aesthetic activities such as reading, viewing paintings, and appreciating sounds, and on the other hand, in the factors that highlight the poet's talent, such as the love of argumentation and allusions.
The "study interest", "study imagery" and "discussion as poetry, talent and learning as poetry" discussed by later generations are the inheritance and development of the humanistic characteristics in Mei's poems. The "Shushi spirit" is a distinctive characteristic of the Song people, and it can be linked to the "everyday" trend of poetry to highlight the tension.
With the revival of Confucianism, the enthusiasm of the scholars of the Song Dynasty to participate in and discuss politics was also unprecedentedly high. Mei Yaochen uses poetry to record major political events, and even if he is not at the center of political power, he has a strong sense of political participation.
He paid attention to the livelihood of the people, and advocated the spirit of "irony" in poetry after Wang Yuyan. He also cared about the country's border defense affairs, spoke as a Confucian soldier, and worked with Su Shunqin to open up a new situation in the Northern Song Dynasty's border poetry.
When a theory is first put forward in the history of literature, it often has the effect of correcting the malpractice. However, with the development of the times, it will have the effect of overcorrection and become a new evil.
Compared with the poetry of the previous generation, the subject matter of Mei Yaochen's poetry has indeed been fully expanded, and this characteristic has been inherited by later generations. In the poems of Su Shi, Huang Tingjian and others, we can see their efforts to use the theme of daily life as their poems and constantly expand the boundaries of the subject matter.
More and more poets wrote poems on the theme of daily life, paying attention to the novelty of the subject matter, which finally made this characteristic develop into a prominent feature of Song poetry and have an impact on the poetry of later generations.
However, it is worth noting that we affirm the pioneering and innovative achievements of poets, but if we look at these poems with the high standards of poetry art, we will find that many poems have not yet reached the corresponding artistic standards, and are more "exercises" on the way to high artistic standards.
Countless scholars have affirmed Mei Yaochen's pioneering and innovative efforts in subject matter, but there are also many scholars who criticize the triviality of Mei's poems, especially the criticism of Ji Yun and Qian Zhongshu.
Mei Yaochen advocated "Yixin Linguistics", emphasizing the need to achieve "the scene that is difficult to write is like in the present, containing endless opinions outside the words", "taking the old as the new, and the vulgar as elegant", and he also tried to practice it in his poems.
However, judging from the presentation of poetry texts, there are many poems that fail to "meet the standard" based on the high artistic standards of the academic tradition. This is due to the expansion of the subject matter and the impact of not being able to find the corresponding elegant language, so the common sayings commonly used in life are included in the poems, as well as the influence of Mei Yaochen's poetry creation ability, poetry concept and even personal character.
His poems focus on daily life, showing the things and phenomena that can be seen everywhere in life, and embodying a sense of normality; Mei Yaochen adheres to the innovative consciousness of seeking novelty and difference, and often deliberately pursues to describe things that "have never had poetry"; Mei Yaochen pursues "Yixin language work", but many poems are the result of "practice" and are not yet sophisticated.
Often, there is no poetry for things that have not been noticed or because their images are difficult to integrate with poetry to burst out of poetry, and poets do not write about "new" things because they are confined to elegant and vulgar concepts or think that they are unable to control "new" things. At the same time, the narrative in Mei's poems is easy to appear too sluggish, and the narrative level needs to be improved.
Yuan Mei once said that Mei Yaochen's poetry was "not profound", and in the perspective of orthodox poetry or when judging the artistic level of poetry, this kind of poetry did not achieve a high artistic standard and was not very successful.
However, Mei Yaochen's attempt is commendable, especially in the context of Mei Yaochen's "one poem in a daily lesson", many poems tend to be more "practiced", and his poetic achievements and innovative spirit cannot be denied.
From the perspective of aesthetic orientation, Mei Yaochen proposed "poet with will" and "new language work", focusing on bringing forth the new and expressing the meaning of the poet. When the "meaning" in the heart rises to a rational cognition, it often highlights the philosophical nature and reflects the characteristics of "rational interest".
In particular, in the recognition of the philosophy of life, from Mei Yaochen's "impromptu reasoning" to Su and Huang's interpretation of philosophical speculation with specific life experiences, the "Shangli" characteristics of Song poems have continued to develop and deepen.
"Blandness" is considered by Mei Yaochen to be the ultimate state of poetry, and it takes a lot of hard work to achieve the realm of "meaning" and "language". "Bland" is not only a style, but also an artistic realm, that is, to express profound meaning in the form of clumsy fluttering.
In pursuit of "newness", Mei Yaochen wrote poems that others had not written and were "new" because of the subject matter, and he pursued the meaning that others had not written in traditional poetry themes, and "new" because of the idea. And "taking the vulgar as elegant, and the old as the new" is a specific way to promote the "new". This can be said to be in the same vein as Huang Tingjian's later advocacy of "rebirth" and "turning iron into gold", which focuses on the transformation and regeneration on the basis of predecessors.
In pursuit of "rational interest", poets often talk about the truth in their poems, involving the principles of nature and the philosophy of life. This characteristic is related to the background of the "Right Literature" policy in the Northern Song Dynasty, poets love to read and think, so they often discuss in their poems. Under the tendency of "rationalization", the poet explores the truths that can be seen everywhere in life.
"Reasoning on the spot" is the characteristic of Mei Yaochen's poetry, and he deduces the universal truth of life from specific scenes in life, such as the white chicken being taken away by a fox, the water level falling, and the boat running aground.
To this day, readers can still understand the philosophy of life, and the poems are constantly interpreted and revitalized. When in a difficult situation, the poet's philosophical speculation assumes the function of self-comfort, from Mei Yaochen to Su Shi.
Since Mei Yaochen proposed that "it is difficult to create plainness", Song poets and poetic works have continuously interpreted this, and plain beauty has become the center of poetics' attention. Su Shi excavated the bland meaning of Tao Yuanming and Liu Zongyuan's "dry on the outside and creamy in the middle, like light but real beauty", and Huang Tingjian commented on Du's syntax as "simple and ingenious, plain and high and deep".
In the era when Mei Yaochen grew up, Song poetry had not yet formed its own face, and the popular style in the poetry world was the white style that was shallow and vulgar, the late Tang style that expressed the secluded and quiet life, and the Xikun style that carved and beautiful. The plainness advocated by Mei Yaochen's poetry, whether it is "clear and beautiful" or "old" and "ancient", is a fresh force for the poetry world.
It is difficult to start a business, and Mei Yaochen's theory and practice are sometimes difficult to synchronize. He advocated "Yixin language work", but not all poetry can reach this state. He advocates "rational fun", but sometimes it inevitably seems stiff. "Blandness", on the other hand, is in a delicate balance, and it is easy to slide to the two ends of "mundane" and "reasonable".
It is worth noting that most of the poets in the same period as Mei Yaochen wrote seven-character ancient poems, while Mei Yaochen wrote five-character ancient poems in the same way as he wrote seven-character ancient poems. And Song Qi, who also wrote five-character ancient poems, took a different path from Mei Yaochen.
Shen Deqian of the Qing Dynasty once said:
Five words are ancient, the long story is difficult to lay out, and there are peaks and peaks in the narrative, which is long but not rambling; the short story is difficult to converge, and the convergence can contain infinite meaning, so it is short but not urgent. The long story must be neat and tidy, and the knot is complete, so it is qualified; the short story is transcendent and leisurely, and there is no need to embellish the knot.
It is difficult to lay out the narrative for the long five ancient stories, and it is difficult to converge on the short five ancient stories. Mei Yaochen's Five Ancient Capitals let go of the writing and paid attention to the narrative, in fact, this is more suitable for a long-form approach. It is often difficult to take care of the characteristics of "simplicity and richness" in writing short stories.
There are many evaluations of Mei Yaochen's status in the poetry circle in the past dynasties, and Liu Kezhuang's expression is the most famous: "The poems of this dynasty, but Wanling is the founder of the mountain." Wanling out, and then Sangpu's obscenity wow rests for a while, and the elegance of the air continues, and its merit is not under Ou and Yin. ”
After Liu Kezhuang, there are also many voices in the literary world that affirm Mei Yaochen's poetic status and praise Mei Yaochen's poetry, such as Fang Hui, Hu Yinglin, etc., but there is also criticism such as "withered" and "slang". Even in modern times, scholars still debate the merits of Mei's poems and whether they are bland.
In the aesthetic orientation of poetry, the poets pursued "novelty" and "rational interest", affirming the value of "plain" poetic style, and paying attention to the technique of "taking text as poetry", increasing the argumentative component, and absorbing ancient grammar, syntax and calligraphy.
With the development of such a poetry system, poetry in Mei Yaochen's place has indeed developed from the situation of Tang poetry on a large scale in the early Song Dynasty to the unique style of Song poetry. After all, in the initial development period of "Song Tune", Mei Yaochen's poems are not typical "Song Tunes", and there are limitations.
Although in Mei's poems, there are many contents that inherit from their predecessors and few innovations themselves, but it is not a pioneering achievement to be able to explore a poetic road that can show different styles under the influence of Tang poetry, but also a sudden rise.