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Editor's note
Du Fu's poems are known as the history of poetry, and his people are known as the saints of poetry. So, what is Du Fu's magic that makes future generations so admired? Today's readers, why do you want to continue reading Du Shi? Jiang Xiaoshui, who is about to publish "Three Hundred Du Poems", gives a full and subtle answer.
Why Du Shi was canonized
Text | Jiang Xiaoshui ("Reading" 2024 Issue 7 New Issue)
Du Fu is the greatest poet in China. There is no greater lyric poet in the world. He left behind more than 1,450 poems during his lifetime. There are so many works, such high achievements, and such a far-reaching influence on later generations, that for more than a thousand years, his poems have been called "poetry history", and his people have been called "poetry saints". A "Du Gong Department Collection" is a poet's daily life notes, travel records, local food and goods records, customs, natural grass and trees, landscape classics, and especially a series of political, military, and social events when the Tang Dynasty turned from prosperity to decline.
The prosperity and decline of Du Fu's life are closely related to the fate of the times, and it is the epitome of that major historical turning point in the Tang Dynasty. Because of him, the memories of the Yongjia Disaster, the Huangchao Rebellion, the Jingkang Disaster, and the Jiashen Rebellion, which are equally tragic in history, are not as clear and profound as the Anshi Rebellion. Just as the United Kingdom gained more knowledge of Roman history from Shakespeare's historical plays than Plutarch's "Biography of Famous People", our understanding of the Anshi Rebellion from Du Shi also exceeded the old and new "Book of Tang" and "Zizhi Tongjian". The official history preserves cold memories such as time and numbers, but the poet gives an audio-visual vivid experience, with body temperature, depth of field and full grain. In his essay On an Aspect of Shakespeare's Realism, Lukács says: "In Shakespeare's plays, the rhythm of the curve of fate is never merely a basic, general straight line, but consists of a multitude of colorful explosive moments that seem to be completely absorbed into the hic et nunc." "We read Du Shi, looking at the tiles that flew out in the heat wave when the Nine Temples were burned, the arrows that clotted blood on Qunhu's waists, the daughter's mouth that was covered for fear of her making a sound, the young son's dirty feet without socks, the fat and thin men who caught the Dingding, the old man who escaped over the wall, and the white bones of the battlefield in the moonlight...... We are immersed in the poet's moment, feeling what he feels, thinking about what he thinks, loving what he loves, hating what he hates, incarnating as him, and empathizing with him. Lao Du's writing in "The Habitat Generation" has shrouded hundreds of generations, rising to the common emotional experience of human beings, and internalizing it into our respective psychological realities. According to Croce, all true history is contemporary history, and Du Shi, as a history of poetry, lives in each of us.
"Du Gong Department Collection" (source: apabi.com)
Reading Du's poems, you can talk about his world and know his people. Never since the beginning of writing or literature has anyone been so genuinely and adequately written. Especially in the 20 years after the age of 40, every period of time Du Fu passed, his words and deeds, sorrows and joys, not only his resume, but even his medical records, are all recognizable. We can not only grasp his outward whereabouts, but also see through his inner heart. This is a complex person, who cares about the Lang Temple and loves the mountains and forests. Confucianism walks in the world, and the way seeks outside. It is not only sympathetic to the people's suffering, but also difficult times. Although I am grateful to the Lord, I have also regulated the king. He is said to be careless, but he is cautious. He is said to be serious, but he has a sense of humor. said that he was straightforward, and he was also round. It can be said that the world is insightful and the human feelings are practiced, but the original intention is not forgotten, and the infatuation does not change. Therefore, in the final analysis, this is a pure person, loyal to the king, sincere to friends, loving to his wife, loving his children, being kind to his brothers, being kind to his neighbors, and being a good horse, respecting the righteous falcon, pitying the goose in the pond, cherishing the fish in the stream, and having the benevolence of all things. Zhang Jie's "Poetry of the Year Hantang" said: "Reading Zimei's poems makes people awe-inspiring and respectful, and the so-called "Poetry Preface" is "through the couple, into filial piety, kindness, beautification and education, and change customs". "But Lao Du is not only the godfather of our emotional education, influencing the values of countless people, but also guiding our vision of things and aesthetics, so that we can see that the mountain is no longer the original mountain, and the water is no longer the original water. For example, Longhan, Shudao, Jinjiang, Kuimen, and Xiangshui, Du Shi all ticked the line and colored. What's more, when we look at the horse, we will think of Fang Bingcao's horse, and when we look at the eagle, we will think of the eagle of the king's soldier and horse, and even the flowers are not purely natural flowers, because there are "Seven quatrains of looking for flowers by the riverside" and "Nine quatrains of quatrains", the poets of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, were crazy about the flowers, sorry for the flowers, and slid to the text formula of Lao Du.
In short, Du Fu reproduced his own era with his writing, and participated in reshaping the perception and expression of later generations of their respective eras. To varying degrees, Du Shi always forms an intertextuality with later times, making a voice for the life that comes after him. The poet has integrated unique historical experience into his poems, and has been incorporated into his own experience by later generations from generation to generation, constantly referencing his own world with Du Fu's world and confirming each other, so that its meaning continues to multiply and endlessly.
Du Fu is known as the poet saint. "The world is holy to those who are especially good and beyond the reach of others." ·In this way, Du Fu is the person who is the best at writing poetry, or in other words, the best at writing poetry. So, why is it good? How's it going? The following will focus on the three aspects of style, structure, and rhythm, and run through the key points such as syntax, chapter, and rhyme.
Jiang Zhaohe's "Portrait of Du Fu" (source: nlc.cn)
A Du poem, the ground is negative and the sea is in a thousand forms. Yuan Zhen's "Tomb Inscription" said that it "has the posture of ancient and modern, and everyone is unique", Ye Xie praised it as "Bao Yuanliu, comprehensive change", nothing more than saying: Looking forward, the elegance of the Book of Songs, the elegance of Chu Ci, the generosity of Jian'an, and the grace of Qi Liang, Du Fu learned what he was like; Looking back, the adventures of Changli, the ease of Xiangshan, the seclusion of Changji, and the profundity of Yishan, Du Fu has what he wants. This is what Han Yu called "the unique Ministry of Industry called the United States", and Wang Yuyan's so-called "Zimei Collection opens the world of poetry".
Du Shi is extremely changing, but there are 10,000 changes that do not deviate from the dominant style, which is depression and frustration. Uttering Du Fu's "Into the Carving Table": "As for the depression and frustration, they are agile at any time, and the disciples of Yangxiong and Meigao can be stumped on it." Originally, it was said that there was a difference between Yangxiong and Mei Gao Wensi, but Lao Du claimed that he could do both, fast and fast, slow and slow. If you slow down, your thoughts will be deep, and your words will be frustrated; If you are fast, although the time is short, you are agile. However, compared with Li Bai, Du Fu's characteristic is not that he is agile at any time, but that he is depressed and frustrated. The four words are divided into two aspects, that is, the literary thinking is depressed, and the tone is frustrated. Depression is to think deeply, and frustration is to speak heavily. Pause is to stop, frustration is to break, and the rhythm of the stanza is to stop. And the play is to advance, to advance is to flow, and to stop is to frustrate. Du Fu called Gongsun Auntie's sword dance "Liuli and frustration", which means that the rhythm is good. Du Shi's language is also "unique when the crown is unique", always tending to latent inward, so no matter how fast it is, it has weight, no matter how light it is, it has density, and no matter how fine it is, it has texture. The poet uses his honed lettering, syntax, and chapter to make his text a super-coded flow of information.
Weight, density, texture, all of these are all encapsulated in the poet's broad and deep worldview. "He is adept at extracting all the latent sounds, emotions and feelings from language, grasping the world in the different layers of poetry, in all its forms and attributes, and conveying the image that the world is an organized system, an order, a hierarchy that each has its place." This is what Calvino said about Dante in the "Literary Memorandum for the Future Millennium", which can be transferred to Du Fu. In Du Fu's deep consciousness, the cosmic order, the moral order, and the aesthetic order are unified. In other words, the way of heaven is the way of man, that is, the way of literature. This is an imaginary schema and a set of comparison modes provided to Du Fu by the Book of Changes, allowing the poet to feel it with primitive thinking and write it with archetypal imagery. This is a real talent, which makes Du Fu "read more than 10,000 volumes", and he can still "write like a god".
In Du Fu's eyes, everything in the world is endless, closely related, full of spirituality, emotion, and will, interacting, resonating, and sympathetic to each other. This is precisely the witch thinking, or poetic thinking, of the first people. In Du Fu's poems, heaven, earth, mountains, water, wind, thunder, as well as birds, beasts, grass, wood, insects, and fish, all sense each other, and form a corresponding relationship with personnel and people's hearts, becoming a symbol of the inner spirit. These archetypal images have been used repeatedly to precipitate a common meaning. The complexity of the categories and the vitality in Du's poems are exactly the portrayal of "the great virtue of heaven and earth". And once the process of rheology is disturbed, the vitality will wither and the people will be sick. Therefore, the bitter rain and the final wind, the turbulent clouds and snow, the horses singing and the eagle seeing, and the tiger roaring and the dragon pan are all metaphors for people's ups and downs or smoothness, the joy or gloom of the heart, and the order or dislocation of the Tao. Without knowing this, we cannot explain the origin of Du Shi's majestic imagination and the source of the infinite tension between the words.
The sense of order of the unity of heaven, man, and literature gives Du Fu a sense of super-stable structure, which is manifested in the richness of his poetry and the strictness of his rules.
Du Fu's heart seems to have two complementary powers of yin and yang, odd and even, scattered and dwarfed, and is changing in disguise, plus he is not only influenced by the pun text, but also loves the majestic, elegant and healthy ancient texts, and sends them into poems, so all bodies are prepared, and each body is good. And the poem itself has a basic prescriptive nature for structure. For example, the ancient style is different from the near body, and the five ancient and the seven ancient, the five laws and the seven laws, and the five absolute and the seven absolute are different. Let's start with archaic. In the early period of Du's poems, the five ancient poems were written a lot and well, or inherited the Han and Wei Yuefu to tell the story, or imitated Ruan Ji and Tao Qian to express their feelings and aspirations, changing layer by layer, advancing step by step, giving people a sense of solemnity and solemnity. His Seven Ancient Beings are outstanding horizontally, and he is good at transforming time and space, unfolding the narrative from the relationship between the subject and the other, like a mirror image overlapping one by one, reflecting left and right, and setting off the front and back. Regardless of whether it is long or short, his five ancient and seven ancient times, the theme is hidden and revealed, the imagery is divided and combined, and the ideas are broken and connected, but no matter how far the mind turns, it can always be picked up in the end; No matter how powerful the side of the structure is, it can still be stabilized in the end.
Let's talk about the near body. Du Fu's Five Laws and Seven Laws are even more intertwined with foreign texts, and the internal meaning is noted, and the meticulousness of its organization and the smoothness of the seams can best see his associative thinking and symmetrical consciousness. His five laws developed the organization and ingenuity of the early Tang Dynasty to the extreme, but greatly expanded the scope of its use, just like writing a diary, one scene, one thing, one reason, no use. His seven laws, in addition to the noble and elegant style of the Tang Dynasty, have opened countless methods, such as regular script, line script and cursive script, from dignified and serious, to the splendid and many, everything, but the pulse is never chaotic. Due to Du Fu's extraordinary sense of order, he often breaks the general rules of poetry, and the quadruples are all right, which is particularly dignified. Even quatrains like to fight in the whole body, which is more dense than enough charm, and has never been regarded as a positive sound. However, he is unwilling to cut down on specific elements and turn from reality to fiction. This kind of long technique of cutting sentences has been fully displayed in the five-word arrangement. Poets arrange rhymes, lay out allusions, and often dozens or even hundreds of rhymes, the structure is grand and regular, but there is less fluidity. Although the ancients highly respected it, today's people are relatively estranged.
Du Fu's strong structural ability also has a prominent performance, that is, he often writes poems in pairs, such as "Wailing Jiangtou", "Mourning Wang Sun" and "Sadness Chen Tao", "Sadness Qinghan", "Spring Suzhou Zuo Province", "Late Leaving Zuoye" and "Qujiang to Wine", "Qujiang to Rain", "Remembering Brother on a Moonlit Night" and "Pregnant Li Bai at the End of Days", and so on. He has carefully composed a group of poems in each poetic style. From the early years of "Ten Songs of Accompanying Zheng Guangwen to the Mountains and Forests of General He" and "Five Songs of the He Family", Du Fu began to break through the narrow boundaries of a single article, and combined multiple poems to form a continuous chapter style, showing richer narrative and lyrical content, such as "Out of the Stopper" and "Three Officials" and "Three Farewells" before and after. And the later the scale is larger, some do not have the name of the group of poems and have the fact of chapters, such as the Qinshu Road before and after the twenty-four poems of the five ancient chronicles, Kuizhou's from the "Cave House" to the "Tifeng" to the Xuanzong Dynasty current affairs of the eight poems and five laws, all of which are intricate and intricate, the pulse is tortuous, and the means of the poet's business position are extremely seen. When it comes to "Five Songs of Generals" and "Five Songs of Yonghuai Monuments", especially "Eight Songs of Autumn Xing", it is the highest expression of the poet's ambition for artistic creation, and has become a multi-movement and multi-part symphonic work.
Ancient calligraphy book "Eight Songs of Huaisu Qiuxing", collection of Waseda University, Japan (source: waseda.jp)
As far as poetry is concerned, style is the appearance, structure is the skeleton, and rhythm is the bloodline. Just as the poem itself has a basic prescriptive structure for it, there is also a precursor for the rhythm. Du Fu's ancient style and close body are both good, and the rhythm also changes with the gods, which can be described as the extreme change of the ancient style and the wonder of the near body.
Let's start with archaic. The galloping space of the five ancient times is not as good as that of the seven ancient ones, and the limit of the neat number of words also brings the restraint of emotional expression, so it tends to be more stable, although it is moving, there is also a sense of tranquility. The seven ancient ones are easy to open and close, and the ups and downs are great, so there are many changes, although they are still and have a sense of movement. Lao Du's movements are even greater, because he keeps adding weight to himself. His five ancient stories, even if they are long, often rhyme to the end, such as "Yonghuai Five Hundred Words" and "Northern Expedition", each with 50 rhymes and 70 rhymes, are all final rhymes, but with the transformation of scenes and moods, they become paragraphs of their own, as if changing rhymes paragraph by paragraph. His seven ancient stories, even if they are short, have nineteen rhymes, not to mention those long Yuefu songs, or into a matrix, or out of miscellaneous words, complex sounds and rhythms, layer upon wave, the uneven changes in rhythm are brought into full play.
Let's talk about the near body. Du Fu has made the greatest contribution to exploring the aesthetic potential of the Five Laws and the Seven Laws. He geniusly foresaw the diminishing marginal effect that would inevitably be brought about by the perfect rhythm, so he capitalized the correct and round body according to the golden rule of perfection, and at the same time broke the fixed sound pattern and created the awkward body, introducing the awkwardness and twisting into beauty and harmony, and seeing the uneven rhythm of the heart with the unevenness of the sound rhythm. Like "the falling flowers and gossamer are quiet in the day, and the pigeon and the swallow are deep in youth" (Ping Ping, Ping Ping), "Fusang West Branch to Broken Stone, Weak Water East Shadow with Long Flow" (Ping Ping, Ping), are the more ruthless, the more work, the hearing is very raw with you, and the visual is very familiar with you, maintaining a delicate balance between aesthetic habits and strangeness.
Du's syntax is extremely creative, and it is essentially developed to adjust the rhythm. The usual sentences, "The slender hand transmits the green silk vegetables, and the high door comes out of the white jade plate", "The spring water sits on a boat like the sky, and the old age looks at the flowers like in the mist", the text is smooth and slippery. But once he has his hands, after some disassembly and assembly, there are muscles and bones and wind gods: "Pan ∣ out of the high gate ∣ line white jade, vegetables ∣ pass on the fiber hand ∣ send green silk" "Spring water ∣ The boat is like sitting in the sky, and the old people ∣ The flowers are like seeing in the fog". There is also a slight change in the pause, after the "plate", "vegetable", "spring water" and "old age", there is a delay and groaning, and the inertia of two, two, three and two five is read as one, three, three and two-five. In addition to dislocation and ordering, Du Fu has many ways to control the flow rate of language, such as heavy classical Chinese, straightforward spoken language, inlay of real characters, mediation of imaginary characters, convergence of sentences, release of loose sentences, and various permutations and combinations of multiple components, all of which can effectively make the rhythm of sentences relaxed.
Du Fu's love for double-tone overlapping rhyme and his obsession with the use of four-tone repetition are mostly due to the precise consideration of rhythm. Wang Guowei's "Words in the World" was unpublished, saying: "Use overlapping rhymes where rippling, and double voices where promoting sections." It can be seen that the double voice rhyme is an organic means to loosen and tighten the rhythm. Du Shi is especially good at this, that is, the heart is the object, and the ingenuity is the secret. Sometimes the numbers are separated by each other, echoing each other and becoming harmonies. What is even more dazzling than this is his four-tone handwriting technique, the last words of the four sentences of his rhythmic poems are often used alternately in and out, and the amplitude of the suppression and resistance to the fall is the largest, and the expressiveness of the sound is also incomparable. Such a highly culturalized person, as soon as he writes the fibers of historical texts, he is born with a primitive person's lips and tongue, and his voice and meaning will be understood as soon as he opens his mouth, and his feelings flow with the same rhyme. In addition to the different sounds, he boldly responded in unison, such as the seven consecutive flat sounds of "Zhongba East Badong Mountain", as well as the five consecutive five sounds of "wall color standing iron" in the ancient style, and the five consecutive flat and five consecutive words of "Worrying about the end of Qi and ending in the south, and the hole can not be broken", it is a thousand mountains alone, and they are determined to go their own way.
The reason why Du Fu was canonized was the culmination of various external and internal factors.
First of all, he was fortunate to be in the prosperity of the opening of the sky, and he was tragically affected by the Anshi Rebellion, witnessing the huge gap between the times. The boy in brocade, a refugee in bastard shoes, a close minister of the Son of Heaven, and an old man in the wilderness, such a broadband life and broad-spectrum experience are unique among his contemporaries. The short establishment of the dynasty gave him the atmosphere and pattern that can only be obtained in the political center. The long-term residence has allowed him to enter the lives of thousands of people. His whereabouts spread throughout Wuyue, Jingluo, Qinlong, Bashu, Huxiang and other most of China, the solemn atmosphere, full of vitality, and the search for forest are all sent by poetry, so his people are not only made by the times, but also his poems are helped by the country.
From the point of view of the history of poetry itself, Shisao, Han and Wei, Qi Liang, and the early Tang Dynasty have all kinds of forms and styles, and skills such as fighting, use, and vocal rhythm have also made great progress. Du Fu happens to be at this node of carrying forward the past and forging ahead into the future, and his poetic vision is the most broad-minded. He is a formalist who claims to be "unstoppable" and engages in all sorts of dazzling linguistic experiments. He is also a realist, believing that "a small skill in the article is not respected in the Tao", emphasizing the responsibility of poetry to the hearts of the people of the world. Therefore, such as "Soldiers' Chariots", "Three Officials", "Three Farewells", "The Song of the Thatched House Broken by the Autumn Wind", etc., not only have lofty ideas and deep feelings, but also art can be called perfect.
A thatched hut in Du Fu's thatched cottage in Chengdu, Sichuan Province (Source: bing.com)
Du Fu is gifted and well-educated, and has stored a huge literature database since he was a child, and has a strong search function. He was among the super circle of friends of the poets of the Tang Dynasty early, and he corresponded with Li Bai, Gao Shi, Cen Shen, etc., and sought the same spirit, so he took poetry as his life's work. Before the age of forty, the poetry and pen have been about more than 1,000 articles, and then more diligent, whether in the extremely turbulent years, running Tongguan, late return to Longhan, climbing Shu Road, or in the extremely quiet grass hall and Kuixia, he has never stopped chanting, it can be said that the time must be so, and the upheaval must be so. During his twenty-two months in Kuizhou, he wrote 440 poems, an average of two in three days, which was an amazing effort. And this extraordinary perseverance is also supported by extraordinary physical strength. Thanks to his childhood "as healthy as a yellow calf" and his adolescent hawk and horse, he continued to live until his old age, despite his illness.
Finally, Du Fu loved all kinds of art all his life, and his cultivation was very deep and his vision was extremely high. At the age of six, he watched Gongsun Auntie dance sword weapons in Yuncheng, and at the age of thirteen or fourteen, he listened to Li Guinian sing in Qiwang's Mansion and Cui Jiutang, all of which were top music and dance. He has countless authentic works of famous calligraphers and painters, such as the murals of Wu Daozi and Yang Qidan, Zhang Xu's cursive script, Xue Ji's list book, etc., and he has also watched Feng Shaozheng's copy of the painting eagle and Gu Kaizhi's Vimala statue of Jiangning Tile Coffin Temple. He has personally seen Zheng Qian's whitewashing, Cao Ba Danqing, Wang Zai's landscapes, and Wei Yan's loose stones. Li Yong is a year-old friend, Gu Chenghao is an old acquaintance, Wang Wei is a colleague, Li Chao is a nephew, and even Yan Zhenqing is one of the chief judges when he is questioned by the three divisions, so Du Shi and Yan Zi must be familiar with each other. Different genres of art can awaken each other. Zhang Xuguan Gongsun Auntie danced the sword, and since then the cursive has grown, and he is grateful for it, that is, Shaoling can be known.
Perhaps, only in the language of Lao Du can we express the admiration for Du Shi who has entered the holy realm. So, I used the axe to cut Ke, borrowed flowers to offer Buddha, followed the precedent of "Historical Records Suoyin", collected Du Fu's texts into sentences, and said for the praise:
The years are twilight, and the real worries are resting. The degree is long and the pole is long, and the report returns to the beginning. Note the Tao as the body,
Feel the heavens are tilted. The remnants of the trance are vast and beautiful.
Damage to the family, worry about the country. There is no way to run, and there is still a lot of rest. Passing Water Hanwen,
The hidden boat is obscure. Great sage, weeping all generations.
("Three Hundred Poems of Du", commented by Jiang Qiaoshui, published by Zhonghua Book Company)
* The pictures in the article are from the Internet
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