China has a long history and a long period of unification, which provides aesthetic time for pastoral poetry, and beautiful scenery provides aesthetic space for ancient poets to create beautiful pastoral poetry. Western scenery also has its own beautiful characteristics. Why is its pastoral poetry far less prosperous than China's, and its connotation far less profound, graceful, complex and tasteful than China's ancient pastoral poetry? Besides the limitation of aesthetic time mentioned above, what is more important is the reason of aesthetic subject, that is, the reason of ancient literati's mentality.
Patriotism-the main theme of pastoral poetry
The land of China, with famous mountains and rivers as bones and muscles and villages as muscles, is the source of the Chinese nation's means of subsistence. When mountains and rivers nurture people, people will love them and have a deep love for mountains and rivers and the countryside. With the development of the times and society, this feeling of native land of mountains and rivers has become increasingly fierce, which has become an important part of the lofty feelings of patriotism when the nation-state is formed, and promoted the final formation of patriotism. On the other hand, inspired by the spirit of patriotism, ancient pastoral poets traveled all over the landscape, feasted their eyes, eulogized the scenery of China, and created beautiful ode to landscape, which made pastoral poetry gain high ideological significance, made great contributions to the development of patriotic literature in China, and also played an important role in inheriting and carrying forward the patriotic tradition.
In remote ancient times, there were many legends about China people who sacrificed mountains and rivers, traveled and lived in seclusion. The yellow emperor traveled around the world and sealed five mountains; Chao Fu and Xu You fled the mountains and forests because of their lofty standards. Yu Shundong swam to the inauguration ceremony, climbed Nanshan, watched He Zhu, swam to Cangwu South and died, and was buried in Jiuyi Mountain; The Book of Songs, Zhou Songyin, eulogizes the magnificent scene of the prince of Wu and merchants, the world is unified, the territory is vast, the mountains are surrounded, and the rivers meet; Wei Wuhou swims in Xihe River and enjoys the beauty of mountains and rivers! Today, Wei Zhibao is also ". Confucius walked in Wei Zhilin, sat on the apricot altar, traveled on the wild land of Shaoyuan and Rongshan, and put forward the famous view that "the knower enjoys water and the benevolent enjoys Leshan". Qu Yuan described the State of Chu as "a complex valley with a gurgling stream" in Evocation. Light and wind turn into clouds, and you will worship Lan. "The terraced fields are tired, and the mountains are higher." With the beautiful mountains and rivers in the old country, the scenery is pleasant, calling the king of Chu to return home. After the Six Dynasties, pastoral poetry flourished, and countless works praised and described pastoral poetry to express their love for mountains and rivers and their feelings for their homeland, and works expressing patriotic feelings through mountains and rivers also emerged one after another. Gao Shi has a ode to "Li Lerong, the mountains and rivers are quiet" ("Li Taishou, Appreciating Suiyang"); Chu Guangxi wrote five poems about visiting Maoshan Mountain, describing its beautiful scenery and wild interest. In the poem, "this intention is to visit the country, let alone travel far" and "all the world is bright and the mountains and rivers are bright in spring", which is intended to praise the empire in the prosperous Tang Dynasty; Du Fu lamented that "although the country is broken, the mountains and rivers will last forever, and the vegetation will turn green in spring" (spring hope); Lu You said, "There are three rivers and seas in Wan Li, and five thousand mountains climb skyscrapers. Adherents shed tears in Chen Hu, and looked south at Julian Waghann for another year "("Feeling Fen Gate at Autumn Night "); Wen Tianxiang has the hatred of "I fell into the mountains and rivers under the age of twenty" (quarrying); Gao Qi sang "Don't give in to each other, win the battle and boast that the world is strong", "From now on, the four seas are home, not limited to the Yangtze River" ("Climbing the Yuhuatai in Jinling and Looking at the Great River"); In the Yuan Dynasty, Zhou said: "The mountains show clouds, and the daytime is cold ... The valley is deep and unpredictable, and the stairs are full of vegetables ... The Han and Tang Dynasties are in harmony with today's Central Plains. Great maps, how difficult it is to create; I am proud of the Sixth Division, and the golden soup is forever solid "("Wild Fox Ridge "), which is a song for the magnificent military strength, the grand national situation, the vast territory and the eternal solid mountains and rivers. After careful investigation, I traveled with Kangxi to Xing 'anling and wrote four poems "Going to the Far Field and Looking Far". One of them said, "The picture is far away from Xing 'an, and the phoenix dances and dragons return to the air. At the beginning of the mid-ridge, the clouds helped the desert and the trees fell cold. Dan Qing is not a southeast show, but the pitch knows the width of the universe. Being far away from Wan Li, I like to get miraculous effects from strange risks. "This poem has sincere feelings and vivid descriptions, and praises the situation of national unity and prosperity during the Kangxi period. Wei Sang Yuan's "Xiongshan is still a glimpse of the frontier fortress, and the ancient flow is difficult to level" (Juyongguan). ..... These poems either write about the beauty of landscapes and pastoral areas to praise the unity and prosperity of the country, or write about the pain of mountains and rivers, expressing the lofty desire to swear to serve the country; Or win by mountains and rivers, pinning the sadness of the rise and fall of the country and the nation. It may be more appropriate to say that it is a landscape poem than a patriotic lyric poem. Beautiful mountains and rivers, beautiful countryside, visit them, appreciate them, praise them, and be proud and gratified by their magnificence and beauty; When foreign enemies invade mountains and rivers and change color, they will shout "Give me back my mountains and rivers" and be willing to die for it. From worrying about the country and the people, profound feelings have always inspired people with lofty ideals in ancient times, and inspired poets who really love China's landscape and countryside.
Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties —— The Foundation Period of Landscape Pastoral Poetry
Strictly speaking, pastoral poetry is divided into two different kinds according to the subject matter, but writing about landscapes mostly involves pastoral, and writing about pastoral will also involve landscapes. Most poets have both, few are unique, and have the same origin and similar aesthetic pursuit, so the ancients often discuss landscape poems and pastoral poems together. The author also combined them and roughly divided the punishment.
The rise of pastoral poetry can be traced back to the emergence of ancient agricultural songs. As early as 3000 BC, the Chinese nation established a developed hoeing agriculture and lived in the countryside. Therefore, in ancient times, there were poems reflecting farming, such as "Follow the Wood and Grass" and "Divide the Grains". There are some agricultural poems in The Book of Songs, such as July in Qi Feng, Tian Fu in Feng Qi and Datian in Xiaoya. But the poem reflects the scene of large-scale slave labor, and it is difficult to see the poet's personality. There is little pastoral scenery in the poem, and even less landscape scenery. There are occasional scenic sentences in the poem, such as "Peach every day, burning its flowers", "He Guang", "Who said that a river is wide and a reed hangs on it", "Qin and Iraq, Fang and", "From the valley, moving to the tree", "Mianshui" and "Mianshui, living in the sea", and "picking Wei" is "the past tense of me. Today, I think it's raining, "Festival Nanshan", "Festival Nanshan, Weiyan" and "Good, Good Field". Some poems about pastoral landscapes, plants, flowers and birds are excellent, but in the end they are not the main theme, just for comparison or to render the atmosphere, and they are in a foil position. There are also many famous sentences about landscapes in The Songs of the South, such as "The autumn wind is curling, the waves in Dongting Lake are under the leaves" in Mrs. Xiang, and "The thunder fills the rain, the night is ringing, the wind is rustling, and the childe thinks about it" in Shan Gui, but it is also for the purpose of rendering the atmosphere and expressing emotions, not the main theme. Poems in the Han Dynasty are underdeveloped, such as "The water is deep and intense, and Puwei is invisible" in The Battle of the South of the City, and "Sunflowers in the green garden, waiting for the sunrise" in long songs. In spring, everything gives birth to brilliance ",and Wu Ming's ancient poems, such as" Green grass and sunflowers in the garden "in" Green Grass ",are similar to the techniques, styles and functions of writing pastoral poems in The Book of Songs and Songs of the South.
From the Book of Songs to Jian 'an for nearly a thousand years, China's landscape is still the same, and its pastoral scenery is getting more and more beautiful, but there are few pastoral poems, let alone landscape poems. First of all, the reason is that the productivity at that time was not developed compared with later generations, and poetry developed in the realistic direction of "the hungry people sing about their food and the laborers sing about their things", and they had no time to pay attention to the pastoral beauty of mountains and rivers, and it was even more difficult to achieve the pastoral beauty of mountains and rivers. Secondly, at that time, poetry was not mature, especially the theory of artistic conception of ancient poetry had not yet come into being, literature (mainly poetry) had not yet entered the conscious era, and real literati poetry had not yet formally come into being. Therefore, it is impossible to produce high-level poems that pursue the beauty of artistic conception by describing landscapes and pastoral areas. Moreover, from the pre-Qin to the Han Dynasty, there were many folk songs, and most of the poets were ordinary people. Due to the limitation of life and literary level, they have no time to appreciate and describe the beauty of landscape and countryside. Thirdly, the dominant trend of thought at that time was pre-Confucianism, and the center of Confucian poetics was "expressing ambition", with the aim of "expressing ambition and ending with propriety and righteousness". Under this influence, it is impossible to produce pastoral poems that emphasize scenery and connotation. Finally, the economic and cultural center was in the Central Plains. Compared with the south, the beauty of landscape pastoral poetry is inferior, and influenced by aesthetic objects, it is impossible to produce more mature landscape pastoral poetry. Longitudinally, pastoral poetry should have these four things together to produce and mature.
The first relatively complete landscape poem in ancient times was Cao Cao's Looking at the Sea, which was about mountains and seas in the north. In the poem, "the water is beautiful, the mountains stand and the islands are high." Trees and paraquat are very lush. Autumn wind makes trees make sad sounds, and the sea is surging. The movement of the sun and the moon seems to come from the vast ocean. The description of the trip to the sun and the moon, if it is out of its territory: the stars and the Han Dynasty are brilliant, if it is out of its territory, contains aspirations and feelings, with broad vision, broad artistic conception and vigorous and bold style. During the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasties, with the further southward movement of the economic and cultural center and the further development of the southeast, the development of manor economy, the prosperity of metaphysics and Buddhism and the initial integration of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, the arrival of the era of literary consciousness and the emergence of artistic conception theory, with the emergence of aristocratic poets, landscape pastoral poetry, as an independent poetry genre and a complete art form, officially appeared in ancient poetry circles. Almost all poets in the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties wrote pastoral poems, among which Tao Yuanming's pastoral poems and Xie Lingyun's pastoral poems are the most famous, which not only originated from them, but also laid their foundation. The following is a detailed discussion of combining first and then separating.
During the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the society was unprecedentedly dark, and the bloody reality made the Confucian belief of "self-cultivation, governing the country and leveling the world" gradually disintegrate, and metaphysics and Buddhism began to flourish. Literati either go beyond reality, go to God, indulge in wine, or go to nature and enjoy the southern landscape, so there are seven sages of bamboo forest and palace poets, as well as metaphysical poets and pastoral poets in the southern Jin Dynasty. However, the literati can't completely forget "keeping the spirit peaceful", let alone completely divorced from reality, so there are contradictions and pains in the poems. In contrast, wandering into an empty net is too dull, and indulging in Yu Meiren's fine wine is inferior, while going to nature and enjoying the joy of nature is neither dull nor unbearable but more elegant, so pastoral poetry has become fashionable, and it is the most dynamic and far-reaching genre in poetry. Due to the different social status and life experience, both Tao Yuanming and Xie Lingyun are influenced by the times and thoughts, but their paths and achievements in poetry creation are quite different.