The Yuefu poems of the Han Dynasty refer to the poems of the Han Dynasty that were collected and preserved by the Yuefu system of the imperial court or music management agencies equivalent to the functions of the Yuefu. It is another magnificent landscape in the history of ancient Chinese poetry after "The Book of Songs" and "Chu Ci", and it is another great collection of ancient folk songs. It created a new trend of poetic realism, which is close to life and uses popular language. It gradually moves from miscellaneous words to five words. It mostly adopts narrative techniques, depicts characters meticulously, has distinctive personality, and has a relatively complete storyline and unique characteristics.
The biggest and most basic artistic feature of Han Yuefu folk songs is its narrative nature. This feature is determined by its content of "promoting from events".
Han Yuefu expresses the character’s character through the character’s language and actions. Some adopt the form of dialogue, such as the dialogue between Luo Fu and Shijun in "Mo Shang Sang" and the dialogue between the wife and her husband in "East Gate Journey", which can show the characters' wit, bravery, kindness and other different personalities. . In addition to dialogue, there are also monologues, often using the first person to let the characters speak directly, such as "The Orphan", "The White Head Yin", "The Evil", etc. Han Yuefu pays attention to the characterization of character actions and details. For example, in "The Song of Love", "Xianke Xianxiao" describes the suspicion of the "husband-in-law"; in "The Journey of Women's Disease", the mother's love of the dying sick woman is described with "I don't know how the tears flow", and the writing is vivid and vivid. Vivid image.
The language of Han Yuefu folk songs is generally colloquial, and the language is simple, natural and emotional. At the same time, it is full of emotions and the love and hate of the people. Even narrative poems combine narrative and lyricism, so they have strong appeal. On the one hand, the things narrated in Han Yuefu folk songs are mostly the people's own affairs, and the author of the poem is often the protagonist in the poem; on the other hand, because the author and the characters he describes have the same fate and the same fate. life experience, so narrative and lyricism naturally blend together to achieve "shallow but deep". For example, "Orphan's Journey" does not make empty cries about the pain of orphans, but focuses on specific descriptions. It uses line drawing to describe the physical and mental suffering of orphans, and even makes life worse than death. The taste can be naturally understood. At the same time, it also reflects the author's sympathy for the sufferings of people's lives.
Han Yuefu poems vary in length, with the longest being more than 350 lines and the short ones being several lines. For example, the longest "Peacock Flying Southeast" has more than 350 sentences, the short "Zaqu: Dead Fish Crossing the River Crying" has only four sentences, and "Jiangnan Can Gather Lotus" has only seven sentences. The rhymes of Han Yuefu poems are flexible. Folk songs have free rhymes and are flexible and changeable. Some of the lines rhyme, such as "Ping Lingdong", "Ping Lingdong, pines and pine trees, I don't know who robbed the righteous public" (ong), "I feel sad in my heart, and my blood is dripping. I will sue my family for selling him." "Huangdu" (u), there are also rhymes with every other sentence, such as "Dongmen Xing", "Yan Ge Xing", etc.; there are also two or three sentences that rhyme with each other, such as "Sunrise Southeast" in "Mo Shang Sang" Yu" and "named himself Luofu" are two lines apart in rhyme, and "take care of my Qin family building" and "Guizhi is a cage hook" are five lines apart in rhyme. This shows the variety of rhymes and adds to the poetry. It is vivid and catchy to read. Han Yuefu poems are also good at using metaphor, personification, exaggeration, elaboration and contrasting techniques. For example, "Baitou Yin" uses "the snow on the mountain is as bright as the moon in the clouds" to describe a woman's love. Purity; "Mo Shang Sang" expresses the beauty of Luo Fu in a narrative way. Han Yuefu poems often use dialogue or monologue to describe the characters, making people feel like hearing their voices. "Going Up the Mountain to Pick Weeds" is almost entirely a question and answer session between an abandoned wife and her old husband, showing the wife's kind-hearted character; there are also monologues throughout, such as "The Journey of an Orphan", which uses a monologue to describe the suffering of an orphan, although the Han Dynasty Yuefu is based on it. It is dominated by realism, but it is also not lacking in romanticism. For example, the passion and extreme exaggeration of "The Evil" depicts a woman's sincere and passionate love for her lover, and she does not hide her love; In "Wu Sheng", the soul of the crow appeals to people; in "The Dry Fish Crosses the River and Cries", the rotten fish can cry and write letters, etc. There are also stories about spirits, such as "Lian Shi Ri", which writes about the journey of spirits and spirits. Anliu and others are gradually getting closer to themselves and are joyful in communicating with God, imagining that they can fly to heaven and become immortals. These romantic imaginations, these rich and strange fantasies, all show the romantic characteristics of Han Yuefu poetry. There are many parallel lines, such as "The Japanese horn bun on the head, the bright moon beads in the ears, the xiangqi as the lower skirt, and the ziluo as the upper skirt." The loops and the harmonious rhythm can also be the characteristics of Han Yuefu poetry. A characteristic. For example, in "Jiangnan" "You can pick lotus flowers in the south of the Yangtze River, and there are fields of lotus leaves!" Fish play among the lotus leaves. "The fish plays with the lotus leaf to the east, the fish plays with the lotus leaf to the west, the fish plays with the lotus leaf to the south, the fish plays with the lotus leaf to the north", it describes the fish playing back and forth under the lotus leaf, and implicitly describes the joy of the people picking lotus. This poem goes back and forth, with vivid images. It is bright, the phonology is harmonious, the writing is lively, the language is natural and smooth, and the artistic conception is implicit.
Because Han Yuefu poetry is "sentimental and inspired by sorrow and joy," it has both narrative and lyrical aspects. It is generally detailed in narrative and slightly less lyrical. For example, "The Peacock Flies Southeast" is mostly narrative except for some lyricism in the last chapter; it lays out the scene, details the middle process and abbreviates the beginning and end. For example, the beginning and end of "The Peacock Flies Southeast" are abbreviated in the middle. Detailed description; detailed description of clothing and rituals but brief description of appearance, such as the description of Liu Lanzhi's appearance in "The Peacock Flies Southeast" and the tattered clothes in "Orphan's Journey".
In addition, there are also allegorical poems in Han Dynasty Yuefu. Allegorical poetry is also an important part of the Yuefu narrative poetry of the Han Dynasty. Narration in the form of allegory has become a characteristic of the Yuefu poetry of the Han Dynasty.
The Yuefu fable poems of the Han Dynasty can be divided into two types. One type is self-narrating through the mouths of animals, and the advocating lyrics "Pheasant Class", and the Xianghe poems "Wu Sheng" and "Yu Zhang Xing" all belong to this type. Another type of fable is a dialogue between plants and humans, with two characters appearing in the poem. Song Zihou's "Dong Yaorao" has a dialogue between a virtual peach and plum tree and a Luoyang woman, telling the injustice of broken branches and fallen flowers, and blaming man-made forces for premature youth. These allegorical poems often have strange imaginations, and fish, birds, flowers and trees can also be used as human words, and they are unexpected.
Han Yuefu poetry, in the history of Chinese poetry, is the third important stage of development after the "Book of Songs" and "Chu Ci". With its ingenious title proposition, superb narrative skills, flexible and diverse system, and realistic creative methods, it truly reflects the vast social life of the Han Dynasty and the people's thoughts and feelings. The excellent tradition of realism in Han Dynasty Yuefu played an exemplary role for many poets of later generations. Its five-character and miscellaneous forms mainly promoted the development of poetic style. To this day, there are still many popular poems that are known and sung by people, and the artistic charm of Han Yuefu will become more and more intense as time goes by.