Among all literary styles, poetry is the one with the earliest origin and the longest history. Prose, novels and other literary works can only be circulated by written records. The earliest poems were written by people orally, which can be passed down by word of mouth, not by words. As recorded in Zuo Zhuan, the poems satirizing Huayuan by the civilian workers who built the city in Song Dynasty were all written orally, and those civilian workers were illiterate. Of course, this is not the earliest poem. The earliest poems can be traced back to primitive society. The origin of poetry is related to labor. There is such a record in the ancient book Huai Nan Zi Dao Ying Xun of the Western Han Dynasty:
Today, those who hold big trees were called "bad promises" before, and then they should respond, which is also a song of persuasion.
Many people carry big logs together, coordinate everyone's pace with chanting songs, and encourage everyone to make contributions. The song is very rhythmic. If you add some content and interesting words to the prison, it will be original poetry. Mr. Lu Xun once called this labor chant the earliest poem of "sailing in the air" and humorously said that it was a school of "sailing in the air". In addition, the origin of poetry is also related to religion and entertainment. The ancient book Lv Chunqiu Ancient Music records:
Yesterday, Ge Zhile, three people fuck the oxtail and sing.
Ge Shitian is a legendary ancient tribe. Their religious entertainment activities are three people holding the oxtail, singing and dancing, and the song has eight paragraphs. The lyrics have not been handed down, but they are inferred from the themes of the same book, such as black birds, water plants, and grain distribution. The content is about totem worship, myths and legends, and agricultural production. In ancient times, there was a saying that "black birds gave birth to merchants". Businessmen regard the "black bird" (swallow) as a totem, and the "black bird" here may be a similar myth and legend. "Vegetation" and "grain" are obviously related to animal husbandry and agriculture. These lyrics are primitive poems, but they do not exist independently, but are combined with music and dance. This situation can still be seen from some primitive people in the world now. Poetry first broke away from dance, then gradually broke away from melody and became a poem for reading and reading, but it still retained its musicality, that is, rhythm and rhythm. Poetry, also known as "poetry", illustrates its relationship with music.
When China's earliest poems originated and what they looked like are not clear because of lack of evidence. The Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu Yue in the Eastern Han Dynasty recorded an ancient ballad:
Break the bamboo and continue the bamboo, fly to the soil to kill.
"Mi" is the word "meat". Basically, it means: cut bamboo down to make a slingshot and use it to shoot mud balls to kill animals. Legend has it that this is a ballad in the era of the Yellow Emperor, but it cannot be verified. It comes from an ancient source and is credible. In addition, there are some broken sentences of ancient songs in ancient books, which are difficult to distinguish between true and false and have research value. Fortunately, as early as the 6th century BC, China compiled the first book of poetry, The Book of Songs, which had a great influence on the development of later poetry. It was actually the source of China's poetry.
The Book of Songs was written in the mid-Spring and Autumn Period, and contains 305 poems about 500 years from the early Western Zhou Dynasty (1 1 century BC) to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period (6th century BC). These poems are mainly produced in the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Hanshui River basins, including today's Shandong, Henan, Anhui, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and northern Hubei.
The Book of Songs is divided into three parts: style, elegance and ode. Feng 160 poems, Ya 105 poems and Ode to 40 poems. These three parts are different in content, form and style, and their literary values are also different. Here is a brief introduction to classification.
1 Shi Feng
Wind poetry is also called national wind. "Wind" is a folk tune, and "Wind Poetry" is a folk song all over the country. The following poems are divided into:,, Yi [humble], Yan [Yang], Wei, Wang, Zheng, Qi, Wei, Tang, Qin, Chen, Qi, Cao, Yi [Bin] and so on. The national style is the collective creation of the lower class. "Hungry people sing about their food, while laborers sing about their things" (He Xiu's Biography of the Ram, which explains the words) directly reflects people's life and emotional feelings, with vivid language and lively form, which has high literary value and is the most essential part of the Book of Songs. According to its ideological content, it can be divided into three categories.
(1) Poetry reflecting love and married life
Love and marriage are one of the important contents of human life, which are prone to all kinds of entanglements and trigger emotional waves. This kind of poem is the most in "National Style". Such as "Feng Wei Papaya" (the words in brackets are translated today, the same below):
Give me a papaya, (you give me a papaya,
Reward it with Qiong Yao. I will give you a piece of jade.
The bandit report is not a simple reward,
Always felt good. Love each other forever )
This is very similar to the situation in which some ethnic minority young men and women exchange personal items to show their love. Another example is "Zhao Nan Youye is dead":
There are dead birds in the field [j ū n [j ū n]] (hunting a fragrant roe in the field,
Baozhi Bai Mao. Wrap it in white thatch.
There is a girl who falls in love with spring and a girl who wants to get married.
Ji lured it. The boy pursued her.
There is a park in the forest, and the forest is full of young trees.
There are dead deer in the wild. There is a dead deer in the field.
White grass is pure and tied with white grass.
There are women like jade. A beautiful girl is lovely.
"Shu and Tuotuoxi" came quietly and leisurely,
I feel sorry for myself, don't pull my scarf,
Don't let your long-haired dog
Bark, too "screaming")
The young hunter caught a deer, which was a capable performance and easily won the admiration of girls. The girl clearly accepted the boy's courtship, but warned him to behave himself, not to be reckless, not to let the dog bark, so as not to attract others' attention, which shows that the girl is shy and careful in her first love. There are poems describing the feelings of lovelorn in The Book of Songs, such as Zheng Feng Cunzi:
He is cunning and naive, (cunning enemy,
Don't talk to me. Don't talk to me again.
Because of you, Victoria,
I can't eat. I can't eat any more.
He is a cunning boy, a cunning enemy,
Don't eat with me. Don't have dinner with me again.
Because of you, Victoria,
I can't rest. I can't sleep. )
I don't know why they don't get along. The man ignores it in a rage and the woman is anxious. Poetry uses a girl's tone, and attachment and admiration are beyond words. Marriage tragedy, the ancients also have, "Feng Weiman" wrote this content. In the poem, a girl is credulous of a man's courtship and is abandoned after marriage. The third paragraph is about the inner pain of a woman after being abandoned:
Mulberry leaves haven't fallen, (when mulberry leaves haven't fallen,
Its leaves are very fertile. How fresh its leaves are.
Jade dove, alas, those turtledoves,
Do not eat mulberries; Never eat mulberries;
Yu's daughter, alas, those girls,
There is nothing to worry about. Never fall in love with a man.
If a man loves a woman,
Still can say; Get rid of her at any time;
If a woman loves a man,
You can't say it. It's hard to get rid of )
Next, the woman married a man, went to bed early and got up late for three years, and her life improved, so the man abandoned her. This poem shows women's contradictory, resentful and helpless feelings incisively and vividly.
(2) Poetry reflecting the life and feelings of working people under class exploitation and oppression.
July is a representative of this kind of poem, which describes the working life of serfs from spring ploughing to mulberry picking, hunting, autumn harvest and winter. The whole poem is full of hardships and bitterness. The first paragraph of this poem says:
July is full of fire. (In July, Mars sets in the west.
We prepare clothes for September. Winter clothes were issued in September.
On the first day, the wind blows, and in the middle of winter, the cold wind crackles.
A cold snap hit in December. People are shivering with cold in the twelfth month.
No clothes, no brown, tattered clothes,
Why did you die? How to spend the end of this year!
On the third day, we began to prepare farm tools for the first month.
On the fourth day, I stood on tiptoe and lifted my feet to the ground in February.
Busy with my wife and children,
Deliver food to the fields in the south.
Tian Hao [Jù n Jun] is very happy. Tianguan was very happy to see it. )
The names of the seasons in the poem are based on the ancient divination calendar: one day is equivalent to November, two days to December, three days to January and four days to February. Tian Tian was an official who supervised serf labor, so obviously, labor was forced. The whole poem consists of eight paragraphs, describing the life of ancient working people for one year. Other poems, such as Cut Tan and Storytelling in Feng Wei, directly accuse the exploiters of "eating and drinking for nothing" and "rats" and make a voice of resistance.
(3) Poems satirizing the decadent life of rulers
For example, Wind, Wall and Potts:
There are thorns on the wall.
Don't slap me. I can't sweep it off.
If Zhong Yang [Guo U is enough], the rumors in the palace,
There is no way. I can't say.
You can talk, and if you say it,
It's ugly. That's really ugly)
It is said that this poem satirizes the incest scandal of Wei family in the Spring and Autumn Period. Wei's wife married a woman of Qi for her son. Seeing her beauty, he took it for himself. This is Xuan Jiang. After Wei's death, Xuan Jiang had an affair with Wei's illegitimate child and gave birth to five children. This poem is a satire on this matter (see Zuo Zhuan Gong Min's Second Year). Whether this poem was written for the Wei family is unknown now, but there is no doubt that it is scolding the decadent life of the rulers, and such scandals abound. The poem "Wind Rat" scolds the ruler: "Rats have skins, but people have no tools. People don't have equipment, why not die! " Look at that mouse with skin. Some people have no morals. Such a person might as well die!
2 Yashi
Most of these poems reflect the life, thoughts and feelings of the aristocratic class. Among them, there are points of elegance and Xiaoya. Daya is mostly poems in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, while Xiaoya is mostly poems from the late Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period. Elegance is mostly a hymn to the luxurious life of the ruling class; Xiaoya is mainly a poem full of resentment, expressing the dissatisfaction of the lower nobility. In style, elegance is graceful and elegant, and poetry is not strong; Xiaoya is lively and has high artistic value. For example, the article "Pick the EU" in Xiaoya has always been praised. It is about a man who went to war with the armadillo [Xi m: ny ǔ n] (that is, the Huns of later generations), experienced a long and hard life, and finally returned to his hometown.
I'm leaving, (recalling when I went to war,
Willow is yiyi. Willow also expressed their farewell feelings.
Today I thought, now that I'm back,
It's raining hard. It snows heavily.
Walk slowly, step by step on the road,
With hunger and thirst Thirsty throat, hungry.
My heart is sad, my heart is full of sadness,
I don't know. I'm sad. No one understands my sadness. )
This is a very touching lyric poem. Xiaoya's poems are similar in style to the national style, and some of them are folk songs.
3 ode
Ode is praise, which is a musical song used by kings and princes for sacrifices and major ceremonies. Ode poems are divided into three parts: 365 poems, 438+0 poems dedicated to Zhou; Four songs of truffles are dedicated to the princes of Lu. Five Shang Dynasty carols were used by the princes of Song Dynasty to praise their ancestors. Because the Song Dynasty was a vassal state established by merchants after the King of Wu destroyed the merchants, it was called ode to the Shang Dynasty. Ode to poetry is the song of the ruler's temple, so it is plain and poetic. They are the parts with the lowest literary value in The Book of Songs, but they have historical value.
The Book of Songs was called "Poetry" in the pre-Qin period, and Confucius called it "Poetry 300", without the name of "Jing". It was not until the Han Dynasty that it was called The Book of Songs, which became one of the sacred books of feudal society and had a lofty position in feudal society and culture. After the Sui Dynasty, the imperial examination system was established, and the Book of Songs was one of the examination contents. Scholars have studied it carefully and are very familiar with it. The Book of Songs established the realistic tradition of China's poetry. Poets in all previous dynasties consciously studied the Book of Songs, inherited this tradition, and reflected the social reality with their own creations. For example, Chen Ziang, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and other poets in the Tang Dynasty actively advocated the spirit of irony and resentment in The Book of Songs, advocated using poetry to interfere in politics, and opposed art for art's sake, which made their poems gain immortal value. Many words in the Book of Songs are still in use today, such as "the beauty of harps and harps", "the occupation of magpies' nests", "learning from others' strengths", "the joy of housewarming", "being cautious" and "reciprocated with peaches and plums", which shows the far-reaching influence of the Book of Songs.