Analysis of the causes of Han Yu’s dangerous and strange poetic style
Author: Zhang Yu
Han Yu (768-824), courtesy name Tuizhi, was born in Heyang (now Mengxian County, Henan Province) ), one of the most accomplished writers in poetry during the Mid-Tang Dynasty, and the leader of the Han and Mencius schools of poetry. Regarding his poems, Han Yu said this: "I would like to have two wings and be captured in the eight wastelands. The spirit suddenly communicates, and all kinds of strange things enter my intestines." ("Tiao Zhang Ji") This is consistent with Huangfu Shi's "I Watch the Poems of Han Libu" There are hundreds of poems, and their driving momentum is like setting off thunder and lightning, galloping between the sky and the earth, and the shape of things changes so strangely that you can't help but be inspired and take a breath." ("Preface to the Collection of Liuzhou") is basically consistent. From his poems, it is not difficult to see his strange style of using strange words, making strange sentences, and creating strange scenes. The strange and dangerous aesthetic characteristics of Han Yu's poetry are unique in the history of poetry. As for its causes, except for a brief mention in "History of Chinese Literature" edited by Yuan Xingpei, few people have discussed it so far. So what causes Han Yu's poetry to be so dangerous? I think this has a great relationship with the popularity of Taoism at that time and Han Yu's life experience.
1. Taoism and dangers
Influenced by the concept of family status in the Six Dynasties, the Li royal family in the Tang Dynasty respected Li Er, the founder of Taoism, as their ancestor in order to improve the status of their surname Li. Therefore, Taoism was called the "state religion" in the Tang Dynasty. It has always been promoted and helped by the royal family, and its development trend is extremely strong. Reach the ultimate level in Kaiyuan Tianbao Room. At this time, the Confucian sage Zhou Gong was pushed out of the academy, and Laozi took his place. Although Confucius was crowned king, he became Laozi's attendant. By the mid-Tang Dynasty, the country's situation took a turn for the worse, with economic decline, political corruption, and frequent wars. As a result, everyone from the princes and nobles to the common people lost confidence in this messy social reality and became tired of it. Most of them took medicine and made elixirs, hoping to use the illusory happiness of fairyland to offset the pain of reality.
Han Yu, who was in the middle Tang Dynasty, also had a very complicated world view. On the one hand, as a government official, he tried to exclude Buddhists and elders, revitalized Confucianism, and wanted to bring the country into the orthodox track of ritual and music culture; on the other hand, as an independent As an individual, he needs to express his personality, find himself, and return to his own nature. At this time, he had to find a way out in Taoist culture, which advocates nature. This led to the split of Han Yu's literary personality. On the one hand, he used prose to elaborate the life ideals and social aspirations of Confucian intellectuals; on the other hand, he expressed his personal feelings in the field of poetry. On this basis, he inherited and developed Taoist aesthetic theory and imagery. Zhuangzi said in "The Theory of Equality of Things": "Li and Xi Shi are weird and weird, and Taoism is one." From this, we can see that in the balance of "Tao", all things are not divided into good and evil, and are not divided into beauty and ugliness. Therefore, this kind of thinking enabled Han Yu to break through the Confucian dogma that "the son does not talk about strange things, strength, chaos, and gods", and logically introduced strange scenes into the field of poetry.
However, realistic objects are often mediocre, so Han Yu introduced the colorful, magnificent and grotesque Taoist immortal system in Taoism into his poems. For example, it is written in "Luhun Mountain Fire": "The mountains are wild and the valleys are fiercely swallowing each other; the wind is furious and the wind is endless, grinding the fire to burn itself, and there is a sound that scares Mo Yuan in the night. The sky jumps and the earth shakes the world, and the looming cliffs shine brightly. "The fever is so high that the four walls are scorched and the ghosts are dead and have no way to escape..." It is not difficult to see from the poem that Han Yu turned the winter forest fire into an earth-shattering story of ghosts and gods. But at the same time, we should also see that Han Yu did not simply borrow Taoist images, but processed the images in accordance with his own emotional and aesthetic needs, thus enriching them with new connotations. Therefore, I feel that the greatest influence on Han Yu's "dangerous" poetic style is not the Taoist image and immortal system, but the Taoist aesthetic category of all things being unified into Tao.
2. Life Sufferings
The various encounters in Han Yu's life are also one of the reasons that led to his dangerous poetic style. Han Yu was orphaned when he was young and was raised by his brother and sister-in-law. When he was thirteen years old, his brother died again, and he followed his sister-in-law Zheng to the funeral for thousands of miles without any relatives or friends to help him. These childhood sufferings will inevitably plant the seeds of relying on oneself in everything in Han Yu's young mind, and will also greatly enhance Han Yu's desire to get ahead. Of course, this also sharpened Han Yu's character, so Han Yu said in "Answers to the Marquis": "Young servants are fond of learning. Apart from the Five Classics, there is no book written by a hundred scholars who has heard it without seeking it, and who has received it without reading it." Young Han Yu I use this spirit of hard study to fight against the "heavenly calamity on my family and all kinds of disasters". ("Essays in Honor of Mrs. Zheng")
Suffering not only prompted Han Yu to study hard, but also taught Han Yu patience. So when Han Yu, who was eighteen or nineteen years old, went to Chang'an, the "capital of fame and wealth" ("Fu Zhi Fu") to seek fame, he endured the pain of failure several times. In order to pay for Chang'an's expensive expenses, Han Yu, who was "too poor to survive" ("Epitaphic of Ma Qun, a young eunuch in the palace") "worshiped the King of Peiping in front of Ma Qun as an old friend" ("Epitaphic of Ma Qun, a young eunuch in the palace"). He ended up living under someone else's roof, begging for food and clothing. His hard work paid off, and Han Yu finally became a Jinshi, but his official career seemed to be far away from Han Yu, because he was once again blocked from the erudite and grand speeches of the Ministry of Officials. In order to become an official, Han Yu endured people's ridicule, rejection and insults, and eventually fell into the ranks of the elite. He paid homage everywhere, bowed his head and listened to the dignitaries, begging for mercy. After leaving Chang'an, Han Yu served as the Bianzhou shogunate, but he was unwilling to do so and became a supervisory censor through the camp. Han Yu, who thought he had a way to serve the country, encountered a situation where "the ambition of the court is to be a blue cloud, and the background is a white-headed prisoner." end. In June of the 19th year of Zhenyuan (803), the winter solstice of the first year of Yuanhe (806), Han Yu was demoted to Yangshan, and later he was on standby in Chenzhou.
During this period, he created more than 60 works, including 23 dangerous poems, thus pushing the dangerous poetry style to the extreme.
Why did Han Yu write a large number of dangerous poems during this period? Why can we write dangerous and strange poems so well? The author believes that the secret of Han Yu's creation of dangerous and strange poems, which appeared immediately after the demotion of Yangshan and achieved such great achievements, is that Han Yu has a deep "Di Yang mark" engraved on his soul. The so-called "Di Yang mark" is Refers to Han Yu's mentality and feelings during this "deprecating experience" in Diyang. The "mark of Diyang" noted in the poem refers to the things described in the poem on the way to Diyang and its demotion to Diyang Mountain, the dangers and monsters on the way to Diyang and its demotion to Diyang Mountain that are exaggerated in the poem, and the relegation vented in the poem. The resentment and injustice of his ministers. This "mark of the dripping sun" not only runs through the entire process of Han Yu's poems during his first exile to the south, but also profoundly affected the poet's poetry style after returning to Beijing. It is recognized by ancient and modern scholars as representative works of Han Yu's dangerous and strange poems, such as "Lu Hun" Famous and dangerous poems such as "Mountain Fire", "Meng Dongye's Lost Son", "Red Teng Battle Song", and "Remembering Dreams" were all written in the early years of Yuanhe after Yangshan was demoted and returned to Beijing. Most of these masterpieces stir up the "hot air" of Lingnan and are engraved with the deep "mark of the dripping sun", making them bizarre and shocking. It was this "mark of the dripping sun" that enabled Han Yu to find a unique way in poetry creation, stand out in the poetry world of the Mid-Tang Dynasty when hundreds of flowers bloomed, and then became the originator of the Chinese school of sinister poetry.
First of all, the frustrated life and depressed mentality of being relegated triggered the formation of his feelings of injustice in his poems. Han Yu served as the censor in the winter of the 19th year of Zhenyuan. Later, he discovered that there were serious shortcomings in the government. He was worried and couldn't help but laugh at things. Soon after, he asked for orders for the people and was demoted to the Yangshan Order. Later, he was "moved" to Jiangling and served as Fa Cao to join the army. His complex mentality of noble aspirations intertwined with frustrated life, loyalty to the emperor and unreliable talent made him full of resentment, and he had to write poems to express his feelings and complain about his injustice. In the past few years, Han Yu's life was in a state of turmoil. He had no place to complain about the unfair treatment given to him by the rulers, and he could not vent the melancholy and anger that lingered in his heart directly, so he had to empathize with things. On the one hand, he displaced his feelings, impressions and emotions about some sinister powerful people and their minions to the dangerous things in nature; on the other hand, he displaced his feelings and emotions about his own rough situation. on external objects that are similar to it. This is the crystallization of "emotion is derived from the sense of things, and literature is derived from emotion". The sinister and ghostly images are infused with the poet's thoughts and emotions of grief and indignation.
Secondly, the unusual scenery he saw on the way to Diyang triggered his rich and strange imagination. The strange customs and customs of Lingnan inspired his creative consciousness of seeking novelties. During Han Yu's trip, he not only passed through Hunan, but also sailed on the "mighty" and "empty turbid waves" of Dongting Lake. When he entered Guangdong from Linwu, he climbed high mountains and dangerous ridges; while taking a boat from Lianzhou to Yangshan, Experience the beauty of the Three Gorges of Lianjiang River, the rapid water of Lianjiang River, and the unique climate of Yangshan Mountain. On the way from Yangshan to Jiangling, we stayed in Chenzhou for three months and visited the scenic spots and historic sites on the way to Jiangling. The strange mountains and rivers in the south aroused the creative passion of Han Yu, who has a curious personality. The combination of curious personality and miserable mood prompted the poet to extend his writing style more into the strange and strange natural scenery. Han Yu passed through Hunan when he was demoted to Yang. Hunan not only preserved the myths and legends of Emperor Yan, Shun, his second concubine, and Qu Yuan, but also preserved a strong witchcraft tradition because Hunan was originally part of Chu. "The other names of witchcraft are Tanjiao and Shijiao. ... This sect is the most prosperous in Hunan Province, practiced by both men and women. It prays to gods to drive away diseases." Han Yu wrote in "In Honor of Zhang Yuan, Henan Foreign Languages", "Condemnation of Ghosts" and " The above situation has been reflected in "Chenzhou Praying for Rain". At the same time, Yangshan, where Han Yu lived in exile, was relatively backward economically and culturally, and had many strange customs that were difficult for the Central Plains people to understand. It is certain that the myths and legends of Hunan, shamanism, and the strange customs of Yangshan inspired Han Yu's sense of curiosity, and also played a certain role in promoting Han Yu's writing of dangerous and strange poems. Some of them have been reflected in the poetry creation at that time, such as "Feelings in the County House", "Sending Benevolent Masters", "Sending Spiritual Masters", "Liu Sheng's Poems", etc.
Finally, the hard life of being demoted to Yangshan Station triggered his magical fantasy. The leisure life of being demoted provided him with time guarantee for writing dangerous poems. When people are in difficulty, they are most likely to have illusions. Han Yu's life of chasing his ministers on the way to Yangshan and his life of being demoted to Yangshan were the most impoverished and abject stages of his life. Therefore, a kind of "illusory world" can be seen everywhere in Han Yu's dangerous poems. The illusory world in Korean poetry is more of a shadow of the secular society on earth. This adds an ethereal and bizarre atmosphere to the poem.
To sum up, I believe that the formation of Han Yu's dangerous poetic style is the result of the simultaneous effects of his personal experiences and the prosperity of Taoism. The psychological trauma caused by his personal experiences is the direct cause, and the Taoist aesthetic system is the theoretical support for breaking through "the child does not talk about monsters, power, chaos, and gods". It should be said that his life experiences, especially being demoted to Yangshan Mountain, are the most fundamental reasons for the formation of the dangerous poetry style.
Bibliography:
Yuan Xingpei's "History of Chinese Literature"
Qian Dongfu's "Han Yu"
Xiao Zhanpeng's "Research on the Han and Mencius Schools of Poetry" < /p>
Tang Xiaofan "Research on Tang Literary Thoughts"
Zhang Shaokang "History of Chinese Literary Theory Criticism"
Chen Yan Li Hongchun "Poetry of the Tang Dynasty in the Context of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism"
Zhang Yu is a teacher in the Chinese Department of Zhoukou Normal University in Henan Province.
——Please adopt it in time if you are satisfied——
>>>Your adoption is my greatest encouragement<<<