Couplets have a long history, and it is said that they originated from Meng Chang, the master of Shu after the Five Dynasties. His inscription on the Taofu board on the bedroom door reads: "Welcome to Qing Yu in the new year and celebrate the festival in Changchun", which means that the article "inscribed Taofu" (see Shu Lang). This is the earliest couplet in China and the earliest Spring Festival couplets.
Couplets originated in the Qin Dynasty and were called Fu Tao in ancient times. With regard to the earliest couplets in China, Mr. Tan Chan-xue wrote in the fourth issue of Knowledge of Literature and History 199 1 that the earliest couplets in China appeared in the Tang Dynasty. According to the Dunhuang suicide note with volume number Stein 06 10 unearthed from the Tibetan scriptures cave in Mogao grottoes:
Years old: Sanyang began to spread, and the four orders began to open.
Fuqing is new at the beginning, and Shouluyan.
Also: Sanyang returns to the beginning, and the fourth order reaches Kyrgyzstan.
Yan Fu's new day celebrates that life has no boundaries.
Beginning of spring Day: When the copper turbidity begins to celebrate the banquet, the jade method begins to adjust the yang.
In addition to three disasters, Five Blessingg has suffered countless disasters throughout the ages.
Baoji can ward off evil spirits, and Yan Rui can ward off evil spirits.
Beginning of spring □ (Home), Fukiko, Sun Chang.
Also: Sanyang began to spread, and Simeng (Meng) began to open.
□□ Walk over and come to Kyrgyzstan one by one.
Celebrate every year, and there is no disaster every month.
Chicken-evil, Yan Fu Cai Yi.
Guardians guard, ghosts hide and bury.
Around the door book, I am healthy!
Anyway, the origin has become blurred with the changes of history. Anyway, it can be proved that he is a cultural treasure of the Chinese nation! ! Philosophical origin: antithetical couplets are antithetical literature. The parallel symmetry of this language is very similar to the so-called "Tai Chi gives birth to two instruments" in philosophy, that is, everything in the world is divided into two halves of yin and yang symmetry, which are very similar in thinking essence. Therefore, we can say that the philosophical origin and deep-seated national cultural psychology of China's couplets are binary concepts of Yin and Yang. The dualism of yin and yang is the basis of China's ancient world outlook. It is the way of thinking of ancient people in China to grasp things with the binary concept of Yin and Yang. This idea of duality of yin and yang has a long history. The divinatory symbols in the Book of Changes are composed of yin and yang, and the Book of Changes says, "One yin and one yang is the Tao." Laozi also said: "Everything is negative and holds Yang, and it is harmonious to rush." ("Lao Zi" Chapter 42. Xunzi thought: "Heaven and earth combine to create everything, and Yin and Yang combine to change." ("Xunzi?" "Book of Rites" and "Huang Lao Silk Book" say: "There are left and right ways of heaven and earth, yin and yang. "This concept of Yin and Yang is not only an abstract concept, but also widely penetrated into the understanding and explanation of everything in nature and human society in ancient China." Zhouyi? Preface and postscript Oracle biography "There is heaven and earth and then everything, then everything has men and women, then men and women have husband and wife, then husband and wife have father and son, then father and son have ministers, then ministers have ups and downs, and then there are etiquette." In Yi Zhuan, various concrete things are used to symbolize Yin and Yang. Yin represents Kun, earth, female, woman, son, minister, abdomen, lower, north, wind, water, lustre, flowers, black and white, suppleness and so on. Correspondingly, Yang represents dryness, sky, male, father, monarch, head, upper, south, thunder, fire, mountain, fruit, red and yellow, vigor and so on. This ubiquitous concept of yin and yang has penetrated into the subconscious of the Han people, thus becoming the collective unconscious of the nation. The concept of yin and yang is manifested in national psychology, and one of its important characteristics is the persistence and infatuation with things in the form of "two" and "pair". "things are born in two ... and have left and right bodies, each with a concubine." (Zuo Zhuan? "Thirty-two years in Zhao Gong") "The road in the world is just a package." ("Zhuzi School" Volume 93) "Maturity and rebirth are justice in justice. Governing the text, from Taiji to two instruments, is nothing more than nothing; Daily use, cold and heat, day and night, all kinds of personnel-life and death, dignity, wealth, respect, up and down, length, distance, old and new, size, smell, depth, light and shade, all kinds of ends, can not be enumerated. " (Ye Xie: Original Poetry) This national psychology rooted in the dual world outlook of Yin and Yang is one of the deep-seated reasons for the emergence and popularity of antithetical sentences. Many previous discussions have also noticed this connection. "Wen Xin Diao Long? Li Ci: Creation is shaped, and the support must be twofold; God makes sense for use, and things are not isolated. My husband is full of words, and I have to worry about it. You must compete with each other and naturally pair up. ..... Body implants must be two, words and deeds are consistent. ……
Etymology: A standard couplet, the most essential feature of which is "antithesis". When expressed orally, it is verbal confrontation, and when written, it is verbal confrontation. What is the meaning of language duality? Usually we talk about four items: equal number of words, relative parts of speech, flat and oblique contradictions, and the same syntax. The most important of the four items is that the number of words is equal and the contradiction is flat and oblique. The number of words here is equal, which is different from the "number of words" in English. Its essence is syllable equality. That is, one syllable corresponds to one syllable. In English, the words "car" and "jeep" are equal in number, but not in syllable. However, in Chinese, "k?m?ch?" and "j?p?" are equal in number and syllable. The reason why Chinese can achieve "syllable" equality is because Chinese is a language with monosyllabic as the basic unit. Syllables, morphemes and characters are trinity. Every syllable in Chinese has a strong independence and has a certain length and tone. In ancient times, there were four tones: flat, rising, falling and entering. Now there are four tones: rising, falling, rising and falling, which are divided into flat and falling. Flat confrontation is a contradiction. In this way, between morphemes in Chinese (that is, between words), we can establish an antagonistic relationship with equal words or even equal words. In English, even if the name and concept of things can be relative, the number and part of speech of words can be relative, and the sentence patterns of two sentences can be relative, but their syllables are different in length, weak in independence, free to spell and have no tone, so they can't be relative. Couplets are mostly written in words, often written, hung or engraved on other buildings or objects. So the second level of antithesis of couplets is the so-called literal opposition. The relativity of words means that couplets are both language art and decorative art. As decorative art couplets, it requires neatness and symmetry, giving people a harmonious and symmetrical aesthetic feeling. Chinese characters just have the conditions to achieve neat symmetry. They exist in the form of individual squares, square and uniform, occupying an equal spatial position in writing. It is readable and visible. Its square configuration has both aesthetic principles and mechanical requirements. Whether writing horizontally or vertically, it can be dense, neat and beautiful. English, on the other hand, is a phonetic symbol, and each word has different lengths, and it is only phonetic but not ideographic, and it is even more invisible. It can only be arranged horizontally, not vertically, and it is impossible to achieve true symmetry in form. In the following interview, two Chinese and English antitheses with the same meaning are compared to further explain why only Chinese has a real antithesis, while English and other pinyin characters do not.
English: (Shakespeare's famous sentences, arranged in the form of couplets)
Chinese:
Construct a good idea;
Write witty sentences.
English "upper and lower couplets" have the same number of words, the same part of speech and the same sentence pattern, but the syllables are not equal. Reading, because there is no tone, the upper and lower couplets are all the same sound, and there is no cadence brought by leveling. As for writing, "bottom couplet" is two letters less than "top couplet", so it is completely asymmetrical. Readers may wonder, can you find and write an English antithetical sentence with equal syllables and equal writing spacing (equal letters) on the basis of the same number of words, the same part of speech and the same sentence pattern? We can't say absolutely not, but because English syllables, words and morphemes are not trinity, we can only pay attention to one thing and lose the other in practice, even Shakespeare's antithetical sentences are extremely rare in English. And "good ideas" in Chinese; Writing a witty sentence is another matter. You see, the words are the same, the parts of speech are the same, the sentence patterns are the opposite, the syllables are the same, the flat and even words are basically harmonious, but the writing is completely neat and symmetrical. Therefore, English "thinks good thoughts; Write a good hand. " Not couplets, but Chinese "constitutes a beautiful thought; Write a wonderful sentence. "You can call it a couplet.
The road to antithesis: from the perspective of literary history, couplets are gradually evolved from antithetical sentences in ancient poems. This development process has gone through three stages:
The first stage is the dual stage, from the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties to the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In China's ancient poems, some neat antitheses appeared very early. Several ancient ballads that have been handed down to this day have seen their disadvantages. Such as "digging wells to drink water, ploughing fields to eat", "doing at sunrise and resting at sunset" and so on. In the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, antithetical sentences became more common. There are already some neat sentences in the hexagrams of the Book of Changes, such as: "Those who can see can be lame." ("Lu" hexagram "63"), "Go to heaven first, then go to the ground." (Ming Yi's "Shangliu" hexagram) The neat sentences in Yi Zhuan are more common, such as: "Look up at astronomy and look down at geography." ("Declining Cohesion"), "Correspondence with one voice, seeking with the same spirit, wet water and dry fire, cloud following dragon, wind following tiger ... are all according to their own categories." (dry? Classical Biography of China)
There are many antithetical sentences in The Book of Songs in the Spring and Autumn Period. Liu said in the History of Parallel Prose in China: "The law of opposing ancient and modern times is almost perfect in the Book of Songs." He listed examples of correct name pairs, similar pairs, renju pairs, disyllabic pairs, overlapping pairs and disyllabic pairs. Such as: "Qing Er, leisurely in my heart." ("Zheng Feng? Ji Zi), "There are floating elements in the mountains and lotus flowers in the pond." ("Zheng Feng? There are many antithetical sentences in Tao Te Ching. Liu Zeng said: "The methods of correcting right in Tao Te Ching have changed a lot, including serial correction, unfair correction and split-word correction. Some people repeat their words. Anyway, there is something right. " (The History of China Parallel Prose, for example: "What you believe is not beautiful, but what you say is not true. Good people don't argue, and debaters are not good. " (Chapter 8 1) "Independence and changelessness, freedom and danger." (Chapter 22) Look at the antitheses in hundred schools of thought's essays again. Such as: "full loss, modest benefit." ("Shangshu? "Wu Cheng"), "Take a fat horse and go into battle lightly." The Analects of Confucius? "eternal night") "decent people, decent people, and villains are often embarrassed people." ("The Analects? And ") and so on. Cifu, which arose in the Han Dynasty, is a new style that pays attention to literary talent and rhythm. As a rhetorical device with the beauty of neatness, contrast and music, duality has been widely and consciously used in the creation of Fu. For example, Sima Xiangru's "Zi Xufu" has: "Drumming, starting a bonfire; The car follows the route and rides on the team. "
Five-character poems came into being in Han Dynasty and reached its peak in Wei and Jin Dynasties. Among them, the use of antithetical sentences is also more. The antithesis in Han Yuefu is more neat, just like the couplet in later poems. For example, "if young people don't work hard, old people will be sad." ("Long Songs") "The new moon spreads gold, and the cold light shines iron clothes. The general died in a hundred battles, and the strong man returned in ten years. " (Mulan Ci) In the above-mentioned styles, antithetical sentences have the following characteristics: First, they are only used as a rhetorical device, not as a stylistic requirement; Second, the number of words is mostly between three words and seven words; Third, antithesis is very loose, and the number of words, parts of speech and sentence patterns are generally relative, but there is a lack of even antithesis. This is just as Mr. Zhu Guangqian said: "The meaning of husband and wife began early, and the duality of sound was deduced from this." (Chapter 12 of Selected Works of Zhu Guangqian's Aesthetics)
The second stage is a parallel coupling stage. Parallel prose originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty, flourished in Wei and Jin Dynasties, and flourished in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. As can be seen from the name, parallel prose is a dual style, which is mostly composed of antitheses. The continuous use of such antithetical sentences is also called parallelism or parallelism. Liu Xie in Wen Xin Diao Long? Ming poetry's evaluation of parallel prose is that "couples who choose hundreds of words compete for the same price." Take Wang Bo's Preface to Wang Tengting in the Early Tang Dynasty as an example;
When Wei is in September, the sequence belongs to Sanqiu. The water is cold and the pool is clear, and the smoke is purple. Yan Yan likes to walk on the road and watch the scenery to worship Afghanistan. Near the Emperor Changzhou, it is the old fairy temple. Terraces are green and the sky is heavy; Feige is full of blood, and there is no land under it. Heting ancient bamboo, the haunt of poor islands; Gui Dian Lan Gong, the posture of mountains and hills. Embroidered, Yamahara full of vision, Kawasawa full of vision. Yan Lu, the hometown of Zhong Mingding's delicious food; Ge boat maze, green finch Huanglong axis. Rainbow sells raindrops, and the color area is bright. Sunset and lonely Qi Fei, autumn waters and sky are the same color. Fishing boats sing late and resound all over the coast of Peng Li; Yan Zhen was stunned by the cold, and his voice broke Hengyang's pu.
They are all composed of antithetical sentences, among which "the sunset and lonely Qi Fei, autumn water and sky are the same color" is an eternal antithetical sentence. This antithesis is the further development of antithesis in ancient poetry, which has the following three characteristics: First, antithesis is no longer purely a rhetorical device, but has become the main metrical requirement of style. Parallel prose has three characteristics, namely, four or six sentence patterns, antithesis and allusions. Second, the number of dual words has certain rules. Mainly "46" sentence pattern and its variant forms. Mainly include: four-character dual, six-character dual, eight-character dual, cross dual and twelve-character dual. Third, the antithesis is quite skillful, but there are many heavy words (such as "Zhi, Er"), and the tone and rhythm of the antithesis are not fully mature.
The third stage is the legal couple stage. Duality, the antithesis in metrical poems. This style of poetry, also known as modern poetry, was formally formed in the Tang Dynasty, but its origin began in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. During the Cao Wei period, he wrote ten volumes of the Sound and five volumes of the Rhyme, which separated the clear and turbid sound from the palace, the merchants, the horns, the zither and Yu. In addition, Sun Yan also wrote Er Ya Yi Yin, using the method of anti-tangent phonetic notation. He is the founder of arc tangent. However, in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, there was only the rhyme of palace and business, and there was no name of four tones. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, inspired and influenced by the "turn-reading" of Buddhist scriptures, the four-tone theory was established and written as "Sound Spectrum". By reading Buddhist scriptures and applying them to China's poems, it becomes four tones: flat, up, down and inner. At the same time, Zhou Pian wrote Four Tones, and Shen Yue wrote Four Tones Spectrum, which established the theories of Four Tones and Eight Diseases. According to the characteristics of rhythm and musical beauty required by poetry, through the exploration of creative practice, the principle that poetry must be "different in five words, different in rhyme and different in two sentences" is summarized. Therefore, the rhythm of poetry is becoming more and more strict. The prosodic pattern of antithetical sentences has developed from parallel pairs to legal pairs. There are quite neat antitheses in Shen Yue's and Xie Tiao's "Yongming Style" poems. Such as: "the clouds go to the wild, and the water goes back to Jianghan." (Xie Tiao's "New Pavilion Farewell to Fan Lingling Cloud") such as; "Ai Ye Mi Nanpu, Lotus Around the North Building" (Shen Yue's "Ai My Heart") and so on. After the prevalence of "four tones" and "eight diseases" in Qi and Liang Dynasties, the four tones were divided into two categories: flat (flat) and peaceful (up, down and entering), which not only gave rise to the concept of flat tone, but also gradually summarized that the flat tone of each poem should change and the flat tone between poems. At the same time, it is found that the use of five or seven words in each poem is more musical and rhythmic than that of four or six words. In a poem, the use of parallelism and prose sentences can also show the intricate beauty of language. In this way, from the "new style poetry" with a little rhyme in the Qi and Liang Dynasties, after more than one hundred years of development, to the Tang Dynasty, metrical poetry reached a strict and accurate stage and became one of the main forms of Tang poetry. Generally, five-character or seven-character metrical poems are all eight sentences, and there are two couplets in the middle, which are called parallel prose and necklaces. They must be opposite, and the sentence pattern, level and meaning are all required to be relative. This is a standard couple. Take Du Fu's Ascending the Mountain as an example;
The wind is fast and high, the ape cries sadly, and the birds are circling in the white sand.
The endless trees are rustling leaves, and the Yangtze River is rolling unpredictably.
Li in the sad autumn scenery, a wanderer all the year round, lives alone on the high platform in today's illness.
Hardship, pain, hatred, heartache and fatigue are a thick layer of dust in my wine.
The jaw joint and neck joint of this poem, "leaves fall like the waves of a waterfall, and I watch the long river always roll forward." "I came from three thousand miles away. Sad this autumn, with my sorrow for a hundred years, I climbed this high alone "is extremely stable." Far better than the parallel prose dialogues in parallel prose. In addition to five or seven-character poems, Tang poetry also has three rhymes, six rhymes and arranged rhymes, and the couplets in the middle are also antithetical.
Couples also have three characteristics: first, antithesis is the metrical requirement of style; Second, the number of words changed from even sentences to odd sentences, and finally fixed at five or seven words; Third, the antithesis is accurate and stable, and the tone is mature.
To sum up, antithetical sentences in China's literature have gone through at least two or three thousand years, including three stages: parallelism, parallelism and regularity. The principle of symmetry was extended from meaning to sound (Chapter 12 of Selected Works of Zhu Guangqian's Aesthetics), which reached its acme in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. The antithesis skills of poets in the Tang Dynasty have been fully developed. If the couplets are compared to the fetus conceived in the poem Mother, then the fetus at this time has been fully developed and will be born soon.
[Edit this paragraph] {Other views on the origin of couplets}
Couplets originated in the Qin Dynasty and were called Fu Tao in ancient times. With regard to the earliest couplets in China, Mr. Tan Chan-xue wrote in the fourth issue of Knowledge of Literature and History 199 1 that the earliest couplets in China appeared in the Tang Dynasty. According to the Dunhuang suicide note with volume number Stein 06 10 unearthed from the Tibetan scriptures cave in Mogao grottoes:
Years old: Sanyang began to spread, and the four orders began to open.
Fuqing is new at the beginning, and Shouluyan.
Again: three yang □ beginning, four orders to Kyrgyzstan.
Yan Fu's new day celebrates that life has no boundaries.
Beginning of spring Day: When the copper turbidity begins to celebrate the banquet, the jade method begins to adjust the yang.
In addition to three disasters, Five Blessingg has suffered countless disasters throughout the ages.
Baoji can ward off evil spirits, and Yan Rui can ward off evil spirits.
Beginning of spring □ (Home), Fukiko, Sun Chang.
Also: Sanyang began to spread, and Simeng (Meng) began to open.
□□ Walk over and come to Kyrgyzstan one by one.
Celebrate every year, and there is no disaster every month.
Chicken-evil, Yan Fu Cai Yi.
Guardians guard, ghosts hide and bury.
Around the door book, I am healthy!
In fact, this is only the earliest existing couplet. The couplet originated from the rhyme, but it is actually a misinformation phenomenon, which is Ji Xiaolan's wishful speculation (see the opening cloud of Conghua, one of the couplet volumes: "I once heard Mr. Ji Wenda say that the couplet began in Fu Tao, and the couplet of Mengchang, Sichuan, Qing Yu and Changchun is the oldest." ),
Zhao Zhixin, the author of Sound Spectrum, clearly pointed out: "Two sentences are connected, and four sentences are unique (sentences), which began in the Six Dynasties, and the Yuan (original) is not close." Wang Fuzhi said that couplets originated from the theory of metrical poetry, just like "decapitation and gouging out feet, harming people's physiology"-Qing history words.
Couplets originated from the symmetry of characters and sounds in China, and appeared before the Zhou Dynasty. With the development of papermaking and calligraphy, couplets have become an independent style.
Mr. Du Huaiqi reiterated that "it is the antithetical couplets that complete parallel prose and rhythmic poetry", and it is precisely because of the dual layout of the couplets that the four tones can be dual and the so-called parallel prose can be formed. Four tones are summed up by complete induction,
The leveling is induced by incomplete induction (see He's Yong Ming Zhi Jian), and Chen advocates that "the metrical rules should be followed, but the technique of fighting for stability should be used flexibly, regardless of the four tones of leveling." Chen Deshu, president of Jiangsu Couplets Association, advocates that couplets should be divided into scattered couplets, connected couplets and French couplets. Professor Zhou Xi (Wei Fu) of Sun Yat-sen University advocates that the compatibility of materials should be considered in creation. These are all valuable experiences.