From the establishment of the Tang Dynasty in June18 to the collapse of the Dynasty in 907, there was war almost every year, either internal rebellion or war with neighboring countries.
People in the Tang Dynasty had a strong spirit of "martial arts" and their personalities were not as distorted as those of later literati, so writing poems on the theme of "frontier fortress" was the favorite thing for these literati who could not go into battle to kill the enemy.
However, there are some obvious differences in the characteristics of these frontier poems, including the early, middle and late stages.
From the early Tang Dynasty to the prosperous Tang Dynasty: from the pride of Jingping to the desire to make contributions, the land of the Tang Dynasty was established in a series of wars, and Tang Jun's fame was also obtained through one bloody battle after another. Therefore, at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Tang people were extremely open-minded. In the face of those forces that threatened them, they did not lie dormant in the early days of the dynasty, but took the initiative to attack.
This is especially obvious when facing nomadic peoples such as Turks.
Because there was a short-lived Sui Dynasty between the Tang Dynasty and the Six Dynasties, wars were frequent, so people felt far away from Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. In fact, the difference between the two is less than 40 years, so the style of writing in the early Tang Dynasty was inherited from the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
The style of writing in the Northern and Southern Dynasties is notoriously weak, especially in the Southern Dynasties, where both folk songs and court poems talk about romantic affairs. Although Emperor Wen once praised the vigorous style of writing in the north, Yang Di returned to court poetry and chanted the artistic conception of "Moonlight on a Spring River".
Therefore, after the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, most literati still liked to ridicule the wind and make love to the moon, which was extremely inconsistent with the weather at the beginning of the dynasty.
However, during the Zhenguan period, a courtier who was not famous for his poems wrote an exciting poem, that is, Wei Zhi's View of Shu Huai Chu.
This poem belongs to "Yuefu Poetry", which was originally a military music with drums on horseback, not a "frontier poem" that later appeared in metrical poems.
The Central Plains is still fighting for deer, which is about Rong Xuan. Generosity remains the same without vertical and horizontal planning.
The first four sentences are as majestic as the iron horse of Jin Ge. Aspiring young people joined the army, controlled the frontier and gained a reputation in troubled times. This was the frontier fortress wind in the early Tang Dynasty.
After that, I wrote about the prosperity of war:
The emperor drove the horse out with a scepter and closed the door. Please take me to South Vietnam, and I will go to Dong Fan with my poems.
These words are quite heroic, but they actually inherit the character of Wei and Jin Dynasties and can be compared with Cao Zhi's white horse.
When Cao Zhi wrote White Horse, he wrote the following words:
Feathers come from the north, and horses climb the embankment. The dragon drove to the Huns, and the left looked around and led Xianbei.
Wei Zhi's poems are not lost to Cao Zhi in momentum and style. What we can see from them is not a lament about the border incident, but a strong feeling about Jing Ping Yu.
What is this behavior for? This is the difference between the early Tang Dynasty and the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
Wei Zhi made it very clear:
Life is full of passion, fame and fortune will be discussed again.
This is actually like Cao Zhi's white horse:
Forget the national disaster at the risk of life, and suddenly feel life and death.
This kind of poem is undoubtedly very suitable for the Tang Dynasty at that time, so a new atmosphere appeared in the style of writing, which is Shen Deqian's evaluation in Tang poetry:
This is the origin of noble spirit and noble bone, which is transformed from the habit of depression and prosperity before the Tang Dynasty.
As a result, frontier poems spread, and the Tang Dynasty also entered a prosperous stage.
Frontier poems were very popular in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, and became a major genre that was not lost to pastoral and landscape. Poets in this period had more or less works on this theme.
The frontier poems in the prosperous Tang Dynasty lost their former spirit of "no utility" and turned to a desire of "making contributions".
For example, Li Bai, who is famous for his elegance, and Wang Wei, who is famous for his mountains and rivers.
Wang Wei was named by Su Dongpo as "painting in poetry, poetry in painting". Generally speaking, his poems are idyllic and Zen, so they are called "Shi Fo".
But there are bodhisattvas with low eyebrows, and naturally there are Vajra who glower. "Fighting alone for thousands of miles, you can crush thousands of troops with your bare hands" comes from Wang Wei's Old General.
If Wang Wei still has a little "spirit of home and country", then the utilitarian heart in Li Bai's works is even heavier.
Li Bai's frontier poems are relatively few in number, but they are basically full of the desire to make contributions, such as:
I hope that the sword hanging around my waist can quickly pacify the border and serve my country. When he successfully drew Lin Ting, he was unique to Huopiao Yao. Emperor Xian of Han raised his sword and called General Li. Go forward bravely, and the demon breath of World War I will be clean. These works are heroic, but more of them contain the desire to serve the country and make meritorious deeds.
This is related to the national conditions of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. The imperial examination just rose, and the clan gradually declined. However, from the actual situation, it is still very difficult to obtain official positions through imperial examinations, especially the "Jinshi" examination.
Under the influence of martial spirit, it became a dream to be promoted by military achievements. Although not everyone can join the army, it does not prevent literati from "shouting slogans" in the form of poetry.
Therefore, the frontier fortress works in this period are optimistic, and it seems that they will be invincible as soon as they enter the battlefield.
For example:
Gao Shi: it is difficult to jump into the field, but you believe in horseshoes leisurely. Cen Can: It has cooled the savage leader's heart. You will no longer need a real fight! We are waiting for the news of victory in Xiguan! . Wang Changling: Ming Xing Chi sealed the sword and said that he would take Loulan overnight. During this period, the Tang Dynasty was powerful enough to ignore any opponent, even dared to take the initiative to attack, wiped out the threat at the source, and even gave domestic literati a sense of heroism.
They regard going to the battlefield as an ambition, even though many of them have never seen a fierce battlefield in their lives.
However, after personally experiencing the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang people's view of war was reversed.
From the middle Tang Dynasty to the late Tang Dynasty: from the reflection on the war to the despair of the war, it is different from the struggle between the Tang Dynasty and foreign forces. Its home is always peaceful. The Anshi Rebellion directly plunged the Tang Dynasty into half of the country, and the whole country was in chaos. All the people of Zhu Zigui in the Manchu Dynasty fell down and died, let alone ordinary people struggling at the bottom of society.
It was such a war that made the Tang people living in the prosperous Tang Dynasty wake up instantly. So this is the original appearance of war.
It can be seen that even after the Anshi Rebellion, the style of frontier poems in the middle Tang Dynasty changed obviously. The poet no longer pursues political achievements, but mainly describes the psychology of frontier soldiers and their concern for the bottom of society.
At this time, many famous sentences with delicate feelings emerged, such as:
Yi Lee: I don't know where to play the flute, but I want to look forward to my hometown overnight. Zhang Ji: Poor Guanshan Road, Wan Li. The bones are full of autumn grass every year. Ling Huchu: I don't want to look back at my hometown until I have collected the land of the Yellow River. In such a poem, the emotion obviously changed from the development in the prosperous Tang Dynasty to introversion, and the personal fame was replaced by the sadness of the garrison and the ladies, and even used to criticize "militancy" and point the pen at political affairs.
The change of emotion has obviously changed the genre of frontier fortress poems. Relatively speaking, the ballad style in the prosperous Tang Dynasty is more suitable for venting personal feelings, while the meticulous tempering of metrical poems is more likely to impress readers' hearts.
Therefore, more frontier poets stopped going to frontier fortress in this period. They only need to compare their hearts, not write generals and princes, but only write the garrison at the bottom and the women left behind. Don't write about the cruelty and heroism of war, just write about the outpouring of people's feelings.
However, although these works have sympathy for people's lives, they also retain some ambitions in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. For example, Jia Dao and others still have backbone in their works, hoping to recover lost land and revive mountains and rivers.
In fact, the frontier poems in the middle Tang Dynasty are reflections on the war. People faded from their previous fanaticism and began to express their dissatisfaction with the use of troops by the upper rulers.
What is the war for? What are thousands of soldiers guarding the border for? Nature is to make the home behind us have a peaceful atmosphere.
So why doesn't the so-called peace come from war? This question of frontier fortress poets in the middle Tang Dynasty is doomed to have no answer.
As a result, after the time entered the late Tang Dynasty, these poets who created frontier fortress themes, just like the middle Tang Dynasty, were tired of the lofty sentiments of making contributions in the prosperous Tang Dynasty and their understanding of war rose to a higher level.
The frontier poets in the late Tang Dynasty had a kind of despair about the war, which eventually became a common phenomenon in the last years of later generations.
Poor bones by the river, I am still a dream girl.
Such a poem is not only a reflection on the war, but also a mockery of the militancy of the rulers and a pity for the soldiers and civilians at the bottom.
Speaking of the war in the late Tang Dynasty, it can be said that after the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang people experienced the war again.
If Du Fu and others describe the Anshi Rebellion euphemistically, then Wei Zhuang and others have completely torn the veil of "whitewashing".
Wei Zhuang in describing the Huang Chao uprising, there is a saying:
The inner mansion burned into splendid ashes, and the sky street stepped on the bones of officials and ministers.
This poem was written by Yin and lost in Song Dynasty, leaving a few words scattered in other collections.
Thought this scene can be said to have reached the acme at that time, but with the discovery of the original poem in Dunhuang a thousand years later, people discovered how miserable the society was at that time:
Every family is bleeding like a spring, and there are voices everywhere. Maiko and Geji secretly donated all their money, and babies and girls were abandoned. ..... Lying around a thousand epee halberds at night, eating blindly at dinner ... Let the kitchen eat wood skin, and Huang Chao cuts human flesh on the plane. In the southeast, the road without food has been cut off, the ravines are getting flatter and flatter, and there are fewer and fewer people. The sixth army was outside, zombies were rampant, and the seventh battalion was hungry. ...
This poem called "A Hell on Earth" is really in line with some countries in today's wars, which is even more shocking.
Under such circumstances, frontier poets turned from introspection to deep disgust and even despair about the war.
Therefore, the frontier fortress works in this period showed unprecedented consistency in style, "crying all over the ages"!
In addition to poets like Wei Zhuang, some schools like Huajian also expressed their antipathy to war:
Wen: My heart is full of smoke and fame. Every year, the golden word hurts and leaves. How brilliant a colorful painting is, which makes the brothel shed tears into blood. Feng Xue: The Yellow River is now in Han Dynasty, and the Great Wall is a river of blood. Ma Dai: However, I want to celebrate the world, and no one has won the meritorious military service. They don't know how to look at such a society, let alone see the solutions to these problems.
Therefore, whether writing frontier fortress themes or writing other poems, there is a kind of despair, either cursing or running away. The former, as Mr. Lu Xun thought, was "the brilliance and sharpness in a muddy pond", while the latter became a decadent mood that would only appear in the last days of the dynasty.
From the heroic spirit of "Jing Nai" to the psychological appeal of "making contributions", to the reflection and suspicion of frequent wars, and finally to the "condemnation and decline" after recognizing the nature of wars, the frontier poems in Tang Dynasty have also changed their taste while writing.
This is exactly what I said. Literary works come from real life. It is precisely because of the changes in social reality that the country was first established in the border areas, and the separatist regime of the buffer region was born in the civil strife. Frontier poems also breathe with the times, and the fate of * * * presents different colors.