Su Dongpo's Literary Background and Qian Zhongshu's Prose Poems

(It is mainly a preface to Su Dongpo's Prose Poems translated by Le Gro Clark, and it is published here with the permission of Mr. Le Gro Clark. If you are interested in textual research, you can read Mr. Wu Shichang's comments in the third issue of Volume IV of New Monthly. Ed. )

For the Song Dynasty, it can be said that, as hazlitt himself said, if it is not crucial, it is nothing. In the Song Dynasty, China people gave up their usually wise passivity and began to "think, search, explore, argue and criticize". However, this kind of intellectual activity cannot be compared with the pre-Qin period, which was the heyday of China's philosophy. People in Song Dynasty were curious rather than speculative, full of curiosity rather than mystery. Therefore, in their rationalism, there is no cleaning, no boldness, no space and room. Generally speaking, their life is dull. This critical spirit is manifested in many aspects, especially in the all-round flood of literary criticism and the rise of Taoism, which combines geophysics, psychology, ethics and sophistry.

Literary criticism is a belated art in China. Apart from a few scattered postscript, Liu Xie's Wen Xin and Luo Chi's Literary Prose Poems can be traced back to the Song Dynasty. This is, of course, Yung Wing's poetry classification. However, Zhong Rong is a literary genealogy rather than a critic. His method of simply dividing poets into sheep and goats and giving praise or criticism where he thinks it is appropriate is the opposite of criticism, not to mention his wonderful attempt to track down literary cultivation (1). The poetic features of Si Kongtu are another matter (2). . Sigong Tu attempts to convey the impressions recorded by the sensitive hearts of 24 different poems with pure images: "pure, gorgeous, grotesque", and so on. His may be the earliest "impressionism" or "creative criticism", if there is any language, so quietly ecstatic, so autonomous and self-sufficient, because of its existence, but it failed to become a sober and appropriate criticism. It was not until the Song Dynasty that criticism really began to be put into practice. Numerous "poetry series" (poetry talks) have been written, and the principles of literature have been covered up by comments on individual poems. Since then, poetics has become the carrier of China's criticism. It must be noted by the way that with the rise of criticism, there are no professional critics. In those beautiful old days in China, criticism was always the artist's own privilege. The division of labor between western critics and artists is something that old China literati would scoff at. Criticism in the Song Dynasty, like all China's criticisms before the "New Literature Movement" (Xie Tiao's literary thought may be an exception), tends to grasp the details and study the best places and words too much. But it is a symptom of critical spirit, and it has an end.

Ordinary readers in China often regard people in the Song Dynasty as hypocrites. Their high seriousness, intellectual and moral demands are a kind of excitement and amusement to ordinary easygoing people in China. There is something paralyzing and losing vitality in their tightrope sophistry, which induces hostile critics to attribute the collapse of the Song Dynasty to its philosophers. Another dishonest attempt is that they try to use a better name to describe the philosophical disguise: dressing up Taoism or Buddhism as orthodoxy. People only need to look at the sketches in the villa to know. The poem found something to laugh at in a garden. Ruan Ji (Ji Yun) and Yuan Mei (Yuan Mei) were both at the expense of philosophers and critics in the Song Dynasty. No one ever wants to admit it. Philosophers in the Song Dynasty are unparalleled in the study of psychochemistry. In the history of China's thought, human nature has never been so strictly examined. Because the most impressive thing in Daoism is the emphasis on self-knowledge. This idea of constant self-torture is in line with the spirit of this era. Philosophers in Song Dynasty are morbidly introspective, always feeling their moral pulse and struggling in their own stream of consciousness. For them, their minds are indeed "a kingdom." They analyze and crush human nature. If Nietzsche hadn't thought that moral prejudice was also the bane of philosophical bacteria, their vivisection of human soul would have made great contributions to Santana's literary psychology.

Poems and songs in the Song Dynasty are also a good example. It is an important universal phenomenon that there is a sharp contrast between Song poetry and Tang poetry. Up to now, China's poetry has been ethereal and exquisite, but in the Song Dynasty, it seems to have a body and become a solid and energetic thing. It is aggravated by the burden of thought. Of course, next to western poetry, it still looks light and slight enough. But the lightness of poetry is the lightness of a plane that depicts a beautiful curve, and it is no longer a moth fluttering in the soft dusk. In Song poetry, people seldom find the charm of suggestive and imperfect beautiful things, which foreigners think is the general feature of China's poems. On the contrary, a person will encounter a lot of naked thoughts and outspoken remarks. This can be called "sentimentality", but in contrast, the poems in the prosperous Tang Dynasty are generally "that". Ve ",using Schiller's beneficial opposite. However, the poets in Song Dynasty made up for their loss of innocence and lyrical brilliance through delicate feelings and observations. In their descriptive poems, they are good at grasping the things described, such as Lu You and Yang Wanli. They are also more aware of the subtle differences of emotions than the poets in the Tang Dynasty, which can be seen from their "words", and the Song Dynasty is famous for "words". Considering that they are all critics who inspired generate, it is no wonder that they are thoughtful artists. Perhaps the most annoying thing about them is their knowledge and charm, which makes their happiness a luxury to a great extent, even the luxury of China people. (3,000 words)

There is also a stylistic analysis of the identity struggle in A Doll's House (6000 words) and Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream (10000 words).

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