The eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties are the general names of the eight masters' prose writers, namely Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan in Tang Dynasty and Ouyang Xiu, Su San (Su Xun, Su Shi and Su Zhe), Wang Anshi and Ceng Gong in Song Dynasty.
origin
According to the survey, You Zhu compiled the articles of the above eight essayists into the Collection of Eight Writers in the Early Ming Dynasty, and the names of the eight great writers began. The Wenbian compiled by Tang Shunzhi in the middle of Ming Dynasty only took the articles of eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties, and all the articles of other writers were rejected. This has played a certain role in shaping and spreading the names of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties. Soon after, Mao Kun, who was highly respected, selected eight articles according to the compilation of Zhu and Tang, and compiled them into Notes of Eight Masters in Tang and Song Dynasties, so the names of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties were decided.
The Eight Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties were the core figures who presided over the ancient prose movement in Tang Dynasty. They advocated prose and opposed parallel prose, which had a far-reaching influence on the literary world at that time and later generations.
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Han Yu (768-824)
To put it another way, Han Changli, a native of Henan, was an outstanding writer and thinker in the Tang Dynasty, the leader of the ancient prose movement and the leader of the "Eight Masters in Tang and Song Dynasties". He has a lofty position in the history of China's prose development, and Su Dongpo praised him as "the decline of eight generations of literature". His articles are magnificent, luxurious and unrestrained, full of twists and turns, novel and concise, logical and rigorous, blending ancient and modern. Whether it is discussion, narration or lyricism, it has formed a unique style and reached a height that no one has reached before.
Liu Zongyuan (773-8 19)
Confucius said, Hedong people, Chang' an people. In the early years of Zhenyuan, he was a scholar, and he was the official governor. During the reign of Emperor Shunzong, Wang was in power. He served as the minister of rites and was determined to carry out political reform. Soon, Wang failed, and he was demoted to Yongzhou Sima and transferred to Liuzhou Secretariat. He lived in the south for fourteen years and died in Liuzhou. A famous thinker and outstanding writer in Tang Dynasty. As an advocate of the ancient prose movement in the Tang Dynasty and one of the eight masters in the Tang and Song Dynasties, Liu Zongyuan opposed the glamorous style of writing that has enveloped the literary world since the Six Dynasties and advocated concise and smooth prose. He is the author of forty-five volumes of Liuhe Dongji and two volumes of Waiji.
Ouyang Xiu (1007- 1072)
Yong Shu, Zi Weng, Hao, lay man, outstanding essayist and outstanding leader of prose innovation movement in Song Dynasty? , one of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties. Because of his concern for the country and the people and his outspoken attitude, Ouyang Xiu's career has experienced ups and downs and hardships, but his creation is "the poorer he is, the harder he works". Adhering to the spirit of Han Yu's Preface to Literature, he strongly opposes extravagant and obscure "contemporary prose" and advocates a simple, smooth and natural style of writing. His works have profound connotations, diverse forms, beautiful language, charm and musicality. Many famous works, such as Zuiwengting Ji and Qiusheng Fu, have been passed down through the ages.
Susan
Su Xun, whose real name is Mingyun, is Mei. Su Xun and his sons, Su Shi and Su Zhe, are called "Three Sus". His prose is mainly about history and politics. He inherited the argumentative tradition of Mencius and Han Yu, and formed his own vigorous style with clear language and repeated analysis of truth, which was very brilliant for strategists in the Warring States period. Sometimes you can't help but have a sophistry look, which is its shortcoming. The author of Jia.
Su Shi (1037-1101), a native of Meishan, Sichuan, was named Dongpo lay man. Great writer, painter and calligrapher in the Northern Song Dynasty. The world is called Su Dongpo.
Su Zhe (1039-112) was born in Meishan, Sichuan. Influenced by his father and brother, he read widely since he was a child and was ambitious. Song Huizong succeeded to the throne, was pardoned, returned to the north, lived in Yingchang, devoted himself to writing behind closed doors, and lived a leisurely and lonely life for twelve years. Zheng He died two years later at the age of 74. He is the author of Luan Jicheng and Luancheng Postscript.
Wang Anshi (102 1- 1086)
Word, formerly known as Jing Guogong, later called king. Linchuan, Fuzhou (now Fuzhou, Jiangxi) people. A famous politician, thinker and writer in the Northern Song Dynasty. China is one of the famous "Eight Masters of Tang Dynasty" in the history of prose. His prose is steep, concise, philosophical, vigorous, imposing, sharp and argumentative, which creates and develops the characteristics of thorough reasoning, rigorous argumentation, meticulous logic, clear expression and harmonious unity. A unique prose style that combines matter and debate in one furnace.
Ceng Gong (10 19- 1083)
Zi Zigu, a native of Nanfeng County, Jianchang Army, was an important backbone of the new ancient prose movement in the Song Dynasty and one of the eight masters in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Ceng Gong, who is "twelve years old and speaks amazingly", is qualified to be alert and intelligent; As an adult, he was highly appreciated by Ouyang Xiu, the literary leader at that time, because of his outstanding literary talent. Ceng Gong has a strong Confucianism, advocates the theory that "Tao precedes literature" and attaches importance to the moral cultivation of writers. His academic and articles were widely known before his death, especially after his death. Ceng Gong's prose works are very rich, especially in discussion and narration. His argumentative paper is full of arguments, full of branches and leaves, full of twists and turns, calm and sincere; The narrative is clear, concise, vivid and thought-provoking.
The relationship between Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan and the ancient prose movement of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties;
The revival of the so-called "ancient prose" depends on the appearance of Han Yu. Speaking of Han Yu, we must see his versatility. On the one hand, Han Yu has the enthusiasm to actively defend feudal autocracy and Confucian orthodoxy; on the other hand, Han Yu is a person with strong personality and strong desire for self-expression. In his grotesque poems by Wang Yang, we can already feel that he is unwilling to be ordinary and loves to make public. However, the self-description such as "Song of Peony" is not a formal image. Even under the guise of pursuing Mencius and inheriting orthodoxy, he can be said to be the same performance of the above two factors. Therefore, when Han Yu devoted himself to the revival of ancient Chinese prose, his attitude was very different from that of his predecessors. In the basic position of reviving Confucianism as the core purpose, he did inherit the predecessors; But his whole prose theory, especially in changing the style of writing and promoting creation, has added many new and more reasonable contents. The success of the ancient prose movement is not only due to his theory, but more importantly, because he wrote many excellent works full of personality, talent and creativity, and re-established the literary status of prose in practice. At the same time, he strongly advocated and called for style reform, United a group of writers who wrote prose, and made prose creation form a greater literary trend.
The Biography of Han Yu in Old Tang Dynasty said: "From Dali to Zhenyuan, most of the characters were ancient prose, mainly Yang Xiong and Dong Zhongshu, while Duguji and Liang Su were the most profound and valued scholars. The more he travels from his disciples, the more determined he is to learn and shake himself up in a generation. " Among them, Dugu and his influence on Han Yu should be indirect, because Dugu was only ten years old when he died in the twelfth year of Dali. But Liang Su had a direct influence on Han Yu. Liang Su's support for himself and his friends has been mentioned in Han Yu's Foreign Affairs with the Ancestors, and Tang Yuyan also recorded that Han Yu, Li Guan, Li Jiang and Cui Qun traveled in Liang Su, but they didn't meet each other for three years. Liang Su praised them at first sight, so he praised their articles. This may be a story invented by later generations, but there is no doubt that Han Yu accepted Liang Su's prose theory. However, Han Yu's ancient prose theory is by no means simply copying or following the opinions of predecessors, and its actual content is much richer.
First, Han Yu advocates writing prose "to learn from the ancient sages" (Answer to Liu), but learning ancient prose is not because "its sentence reading is different from that of today", but because "learning ancient prose is to combine words with words, and the people who use words are also determined by ancient prose" (After the funeral of Ouyang Sheng), that is to say, learning ancient prose is basically for learning ". However, the "Tao" mentioned by Xiao and others only refers to ethics, that is, the external ethics in Confucianism, while the "Tao" mentioned by Han Yu refers to (sometimes emphasizes) people's internal moral cultivation and personality spirit. He once said in Three Instruments that "one cannot be dishonest" and in Answer to Wei Chisheng's Book that "a man's so-called writer must be among them, so a gentleman should be careful" and repeatedly emphasized that Mencius "prepared everything for me, but was sincere" (Answer to Hou Sheng's Questions about the Analects of Confucius), so he attached great importance to "qi".
In Mencius' words, if you have a noble personality and rich interests, the article will be enriched. "Richness is called beauty, and richness is called greatness" (ibid.). In response to Li Yi's book, he said:
Air, water, words and floating objects. When the water is big, things float, and the size floats, and the qi and characters are still the same.
Of course, this is not Han Yu's invention. Han Yu's re-presentation of these opinions has two meanings: first, he changed "writing in the Tao" from the external constraints of etiquette and moral beliefs to the determination of literary content by people's internal personality cultivation. Although Han Yu's personality cultivation and inner spirit generally do not conflict with Confucian etiquette, it makes literature tend to be consciously expressed rather than passively interpreted. Secondly, Han Yu affirmed the position of emotion in inner spirit and personality cultivation.
The so-called "qi" also includes "injustice makes a sound" (preface to farewell to Meng Dongye), "anger and poverty, sorrow and joy, resentment and thinking, drunkenness and annoyance" (preface to farewell to Gao Xian), "sad voice" and "words of poverty" (preface to static pool singing and poetry) and so on. This shows that Han Yu's exposition on "writing with Ming Dow" is inclusive and does not exclude or even recognize the existence of strong emotions.
Second, to learn the prose physique of the ancients is mainly to learn the "words must come out" of the ancients (Nanyang Fan Shaoshu's epitaph), rather than simply imitating ancient prose. An important feature of parallel prose is that it is easy to use allusions, but the author who lacks creativity repeatedly embeds some familiar platitudes in it, which has neither true feelings nor fresh language. Han Yu, who advocated prose in view of this defect, attached great importance to "acting only by words" (in reply to Li Yishu). Although he also attaches great importance to learning languages from the works of the ancients, such as Zhou Pansuan, the meticulousness of Spring and Autumn Annals, the exaggeration of Zuo Shi, the fantasy of Yi, and the aestheticism of poetry. In "Answer to Li Yishu", he said that at first he was afraid to read the books of the Three Dynasties and the Han Dynasty, and he was afraid to keep his ambition, but he could not "just focus on what he said." Since then, "those who know the truth and falsehood of ancient books are correct and do not think deeply" have gradually gained experience, so "if you take it from your heart and note it in your hand, you will surely gurgle." Finally, as the ancients said, "Stay away from it and wait and see", only by holding your breath and keeping your breath can you reach the state of transformation and write your own words and your own heart freely. It can be seen that what Han Yu requires is the method of learning ancient Chinese and the language style of "self-reliance, not conformity" (answering Liu's letter). In fact, his reference and absorption of previous articles are very extensive, including the elements of parallel prose.
The essence of Han Yu's prose theory is to advocate "Ming Dow as a style" while acknowledging the rationality of the author's personal inner feelings in prose, and to emphasize the innovation of language and the individualization of style while advocating "learning from the past". However, it is not easy to unify the expression of personal inner feelings and personality with the requirements of "Tao", but there are often contradictions. Facing this contradiction, Han Yu still puts "Tao" in the first place in theory. On the one hand, he admits that people's inner feelings are the basis of the success or failure of literary creation, but on the other hand, he tries his best to bring these feelings into the norms that conform to feudal ethics. He said that his "Tao" is "the Tao preached by Confucius and Mencius" (an answer), and his "Wen" is a text praising the Tao of Yao and Shun, and its content is "the capital of the Six Classics", although there are strange words to win the world. In a word, the tolerance of Tao to personality and emotion is limited.
As for Han Yu's own creation, it can better reflect his temperament as a writer than his theory. Although there are a lot of works about Tao and sex, such as The Original Tao and Reading Xunzi, there are also many literary works that are based on true feelings and deliberately pursue artistry. Therefore, Pei Du, a person at that time, said that he "relied on stunts and was often uninhibited. He didn't write by system, but regarded writing as a kind of play "(Li Ao's book). Later, he said that he "teaches people by words" (Wang Anshi's Book of Masters) and "the first scholar's ear" (Song Shiqi Song's Non-Korea). "I thought there were many scholars, but I didn't know enough. However, this is precisely the reason why Han Yu succeeded in literary creation. In his creative practice, he not only devoted rich emotions, but also used superb language skills to write many excellent prose works.
Han Yu's argumentative essays, such as The Original Road, Mourning, Teacher's Theory and Argument for Officials, are rigorous in structure and attach importance to the momentum and logic of writing. They were praised by ordinary ancient writers in the past, but their literary value was not high. It's some argumentative papers, rich in emotion and sincere and moving. For example, "Preface to Send Meng Dongye" is unfair to Meng Jiao and gives vent to the phenomenon of burying talents in the society of the times; The Preface to Farewell to Dong Shaonan comforted Dong Shaonan that he had to go to Zhao Yan to find a job because he was promoted to a scholar, but he could not even aspire to a job, and expressed his feelings about the talent's poverty and untimely birth.
The Preface to Send Li May Return to Pangu eulogizes lofty retired people and rebukes the despicable behavior of those villains who "wait on the door of the official, run on the road of the current situation, and then prevaricate and talk about it in Kan Kan", which contains a kind of "injustice" that the lower literati are eager to vent under social repression. In addition, there are some allegorical miscellaneous feelings, which are sharp, sharp and vivid, often hitting the nail on the head, but quietly.
For example, Miscellaneous Notes on Dragons, Miscellaneous Notes on Horses and Understanding by Lin all take the experiences of animals such as dragons, horses and forests as themes, and these miscellaneous feelings often contain Han Yu's perception of his own talents or his sigh of poverty and loneliness. Such as the famous "said the horse":
Where there is Bole, there is a swift horse. There are often swift horses, but Bole is rare. Therefore, although there is a famous horse, it is only humiliated by a slave, and it is not called a thousand miles to die in a trough. A horse can travel thousands of miles, and a stone can eat it all. People who eat horses don't know if they can walk Wan Li Road, but they are also horses. Although they have the ability to walk the Wan Li Road, they can't eat enough, so they are beautiful. They want to be as good as ordinary horses, so they can walk the Wan Li Road. If you don't follow its path, you can't make full use of your food, but you can't understand its meaning. When you carry out the policy, you say, "There are no horses in the world!" Oh! Is it really innocent? I really don't understand horses!
In Han Yu's prose, Ode to Twelve Lang, written in memory of my nephew Han Laocheng, is particularly lyrical. Most of the predecessors wrote eulogies in parallel prose or four-character poems, seeking a sense of Zhuang Su in a neat format. However, this article has no format or rhetoric, and it is not as structural as Han Yu's other articles. In the tone of telling the deceased, the full text laments the decline of the family, mourns the early death of the deceased, doubts the justice of providence and the gods, doubts the number of life and death and even the establishment of heirs, and writes inner bitterness and sorrow; When writing the first bad news in the middle, the psychology of being suspicious, unwilling to believe and having to believe is particularly sad and moving. The repetition of the meaning of the article can best reflect the superiority of prose over parallel prose in a specific situation.
Han Yu's narratives, such as Biography of Zhang Zhongcheng, Biography of Mao Ying and Preface of Ding Shilian, are vivid and humorous. For example, in Introduction to Zhang Zhongcheng's Biography, Nan Jiyun turned to Helan Jin Ming for help, and Helan Jin Ming held his ground out of jealousy, but gave a banquet to win over Nan Jiyun. At this time, Han Yu wrote with a thick pen:
Ji Yun said generously, "When the clouds come, people who have no affection for Yang will not eat the rest of the month. Although the cloud wants to eat alone, it can't bear it. " : although you eat, you don't swallow. "Because he drew his sword and broke a finger, bleeding profusely, and showed it to Helan, everyone was frightened and he was grateful.
Next, add another section:
(Nan Jiyun) will go out of the city and shoot an arrow at the floating picture of the Buddhist temple. He said, "If I answer the thief, I will destroy Helan. This arrow depends on it. "
These two paragraphs not only depict Nan Jiyun's brave and loyal character, but also highlight Nan Jiyun's strong personality. In Preface to Poems, Han Yu made full use of the methods of playing hard to get, borrowing and revealing, and described the dramatic process and psychological changes of talented Taoist XuanYuanMimi, Master Liu and Hou.
First of all, he wrote that the Taoist priest's appearance is not strange, "white beard and black face, long neck and high knot, Chu language in his throat", which reflects the arrogance of Hou and others who "ignore" seems reasonable. However, this psychological arrogance began to change when Mi Ming invited him to write poems. At the beginning, Master Liu was "overjoyed, that is, he helped to write the first two sentences", and he did his part, "full of enthusiasm, that is, he bowed his head", while the Taoist priest was "sitting on the north wall with his hands folded" and chanted two sentences, "The dragon head is stupid, shrinking bacteria", but they still refused to accept it and wanted to win more. "It is not surprising that sound is good for sorrow. If you want to write, you will stop." Taoist priests "should be like a ring, all of which stand out with sarcasm."
Until the third night, the two men were completely defeated psychologically, and the Taoist priest "sang forty more sentences." At this time, both of them were "scared to stand up and worship under the bed", but the Taoist priest had "slept against the wall and snored like thunder". Like a novel, this passage vividly describes the appearance of two literati, their psychology of changing from arrogance to respect, and an informal, dissolute and humorous Taoist image.
Throughout Han Yu's prose creation, his artistic skills can be summarized as the following three aspects:
First of all, Han Yu pays great attention to the innovation of vocabulary. An important defect of parallel prose is that the language is outdated, the routines are too familiar and the allusions are easy to use. However, he introduced new words from the vocabulary of his predecessors, refined new words from the spoken language at that time, and created many novel words, which often made quips and aphorisms flash in his articles, adding a lot of life. For example, sending the poor away is disgusting, dejected, easily criticized, wriggling, diligent, lacking in fun, and successful thinking is destroyed by following, not blocking or flowing, not only failing, but also on the original road. In addition, Han Yu also changed the habit of using flowery words in parallel prose and adopted some words that were not used by people or were very irritating. For example, "Farewell to the Poor" describes ghosts as "opening their eyes and sticking out their tongues, jumping over servants, stomping their feet, laughing and caring for each other", and "Preface to Poems" describes people as "white beard and black face with a long neck and a high knot". Of course, Han sometimes can't help but overdo it, using some obscure words to make the article groggy and difficult to understand.
Secondly, Han Yu pays great attention to the design of sentence patterns. Although the sentence patterns of parallel prose are in tune and the syllables are loud, they change little and have a weak momentum. Han Yu's prose is very good at inserting various repetitive sentences, parallelism sentences and antithesis sentences to increase the change and momentum of the article, give play to the advantages of long and short sentences in prose, and make up for the lack of musical beauty and rhythm in prose. For example, the second paragraph talks about Mr. Wang's knowledge, Confucianism, Taoism, articles and being a man. The four-layer narrative ends with "Mr. Wang's career can be described as diligent", "Mr. Wang's contribution to Confucianism can be described as tiring", "Mr. Wang's contribution to literature can be described as grand" and "Mr. Wang's contribution to being a man can be described as successful", which makes the rhythm of the four-layer meaning appear very neat and clear. Another example is the person in the painting described in the picture, which repeatedly lists 32 postures 123 people, such as "five people ride and stand, ten people ride with a back, one person stands in front of the flag, ten people ride with a back and lead, and two people ride with a back ...";
The horse in the painting is written with 27 kinds of horse postures. It looks verbose, but it is beautiful to read. All kinds of people and horses are drawn, and all kinds of sentence patterns with different lengths and rhythms are extremely complicated, which just makes people feel that this is a huge, fine and uneven layout. In addition, the preface to seeing off Meng Dongye uses thirty-eight "Ming" in succession, which is not monotonous because of the change of sentence patterns, but has the momentum of spewing and pressing; As mentioned earlier, the psychological paragraph of the poem "Sacrificing Twelve Lang" is written in the first message, and auxiliary words are used at the end of the sentence, but the different tones of "Ye", "Hu" and "Ye" are mixed, long or short, which really shows the intense ups and downs of feelings.
Third, Han Yu pays great attention to the structural layout of the article. Sometimes, he will suddenly appear with a heavy pen, grab the reader's attention, and then turn to this topic. For example, the preface to See Dong Shaonan begins with "How sad Yanzhao once called people", and the preface to send a letter to Heyang Army begins with "Bole crossed the wilderness of northern Hebei, and the horse was empty";
Sometimes it comes around from a distance. For example, The Preface to Sending District Books first states that Yangshan is secluded, cold and backward in culture, and then borrows Zhuangzi's words about people fleeing from the world who are glad to hear the footsteps in the empty valley, and writes about the pleasure of making friends with district books in its current environment. As for the preface to seeing off Meng Dongye, it is a combination of the above two types. Later, the epigram "Everything is uneven, there must be a voice" was aroused, but Meng Jiao did not introduce it, but from the voice of things to the voice of people, from the voice of people to rhetoric, rhetoric from ancient times to the Tang Dynasty, vague and irrelevant. The last few words come down to Meng Jiao. Looking back on the last article is not only the expression of the author's own life feelings, but also the foreshadowing of this topic. In addition, like the original way, the progressive layers, the positive and negative reflections, and the overall contrast with the original destruction are all simple reasoning words, but the truth of the article is the same. It is worth noting that in some cases, Han Yu also deliberately avoided the swaying article structure. For example, Liu Zongyuan's epitaph is plain, showing his love for personality and talent, but cherishing his behavior (Han disapproves of Liu's participation in Yongzhen's innovation) and pity for his feelings; "Sacrifice to Twelve Lang" is also a direct expression of feelings, and it is not intended to be a text. But this is actually a careful consideration of the structure of the article, that is, in this case, natural and plain is the best structure.
There are various styles in Korean, and the styles are different. Its most striking features are majestic, full of emotion, strange and novel writing style, staggered sentence patterns and changeable structure. The predecessors said that it was "wild and arrogant" (Liu Zongyuan's Answer to Wei Heng, Showing Han Yu as a Book of Pen and Ink), "Like the Yangtze River, it is full of confusion and confusion. Of course, Han Yu has worked hard on the article, and the trace of "doing" is inevitable.
At that time, Han Yu was a literary leader. He not only put forward his own theory and participated in practice, but also vigorously promoted his fellow writers in literature. For example, he recommended Meng Jiao in his poems, Zhang Ji and Fan Zongshi in his writing, and wrote articles for Li He (taboo). He himself said that he has a wide range of friends. "There are thousands of people who know each other ... either as colleagues or as artists" (With Cui Shu), while Li Ao said that he was "quite virtuous", like "Hao Juan, one of the heroes of Qin and Han Dynasties" (Answering Han Shu). So a group of writers has formed around him, and they have both poems and essays. There are many people who have made achievements in poetry, but in prose, no one else has made any achievements except Han Yu. Li Ao, for example, is mainly argumentative. Although he is orderly in structure, he lacks literary talent and momentum. Huangfushi's prose pays more attention to the strange rise of external language forms, but its emotional strength is weak and its momentum is not strong enough. Fan Zongshi's prose pushed Han Yu's strange language to the extreme. Although "words must be spoken", he ignored the general principles of language communication and went to obscurity.
Because of his different political opinions and personal experiences, Liu Zongyuan did not belong to Han Yu's group of writers, and because he was relegated to the south for a long time and was far away from the literary center at that time, his ancient prose theory and creative practice did not have a great influence like Han Yu's. However, Liu Zongyuan also made a unique contribution to the revival of ancient Chinese prose.
Like Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan also emphasized the relationship between "Wen" and "Tao". He pointed out in the "Report to Cui An Scholars on Literature": "The words of saints are expected to be Ming Dow, and scholars must leave messages behind for the sake of various ways. Words are handed down to the world, so they must be written. Obviously, The Road is fake, it is a fake book, it is just an ear. " In other words, the purpose of writing articles is Tao, and the purpose of reading articles is Tao, and words are just means and tools to convey Tao. In response to Wei Zhongli's book Teacher's Way, he clearly put forward the principle that "the writer should take Ming Dow as the guide", and in response to Wu Wuling's book Non-Mandarin, he also asked the article to have the function of "assisting time and transitivity", that is, it can be applied to reality.
Based on this understanding, Liu Zongyuan is also critical of parallel prose. In "Qiao Qiwen", he satirized parallel prose as "dazzling for literary talent and trivial for arranging couples; Draw a yellow dialogue and fly away; Parallel four or six, embroidered heart; Gong Shen feather vibration, sheng spring tentacles; The audience danced and talked about the roar of thunder; Only drowning the minister's heart, making him old and ugly ",that is to say, parallel prose is superficial and beautiful, useless and even confusing. "He also highly praised the writings of the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties, and thought that" prose is magnificent in ancient times, and there is no image of Xijing in the Han Dynasty "(Preface of Liu Zongzhi's Spreading Milei in the River), and advocated that writing articles should take books as the quality, poems as the constant, rituals as the appropriate, spring and autumn as the break, and books as the exchange.
Generally speaking, Liu Zongyuan's prose theory is very similar to Han Yu's. It is not without extremes to evaluate parallel prose. It is inevitable to ignore the independent value of literature by emphasizing Taoism, but it also attaches great importance to artistic considerations such as literary momentum. As for his article, it is not completely limited by his theory.
As far as the specific performance of the article is concerned, Liu Zongyuan's point of view is somewhat different from Han Yu's.
First of all, Han Yu pays more attention to the direct expression of prose emotion. The so-called "injustice makes a sound" and "the sound of mourning is wonderful" all refer to the author's undisguised expression of emotion, while Liu Zongyuan pays more attention to the implicit expression of emotion. In "Answering Wei Zhongli's Teacher's Book", he said his composition: "I never dare to treat it lightly, for fear that it will go wild and stay; Never dare to be lazy and free, for fear that it will relax; Never dare to faint, afraid of its ignorance; I have never dared to do it proudly, I am afraid it is arrogant. "
In other words, we should be calm in our creation, so that our inner feelings can be deeply and implicitly expressed. There are factors such as life attitude and religious belief. Han Yu vehemently opposed Buddhism, and once criticized those who studied Buddhism for "being dead and alive, solving the external glue, because they would be indifferent to the world." Park and pale, fall and fall, rout and out of control "("send Gao Xian in the main sequence "); Liu Zongyuan, on the other hand, believes in Buddhism, and has repeatedly refuted Han Yu, arguing that Buddhism makes people "enjoy leisure in Leshan" ("Preface to Sending Monks"), arguing that feelings should not be exposed too much, and that "boredom leads to anxiety, while hope leads to harmony, which leads to stagnation. "A gentleman must lean on something, be skillful, make it calm and flat, and if he has enough, he will succeed" ("Three Pavilions in Lingling"). Therefore, although he often can't suppress his passion, his works are intense.