China's classical poetry has a long history, with many famous poets and excellent works, and has always had a large number of readers and fans. Reading and appreciating poetry has always been regarded as an "elegant thing" because it can cultivate people's temperament, improve people's spiritual cultivation, and more directly bring people aesthetic pleasure and enjoyment, and cultivate people's aesthetic ability.
Poetry is the flower of a nation's spirit and the temple of virtue, wisdom and beauty. The content of ancient Chinese poetry is rich and colorful, especially the creation of some excellent poets, which often reflects the poet's noble sentiment and personality strength. For example, two thousand years ago, the great poet Qu Yuan's lofty ideal of "beautiful politics", profound patriotic feelings, "nine deaths without regret" integrity and indomitable spirit; Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi, great poets in the Tang Dynasty, care about the fate of the country, sympathize with the sufferings of the people and care about the country and the people. Famous poets in Song Dynasty, such as Xin Qiji, Lu You and Wen Tianxiang, are full of enthusiasm for serving the country. Their immortal patriotic complex, as well as a song by national hero Yue Fei, is still inspiring every Chinese son and daughter. Not only that, those poems that eulogize the magnificent mountains and rivers, those poems that worry about the country and the people, those poems that praise family ties and sincere friendship, those poems that express pure love and strive for marriage autonomy, those poems that vividly depict the scenery of the four seasons and enjoy pleasure, and so on. , will purify our hearts, cultivate our temperament and sublimate our moral sentiments.
Some outstanding writers in ancient times not only widely and profoundly reflected all aspects of life with their wonderful and beautiful chapters, but also broadened our minds and horizons, and often conveyed their life experiences and embodied their life wisdom with their unique sensitivity and wisdom to life. "The endless grass on the grassland comes and goes with the seasons. Wildfire never completely burns them down, but they grow taller in the spring breeze" (Bai Juyi). "When you climb to the top of the mountain, you will see that other mountains are short in the sky." (Du Fu) "Go up a storey still higher and broaden my horizons by three hundred miles" (Wang Zhihuan), "I was born to be useful, and my daughter will give it back after spending all her money" (Li Bai), "There is no doubt in a mountain river", (Lu You). Gong zizhen and others. These profound thoughts arising from complex life experiences and the tough, broad-minded, chic and optimistic attitude towards life expressed in them are full of philosophy, which can enlighten our life wisdom and broaden our minds, thus greatly increasing and improving our life experience and self-cultivation.
Of course, as an art, the main function of ancient poetry is to enrich our spiritual life, especially to meet the aesthetic needs in our lives. We know that everyone loves beauty without exception and requires spiritual enrichment and emotional satisfaction, and excellent literary and artistic works such as poetry are meeting our needs in this respect with their unique character and characteristics. For example, in our life, we will have all kinds of experiences, such as the warmth of love, the warmth of friendship, the comfort of being in the beautiful scenery of famous mountains and rivers, the joy of victory, and even the sadness and resentment after leaving. At this time, we will naturally look for some words and sentences created by the unique sensitivity of writers and poets, which will be connected with our hearts with their unique universality, typicality and distinctiveness, so that our feelings can be expressed and pinned. For example, "However, China holds our friendship, and heaven is still our neighbor" (Wang Bo) wrote sincere friendship; "I don't see you for a day, like Sanqiu Xi" (Book of Songs), writing about the suffering of lovesickness; "Platanus acerifolia is more drizzly, and the dusk is falling" (Li Qingzhao), which is about the sorrow of leaving people; "In the morning, I will treat the waste and bring the lotus home" (Tao Yuanming), writing about the joy of farming; "Mochow has a vast road ahead, and everyone knows a gentleman" (Gao Shi), which is written about the comfort of leaving friends; "The repeated changes have become a thing of the past, and the dignity of this mountain still commands the cold river" (Liu Yuxi), writing down the vicissitudes of history; "On that green spring day, I sang loudly, drank heavily and started my hometown" (Du Fu), describing the joy of returning to my hometown after the war; As well as some joys and sorrows, such as "like a strong spring wind blowing up at night and blowing open the petals of ten thousand pear trees" and "red apricots coming out of the wall are full of spring", all kinds of scenery may be experienced by ourselves, but we can't feel it so keenly and express it so deeply and vividly. Through the dexterous hands and accurate and vivid description of the ancients, we will reach "* * *" in our hearts.
As we know, although some of people's sensory abilities are innate, people's rich sensory abilities, including people's aesthetic sensory abilities, are keenly developed through acquired practice and the accumulation of the whole human history and civilization. From a historical perspective, human beings have discovered the beauty in daily life in long-term social practice, thus creating works of art such as poetry, music and painting. On the other hand, art products also create audiences who understand art and appreciate its beauty. Therefore, people's aesthetic feelings and abilities are gradually cultivated, enriched and sharpened through constant contact, study and appreciation of works of art. Marx once said that the most beautiful music is meaningless to non-musical ears. So where did the "ear of music" come from? It is cultivated and created by listening to "the most beautiful music". The cultivation of aesthetic ability and the formation of aesthetic taste are sometimes unconscious and often germinate and develop gradually under the influence of long-term influence. In infancy, a lullaby and lullaby by my mother, a children's song taught in kindergarten and a fairy tale are all a kind of perception and cultivation of beauty. The active study, reading and appreciation of literary and artistic works is the conscious cultivation and pursuit of aesthetic ability and appreciation level. It will enhance our sense of beauty, enlighten our understanding of beauty, thus edifying our temperament and enriching our spiritual life.
Knowing that works of art have great functions that affect our spiritual world, knowing that works of art themselves create audiences, that is, what works of art will cultivate what kind of appreciators, then we must choose what works to appreciate, that is, what works to watch and what works to read. The famous works in history are excellent spiritual products, and some of them are treasures left by long-term historical tests. These works are generally representative and exemplary in different degrees. Choosing these representative and exemplary excellent works as the objects of appreciation can not only greatly meet our aesthetic needs, but also be the best way to cultivate our appreciation ability, establish high-level aesthetic standards and improve aesthetic judgment.
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The content of life is extremely rich and colorful; Art is more colorful, but not everyone can capture beauty in life and feel beauty in art, so the problem of how to learn and appreciate works of art, know life through works of art and feel the beauty of life arises.
Specific to ancient poetry, this is a kind of language art. Generally, poets are inspired by objective things and situations in their lives and have some unique feelings, so they express them in language or words through artistic conception, that is, the so-called "emotion moves in China and in words", but this is in creation; As readers and appreciators, we should take the opposite road, that is, through the understanding of "Yan", we can understand the life scenes experienced by the poet and understand the poet's unique feelings and rich feelings. This is just as the theory of ancient Chinese prose says: "Writers write with emotion, and readers write with human feelings." (Wen Xin Diao Long Yin Zhi) The former means creation, while the latter means appreciation.
Generally speaking, the appreciation of poetry always goes through a process of understanding, experiencing and tasting. In other words, we must first understand; The second is to understand and appreciate the feelings and scenes expressed in the works to achieve a certain * * * sound; Thirdly, it is through repeated taste to gain an understanding of beauty and spiritual pleasure.
As we know, all literature and art are emotional, and they always reflect life with concrete images and express the author's thoughts and feelings through artistic images. Therefore, literary appreciation must start with the image in the work, and experience the author's thoughts and feelings and appreciate the artistry of the work through the feeling of the artistic image of the work. China's classical poems have the characteristics of creating artistic images.
Generally speaking, China's classical poems are mostly lyric poems, with concise sentences and relatively short forms. They are different from novels, plays and other large-scale narrative works, without any storyline and typical characters, but mainly express the poet's subjective feelings by capturing objective images and describing external scenery. This subjective and objective image and scenery is called "image" in China's literary theory. For example, in the Book of Songs, peach blossoms are in full bloom, which plays up the atmosphere of wedding celebrations. Write tender mulberry with the words "Mulberry not falling, leafy", symbolizing the beautiful years of youth; Writing Liu silks with the words "I have been there, Liu Yiyi" also shows the feeling of parting; Qu Yuan, a poet, symbolized his noble personality and virtue with fragrant grass and Chunlan Qiuju. The "falling flowers" and "flowing water" commonly used in Tang poetry and Song poetry indicate the passage of time and ruthlessness; "Autumn geese" means the sadness of leaving people, the feeling of sadness, and so on. The juxtaposition and conjugation of images constitute the image of the whole poem, that is, "artistic conception" Therefore, only by grasping the image and artistic conception of poetry and understanding the meaning and purport contained in it can we really appreciate poetry. Here, let's take a night-mooring near maple bridge, a famous work by Zhang Ji, a poet in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, as an example:
The moon is falling, birds are singing, and frost is everywhere.
Jiang Feng sleeps in the fire.
Hanshan Temple outside Gusu,
The midnight bell arrived at the passenger ship.
This is a poem written by a Jiangnan poet in the last years of Tianbao. He passed by Suzhou and spent the night in Qiao Feng. The poet chose a series of scenes with bleak atmosphere, such as the setting of the moon, crows, river peaks, fishing fires, temple bells and passenger ships, which constituted the artistic conception of the whole poem-a cold and silent painting. It is through this painting that readers can feel the poet's situation at that time and his infinite sadness and feelings about travel.
From the above analysis, we can see that our appreciation of classical poetry should start with the images of the works and grasp their images and artistic conception, which is inseparable from readers' imagination and association. We should mobilize our imagination and let the scenes and things described in the poem reappear in our minds, such as being there, seeing things, hearing their voices and seeing people. Only in this way can we shake the artistic works we appreciate, so as to obtain the spiritual pleasure and enjoyment it brings us. When we read some excellent descriptions in poetry, we often use "as if we witnessed it" to describe it. This is not to say that its written description is directly visible, but the vivid description of the poet has aroused our rich imagination, thus producing vivid visual images in our minds. Du Fu's writing of autumn scenery's "fallen leaves are like waterfalls, but I think the long river is always rolling forward" has a strong sense of picture, and the scene of "as if witnessing" in the poem mainly depends on the reader's understanding and imagination. People's appreciation activities can not be separated from imagination, so it can be said that people's appreciation activities are completed on the basis of readers' imagination.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the appreciation activity of the appreciator is not only to reproduce and restore the artistic image in the work through imagination, but also to associate and supplement the appreciated image and artistic conception according to his own life experience. From this perspective, appreciation is not only a passive feeling, but also a kind of "re-creation", which mainly depends on the association of the appreciator.
Appreciation activities still need association, because literary and artistic works are impossible, and there is no need to write everything in detail. It needs choices, hints and hints, especially poems, which are concise and short in length, and must have something to say, which needs to be supplemented by the appreciator's association to convey the author's hints. Wang Wei's poem "Lonely Smoke in the Desert Down the Yen" uses four images of desert, lonely smoke, long river and sunset to express the impression of the vastness and desolation of the northern desert and the silence of the wilderness. Mr. Zhu Ziqing once analyzed: "Adding the word" straight "to" solitary smoke "means that there is no wind, of course there is no wind, so it gives us a silent impression. Adding the word' circle' to the' sunset' does not mean that only the sunset can get the' circle', but that only when the' sunset' hangs on the horizon can we see the' circle'. A round of' sunset' quietly set off behind the' long river'. What a peaceful state this is! " (Appreciation of Literary Works) This is an example of understanding and appreciating poetry through imagination and association. This shows that only through the imagination and association of the appreciator and the supplement of the appreciator's life experience can we understand the theme of the poem and feel and experience its touching place.
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Art appreciation is an aesthetic activity and a manifestation of aesthetic ability. Aesthetic ability is cultivated from long-term practice and requires a certain level of knowledge and experience. For example, we appreciate classical poetry. First of all, you need to have some knowledge of ancient Chinese, historical knowledge (the author's time and life), literary knowledge (the genre of ancient poetry) and so on, which can be said to be the preparation for appreciating works. On the basis of understanding and reading the works, through repeated reading and tasting, we can appreciate the beauty of the works and gain a spiritual enjoyment.
When the ancients talked about the appreciation of literature, especially poetry, they often emphasized familiarity. We know that to appreciate a poem, we often need to read and even recite it with our hearts, so as to fully appreciate the theme, interest, mood, rhythm and rhyme of the poem. For reading and appreciating poetry, it is not enough to just stay in rough reading and extensive reading. In particular, some excellent works in ancient poetry, although short in words, are all made by poets after careful consideration, painstaking management and tempering, and their beauty is often seen word by word. Wang Guowei once gave an example in "Ci Hua on earth": "The branches of red apricots are noisy in spring" and "noisy" are written, and the realm is exhausted; "The cloud breaks the moon and flowers make a shadow, and the word" agriculture "is written, and the realm is exhausted." The first sentence quoted here comes from Song's poem Yulouchun, which describes the poet's feelings about the branches of apricot trees in spring. There is no so-called "noisy" when the red apricot is in full bloom. When the poet sees that spring is full of flowers and vitality, his heart is restless, and his feelings depend on the word "noisy". As an external landscape, apricot blossom is thriving, bustling and flourishing, which is vividly expressed by the word "noisy". The last sentence quoted by Wang comes from the word "immortal". This sentence says that flowers fall in the moon, and flowers fall in the shadows. It doesn't matter to get it, but because the poet saw the flowers dancing in the breeze under the moon, he seemed to enjoy himself and feel sorry for himself, so he described it as "creating shadows." I'm afraid only we can fully understand this seamless state of looking at things rationally, paying attention to things with feelings, supporting feelings with scenery, pondering, chewing and experiencing repeatedly. In classical poetry, there are many places where sentences like this are refined. The ancients called it "epigram" and "poetic eye". It is difficult to realize their benefits without repeated careful reading and in-depth research. For longer poems, the poet pays more attention to the pentium emotion, which runs through the context and ups and downs. China's classical poems also attach great importance to the coordination of thoughts and feelings, and choose different rhymes such as low tone and clear articulation, which requires people to appreciate its charm through chanting and reading. The so-called "listen to people's hearts" and "repeat it, and you will see the true meaning." It can be said that the process of reciting repeatedly, that is, the process of appreciation with understanding, will make people enter an unpleasant state of mind and gain spiritual enjoyment.