There are about 600 poems handed down by Li Shangyin, among which the themes of current politics are directly touched, accounting for a considerable proportion. Li Shangyin's epic has made great achievements. They are by no means sick moans of "thinking about the past", and they are also different from those poems written by predecessors that send feelings to the past. They take history as a mirror, Chen's politics as a mirror, and the criticism of the times as a supplement, making history-chanting a special form of political poetry. Untitled poetry is Li Shangyin's unique creation. Most of them take the lovesickness of men and women as the theme, with faint artistic conception, full of twists and turns of feelings, beautiful words, pleasant tone, which can be dense and dense, and makes people sad to read. Generally speaking, Li Shangyin's literary achievements have the following themes: political poems.
As an intellectual who cares about politics, Li Shangyin wrote a lot of poems in this field, and about 100 poems have been handed down. Among them, Bai Yun in the Western Suburb, Shi Dong Sui and Two Feelings are more important works. Li Shangyin's early political poems were mostly based on Chen's current situation, and their harsh tone of grief and indignation and sense of self-expectation reflected his mentality at that time. In poems about political and social contents, it is a feature of Li Shangyin's poems to borrow historical themes to reflect his views on contemporary society. Fu Hou, two poems of Northern Qi Dynasty, Mao Ling, etc. It is a representative.
From the beginning, Li Shangyin was fascinated by Li He's strange style and the beautiful poetic style of the Southern Dynasties. He deliberately imitated and wrote many poems praising love. But in the ninth year of Daiwa (835), he witnessed a bloody and dark political situation in which a large number of court officials were killed and eunuchs came to power. His thought and creation changed, and he wrote many political poems criticizing the dark reality. For example, he expressed his views on the current situation, angrily denounced eunuchs' crimes, praised generals who dared to oppose eunuch autocracy, and earnestly hoped to eradicate eunuchs and restore the power of the emperor. Another example is deliberately imitating Du Fu's political poem "Hundred Rhymes in the Western Suburb" during the Northern Expedition.
Li Shangyin's political poems are mostly poems that satirize the present through the ancient times. For example, Ode to an Epic criticizes the debauchery, ignorance and incompetence of the rulers. One of the two poems in Sui Palace is intended to remind the rulers of the late Tang Dynasty to learn from history. Another example is Two Poems by Ma Su. Secondly, it satirized and mocked the tragic ending of Tang Xuanzong's estrangement from his relatives and even the loss of his beloved concubine for the sake of the emperor. Implicit and deep, the meaning is beyond words. Jia Sheng deeply embodies the author's feelings: the rulers in the late Tang Dynasty believed in Buddhism for immortality, but they didn't care about the irony of national affairs and their own talents. Another example is Yao Chi, which satirizes the emperor's quest for immortality in the Tang Dynasty, and Sui Shidong, which alludes to the imperial court's eastward expedition to Li.
The success of Li Shangyin's epic lies in paying attention to the conciseness of ideas and the precision of materials, skillfully combining history with reality, or creating fictional scenes with imaginary words, breaking through the limitations of historical facts and revealing the essence of satirical objects more deeply; Or grasp the details or trivia with typical significance and dig deeper to make it more general and typical. At the same time, his own feelings and comments are naturally contained in vivid images, full of lyrical colors and deep feelings, which achieves the harmonious unity of the profundity of implication and the distinctiveness of image and the fuzziness of emotion, and enhances the artistic expression of poetry.
Express one's feelings and recite things.
Li Shangyin's career was bumpy all his life, and his ambition could not be realized, so he used poetry to dispel his depression and anxiety. Ding An Tie Tower, In Spring, Happy Garden and Du Gongbu in the Middle of Shu are the most popular songs. It is worth noting that many seven-character poems in this kind of works are considered as important successors of Du Fu's poetic style.
Untitled love poems
Li Shangyin's love poems are unique among China's classical poems. Part of it shows his deep feelings with his wife Wang, represented by "Short Message to Friends in the North on a Rainy Night". Through the description of autumn scenery in the late rain, this poem shows the poet's loneliness in a foreign land and his deep yearning for his wife. Less than 12 years after marriage, Li Shangyin's wife died. His funeral works, such as House Mourning in the First Month, Going to Shu Dong after Mourning, Three Passes of Snow, etc., are homeless and homesick, written in blood and tears, and are unsightly to read.
The works that chant inner feelings, including most untitled poems, are the most distinctive parts of Li Shangyin's poems, and they are also the most concerned parts of later generations. Jinse, Poems of Yantai Mountain, Three Poems by Bi Cheng, Return to the Temple of Our Lady, etc. , has always maintained a style similar to untitled poetry. Five Willow Branches, Sending Friends to the North on a Rainy Night, Mourning for the Past and Going East, Three Passes of Snow, etc. It embodies the artistic conception of another style of Li Shangyin's emotional poems.
Li Shangyin is most famous for his untitled love poems, but his untitled poems are "obscure" and have hidden meanings. These untitled love poems include 15 untitled poems and nearly 30 quasi-untitled poems. Some of these poems are commissioned, but most of them belong to pure love poems. Li Shangyin's poem "Quasi-Untitled" is also quite excellent. For example, the poem "Jinse" looks like chanting things, but it is actually chanting things. It hides the specific events in life, rises with golden utensils, and makes full use of metaphors, symbols, allusions and other means to express its full of grief and indignation vividly and elegantly.
Li Shangyin is famous for his untitled poems. According to the statistics of poems collected in Li Shangyin's Poems Collection, it can be basically confirmed that there are 15 poems named after * when the poet writes, and another 5 poems are often marked as untitled in popular poetry collections (the five methods are "appreciating people tirelessly", "making the finishing point", "Princess Shouyang" and ".
Some researchers (such as Liu Yang) think that some poems with titles in Li Shangyin's poems should also belong to the category of untitled poems, because the titles of these poems are often taken from the first few words of the poems (such as Yesterday, The Sun shines, etc.). ), or the poem has nothing to do with the content itself (for example, for you, a piece of music, etc. ). However, according to this standard, nearly 100 of Li Shangyin's poems can be classified as untitled poems. So this statement has not been supported by most people.
Feng Hao summed up the previous annotation work on untitled poems in Notes on Yu Xi Sheng Poems, from which we can see that there are great differences among different schools: "It is either fable or endowing untitled poems with their own strengths. Each has his own prejudices and his own decisions. I read the complete works carefully, and even many people actually have sustenance, and few people are erotic and confused. "
Social singing and poetry
Among Li Shangyin's poems used for communication, several poems addressed to Hu Ling Mao (seeing off to fill a vacancy, sending a message to Secretary Ling Huchong, paying for a doctor, sending him to be a bachelor, dreaming of being a bachelor, and Hu Ling Scheeren saying that the drama on the moon last night was a gift) are particularly eye-catching, which provides an explanation for his relationship with Hu Ling Mao. Shi Li absorbed the strengths of predecessors, inherited the depression and frustration of Du Fu's Seven Laws, integrated the magnificence and richness of Qi Liang's poems, and imitated the ghostly fantasy of Li He's poems, forming his affectionate, lingering, aesthetic and delicate style. Shi Li is also good at using allusions and appropriate historical analogies to express hidden and unspeakable meanings. Li Shangyin's poem Go East is a household name. After reading this poem, we can see that this is just an excuse for Li Shangyin to go to the teacher to learn immortality. The so-called study of Taoism is only to relieve one's inner injustice and lament one's fate, but also to face all kinds of decadent indignation in the political affairs and lament the declining Tang Dynasty.
parallel prose (prose written in the parallel style)
Few people talk about Li Shangyin's writing achievements other than poetry. In fact, he was one of the most important parallel prose writers in the late Tang Dynasty. This style pays attention to the antithesis of words and uses a lot of allusions, which is widely used in official documents of the Tang Dynasty. Under the training of Ling Huchu, Li Shangyin became an expert in parallel prose, drafting memorials, letters and other documents for many officials. "Biography of Wen Yuan in Old Tang Dynasty" said that Li Shangyin was "particularly easy to handle funerals". At that time, the parallel prose used in the performance of the text required gorgeous words and accurate expression, so it had high requirements for allusion. Li Shangyin, who is good at writing parallel prose, has developed the habit of using allusions, which is considered to be the reason why he likes to use allusions in his poems.
Li Shangyin once compiled his parallel prose works into Fan Nanjia Collection and Fan Nanyi Collection, each with 20 volumes and 832 articles, which no longer exists today. According to the records in the Book of the New Tang Dynasty and Records of the History and Arts of the Song Dynasty, Li Shangyin's collected works are not only two episodes, but also some others. However, none of these collections have been handed down.
Fan Wenlan spoke highly of Li Shangyin's parallel prose in A Brief History of China, thinking that it would be a pity if all the parallel prose in the Tang Dynasty were lost as long as the Collected Works of Fan Nan was still there. Li Shangyin's poems are unique in the poetry circle of the late Tang Dynasty, because he is sentimental and devoted to them. He expressed the sadness and persistence of the scholars in the late Tang Dynasty with many works, thus creating a new style and new realm of poetry. His poems are novel in conception and beautiful in style, especially some love poems and untitled poems, which are lingering and memorable. In addition, Li Shangyin used subtle and hazy expression techniques to the extreme, but some poems were too obscure and puzzling to be solved. There was a saying that "poets always loved Quincy, but only hated that no one wrote Jian Zheng".
The highest achievement of Li Shangyin's poetry is modern poetry, especially seven-character poems. He is the second milestone after Du Fu in the development history of the Seven Laws in Tang Dynasty.
Li Shangyin inherited the characteristics of Du Fu's Seven Laws, such as prudence, depression and frustration, and combined the rich colors of Qi Liang's poems with the fantasy symbolism of Li He's poems, forming a unique style of affection, aestheticism and delicacy. For example, "Re-crossing the Notre Dame Temple" meets love, and the symbol of Bixing is integrated into the landscape to convey the feeling of being trapped and frustrated; "Spring Rain" moves the exotic beauty of Li He's ancient poems into the regular poems, with beautiful language, neat antithesis, beautiful melody and beautiful images. However, because he likes to use unorthodox classics in his poems, the overall meaning of his poems is often vague. Secondly, Li Shangyin developed the expression of life lament to a deeper and more subtle aspect, and was good at expressing melancholy and lonely feelings with gorgeous and exquisite art forms. His poems are full of confused and sad experiences. His works are profound and delicate, with profound charm, "near but not floating, far and endless", full of symbolic meaning and hazy beauty. For example, there are always different explanations about Jinse's poems, such as mourning, sustenance, love, listening to songs, self-preface, self-injury, etc., which are subtle and far-reaching and have hazy beauty. Thirdly, in a sense, his poetry is a symbol of his soul and a purely subjective expression of life experience. Li Shangyin's seven poems, such as Love at the Rockfall Pavilion in Cuizhou, Cui Yong, Sending Friends to the North on a Rainy Night and Sunset Tower, express the feelings of life experience more, with delicate feelings and beautiful artistic conception. Poetry is permeated with life experience and the sadness of the times, with a sad and sad artistic conception and sad beauty. In art, they are more delicate, sad and beautiful, and in exquisite and rich rhetoric.
Li Shangyin's poems have a wide range of teachers. His feeling of compassion for others and the method of reposing the beauty of vanilla originated from Qu Yuan, and his poetic style with profound meaning is similar to Ruan Ji's. Du Fu's spirit of worrying about the country and the people, his depressed and frustrated style, Qi Liang's exquisite and gorgeous poems, and Li He's symbolism and style all influenced Li Shangyin. Some of Li Shangyin's long and ancient styles are bold and unconstrained, close to Han Yu's; He also has several fresh and beautiful poems with pure lines, which were born out of the folk songs of the Six Dynasties. Li Shangyin is good at melting hundreds of families into one furnace, so he can form his own family. Among the 300 Tang poems edited by Sun Zhu in Qing Dynasty, 32 poems by Li Shangyin were included, second only to Du Fu (38 poems), while 29 poems by Wang Wei and 27 poems by Li Bai were selected. This anthology of Tang poems is a household name in China, from which we can see Li Shangyin's great influence on ordinary people. Although the social significance of Li Shangyin's poems is not as good as that of Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi, Li Shangyin is the most influential poet in later generations, because there are more people who like Li Shangyin's poems than Du Li and Bai Juyi. Li Shangyin's poems, especially his love poems, have a great influence on later generations-from Han Wo and others in the late Tang Dynasty, Kunxi poets in the early Song Dynasty to Huang Jingren and Gong Zizhen in the Qing Dynasty, all of them are influenced by his poetic style. In addition, graceful poets in the Tang and Song Dynasties and many love playwrights in the Ming and Qing Dynasties also constantly learn from him. What is particularly noteworthy is that Li Shangyin's poems expressing sentimental feelings combine people's sense of life experience and the sense of the times in sadness, and pursue a delicate and elegant beauty. The characteristics of poetry are more obvious, such as fine theme, deep emotion and graceful and delicate artistic conception. This has built a bridge between poetry and writing.
According to Ye Xie, "There were seven unique poets in the Song Dynasty, probably/kloc-0 studied Du Fu in 1967 and/kloc-0 studied Li Shangyin in 1934." (Original Poetry) In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, Yang Yi, Qian and other clansmen, Li Shangyin, often sang in harmony with each other, pursuing gorgeous rhetoric and neat antithesis, and published a collection of Kunxi Appreciation, which was called Titi. It was quite influential at that time, but he didn't learn the essence of Li Shangyin's poetry and his achievements were very limited. His influence also disappeared with Ouyang Xiu and others entering the literary world. In addition, Wang Anshi also spoke highly of Li Shangyin, thinking that some of his poems were "unbearable for Lao Du" (Cai Kuanfu's poems). Wang Anshi's own poetic style is also obviously influenced by Li Shangyin.
Poets in the Ming Dynasty were all influenced by Li Shangyin from The First Seven Sons to Qian and Wu. People who like to write erotic poems in the Ming and Qing Dynasties specialize in Li Shangyin's untitled poems, such as Yi Yun Ji and Yi Yu Ji by Wang Yanhong, a poet in the late Ming Dynasty. Romantic poetry in the novels of Yuanyang Butterfly School in the Republic of China was also influenced by him.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Taoist monks annotated Li's poems. At the beginning of Qing Dynasty, Zhu completed three volumes of Notes on Li Yishan's Poems by deleting less and supplementing more on the basis of Notes on Daoyuan. This is the earliest complete annotation of Li Shangyin's poems that can be seen at present. Since then, through the annotation and textual research of Lv Kunzeng (Shi Pin Jie), Yao Peiqian (Shi Pin Zhu), Qu Fu (Shi Pin Zhu), Mengxing Cheng (revised version of Shi Pin Zhu) and Feng Hao (original version of Shi Pin Zhu), we have been able to roughly understand the allusions in Li Shangyin's poems, but the meanings of many poems are still inconclusive. Regarding the influence of Li Shangyin on later generations, we can refer to the influence of Wu Diaogong in the Northern Song Dynasty on poetry, Li Shangyin's Beautiful Sunset in the Qing Dynasty, the influence on Su poetry, the influence on the formation of Li Shangyin's poetry, and the graceful and restrained poems of Liu Xueyan in the Tang and Song Dynasties.