Basic knowledge of couplets

First, the origin and development of couplets

Couplets, also known as couplets or couplets, are antithetical sentences written on paper, cloth or engraved on bamboo, wood and columns. It is a national cultural form that our people generally love. When people meet important events or moments such as weddings, funerals, festivals and birthdays, they all like to use it to express their feelings of celebration or mourning. This kind of couplets is most widely used during the Spring Festival, and is called Spring Festival couplets. Spring Festival couplets, also known as "door pairs", "spring stickers", "couplets" and "couplets", are unique literary forms in China. It depicts the background of the times and expresses good wishes with neat, dual, concise and exquisite words. Every Spring Festival, no matter in urban or rural areas, every household should choose a pair of bright red Spring Festival couplets and stick them on the door to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, so as to increase the festive atmosphere of the festival.

Spring Festival couplets originated from ancient peach symbols. In the Qing Dynasty, Yanjing Shi Sui Ji recorded: "Spring Festival couplets are also Fu Tao." At that time, "Fu Tao" was a rectangular red wooden board hanging on both sides of the gate, with the names of "Shen Tu" and "Lei Yu" written on it to ward off evil spirits. During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, some people wrote couplets on the palace peach symbols. According to "History of Shu Family in Song Dynasty", Meng Chang, a great master of the later Shu Dynasty, once wrote a poem on the mahogany board, and the author was Bachelor Xin. "Write a cloud:' Come to Qing Yu in the Spring Festival, celebrate the festive season' on the pretence that it is not working." This is the first Spring Festival couplets recorded in China's state-owned written records. Until the Song Dynasty, Spring Festival couplets were also called "Fu Tao", and there was a saying in Wang Anshi's poem that "thousands of households always change new peaches for old ones". Later, due to the mass production of paper, peach symbols gradually changed from mahogany boards to paper, which was called "spring stickers", and this was the beginning of pasting Spring Festival couplets.

The word "Spring Festival couplets" appeared in the early Ming Dynasty. The popularity of Spring Festival couplets prevailed in the Ming Dynasty. According to Miscellanies of Mao Yunlou, "Spring Festival couplets began in Ming Taizu. Jinling, the imperial capital, suddenly issued a decree on New Year's Eve, and a pair of Spring Festival couplets must be posted on the doors of officials and scholars. Mao Wei walked out of sight and thought he was laughing. " It is said that one year before New Year's Eve, he issued an imperial edict requiring every household in Jinling to stick Spring Festival couplets written in red paper on their doorframes to welcome the Spring Festival. On the morning of New Year's Day, Zhu Yuanzhang made a tour incognito and went door to door to check the Spring Festival couplets. Whenever he sees a well-written Spring Festival couplets, he is very happy and full of praise. Zhu Yuanzhang was very angry when he saw a family that didn't stick Spring Festival couplets. He asked why. The attendant replied, "This is a master who is engaged in killing and cutting pigs. He was so busy during the New Year that he didn't have time to ask someone to write. " Zhu Yuanzhang ordered people to bring pen, ink, paper and inkstone, and wrote a pair of Spring Festival couplets for this family: "Split the road of life and death with both hands, and cut off the root of right and wrong with one knife." After writing, I will continue to patrol. After a period of time, Zhu Yuanzhang passed by here again when he returned to the palace. He saw that the butcher's house had not posted his Spring Festival couplets, so he asked what was going on. The host respectfully replied, "This pair of Spring Festival couplets was written by the emperor himself. We hang high in nave and burn incense every day. " Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy, so he ordered his attendants to give the family thirty taels of silver. In addition, he also wrote Spring Festival couplets for princes and ministers, and gave them to Xu Da, the king of Zhongshan. The contents are as follows: "Breaking barbarians, merit comes first in ancient and modern times; When you go out, you will go to chinese odyssey. " The couplet given to Tao An is: "The national dynasty is unparalleled, and the article from Hanyuan is the first." It can be seen that the naming and promotion of "Spring Festival couplets" is due to the emperor's personal practice, the love of literati and the spread of the masses, and the Spring Festival couplets have been handed down as a custom.

Second, the characteristics of couplets:

The characteristic of couplets is that there should be both "pair" and "couplet". In the form of pairs, they are "right" to each other; The contents of the context take care of each other and are closely related. The upper and lower couplets must have a complete and unified structure and clear and concise language. The characteristics of couplets are summarized as "six phases", which are classified as follows:

First, the number of words should be equal. The number of words online equals the number of words offline. The number of words in each clause of the long couplet is equal. There is a special case that the number of words in the upper and lower couplets is intentionally different. For example, during the Republic of China, some people ridiculed Yuan Shikai's couplets: "Yuan Shikai is eternal; Long live the people of China. " The words "Yuan Shikai" in the first part and "China people" in the second part mean that Yuan Shikai is sorry for the people of China.

Overlapping or overlapping words are allowed in sentences. Folding in half and overlapping words are commonly used rhetorical devices in couplets, but attention should be paid to the consistency of the upper and lower couplets when overlapping. For example, in the Ming Dynasty, Gu Xiancheng wrote the title "Wuxi Donglin Academy Union": "The sound of wind and rain can be heard; Family affairs, state affairs, and what's going on in the world are all concerned. "

However, we should try to avoid "homophony" and "homophony" in couplets. The so-called homonym means that the same word is opposite in the same position of the upper and lower parts. The so-called ectopic reduplication means that the same word appears in different positions of the upper and lower links. However, some function words are allowed to have homophones, such as Ge Linglian of West Lake in Hangzhou: "The song of peach blossoms and flowing water, between the shade of grass and leaves."

The word "Zhi" in the upper and lower couplets is repeated in the same place, but it is OK because it is empty word. However, there is a special form of "heterotopia and mutual emphasis" (called "transposition case"), such as Lin Sen's couplet of Dr. Sun Yat-sen: "One person is eternal, one person is eternal."

Second, equivalence of parts of speech. There are two types of parts of speech in modern Chinese, namely, notional words and function words. The former includes nouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, quantifiers and pronouns. The latter includes adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary words, exclamations and onomatopoeias. Part of speech equivalence means that words or phrases with the same position in the upper and lower parts should have the same or similar parts of speech. The first is the rule of "real to real, virtual to virtual", which is the most basic rule and has the widest meaning. In some cases, just follow this. Secondly, the corresponding rules of parts of speech, that is, the words 12 above correspond to each other. This rule should be observed in most cases. Thirdly, the semantic correspondence rule refers to putting things of the same type represented by Chinese characters together for confrontation. The ancients noticed this rhetorical method long ago. Nouns, in particular, are divided into many subcategories, such as astronomy, seasons, geography, government offices, vegetation, birds and so on. Finally, the corresponding rules of adjacent categories, that is, words in adjacent categories can be paired with each other. For example, astronomy belongs to the season, astronomy belongs to geography, and geography belongs to the palace.

Third, the structure is commensurate. The so-called structural proportion means that the grammatical structure of the upper and lower conjunctions should be as same as possible, that is, the subject-predicate structure is opposite to the subject-predicate structure, the verb-object structure is opposite to the verb-object structure, and the coordinate structure is opposite to the coordinate structure. For example, Li Bai's topic is Yueyang Tower in Hunan: "Water and sky are one color, and the wind and moon are boundless."

This conjunction is both a subject-predicate structure. Among them, "water sky" and "romantic moon" are both parallel structures, and "one color" and "boundless" are all positive structures.

However, in the case of equivalent parts of speech, the requirements for some similar or special sentence structures can be relaxed appropriately.

Fourth, the rhythm corresponds. That is, the upper and lower couplets must be consistent, such as: "don't let the spring and autumn pass;" It is the hardest thing for an old friend. "

This is a seven-character short couplet, and the rhythm of the upper and lower couplets is exactly the same, both of which are "223". Longer couplets must have corresponding rhythm.

The fifth is uniformity and harmony. There are two aspects to the harmony between ping and ping: one is the opposition between ping and ping. Generally, word pairs are not required, but attention should be paid to the right ending, the upper part is different and the lower part is flat; The words at the end of the sentence or at the rhythm point should be flat and opposite; The end of every clause in a long couplet should be flat and even. Second, the upper and lower couplets appear alternately in their respective sentences. Yu Dequan, a contemporary theorist, summed up a set of "horseshoe rhyme" rules, which are simply "flat and even", just like the rhythm of horseshoes.

The problem of alignment is not absolute, and it can be flexible in many cases. If there are overlapping words, compound words, palindromes, humor, phonology, etc. Couplets can be decided according to the specific situation.

Sixth, the content is relevant. What are couplets? It is both "right" and "related". The words mentioned above are all "right", with the same number of words, equivalent parts of speech, the same structure, corresponding rhythm and even harmony, but they still lack a "couplet". "Lian" is about content relevance. Between the upper and lower couplets of a couplet, the content should be related. If the upper and lower couplets each write an irrelevant thing, and the two can't reflect, connect and echo, it can't be regarded as a qualified couplet, or even a couplet.

However, there is a form of couplets called "no love pair". The upper and lower couplets are word for word, but the content is irrelevant. The comparison of the meanings of the upper and lower couplets can arouse unexpected interest. He Danru, who became famous at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, once used the Cantonese proverb "I don't know if the sect is losing money" to comment on the famous sentence of Tang poetry "Who rules the clouds all around?" Very distinctive.