Similarities and differences between Chinese and western poetry

Aesthetic comparison between Chinese and western poems

Zhu Guangqian

The taste of poetry varies from time to time, and the poems of various nationalities and times have their own characteristics. It is a very interesting study to visit and compare them. Take China's poems and western poems for example. They have many interesting similarities and differences in taste. The interest of western poetry and China's poetry focuses on several popular themes, the most important of which is (1) human relations (2) nature (3) religion and philosophy. We are now at this level:

(1) Let me talk about interpersonal relationships first.

Most western poems describing interpersonal relationships are centered on love. China said a lot about love in his poems, but he didn't let love obliterate other human relations. The friendship of friends and the kindness of the monarch and the minister are not very important in western poems, but in China's poems, they are almost equal to love. Take away Qu Yuan, Du Fu and Lu You's feelings of loyalty, patriotism and love for the people, and the essence of their poems will be stripped away. In the past, people who annotate poems often put loyalty and patriotism badges on love poems. For example, when Li Mao annotated The Book of Songs, he regarded many poems that men and women love each other as satirical current affairs. Zhang Huiyan said that Wen Feiqing's fourteenth poem "Bodhisattva Man" is "a work that people can't meet but can't ask for". This method is far-fetched. Recently, however, people have gone to extremes, affixing love badges to truly loyal and patriotic poems. For example, some people think that love poems are written in works such as Li Sao and Journey. I thought it would be far-fetched. Scholars who have seen western poetry see that love is so important in western poetry and think that it should be important in China's poetry. They don't know that the social situation and ethical thoughts of China and the West are inherently different. In former China, love was not as important as modern China people thought. Generally speaking, China's poems describing Syrian human relations are more about the friendship between friends than the love between men and women, and in the concentration of many poets, the works that give answers and sing often account for the majority. The friendship between Su Li [1], Du Li, Han Meng, Su Huang, Nalan Chengde and Gu Zhenguan, the seven sons of Jian 'an, is a beautiful talk from ancient times to the present. Among western poets, Goethe and Schiller, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Keats and Shelley, Wei Erlun and Rambo are also friends, but their poems with friends and friends' fun as the theme are few.

Love is not as important in China's poetry as in western poetry for several reasons. First, although western society is based on the state on the surface, individualism is the core in its bones. Love is the most painful thing in personal life, so try to develop it as much as possible, so as to cover up the relationship between others. The poet's love history is often the end of his life history, especially in modern times. Although China's society is superficially family-based, its essence is kindness. Literati often spend most of their lives on business trips, and it is common for an old couple to send her to other counties. They are not in contact with women, but with colleagues and literary friends day and night.

Secondly, influenced by the chivalry in the Middle Ages, western women had higher status and better education. They can often get together with men in knowledge and interest, and get the pleasure of being friends in China, but they often get it from women in the west. Influenced by Confucianism, China has a low status for women. Lovers' love often comes from ethical concepts, but in fact, like-minded fun is quite rare. China's social ideal values fame and fortune, and "chasing four dresses" is a shame for Confucianism.

Third, there is a great difference between the eastern and western views on love. Westerners attach importance to love and have the slogan "Love is the best". China people value marriage over love, and true love is often found in Mulberry Shop. Down and out, bored, pessimistic and world-weary, people are willing to express their feelings openly, such as Li Houzhu and Emperor Yang Di, whose romantic children have been defiled by this world. We can say that western poets want to realize life in love, while China poets often just want to entertain themselves in love. China poets are down-to-earth, and love is love; Western poets are far-sighted, and love has some philosophy of life and religious feelings.

This is not to say that China poets can't be more affectionate. Most western love poems are written before the wedding, so most people praise their looks and attract their admirers. Most of China's love poems were written after his marriage, so the best ones are often farewell and mourning. Western love poems are longer than "longing", and Shakespeare's sonnets and Shelley and Browning's short poems are the best places for "longing". China's love poems are best at "resentment", such as Curled Ears, White Boat, Far-off Altair, Ge Yanxing by Cao Pi, Ode to a Slut by Liang, Song of Eternal Sorrow by Li Bai and Spring Thoughts. Looking at the whole, it can be said that western poetry wins with frankness, while China's poetry wins with euphemism; Western poetry wins by profundity, while China's poetry wins by implication; Western poetry is better than spreading truth, while China's poetry is better than simplicity.

(2) Second, talk about nature.

In China, as in the West, poets love nature relatively late. The original poems are all based on personnel, even if they occasionally involve nature, just like the original painter takes mountains and rivers as the background of figure painting, but the center of interest is not in nature itself. The Book of Songs is the best example. "Guan Guan Luo Gui, in Hezhou" is just a foil of "My Fair Lady, Gentleman is Good". "White dew is frost" is just a foil to "the so-called Iraqis are on the water side". With more natural persons, people's interests have gained deeper and broader significance. Therefore, the rise of natural interest is a major event in the history of poetry development. This great event began at the turn of the Jin and Song Dynasties in China, about the fifth century after the Gregorian era. In the west, it began in the early stage of the Romantic Movement, about18th century after the Gregorian calendar era. Therefore, the appearance of China's nature poems is about 1300 years earlier than that of the west. Generally speaking, poets despise the Six Dynasties, which I think is the biggest misunderstanding. The Six Dynasties was the beginning of China's natural poems, and it was also the period when China's poems divorced from music and sought music in the words themselves. Since the Six Dynasties, China's poems have only expanded the content of his poems by specialized research on melody, innovation in form, new interest, more refined images and philosophical thoughts. On these levels, the Six Dynasties can be said to be the The Romantic Period of China's poetry, and its importance to China's poetry cannot be attributed to the influence of the Romantic Movement on western poetry.

Compared with western nature poems, China's nature poems, like love poems, are euphemistic and implicit, concise and meaningful, straightforward and profound. There are two kinds of natural beauty, one is rigid beauty and the other is flexible beauty. Rigid beauty is like mountains, seas, strong winds, heavy rains, silent nights and boundless deserts; Flexible beauty is like the breeze and bright moon, faint fragrance, thin shadow, green snail-like mountain light and eye-catching lake water. There are two sentences in ancient poems, "The steeds in northern Hebei are autumn, and the apricot flowers in southern Jiangsu are spring", which can contain these two kinds of beautiful scenery. There is also a difference between rigidity and softness in artistic beauty, which has been discussed in detail in Yao Nai's Fei Shu with Jie. Poems like this and words like Xin are the representatives of rigid beauty. China's poems have their own differences in rigidity and softness, but if compared with western poems, western poems tend to be rigid and soft, while China's poems tend to be soft. The nature that western poets like is the sea, not the storm, which makes the cliff desolate and the sun scenery; China poets naturally like the sparse willows in Mingxi, the gentle breeze and drizzle, the lakes and mountains, and the moonlight. Of course, this is just a general statement. There are poems with or without softness in the west and poems with or without rigidity in China, but softness in western poems and rigidity in China's poems are not their natural strengths.

Poets' love for nature can be divided into three types. The most superficial is the "feeling school". I love breeze because of coolness, flowers because of fragrance and beauty, birds singing and spring water because of its pleasure to the audience, and blue sky and clear water because of its pleasure to the audience. This is the inherent tendency of healthy people, and all poets inevitably have some "sentimentalism". There is a school of poets in the modern west called "Decadence School". They pay special attention to this sentimentalism and try their best to spread the stench in their poems. This hobby is often due to personal quirks and cannot be regarded as the Excellence of poetry. The poet's second love for nature stems from the tacit understanding of interest. The attitude expressed in the poem "Never tired of seeing each other, only Jingting Mountain", "Even the plains are far away from the wind, and good seedlings are also full of new ideas" and "Everything is complacent when it is quiet, and everyone is happy when it is quiet" [2] all belong to this category. This is the attitude of most China poets towards nature. The third is pantheism, which regards the whole nature as the expression of the gods, sees the incredible beauty in it, feels superior and always dominates the power of people. The worship of nature has therefore become a religion, which contains extremely primitive superstition and extremely mysterious philosophy. This is the attitude of most western poets towards nature, and few poets in China have reached this level. Tao Qian and Wordsworth are both famous natural poets, and their poems are similar in many aspects. By comparison, we can see that Chinese and western poets have very different attitudes towards nature. Let's take Shi Tao's drinking as an example:

Picking chrysanthemums under the east fence, you can see Nanshan leisurely. The mountains are getting better and better, and the birds are back. That makes sense. I forgot what I wanted to say.

It can be seen that he still holds the attitude of "reading well, not asking for more understanding" about nature. He doesn't like "fire in a cage" and likes "garden without vulgar feelings", so he lives in the universe of "more than ten acres of square houses with 89 huts" and thinks that "people are easily satisfied" His mind is so open-minded and calm, so when he is in the "Zeng Qiu", he is often "happy to know" [3]. But he doesn't want to distinguish, which is the biggest difference between him and Wordsworth and other western poets. Wordsworth also hates "vulgar feelings" and "loves autumn mountains". He can be happy and content, but he is a thinker and full of religious feelings. Based on his own experience, he said: "A very ordinary flower rippling in the wind can cause me to think so deeply that I can't express it with tears." In the poem "Tingtan Temple", he also said that he felt that there was "an elf who drove away all profound thinkers and all objects of thought and circled in all things." This enlightenment is obviously different from this mysticism and the tacit understanding between China's poets and nature. China poets can only hear nature in nature, while western poets can often see a mysterious and great power in nature.

(3) Philosophy and religion

Why can China poets only see love in love and nature in nature, but can't have a deeper understanding? This cannot but be attributed to the weakness of people's philosophical and religious feelings. Although poetry is not a tool to discuss philosophy and publicize religion, it is not easy to reach a profound level without religion and philosophy behind it. Poetry is like flowers, philosophy and religion are like earth. The soil is not fertile, the roots cannot be deep, and the flowers cannot be multiplied. Western poetry is deeper than China's, because it has deeper philosophy and religion to cultivate its roots. Without Plato and Spinoza, there would be no idealism and pantheism shown by Goethe, Wordsworth and Shelley. Without religion, there would be no Greek tragedy, Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. In fact, China's poems show extraordinary splendour on barren soil, which is a surprise, but compared with western poems, it is always a fly in the ointment. I love China's poetry. I think it is often inferior to western poetry in implicit charm and elegant style, but when it comes to profundity and greatness, I can't defend it.

As far as nationality is concerned, China people are quite similar to the ancient Romans, and they are down-to-earth everywhere, emphasizing reality rather than metaphysics. Therefore, as far as philosophy is concerned, ethical creed is the most developed, while systematic metaphysics is unknown; As far as literature is concerned, works focusing on personnel and social issues are the most developed, and works focusing on virtual structures are few and far between. China people are the most "practical" and "humane". This is its strength and weakness. Its strength lies in this, because people-oriented theory says that the relationship between people is the most important, while China's Confucianism stresses personnel, and its untimely society can actually enjoy stability for more than 2,000 years. This is its shortcoming, because it attaches too much importance to humanism and secularism and cannot dream of higher places, so it cannot expect higher places. After social stability, it was impossible to move forward at first, but later it lost its inherent stability because it could not move forward.

I said that China's philosophy is very simple, and I have never forgotten the philosophy of Zhuangzi. However, compared with Confucianism, Laozi and Zhuangzi are more extensive and profound, and compared with western philosophers, they still emphasize personnel. They seldom leave people to study the essence of thought and the source of the universe. Although they had a great influence on China's poems, they were not completely satisfactory for two reasons. First, philosophical methods and systematic analysis are easy to teach, but subjective understanding is difficult to teach. Laozi and Zhuangzi's philosophy is based on subjective understanding, not as superficial as the systematic analysis of western philosophers, so their thoughts are just dross. The old school is a Taoist saying, and the tone of China's poetry is more influenced by Taoism than by Laozi and Zhuangzi. Second, the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi is still nihilistic and despises efforts, but without the "continuous efforts" that westerners attach importance to, neither poetry nor philosophy can penetrate. Laozi and Zhuangzi, although their works are profound, the people who teach them are often complacent.

As long as we study the poems influenced by Laozi and Zhuangzi, we can see this truth. Most poets in China are from Confucianism, such as Tao Qian and Du Fu. However, the four great poets were deeply influenced by Laozi and Zhuangzi, which created a new realm for Confucian China's poetry. They are Qu Yuan in Li Sao and Yuan You (assuming the author is Qu Yuan), Ruan Ji in love poems, Guo Pu in wandering fairy poems, and Li Bai in Fifty-nine Poems, about going in and out in the daytime, thinking about the past and ancient customs. We can collectively call them "immortal poets". What are their ideas? Qu Yuan said:

Only the infinity of heaven and earth laments the long diligence of life. I can't smell the past and the future. ..... The desert is quiet, quiet and pleasant, which is inaction.

I smell the dust of red pine, and the original wind stays.

Ruan Ji said in Ode to Shi Huai:

Not enough people went, and those who came didn't stay. I want to climb Taihua Mountain and swim with pine nuts.

Guo Pu said in "Poems of Wandering Immortals":

Time goes by, and it's autumn and summer again. Huaihai becomes a bird, and my life is unique! Although I want to fly in Danxi, Yun Chi is not my driver.

Li Bai said in "Antique":

The Yellow River flows eastward, the white sun sets in the west, Sichuan and streamers passing by, and they are erratic. ..... When you visit Yun Chi, you will appreciate the scenery there.

These poems all express the same attitude, and they all want to move from world-weariness to transcendence. The reason why they are world-weary is nothing more than impermanence and short life. Their transcendental methods are trying to figure out the legend of Taoist alchemy, so as to prolong the life of Crane Immortal. But this is just a hope. They don't realize the fairyland and enjoy the happiness they want. So Qu Yuan said:

Levin is far away, but why should I travel?

Ruan Ji said:

There is no turning back when picking herbs, and the immortal's will does not match, which makes me feel good and makes me hesitate for a long time.

Guo Pu said:

Although I want to fly in Danxi, Yun Chi is not my driver.

Li Bai said:

I think the fairy is in the east corner of the blue sea. The sea was cold and windy, and the landslides in Bai Bo collapsed. Long whales spewed out, tears touching the heart like beads. .

They are not satisfied with this world and want something from another world. This kind of longing is quite similar to the religious feelings in the west, which should produce a very gorgeous and brilliant ideal world, but their ideals have finally "aborted". Although they all see the suffering of this world clearly, their imagination of another world is vague. Their fairyland is sometimes in the "blue clouds", sometimes in the "east corner of the blue sea" and sometimes in the Yaochi where the Queen Mother of the West lives. According to Li Bai's calculation, it is "three hundred miles above the sky". There is an "emperor" in the fairyland, who is served by a jade boy in blowing sheng and an elf princess holding hibiscus flowers. Wang Qiao, An Qisheng and Pinus densiflora are the "apostles" of the celestial world. Wonderland is also very precious to the precious prosperity of the world. Just look at "the jade cup gives nectar" and "but see the gold and silver platform", and you can imagine the generosity of the gods. Immortals don't forget the beautiful scenery of Yunshan Linquan, so "more than a thousand trees in Qingxi", "beams between clouds" and "jade playing Lanping" are all worth visiting. The greatest happiness of immortals is longevity. Guo Pu's "chitose baby" is still too short, but Li Bai's immortality is "Long live the meal calendar". Immortals have great abilities, such as "occupying a large area", "attracting scenery to leave a name", "waving hands to break down barren trees" and "brushing the western sunlight". The way to ascend to immortality is Yun Zhonghe, but sometimes it is necessary to collect medicine and make an alchemy, and to "be real" and "kneel down for treasure."

This image of heaven starts from the nihilism of Laozi and Zhuangzi and adopts the Taoist thought of holding the world high. They don't know that although later Taoists held the self-esteem of the old school, their love thoughts were fundamentally incompatible with Laozi's philosophy. Laozi thinks that "man's great misfortune lies in his body", so "holding the desire to see the wonder" is a golden needle, while Taoism desperately strives for a long life and can't forget the prosperity of the jade palace and the jade cup spirit liquid. It is the contradiction of the immortals to be above the world and not beyond their desires. Their contradictions don't stop there. Although they seem to want to be superior, there is still a strong Confucian color in their bones. They have not abandoned the unique humanity of the Chinese nation. Qu Yuan, Ruan Ji and Li Bai all have a great responsibility to help the world and care for the people. Ruan Ji claims to be crazy, but there is still the advice of "life geometry, be open-minded and try your best" in his poems. Li Bai expressed his ambition in Antique, and also said, "My ambition is to delete the narrative and reflect the spring." They all have the desire to become scholars. Seeing the hardships of the world and the shortness of life, they fled to the nothingness and quietness of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and tried to hold high the world after learning Taoism. The fairyland they want is elusive. "Although I want to fly in Danxi, Yun Chi is not my driver." , still can't help but "caress my heart like tears", so I returned to the human state, trying to seek temporary happiness and give my feelings to the wine girl. "Want to gather far away without rest, talk about floating but carefree" is Qu Yuan's angry talk, which became a wet policy in Ruan Ji and Li Bai. All the poets in this school suffered from poverty in their later years. From Shu to world-weariness, it is impossible to seek transcendence because of world-weariness, so he falls into the world of play again, and playing the world cannot be carefree. They have been wandering in this contradiction and conflict all their lives. A truly great poet will wander in this contradiction and conflict, but he can also overcome this contradiction and conflict and get a solution. Dante, Shakespeare and Gaud all stayed. They surpassed Ruan Ji and Li Bai because they finally settled down, while Li Ruan ended up wandering.

Why do Chinese immortals stop wandering? This is due to the weakness of human philosophy and religious sentiment mentioned above. Philosophy is simple, so it can't find harmony in conflict, nor can it create an ideal world that the soul can entrust. Religious sentiment is weak, so there is a lack of "unremitting efforts". I am comfortable in this world and have no intention of seeking sustenance and comfort in the ideal world. Among the poets in China, Qu Yuan, Ruan Ji and Li Bai can look into the distance. They have all explored the realm that China poets don't often go to, but their nationality is too heavy. They just flew to the sky and fell to the ground. Therefore, Western poets' longing for another world can produce masterpieces such as Paradise Lost and Faust, while China poets' longing for another world can only produce some simple and fragmentary short poems such as Farewell, Love Poems and Antique.

Besides Laozi, Zhuangzi and Taoism, Buddhism also has a profound influence on China's poetry. Unfortunately, this effect has not been carefully studied. First of all, it should be noted that most of China's poems influenced by Buddhism only have "Zen interest" but no "Buddhism". "Buddhism" is a real Buddhist philosophy, and "Zen interest" is the interest of monks sitting in mountain temples to understand Buddhism. Buddhism was introduced to China from the Han Dynasty, and began to be sung after the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and Sun Chuo's Poems of Visiting Mount Tiantai was its source. Among Jin people, it is the easiest to learn Buddhism, so Hui Yuan, a monk in Jin Dynasty, made great efforts to make friends with him and invited him to join the "White Lotus Sect". He was conditioned to drink wine, and then "folded his eyebrows and left", as if disdaining Buddha. But he heard Yuan Gong's comments and told People that it was "quite thought-provoking". At that time, Buddhism prevailed, and Tao Qian was inevitably influenced by some casual influences. In his "Sparse Yan Zi":

Learn less piano books. I love leisure. As soon as I open my books, I forget to eat happily. In the shade, the birds changed their voices and they were happy again. As the saying goes:

In mid-May and June, I was lying under the north window, and a cool breeze blew. I called myself Master Sidi.

There is a passage about understanding Zen machines. His poems also describe this realm very much. After Tao Qian, China poets were deeply influenced by Buddhism, and the greatest achievements were Xie Lingyun, Wang Wei and Su Shi. Their poems are all dedicated to Buddhism, but there is a kind of Zen everywhere. Only by playing with their complete works carefully can we get such a general impression. For example, Xie Lingyun's "White clouds embrace the secluded stones, and the green baskets (xi m: o) make clear the ripples", "An empty pavilion will argue forever, and an empty court will bring a black magpie", Wang Wei's "Birds scattered in the sky, flowers lost for a long time", Su Shi's "Lean on my hut door, lean on my staff, and listen to cicadas in the evening wind", and Su Shi's "The boat is sailing without moving.

The reason why they have "Zen" instead of "Buddhism" is that poetry is not suitable for reasoning, and it is also because they envy Buddhists instead of Buddhism. After the Jin Dynasty, most poets in China had "Fang Diplomacy", Xie Lingyun had a gentleman, Wang Wei had a gentleman and a Zen master, and Su Shi had one. They are very envious of the speech and literary talent of this group of eminent monks, and often steal "half a day off" to the temple to appreciate the taste of "meditation" or exchange a few interesting words with the Zen master. The realm of poetry and Zen are interlinked, so poets and Zen masters often meet silently. China poets love nature earlier than western poetry 1000 years, which is also related to Buddhism. Monks in Wei and Jin Dynasties had the habit of choosing scenic spots to build temples, and they were the first to see the natural beauty (China monks had a hobby for nature or were influenced by Indian monks, and ancient Indian Brahmins had the habit of living in seclusion with scenic spots, as evidenced by the drama Shagongdana). Monks first saw the beauty of nature, and poets learned this new interest from their "Fang Diplomacy". The biggest component of Zen interest is the wonderful understanding gained from nature in silence. This is where China poets can benefit most from Buddhism. However, although they have the intention of "participating in Zen", they have no intention of "proving Buddhism". They want to seek recreation in Buddhism instead of believing in Buddhism and seeking complete enlightenment and complete liberation. Going into the mountains to participate in Zen, going out of the mountains is still his official, eating his wine and meat, and cherishing his wife. Originally, the beauty of Buddhism was that "if you don't stand in words, you will become a Buddha if you see sex", but poetry is still a dust barrier.

Buddhism only expanded the appeal of China's poems, but did not expand its philosophical foundation. The philosophical roots of China's poems have never been more than Confucianism and Taoism. Buddhism is a foreign philosophy, so it is precisely because it has some similarities with Taoism that China's poems are popular. After the Jin dynasty, most people tried to explain that they did the same, thinking that ascending to immortality was becoming a Buddha. Sun Chuo's Poem of Visiting Mount Tiantai and Li Bai's Poem of Giving a Monk Cliff both believe that Buddhism and Lao can be interlinked, and the "heresy" initiated by Han Yu is also the unity of Buddhism and Lao. Although Laozi is still nothingness, he has not made it clear that he is silent. He is an out-and-out individualist, and most of the Tao Te Ching is the experience of sophisticated people, so he later became the knowledge of applying for name punishment in Korea. Buddha aims at Puji's life. Laozi advocates that human beings should return to the ignorance of primitive times and Buddhists should realize their own nature. According to Laozi's theme of "abandoning saints and wisdom", Buddhism should also be abandoned. It can be seen that the old and the Buddha root are incompatible. People in the Jin and Tang Dynasties combined Buddhism with old age, just as they combined Taoism with old age. They never thought of this kind of makeshift contradiction. It is particularly strange that Confucian poets often believe in Buddhism at the same time. Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen were originally thorough Confucian scholars, but they said in vain that "I learn from an empty door instead of immortals, and I have to return to heaven when I return home", and Yuan also said in the poem "Sending Illness" that "I learned Buddhism early and lived like this". China used to have the habit of "deeply believing in religion, but not asking for much understanding". This careless spirit of compromise also has its advantages, but it is incompatible with profound philosophy and passionate religious ambitions. It is precisely because of this that China's poetry has reached the realm of beauty but not greatness.

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[1] Su Li was the collective name of Su Wu and Li Ling in the Western Han Dynasty.

[2] From Cheng Hao's "Accidental Autumn" in the Song Dynasty, the original poem is "Nothing is idle when you are idle, and red when you go to bed. Everything is complacent when you are quiet, and you are happy when you are with people at any time. Tao passes through the material world and thinking enters the abnormal situation. Wealth is not lewd, poverty is not happy, and men are heroic here. " -Xi Yunzhu

[3] "Zengqiu" is Zengcheng Mountain, which is located in the west of Xing Zi County. -Xi Yunzhu