Seven-law composition series tutorial

The first lecture on the composition of the seven wonders

As the first lecture at the beginning of this class, I mainly talk about the following three aspects:

1. The importance of good layout in the writing of the four-line poem;

2. Twenty-five common methods of planning and layout;

3. Example analysis method 1: Today's people remember the past and combine things.

What's the ingredient? The explanation we gave in The Great Chinese Dictionary is "the law of the layout of poetry". In our poetry writing, we must first determine a theme of performance, and plan and arrange its content and structure around this "theme". A poem, what to write at the beginning, what to write in the middle and what to write at the end, this is your "layout". But "planning the layout of the article" is different from composition, and it is not enough to write only what is written in each part. You should also clarify the relationship between the parts, the logic before and after, and make it appear reasonable and prudent.

The importance of composition in poetry creation is self-evident. This is the most basic requirement. A qualified poem requires at least reasonable content layout, clear expression ideas and self-consistent basic logic. On the other hand, works with patchwork contents, logical contradictions and messy rules and regulations, even if they are flowery in language, profound in emotion and profound in meaning, are not introductory works after all.

What I am talking about here is "the method of planning the layout of articles", which focuses on two aspects: first, the content layout, that is, what to write first, and then what to write; The second is relationship processing, that is, what kind of logical relationship and subtlety this content layout presents.

Good layout is the key to creating excellent four-line works. The seven wonders are short in space, need warning and have bright spots. Shen Zufen said that the Seven Wonders need to "strictly choose what it wants to express and extract the most typical fragments to express". In fact, the choice and distribution of this kind of expression content, as well as the relationship and way of expression, all involve the ingenuity of layout and conception. Therefore, using a good layout will help the Seven Wonders to write highlights and get rid of mediocre and vulgar routines.

For example, Yang Wanli's Listening to the Rain:

I returned to the ship last year and stayed in Yanling. The rain hit the awning and I could hear the light.

Last night, it began to rain under the thatched eaves, and the dream was called the sound of the sky.

It was nothing more than that the poet stayed in the thatched cottage last night and listened to the rain beating on the eaves of the thatched cottage all night, so he wrote this poem. A four-line poem, if written truthfully, will certainly be unremarkable without any bright spots. When writing, the author spent a lot of time on "planning the layout". This poem is very clever in content layout and relationship handling, and digs out the strangeness in daily trivia.

Look at his beginning, not in a hurry to write about listening to the rain under the eaves last night, but listening to the rain on the ship from previous years. "I returned to the ship last year and stayed in Yanling. The rain hit the awning and listened to the light." In previous years, the poet went home by boat, passed by Yanling, spent the night in Yanling, and it began to rain. This light rain beat against the sky and rang all night. The poet listened to the rain and heard the dawn.

The last two sentences cut into the matter of listening to the rain on the roof last night. "It rained on the thatched eaves last night, and the dream was called the sound of awning." The poet stayed in the thatched cottage last night, listening to the sound of knocking on the eaves, and fell into a trance in his sleep, mistakenly thinking that he was still on the boat in Yanling, listening to the sound of raindrops knocking on the awning.

Look at this four-line poem, the content layout is quite clever. Write the sound of rain hitting the roof on the ship in previous years, and then write the sound of rain hitting the roof last night. The first two sentences are far from the point, and the third sentence is switched back, with rich artistic conception and rich opening and closing changes. Dealing with relationships is also ingenious. The author connected listening to the rain on the boat in previous years with listening to the rain on the tree eaves last night, and naturally there was a meeting point. This intersection is that when people are asleep, these two kinds of rain sound familiar. The deja vu rain in the dream linked the past with last night's situation.

Then, let's look at this poem. The first two sentences are about listening to the rain on the boat in previous years, and the third sentence is about listening to the rain on the roof last night. This is the difference in content layout; As soon as the fourth sentence came out, the two situations were combined through similar rain in the dream. In this way, the content layout of the whole poem is not loose and fragmented, but there is a meeting point that unifies two completely different artistic conceptions in the whole poem. With this ingenious sketch layout and clever handling of relations, the author makes the artistic conception of "listening to the rain" dreamlike, and also writes the subtle feeling of deja vu in the life situation, which is a masterpiece.

Some people will think that the length of the Seven Musts is so short, so the space for arrangement and change will be limited, not as complicated and changeable as the ancient style and the Seven Laws. Of course, as far as single sentences are concerned, due to the limitation of space and words, the change of composition is indeed much simpler than that of seven laws and long ancient customs. However, this is only a single prime minister, which does not mean that the creation of the four wonders genre lacks exploration space and room for manoeuvre in composition.

In fact, by reading a large number of ancient classics, we find that the seven wonders have great room for development and change in the layout of articles because of their short length and flexible style. This is not aimed at a certain four-character poem, but at its overall change potential as a genre. Write a four-line poem, although the composition is not very complicated; However, if you want to write two poems, you have to ponder and think about how the layout of the two poems should change. Each poem has its own different arrangements.

There are more than 70 four-character poems by Li Bai and more than 90 four-character poems by Du Mu/KLOC. It is impossible to use several articles repeatedly. Nature is the poet's way of constantly exploring the layout of his works and the changing space of composition in his creation, which makes his seven unique works rich, changeable and beautiful. Otherwise, it is boring and repetitive to always follow several fixed rules and patterns.

Therefore, in the creation of the four wonders, the more layout methods you contact, understand and master, the more you can understand the composition changes of the four wonders, and the more handy you will be in application. This is the same as a smart woman cooking. A good cook has all kinds of dishes for every meal, which are rich in flavor and people like to eat them. Otherwise, the same food, the same taste, two or three days, even no appetite.

Here, I have summarized 25 common methods for planning the layout of articles, which are further divided into 1 1 categories, as follows:

Visit the ancient times in Tai Su (Don Li Bai)

The old garden is barren and willow is new, and Lingge sings endlessly in spring.

Today, only Xijiangyue took photos of people in Wugong.

background

In the 12th year of Kaiyuan (724), Li Bai traveled far away from his relatives, and in the 14th year of Kaiyuan (746), he roamed wuyue. Travel across the state and write down the poem "Yue revisits the ancient times"; I returned to Suzhou from Yuezhou to visit Gusutai, and wrote this song "Suzhou Visiting the Ancient".

"Tai Su", namely Gusutai, is on Gusu Mountain in the southwest of Suzhou. According to legend, it was built by He Lv, the king of Wu in the Spring and Autumn Period. Fu Cha set up spring night Palace on the stage, drinking with the attendants and maids all night. The state of Yue attacked Wu, the king of Wu was defeated, and Gusutai was burned. "Visiting the ancient times" means visiting historical sites.

Sentence meaning

[The old garden is barren, and the willow tree is bright, and Ling Gechun can't sing]

"Old Garden Deserted Terrace" refers to the gardens and abandoned terraces of the old King of Wu. "Pentecostal" is different from the "Pentecostal" that is often said now. Here is to describe the clear and loud singing. "Invincible" means endless meaning, and "invincible spring" means that this song contains endless spring.

[Today, only Xijiangyue took photos of people in the Wu Palace]

"Xijiang", the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River was often called Xijiang in the Tang Dynasty.

There is a cloud in Li Bai's poem "Drinking asking for the moon": "This month, according to the ancients."

Technology and ideas

Commenting on this poem, Notes on Tang Poetry said: "I am reluctant to part with the ancient times, and my words are extremely sad."

The first two sentences are "the old garden is bleak and the platform is new, and the ridge songs can't be sung in spring." On one side stands the monument of "the old garden is desolate", and the words "old" and "desolate" are written in the desolate and dilapidated garden pavilion of Gusutai. On the one hand, the spring is beautiful here, willow trees are shaded, people sing in the mountains and in spring.

"A Brief Record of Poetry Changes" said: "In a word or two, but writing about today's scene has hinted that the beauty of the Wu Palace cannot be seen again; But the wonderful thing is that three or four sentences were not written from an invisible place, they were all written, and they were so beautiful that they could no longer be seen. "

In Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty, this kind of writing is called "the illusion of smallpox out of thin air". The author conjures up the former "people in the martial arts palace" from the "old garden and barren terrace" in front of him, and conjures up a wonderful and prosperous virtual realm from the extremely desolate reality, which shows the transience and illusion of the hegemony of the king and the land more and more, instead of expressing his feelings directly, he is deeply touched.

In A Dream of Red Mansions, Zhen annotated a good song for the first time and began to say, "The humble room is empty and the bed is full; The withered grass and withered poplar used to be a ballroom, and it is also a very prosperous and beautiful virtual environment (full of beds and dance halls) coming out of the extremely desolate real environment, which gives readers a great visual impact and causes readers to think deeply.

Shenyuan (Song Luyou)

one

On the city, the setting sun draws a corner to mourn, and the Shen Garden is not a revival pool platform.

Under the sad bridge, the spring waves are green, which used to be a stunning photo.

Lu You visited Shenyuan in his later years, and Shao Xi visited Shenyuan in the third year (1 192), and wrote an old-school seven laws. In the fifth year of Qingyuan (1 199), Lu You was seventy-five years old and visited Shenyuan again to write two poems about Shenyuan. This is the first poem in a series, which was written by Youshen Garden on 1 199.

[The setting sun on the city draws a corner to mourn, and the Shen Garden is not a pool platform.]

"Corner painting" is an ancient military instrument painted with colorful ornaments. It can be used to tell the time at the head of the city, and its sound is bleak. "Don't Revive the Old Pond and Terrace" is based on a seven-rhythm poem written by Lu You1KLOC-0 when he visited Shenyang Garden in 1992. There is such a sentence in the title: "The garden has changed its owners three times in forty years, and the terraces in the pond in the garden have changed greatly.

[The spring waves under the sad bridge are green, which used to be a stunning photo]

"Jing" describes the lightness of a beauty's body according to the sentence of "Jing" in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Cao Zhi's Ode to Luoshen. Later generations used "Jing Hong" to refer to a beautiful woman with a light figure. The idiom "a glimpse" describes the amazing sight of a beautiful woman glancing at it in a hurry.

consider

Lu You's last two sentences have traces of drawing lessons from Yan Shu's Qing Ping Le. Yan Shu's "Qingpingle" wrote:

The setting sun leans on the west wing alone, and the distant mountain is facing the curtain hook. People don't know where, but the green waves still flow eastward.

Of course, Yan Shu's conception draws lessons from Cui Hu's sentence "People don't know where to go, but peach blossoms are still smiling in the spring breeze". However, Lu You found this change from Yan Shu's "People don't know where to go, and the green waves still flow eastward", which shows that later generations' poetry creation is an inheritance and renovation of previous classics.

The most touching thing about Lu You's poem is that the last sentence describes that Tang Wan once swam in Shenyuan and took pictures by the water. It is extracted from the words "I was surprised to take a photo", which is extremely amazing and moving. However, this amazing scene is just an illusory beauty.

Let's analyze the layout of these two four articles. The first two sentences in Li Bai's Visit to the Ancient Times by Su Tai are written in front of today's reality: "The old garden is barren, and the Lingge oratorio Yang Liuxin can't be sung in spring". The last two sentences, "Today, there is only Xijiang Moon, and I once took photos of people in Wu Palace", are based on Xijiang Moon and return to the virtual scene of Wu Palace in the past.

In Lu You's Shen Garden, the first two sentences, "The setting sun on the city draws a corner to mourn, and Shen Garden is not the revival of the old pool platform", are the real scenes of Shen Garden today; The last two sentences, "Spring waves under the sad bridge are green, which used to be stunning photos", are based on "Spring waves under the bridge" and return to the scene of stunning photos.

Therefore, this method of planning the layout of articles can be summarized as "modern people pursue the past and combine things", which belongs to one of the methods of "modern people look at modern people". This layout has two characteristics: 1. Put the past before the present. Write today's reality first, and then go back to the virtual reality of the past. 2. There must be a combination. It is not enough to write about today's reality and past virtual reality. If there is no relationship between the two, then "today" and "past" cannot be linked. Therefore, we should combine the present and the past with the unchangeable.

In Li Bai's poems, the poet combines the past and the present with the help of the eternal moonlight, thus highlighting the ups and downs of the past and the present, which contains endless sighs.

In Lu You's poems, with the help of constant spring waves, the poet integrates ancient and modern times, and compares today's scene of "painting a corner" and "the old pool platform is not resurrected" with the amazing scene of "stunning a photo" in the past, and he is heartbroken.

The above are the characteristics of the layout method of "looking back at the present and combining things". Li Bai's works belong to homesick poems, while Lu You's works belong to homesick poems. It can be seen that this method of planning the layout of articles is suitable for writing these two kinds of themes.

Of course, the content layout of these two songs is also different. Comparatively speaking, the imaginary world in the past written by the two men is beautiful, but it is short-lived and illusory. Writing today's reality, Li Bai's works have both a desolate side and a beautiful side, with the intention of comparing the desolate side with the beautiful side. In Lu You's works, there are only some sad scenes. "Sunset" is fading away, the sound of "painting corners" is sad, and "pool terrace" is not what it used to be. The image is full of sadness.

A similar example

Chucheng (Song Luyou)

There are sad apes and birds in the deserted city on the river, and Quyuan Temple faces each other across the river.

In the past 1500 years, only the sound of the beach seems to be like the old days.

"Cheng Chun" here refers to Zigui. The first two sentences, "The desolate city on the river is sad, and Quyuan Temple is across the river", describe today's reality. The desolate city, the piercing apes and birds, and Quyuan Temple, the overall artistic conception feels desolate and sad. The third sentence, "What happened in 1,500 years", traces back to the past, thinking that after Qu Yuan threw himself into the river, the world experienced vicissitudes and the country rose and fell in 1,500 years. In the fourth sentence, "only the sound of the beach is like the old days", and only the sound of the river beating on the beach is the same as that of Qu Yuan when he was alive.