Research and Creation of China Historical Figures' Couplets

1, as a couplet of national quintessence.

Couplets, like regular poems and Peking Opera, belong to the "quintessence" of China culture. It is a national quintessence because it is unique to China culture, and it is a cultural style created, developed and constantly improved by China people (including ordinary workers and intellectuals) in the long-term cultural construction and cultural inheritance. It is closely related to China's economic environment, social ecology, spiritual character, national psychology, folk customs and cultural genes. It is a unique flower nourished by China. Foreigners can accept and appreciate China's national quintessence from strangeness and estrangement through constant edification, and even imitate and learn through constant appreciation and exertion. However, this kind of imitation and learning must also be carried out in a pure China way. Once you leave or abandon the pure China way, you can't enter such cultural symbols, let alone use them. Therefore, we can say that no foreigner, no matter how familiar he is with China's national quintessence, can transplant it into other countries' cultural styles, let alone integrate it with other countries' cultures. This is because, for example, couplets, regular poems and Peking Opera, not to mention their cultural psychology and national complex, are just the square Chinese characters and pronunciation methods they use. The so-called parallel antithesis, clear pronunciation, means that there is no reference and imitation of any language and writing outside China culture.

National quintessence, according to the views of some scholars during the May 4th Movement, refers to it as the essence of national culture. Mr. Lu Xun once said: "Literally, it must be unique to one country and not found in other countries." In other words, this is a special thing ... "But at that time, the national disaster was deep, and what Lu Xun particularly hoped for was the reform and revitalization of the country, which was destructive to the whole society, so he was very dissatisfied with the slogans and behaviors of the literati who turned a deaf ear to things outside the window." He said sarcastically ... but special is not necessarily good, why keep it? "In his eyes, braiding, foot-binding, opium and mahjong are all" special "things of China. Therefore, Mr. Lu Xun used "quintessence of Chinese culture" as a derogatory term in his essays, which was spicy and ironic. Nowadays, the decadent and backward national customs such as braiding and foot-binding in feudal times have long been historical relics that will not reappear with the decline and demise of that era. Chinese civilization and cultural construction in the new era and the new century require us to learn, draw lessons from and absorb the excellent traditional culture and modern culture at home and abroad, and regard them as healthy factors to meet the needs of new civilization and cultural construction, so as to make the past serve the present and foreign things serve China. As the "essence of national culture", national quintessence should be an important part of such factors. Some people once said that there are three quintessences of Chinese medicine, Chinese painting and Peking Opera in China, while others divided the quintessence of China into four categories, and these four categories of projects are different for different people. For example, some people add cooking to the above three items; Some people add martial arts ... In addition, some people include Spring Festival couplets, poems, paper-cuts, riddles, cross talk, calligraphy and national costumes in the quintessence of the country. According to the two definitions of "uniqueness" and "essence" mentioned above, all of the above can be well-deserved in the national quintessence.

China's national quintessence is not only a cultural style nurtured and formed in China's long-term historical and cultural ecology, but also needs extensive, detailed and in-depth research to inherit, carry forward and develop it, including the origin and pulse of its emergence, formation and development, the formation, development and characteristics of couplets, which people have actually explored and discussed in detail for a long time, which is enlightening. But the author has been engaged in writing and researching couplets for several years. On the basis of absorbing Fang Jia's achievements and drawing lessons from other people's viewpoints, he also formed some superficial views of his own, and was willing to take the liberty to record them in order to learn from each other's strengths and teach them the same.

2. The origin of couplets

There are different opinions about the origin of couplets. Some people say it in the Ming Dynasty, and some people say it in the Five Dynasties. The collection of ancient and modern couplets published by Fujian People's Publishing House has a relatively complete summary of the origin of couplets. According to the book, as early as before the Qin and Han Dynasties, China folks had the custom of hanging peaches at home for the New Year. The so-called Fu Tao is to write the names of the legendary gods "Shen Tu" and "Lei Yu" on two mahogany boards, and then hang them on the left and right front doors to ward off evil spirits and ghosts, which has lasted for more than 1000 years. Until the Five Dynasties, Meng Changjun, the last emperor of the post-Shu Dynasty, loved literature and arty, and felt uncomfortable with the old practice of writing only two names of great gods on the palace door every year. He wants to have some new ideas. Therefore, "year after year (year after year), the bachelor is the word, the peach symbol is engraved, and the bedroom door is set left and right." What these words are is not recorded in the history books, but later generations can guess that they are all interesting and literary words, not just the names of two immortals. In the first year of Meng Chang's national subjugation, that is, before the Spring Festival in 934, he created what is called the earliest Spring Festival couplets in the history of China. Song Shi Shu Jia Shi: "At the end of the year, the bachelor was lucky enough to write a poem, claiming to write a poem:' New Year, Changchun on the First Day'". Meng Changjun, like Li Yu, Queen of Southern Tang Dynasty, died at the hands of Zhao Kuangyin, and Meng Changjun's national subjugation was thirty-four years earlier than Li Yu's. Li Yu, as the king of national subjugation, wrote a beautiful poem that can be recited through the ages. Meng Chang lacks Li Yu's talent and can't write anything that lasts forever. His mediocre imagination can only work hard at carving chapters and making sentences, but it can be described as "unintentional willow trees." His two dry couplets created a new style of China literature. Zhao Kuangyin perished in Meng Changjun, but the habit of posting Spring Festival couplets advocated by Meng Changjun became an indispensable folk tradition after the Song Dynasty. Wang Anshi's poem proves this: "Firecrackers are one year old, and spring breeze warms Tu Su. Thousands of households always exchange new peaches for old ones. " The title of this poem by Wang Anshi is "January 1st", which is the so-called New Year's Day today. In the poem, it was recorded that people still hung peach symbols in front of their houses during the Spring Festival in accordance with the habit that has been circulating for many years. However, according to the author's understanding of the collection of ancient and modern couplets, the peach characters in Wang Anshi's poems should be new couplets rather than old ones. It was only in the era of Wang Anshi that the name of the Spring Festival couplets was officially born, so people still called it "Fu Tao" according to the following habit.

The literary form of Spring Festival couplets was officially affirmed when Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself emperor. Zhu Yuanzhang made Jinling its capital. To show the meaning of celebrating the whole world, before New Year's Eve, he ordered officials and scholars to put a pair of Spring Festival couplets in front of people's houses, go out in person and visit incognito, and watch from house to house for fun. At this time, he is no longer like Meng Chang, who only cares about his "Qing Yu" and hangs beautiful words on his doorstep, but asks everyone to join in the fun. Moreover, the original painting or writing was made of red wood, and at this time, it was finally replaced by red paper. Since then, couplets have officially entered the room and become a literary style loved by scholars and even the people, which has been passed down to this day. The story about Zhu Yuanzhang and couplets is recorded in Zayunlou ZaShuo:

The Spring Festival couplets were set up in the Ming Tombs. At that time, Taizu, the capital of Jinling, suddenly issued a decree that on New Year's Eve, officials and scholars should add a pair of Spring Festival couplets to their homes. Mao's trip to the micro-family made him laugh. Occasionally, I saw a family, only to find that it was a castrated pig (that is, a piglet), but I never asked anyone to write it for me. Mao is a big book saying:

Split the road of life and death with both hands,

Cut off the root of right and wrong.

Drop your pen and leave. When the heir came back and didn't post it, he asked why. A: Knowing is an imperial book, hanging nave high and burning incense to celebrate the New Year. Mao was overjoyed and gave him thirty taels of silver to move.

The things recorded in this book have been circulating for a long time, and it is difficult to distinguish between true and false. Zhu Yuanzhang didn't study for a few days before he proclaimed himself emperor, but he did learn something after he established Nanjing as the capital. But what is unknown is that he has extraordinary intelligence and occasionally inspired generate to write such a poor couplet by mistake, which is slightly better than the jingle. However, since then, couplets have become an important folk custom for the New Year, but there is no doubt about it.

3. The predecessor of couplets (1)

Every literary style, its origin will not come out of thin air. Generally speaking, it must rely on a certain "paradigm"-here, a philosophical concept is used to express the author's meaning for the time being-as the mother of its pregnancy, just as the novel was conceived in the script, the Song Ci was conceived in the Tang Dynasty, and the Yuan Song was conceived in the Song Ci ... So what is the mother of the pregnant couplet? Some people say that the predecessor of Song Like Ci is Tang Poetry, which really makes sense.

First of all, the origin of couplets is very close to the prosperous era of Tang poetry. As mentioned earlier, the first Spring Festival couplets were written by Meng Changjun, the king of Shu after the Five Dynasties, only thirty or forty years before the demise of the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty was a peak in the history of China's poetry. Poets at that time, such as the Ganges, were unforgettable. There are more than 48,900 complete Tang poems, which have been handed down to this day. From the early Tang Dynasty, the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the middle Tang Dynasty to the late Tang Dynasty, a large number of outstanding poets emerged. They have been shining on our ancient country like the stars in the sky, such as Wang Bo, Zhang Jiuling, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei, Jia Dao, Li Bai, Du Fu, Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Bai Juyi, Li He, Du Mu, Li Shangyin, Wen, and some of them. After the demise of the Tang Dynasty, the country split, so there were five dynasties and ten countries. With the change of dynasties, the once vigorous and magnificent spirit of Tang poetry also declined. However, a stereotyped cultural style has not changed with the change of dynasties in society. Tang poetry is still within the original territory of China, spread in the Five Dynasties and Ten Countries, and gradually evolved with the evolution of the times in the later development. As a matter of fact, The Whole Tang Poetry contains not only the poems and songs of the Tang Dynasty, but also the poems and songs of the Five Dynasties, which shows the inseparable relationship between the literature of the Five Dynasties and the literature of the Tang Dynasty. Meng Chang's two sentences inadvertently created a new literary style of couplets, which can be said to be produced under such a background.

Secondly, the form of couplets is deeply influenced by Tang poetry. The Tang Dynasty was a period when China's new poetic style-rhyme was fully mature. Before the Tang Dynasty, China's poems also had a certain format, but after all, they were not rigorous and standardized. There are no strict rules for the length, rhythm and antithesis of poetry. Poets only follow an established habit when writing, but there is no uniform difficulty scale. Starting from the Tang poetry, China's poetry entered a "metrical" era, which emphasized metrical. Generally speaking, there are four kinds of metrical poems in the Tang Dynasty: five-character metrical poems, five-character quatrains, seven-character metrical poems and seven-character quatrains. These four forms of poetry not only have certain rules in the number of words and sentences, but also include strict antithesis and rhyme, and antithesis also includes antithesis of parts of speech and antithesis of rhyme. In particular, there are four couplets in a total of eight poems, namely the first couplet, the parallel couplet, the neck couplet and the tail couplet. The writing requirements of couplets and necklaces are the most stringent, and even there are clear rules about which words should be flat and which words should be flat in a sentence. For example, some sentences should be flat, and some sentences should be flat. These characteristics of Tang poetry not only influenced the creation of words, songs and poems in later generations (some researchers in the history of poetry in later generations also called words and songs metrical poems), but also influenced the creation of couplets. The antithesis that must be adhered to in the creation of couplets can be said to come directly from the metrical poems of the Tang Dynasty. For example, when people write couplets to enlighten their children, they adopt such a formula. The so-called "wind versus rain" means "wind" and "rain" are nouns representing natural images, while in tone, "wind" is a flat voice and "rain" is a dull voice; "Summer" and "autumn" are both nouns indicating the names of seasons. "Summer" is a muffled sound, while "autumn" is a flat sound. ...

What needs to be added is that the theory of "level-leveled antithesis" in poetry is strictly from Shen Yue, a writer in the Southern Dynasties before the Tang Dynasty. During the Southern Dynasties, Shen Yue, Xie Tiao, Wang Rong and others gradually embarked on the road of paying attention to temperament and deliberately carving, which was called "eternal love" by people at that time. Shen Yue summed up the experience of poetry creation at that time, put forward the viewpoint of distinguishing four tones and avoiding eight diseases, and theoretically emphasized the importance of phonological harmony in poetry creation for the first time, which played a very positive role in enhancing the rhythmic beauty of poetry. However, it was the poetry creation in the Tang Dynasty, especially in its heyday, that finally perfected Shen Yue's theory in practice. For example, Du Fu's poems are famous for their rigorous meter and prudence. Here, we take some of Du Fu's poems as examples.

Leaves fall like a waterfall,

〇〇●●〇〇●

When I watch the long river roll forward.

●●〇〇●●〇

-Seven-law "Ascending" couplets

The above two poems are typical rhythmic sentences. "Endless" and "boundless" are adverbs, and "falling wood" and "Yangtze River" are nouns. "Rolling" and "rustling" are adjectives of things, and the last "Xia" and "Lai" are locative verbs in the poem-this is a part-of-speech antithesis. As for the phonological antithesis, it is also very rigorous. The first sentence is flat, and the second sentence is flat (in order to make it easier for readers to understand, this book uses the symbol zero to indicate the flat sound, and uses ● to indicate the flat sound), taking two words as a beat, which is rigorous and accurate. It can be said that it not only represents the model of Tang poetry, but also embodies the style of Du Fu's poetry.

Look at another example.

After three months of fighting,

〇●〇〇●

Letters from home are priceless.

〇〇●●〇

-Five Laws "Hope of Spring" Necklace

The standard format of couplets should be: flat and even. However, in the actual creation of metrical poems, there is a saying that "no matter one, three, five, two, four and six are distinct", that is to say, in some places, the standards of the first, three and five characters can be relaxed because these places do not affect the rhythmic beauty of poems; There are only five words in the Five Laws, so the fifth word is still important, but sometimes the first word and the third word can be relaxed under certain circumstances. The necklace of Du Fu's poem "Spring Hope" quoted above is relative except the first word of the first sentence. On the other hand, the leveling of couplets is basically based on the format of metrical poems, and the antithesis is carried out according to two words and one beat. So it is not surprising that some people regard Tang poetry as the source of couplets.

4. The predecessor of couplets (2)

As mentioned above, some people have become accustomed to regard the regular poems of the Tang Dynasty as the predecessor of couplets, and think that couplets were born out of it. This statement cannot be said to be wrong, but I think it is incomplete. Why do you see it? Because this view only emphasizes the influence of Tang poetry on the duality of rhythm and meaning of couplets, but ignores the differences in sentence patterns between couplets and Tang poetry. The metrical poems in the Tang Dynasty are very strict in sentence patterns, usually five or seven words. In other words, the standard metrical poems in the Tang Dynasty are exclusive in sentence patterns. Unlike long and short sentences in the Song Dynasty, each sentence can use one word, two words or even more, and unlike ancient poems before the Tang Dynasty, there is no absolute limit to the number of words used. As long as the emotional expression needs, you can even use sentences of more than ten words. Although the sentence patterns of one sentence, two sentences or even a dozen sentences are abnormal in ancient poetry, from the development of China's classical poetry, the normal sentence patterns of poetry are not static, but constantly changing. For example, four words in the Book of Songs, five words in ancient poems in Han Dynasty, six words in Chu Ci and seven words in Wei and Jin Dynasties.

China's first collection of poems, The Book of Songs, contains more than 500 years' poems from the early Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period. These poems are divided into three parts: wind, elegance and ode. "Wind" was a folk song all over the world at that time, which is equivalent to today's folk songs. "Ya" is a work of "talking about what the king is doing", which is generally written by the literati class; Carol is a song and dance music for the royal family to sacrifice their ancestors. It can be seen that the author of The Book of Songs included people from all walks of life at that time. However, no matter what class people are, the poems in The Book of Songs are basically in the form of four sentences. For example, Guan Yu, who is familiar to everyone:

Guan Guan Luo dove,

In Hezhou;

My beautiful lady,

A gentleman likes it so much. ...

Of course, there are also five, six, seven or even eight-character sentences in The Book of Songs. There are four sentences interspersed in the book of songs "July in Qi Feng", and there are many irregular sentence patterns, such as "three mornings, four mornings" and "May is moving".

Poems in Han Dynasty are represented by Yuefu poems and nineteen ancient poems. There are two, three, four or five, six and seven sentences in these poems, but generally five sentences are the main ones. The earliest seven-character poem, I think, should be Zhang Heng's Four Sorrow Poems in Han Dynasty, which is divided into four paragraphs, each with seven sentences and seven words. Although some sentences are full of function words, most of them are real seven-character poems. The seven-character poem was finally finalized by Cao Pi, Wei Wendi. Ge Yanxing by Cao Pi is considered as "an early and complete seven-character poem among the existing literati works" (edited by Zhu Dongrun, Selected Literary Works of China in Past Dynasties, Volume II, page 257). Seven-character poetry flourished in the Tang Dynasty and has since become the most representative form of ancient poetry in China.

Although the writing of couplets was greatly influenced by the regular poems of the Tang Dynasty, we can't help but see that it was actually influenced by various poetic forms before the Tang Dynasty. The most obvious example is that its sentence pattern is definitely not limited to five words and seven words, but from two words to seven words or more. Moreover, by combining various sentence patterns of poetry, it even creates hundreds of long couplets, which can accommodate rich life content and thoughts and feelings that an ordinary poem can't.