Zhao Mengfu And The Yuan Mid-poetry

Zhao Mengfu(赵孟頫)is a very special person in the poetic circles of Yuan Dynasty. This specialty comes not only from his special royal status and quite legendary life experiences, but from his literary creation in a more important sense. In the general expressions of literary history, Zhao Mengfu is mainly described as an integration and transformation promoter of Northern and Southern Poetry styles of Yuan Dynasty, a precursor who blends the southern style into the Northern poetic circles and one of the Four Leading Poets of Yuan Dynasty, this paper believes that this evaluation is not undervalued nor incorrect, but is far from comprehensive.The special qualities of his poetry are reflected primarily through the wholeness of all his creation and the wholeness mentioned here is a comprehensive cross-reference of the excellence and defect. Unlike Li Bai(李白)and Du Fu(杜甫),whose poems cover all themes and contain many extraordinary images, Zhao Mengfu's poetry as a whole manifests highly simplicity and common property. Apart from some poems which are composed according to the prescriptive writing routine, the majority of Zhao Mengfu's poems are about personal feelings, which become a major impetus to his poetry writing and, in some presenting poems, even evolve into a kind of intermediary intercourse, coming to gain a general value.Zhao Mengfu's poems about personal feelings maintain a high degree of impressionistic manner. When specific emotions triggered by specific events are abstracted, they are given a high degree of identity in terms of the form.In the southern poetic circles, integrating specific and personal emotions into a kind of abstracted forms of expression is a widespread approach to poetry creation in turning point of the Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty. Unlike Zhang Yan and other poets who pursue purity, freshness, coquette and elegance and who are in fact using a seemingly elegant and popular form of literature to cover up their defeat and trauma in real life, Zhao Mengfu maintains this creative approach to the end of his life.On the basis of the abstraction of personal feelings, Zhao Mengfu's poems, Lyrics(词)and Melodies(曲),as a whole, manifest a kind of unusual heterogeneous homogeny. In his poems, Lyric and Melody, he expresses quite similar emotions, and the setting of images and the arrangement of words are also very similar. Devoting poetry, Lyric and Melody to expressing personal feelings signifies that Zhao Mengfu has greatly changed the old Confucian tradition of feeling expression, which is a strong refutation to the arguing and reasoning via poems which has been prevalent since the Song Dynasty. Many of Zhao Mengfu's poems(including Lyrics and Melodies) do not avoid repeting words or using the simple meaning of literary quotations and images, which indicates that he treats poetry as merely a tool to express feelings. Not emphasizing moral instruction or expostulation is initiative in the history of Chinese poetry. However, this alienation from the traditional poetry concepts and the contempt for some of the prescriptive style routine possess a meaning different from the past under the background that Chinese literature are approaching the modern times. We witness that the former prince walks ahead of his time in the aspect of liberating poetry style, personalizing and emotionalizing poems, which characterize modern literature.In order to dig out the special significance of Zhao Mengfu's poems in the history of poetry, this paper offers a lyric clue, while furthering research on all poems through his life following the traditional form research method.The advancing of the clue mainly relies on the concept of "The latent evolvement causing by subject"(主体性潜替),and the goal is not only to provide supplement for the traditional study on the history of literary form, but also provide basis for the analysis of those poetry of the Yuan Dynasty which seem to have no difference from the poetry of previous dynasties.When deciding on the choice of poets of Yuan Dynasty, this paper follows the following principle-choosing those who can form a mutual clarification and cross-reference with Zhao Mengfu.Apart from those who have to be mentioned, such as Wang Yun, Yu Ji, Yang Zai, etc.,this paper makes great efforts to avoid those who have gained extensive research and discussion in the academic field and focuses on studying the often ignored figures in the history of literature.Research results include:by comparing Zhao mengfu with Wu Cheng(吴澄),this article outlines the rough origin and general character of Zhao Mengfu's academic ideas and gives a retrospective description of the basic mentality and the fate of the southern intellectuals of Yuan Dynasty; By investigating the highly representative Yue Quan Poets(月泉吟社)and the Wu Xing Ba Jun(吴兴八俊)which are long-ignored in literary history, the paper defines the main poetry style of the south-east poetic circles; By comparing and analyzing poems like "A tribute to the hermits"(《咏逸民》)and "The responsory to Yao zijing's five poems of autumn"(《和姚子敬秋怀五首》),the paper reveals that how common values can become an expression of personal feelings under special historical conditions, and how, in the process, "The latent evolvement causing by subject" can unknowingly change the connotation of poetry in this process; By comparing Zhao Mengfu's poems with those of the well-known northern poets and investigating the intercommunication between them,it is found out that Zhao Mengfu is not, as some researchers see it, a "loner" from the south and the differences between the Southern and the Northern poetry are not as huge as some literary history describes.In terms of poetry writing, Northern and Southern poems are quite similar and concerning basic poetic concept, both the Northern and the Southern poetry originate from Song people; By comparing Zhao Mengfu's poems with those of Yuan Jue(袁桷),who comes later, this paper identifies the intellectualization inclination of new royal poems in Yuan Dynasty, and intellectualization is a factor in the poetry of Song Dynasty; By comparing Yang Zai's(杨载)poetic ideas and creation with Zhao Mengfu's, this paper finds that "The poets in Yuan taking Tang as their model", in fact, follows the poetic concept of Song Dynasty, therefore, it is inaccurate to say that the poets of Yuan took Tang as their model and they struggled against Song; By comparing Yu Ji's(虞集)poetic ideas and creation with Zhao Mengfu's, this paper identifies the basic characteristics of the new royal poems; By analyzing the change of Yuan's poetic style before the Yan-You times(延祐),the paper claims that the so-called "North-South integration of poetry" takes place, in fact, against the background of natural withering of northern poets and the gradual rise of southern poets, which is basically a process of southern poetry style gradually replacing the Northern style. During this process, the most powerful promoter is time and not a certain great figure who intends to reverse the poetry style; By analyzing the writing process of Yuan's poetry history, the present paper finds that the so-called "to learn Tang"(宗唐)clue, in fact, breaks off in Yuan's literature history and the regain of it happens in the Ming Dynasty. Many poems of Late Song imitate Late Tang, but how to learn Tang not classified in the Yuan Danasty, usually, the Yuan's poets did not hold their ground on the separation of the early, the flourishing, the middle and the late periods.As a result, Yuan's so-called "to learn Tang and against Song" in logic is incomplete, so Seven Poets in the Ming Dynasty(明七子)holding up Flourishing Tang and denouncing Late Tang is necessary in logic, though radical in form.Zhao Mengfu lived through the Late Song to the Flourishing Yuan and he intercommunicated with several classes, including the civilian,the officials and the royal scholars, and therefore research on his life experiences and mentality is of great significance for us to understand of the macro development and change of Yuan's poetry. At the same time, Zhao Mengfu's personal feelings and poetry writing are very special in the poetic circles of Yuan Dynasty, so digging out the specialty of his creation and life in context of poetry style changing will be another significance of this paper.