A Study Of The Ci Poet Sun Linzhi In Qing Dynasty

Sun Linzhi(1790-1860),whose courtesy name is Qingrui and art name is Yuepo,was born in Changzhou(modern Suzhou,Jiangsu Province).He devoted his life to the writing of Ci and was well-known for his Ci in Daoguang and Xianfeng period of Qing dynasty.It’s a pity that his talents were unrecognized and he only lived an ordinary life as a commoner.He spent the first half of his life in the village,and then traveled around.In his later life,he died in the fall of the city of Suzhou during the war of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Rebellion.Sun wrote over 400 Ci and more than ten types of Ci collections.He focused on poetry exchange,object depiction,and travel recording.His artistic style not only reflects the trends of Zhexi School and pursued after Yutian(玉田),but also featured sorrow,mildness,and lingering elegance.At the early stage,his Ci presented the beauty of purity,liveliness,and freshness,with simple language conveying strong rhymes and Xiaoling(小令)creating lingering charm.During the middle stage of his creation,he travelled and resided as a visitor.His style turned into sadness,melancholy,and lingering euphemisticity.In the later period,Sun suffered from a miserable life due to the chaos of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom,and his Ci style thereby became utterly depressing.In addition to the lament of his life experience and self-compassion,there are also many connotations of spiritual sustenance in his Ci.Sun Linzhi was fond of carefully perceiving and laboriously emulating Zhang Yan(张炎),and thus his Ci is extremely similar with Zhang’s.Sun Linzhi’s writing practice was basically consistent with his thoughts on Ci studies.Firstly,he advocated elegance and purity,paid attention to the elegance of language,and pursued subtle beauty and lingering euphemisticity in the aesthetic style.He reinterpreted the connotation of"Qing"(清)from the perspective of personality,purpose of creation,and rhythm.Secondly,he admired"flexibility and interest"(活趣)and advocated flexibility and liveliness in the choice of tones,rhymes,words,and sentences,so as to achieve the goal of"achieving the fun in Ci".Thirdly,he recognized"integrated majesty"(浑厚),hoping to form a deep and integrated state in his Ci.Although Sun Linzhi’s spiritual sustenance in creation and his ideological"integrated majesty"are very similar to the propositions of Changzhou School,these characteristics of him are not influenced by Changzhou School but a spontaneous behavior impacted by the background of the time and his life experience.Sun Linzhi has a close relationship with the Ci circle during Daoguang and Xainfeng of Qing dynasty.During this period,he participated in and presided over many large-scale Ci exchange activities,including Jiangdong Ci Society Ci exchange,Qingxi Shuixie Ci exchange,and Qinhuai Kuliu Ci exchange.The Jiangdong Ci Society Ci exchange was organized by him with a few friends of his when he lived in Jinling.Although the overall Ci belonged to Zhexi School and inevitably showed a style of emptiness,Sun’s sincere writing with spiritual sustenance still added certain innovation to it.Qingxi Shuixie was originally a private Ci exchange between Sun Linzhi and Qin Yaozeng,it later evolved into a collective Ci exchange activity that affected most of the south of the Yangtze River.Sun’s anthology was quite influential at the time.The Selected Works of Seven Masters in the Kingdom(《国朝七家词选》)was his attempt to establish a new paradigm in the later period of the Zhexi School.It adheres to the elegance of Zhexi School and embodies the ideological proposition of"flexibility and interest"with an inclusion of Guo Lin’s works.Exquisite Modern Ci(《绝妙近词》)is a small collection of Qing Ci.Although the original intention of Exquisite Modern Ci was to directly follow Wang Chang’s Ci Zong(《词综》),it reflects different aesthetic characteristics during the compilation.Sun Linzhi is a sophisticated poet,and at the same time a pure poet.The appreciation of Sun Linzhi’s works and thought can not only offer us an opportunity to see the pure life of a poet dedicated to Ci writing and to further pry into the historical details of the transfer of Zhexi School and Changzhou School,so as to form a richer and deeper historical understanding of this period.