On Landscape And Idyll Of Jin And Song Dynasties

Nature is described in the early Chinese classical poetry, whereas landscape and countryside in nature as sources for poetry are valued and come to be prosperous until the late Dongjin and Song Dynasties. The idylists represented by Tao Yuan-ming and Xie Ling-Yun have produced a large amount of poems to depict and eulogize nature. Thus appears the first creative upsurge in the Chinese history of poetry.The two deep-seated reasons why landscape and idyll come into being and develop during this period of time are as follows: One is that the given mode of life under feudal political and economic system impel literators and scholar-bureaucrats to long for landscape and countryside. Both centralized kaiserism and self-suff icienct small-scale peasant economy determine the mode of life of literators constantly changing from official ism to reel us ion, from city to countryside. The cruel domination of the ruling class and the rapid drop in position of the traditional scholar-bureaucrats during Wei, Jin and Nan-bei Dynasties; the development of agriculture in the South since Dongjin Danasties, both the two factors above make them seek for anew way of life--landscape and countryside. So, landscapeand countryside become objects with which literators express their emotion.The other reason is that the rapid development of metaphysics, Daoism and Buddhism makes scholar-bureaucratschange their understanding of landscape and countryside and makes landscape and countryside prosperous. After the breakdown of Confucianism since the end of Han Dd countryside, which enjoyed by Buddhism and Daoism, become the common objects that men of letters care for. Poets change their understanding of landscape and countryside from the aspect of metaphysical to aesthetic. And this impels landscape and idyll to come into being. Landscape and idyll in Jin and Song Dynasties, produced under the same historical background, share the common ideological and artistic characteristics. Ideologically, the poems reflect that poets have been fed up the real life and pursue an ideal life, and also express their honest and simple personalities. Artistically, easiness advocated by Daoism and aesthetic ideas for people in Wei and Jin Dynasties embody vividness and brightness. The combinat ion of new poetic content and traditional skills forms the image with emotion and scene. With the influence of aesthetic view of points in metaphysics, appears a simple and fresh art of language. However, because the parentage, status, experience as well as depicted objects are various, the ideological and artistic characteristics they show are different. Thus, the poets don't form a unitive and concordant faction. It is the ideological and artistic characteristics that directly impel the poetic faction of landscape and idyll to form in the Tang Dynasty and produce profound influence on the later creation of poetry.