On The Idea Of Poetics Of HuiHong--a Monk And Poet In Song Dynasty

As a monk and poet, the outstanding character of the idea of Hui Hong's poetics is that he treats poem as literature, which is different from the monk Qi Yi of Tang Dynasty who is seeking the simplicity, elegance and serenity, and is also different from HanShan, ShiDe and Wang Fanzhi who use merely colloquialism to write some works of dissuasion and instruction just similar to ragged verse. So his poems do not sink into the old way of writing poems for doctrine and are not plain as other monks' poems, which is his brilliance comparing with other monks who write poems. He regards poetry from the angle of literature and acquires some knowledge of the aesthetic idea, style and creation of poetry. He also has his own understanding of the basic skill of finding the best turn for the words and phrases, the creating attitude of expressing the sensibility by poems and the grasp of the visual thought of imaginable thinking. " Seeing the peculiarity from commonness", "On Qi Yun", the beauty of poetic language and the aesthetic idea of form of richness and honor which Hui Hong is taking delight in talking about are all not his own creation. But he can understand and explain the common character of these poems of Song Dynasty from his own. So he can see the difference from the sameness and showed his individuality. His preference of bold and unstrained style and lucid and elegant style shows his personal style of unrestrained frivolousness. His theory of creation is mainly focusing on his pursuit of thinking hard over his choice of words and trying best to find best way to express the meaning, among which, the most famous is his recordation of Huang Ting jian's theory of "Duo tai huan gu" and his own theory of "imaginable thinking". For the understanding of the former, Hui Hong is preferred in the demand of finding new ideas in creation, while the latter manifests his way to weigh the art from the artistic eye. Poetry is the art of emotion. Hui Hong attaches much emphasis on embedding the emotion in poems. Though he is always blamed by the earthling duo to much emotions in his poems, he never gives up this thought of poetics. Hui Hong can pay much attention to the emotion of poetry under the objection of most people, which seems objecting to the Confucian view of using poems to instruct. But in fact it is not so, which can be approved by his stress on the moral quality of the character of poems. According to Hui Hong, the quality of poem is basing on the moral quality of people, the better the moral quality, the better the poem. In order to affirm his attitude, he brings the gentle, honest and sincere side of Du Fu's poems into play to express his conscious protection of the feudal hierarchy. Hui Hong is not only a monk, but also a poet, so his idea of poetics shows this duality. The most obvious character is the influence of Chan Sect on his individuality and his understanding of "Word Buddhism", which make him see the language from broader eye. So he can get rid of the identity of monk which restrains the creating of mundaine literature. His pursuit of bold and unstrained style shows his free personal charm while his likeness for lucidness and elegance shows his emphasis on elegance. These two things seem contradictory to each other, but if they are put in the context of individuality, the contradiction is gone. Though Hui Hong is a son of Buddhist, he holds deep Confucian view of using poems to instruct when he discusses the poetry. He not only extols "profound syntactic prosody", but also mostly appreciates "the thought of being loyal to the emperor" which manifest the unity of Confucianism and Buddhism. This is out of question makes his idea of poetics have a unique style. In conclusion, Hui Hong's idea of poetics is similar to Jiang Xi Poetry Faction, which is lying in the help of section (Hui Hong is a JiangXi native) and his lucky chance and personal effort. Therefore, his origin of his idea of poetics has the component of individuality and his idea has much new thought though lack of...