The Origin Of Landscape Essay

Early in pre-Qin dynasty there were records on people's aesthetic activity to mountains and rivers." Analects of Confucius "and "the book of zhuangzi" wrote down scholar' feeling on "mountains and rivers". Especially Zhuangzi afforded to "travel" new connotations, which had profound influences on the landscape essay. Beautiful description of rivers and mountains in literature can trace its back to ancient times, but most early " real landscape essay" (Zhou Zhenfu) should be " a record on offering sacrifices to Heaven ", written by Ma Dibo in the Eastern Han Dynasty. But former writers didn't keep their interest in the description of real mountains and rivers for long. It is not until Eastern Jin Dynasty, when scholars lived in a peace political situation, wandering in rivers and mountains, talking about Xuanxue and Buddhism that raised the landscape essay abruptly.Beautiful mountains and rivers consolidated scholar's heart and soul, made them surpass morale life once they kept their eyes to mountains and rivers; they had a tendency of writing landscape essay of philosophical principles. With the influence of Xuanxue, Wang Xizhi wrote down the works of "preface on the collection of LanTing" which merged esthetics with philosophy, showing scholars deep recognition of life. Hui Yuan, the representative of Buddhist disciples of Mountain Lu, watching mountains with intelligent eyes, wrote much excellent works and firstly formed a writing group in the history of literature. They have made an active portrait of nature, on which showed their understanding of Xuanxue and Buddhism, and marked the maturity of landscape essay.Topography is another origin of landscape essay, which can trace its back to "yugong" and "the book of mountains and seas". With a tendency of using literary words and mainly recording on mountains and rivers in Jin and Song dynasty, so flourished the landscape essay, especially the description of Sanxia was beautiful and moving and influenced the transition of writing style after Song and Jin Dynasty. Li Daoyuan is undoubtedly the giant standing on the shoulders of forefathers. His" water by note " merged writing style of Southern dynasty and Northern dynasty, narrated...