Xin QiJi's Garden Poetry ("Ci") Study

Xin QiJi's Garden Poetry ("Ci") has a unique literature and aesthetic values.Dai Lake and Piao Spring Gardens were the places where he lived and wrote poems about for over 20 years in Shangrao, Jiang-xi Province. The buildings, plants and all other landscapes carried his aesthetic pursuit and spirit.The poetry written in Dai Lake and Piao Spring reflects not only the author's living status at certain time, but also his two entirely different attitudes. The first one is the seclusion attitude towards the poetry of Dai Lake. These poems show the author's self-contradiction about whether to be an official. His calm appearance and longing inner can be explained as "the helplessness living in a leisure life,the waiting for the re-appearance".The second one is the seclusion attitude towards the poetry of Piao Spring. These poems started to show the author's self-reflection about his past and pursuit of the new spirit conversion, like YAN Hui's simple and virtuous life, Tao's free and easy life, TAO Yuan-Ming's secluded life with self-satisfaction. In these poems, the author's mental status can be concluded as "watch the vulgar world with a smile, persist in a merry life".XIN Qi-Ji's Garden Poetry often wrote certain picturenary images like spring image, mountain rock image, gull and crane image. The author put his all personal character and emotion into these images. For example, the spring represents not only the beautiful scene (blurred fantasy of water reflection, the romance of the moon in the water, gurgling sound of the flowing water, etc.), but the source of the philosophy thinking."Empty Mountain" in the mountain rock image represents his seclusion attitude. The mountain image represents certain person and character the author appreciated. Also, it is a representation of the spiritual character like active, bold, hearty, just as the author;Every little mountain piece, or strange and barren rock represents the character of noble, refined, independent, strong-willed. This is actually presenting his way of living. Gull and crane image shows the author's free spirit, proud and noble character. The stories about these two birds about how they can be friends with people with a noble heart, or choose to be alone if others vulgar, are actually used by the author to show his determination of divide himself from the ugly society.These images altogether reflect the author's garden Aesthetics thoughts:the pursuit of simple and elegant style, attention to the aesthetic charm of representative vivid instead of the only appearance.