Dream Lake - Lake Image Formation And Development

The West Lake, one of our famous scenery, not only has its natural beauty, but also hasprofound humane feelings which given by the change of history, is a best combination ofnature and human. Her beauty conquered countless men of letters, made them intoxicated inher and wrote a lot of poetries to in praise of her green mountains and water, and all of thesepoetries at last made this lake become one of Chinese poetries’ typical aesthetic image. TheWest Lake is closely geared to people’s life in reality, generations of Chinese paid diligentsweat on her government. While she was written down under poets’ pens, there not onlycondensed the soul of nature and the heart of poet, but have the power of human as well. As aresult, there are many aesthetic and cultural implications in the West Lake image. However,she was not always the perfect natural image for poets, her aesthetic characteristics and theway becoming an image had after a long process of development in history. Her specialaesthetic style had been detected in the Tang Dynasty, then after the Northern Song Dynasty’sdevelopment, she had formed a complete image system which had reached her peak. Andfrom that time, the West Lake has kept her characteristics throughout and still continues to bedeveloped. Different historical dynasties, because of different culture and social psychology,the West Lake image show different aesthetic characteristics, and reflect those factors in turn.There are so many poetries about the West Lake that put them together equivalent to a hugepoetry school. Good or not are all in the school where worth people to research. So far, thereare only a few scholars have researched these poetries, and most of them focus on the TangDynasty and Song dynasty for the image is fresh and vivid. One of the most famous papers isXia Chengtao’s “the West lake and Song iambic verse”. Except that, there are few papers toresearch her aesthetic characteristics as a poetry image. However, image is the core of ancientpoetry. Its most important effort is combining the poetry and reality. What’s more, as anatural scenery, the West Lake is typical that could not be replaced by any other naturalscenery image. So it is important to research the West Lake image. This paper put the creationon historical perspective to research the West Lake image’ develop process. Devote not onlyto show a complete lake image, but to try to find the development law of poetry image aswell.