Study Of Xia Song’s Poetry

Xia Song, an important official in the political circle of early North Song Dynasty, swame in and jumped out of glorious officialdom for over 40 years. Several promotion and demotion as he got through, he was criticized as"treacherous", because he was despised in moral quality. Whereas Xia Song won very rich achievements in his official career and also attained great success in his martial experience in fact. His existed works consist of The Wen Zhuang Collections in 36 volumes and The Gu Wen Si Sheng Yun in 5 volumes. And now, there are 286 poems of Xia Song in total.Xia Song’s literary theory is fairly rich. He proposed that poetry and articles are supposed to praise the royal dignity and extol the grand career. Also he worshiped the Confucian classics, and held that poetry and articles should convey rational ideas and moral principles. Meanwhile, he asserted that literature is combination of letarary and qualitative, thus praise highly on Qi and Gu in poems and articles. In addition, he persuited a moderation and fit but vigorous style, and took spectacular momentum and vigorous language as his aesthetic standard.As to poetry theme and content, there’s thoughts of seeing things, singing of browing scenery, works of reward gift, farewell poetry, poetry for festival and also works meditating the past and history. All in all, Xia Song’s poetry is rich in content.Xia Song’s poetry varies in aesthetic style according to different styles, half of which is royal poetry, characterised as elegent and delicate, dignified and graceful, gorgeous and colorful. While his unroyal poetry seems nature and fresh, exquisite and understandability, or otherwise vigorous and magnificant, orderliness and fine. This multiaspect of his poetry is owe to his containing various manners in poetry sources. Xia Song came down in one continuous line with Xikun style, while was fairly similar to the innovators including Ouyang Xiu, Mei Yaochen and Su shunqin etc. And he derived nutritions from Du Mu, thus forming peculiar poetry style. If we want to identify which faction Xia Song belonged to, we can say that he is pretty close to Xikun style both in poetry works and theory. Meanwhile, he happened to share the same view with later Xikun members.Xia Song’s poetry initiate to show the features of poetry of Song Dynasty, with a classical transitivity between bright-colored style of early Xikun members and elegant style of later Xikun members, which lead to the innovators and also a transition from Tang accent to Song tune.