Liu Yuxi’s Poetry Creation Psychoiogy Research

Liu Yuxi, a poet of a strong sense of subjectivity and personality in the mid-Tang Dynasty, has almost a sentiment of a born politician and a deep aspiration for official achievement. As with many scholars of the Tang Dynasty in terms of ideological beliefs and personality spirit, Liu holds an attitude that Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are mutually complementary and coordinate. And the Confucian thoughts had dominate the mentality and behavior of his whole life. He achieved an illustrious official career of his early years primarily by participating the political movement "Yongzhen Reform" which had been dominated by Wang Shuwen in the mid-Tang period. Yet the movement failed, Liu was demoted and migrated again and again,living through almost his whole remaining official career in relegated place or a state of living-repressed. Thereafter, his aspiration for official achievement and living way were also nearly in sinking and wasted state meantime while, valuably, his consciousness of fame as a politician and personality spirit as a scholar were never declined nor were reduced but had been further strengthened and extended. To some extent, it is the career turbulence that leads to his retreat of the frustrated from being bold-and-unconstrained as well as his restrained existence of living state, but the social-responsibility ideals and artistic feelings as with a Confucian, the unyielding disposition and wild mentality as with a gifted scholar, the sage’s ideals and the lone-and-angry mood as with a philosopher make him remain be able to maintain a high-spirited attitude as a strong man and an indomitable will as a scholar towards life even in front of frustration of life and the repressed and wasted of living. Based on these, the attitude to retreat of the frustrated is transformed into a relegated official’s attachment to his monarch, the unyielding disposition of the bold and unrestrained is converted into the stubborn psychology of a gifted scholar, and the speculative spirit of a philosopher is finally turned into the mental vicissitudes of the loser and old man.Along this way, the ideal of “beyond the earth” aroused by the personal dignity and independent consciousness as a scholar cannot essentially dissipate his fatigue of becoming native in the local official position, instead bring him contradiction with thespirit of “entering the society”. And the frustrating official career also increases his sadness originally caused by the relegation transitions and the consciousness of flowing life. Additionally, the sense of loneliness and the spirit of discrimination as a philosopher resolve and reconstruct his heavy experience of the world’s vicissitudes and the helplessness in life. All of these, together with his persistent consciousness of fame as a politician and unyielding personality spirit as a scholar as the basis and precondition, has transformed him from a philosophic poet into a social philosopher!Of course, at a time when official career lagged and life was in repressed and wasted state, Liu also revealed the intent of living in seclusion after years of relegation transitions plus “Niu-Li party struggle’s” effect in imperial court, although in his later years he followed Pei Du and remain hoped to be able to make a difference in his career prospect. But Liu’s seclusion was reluctant and was even not thorough. So the "moderate reclusion" or "official reclusion" approach and presence had been his best and ultimate choice. On one hand, he would have guarded and stuck to the ideals with a contradictory mentality between advance and retreat, while, on the other hand, he would have resolved the contradictions between reality and the ideals in a poetic way.In reconstructing the experience of bantering and watching-conversation on the reality and life poetically he could have counteracted the meaning of the ideal mode of seclusion life after official success and physical leisure; in deconstructing the seclusion ideals could have reconstructed the new reality. The reason why his transformation was realized had been mainly due to that his utilitarian goals in life and motivation were based and preconditioned on Confucian’s “poetic feelings” and scholars’ poetic attitude toward life and life-style.