Research On Qin Ying And His Poetry

Qin Ying was a poet who formed an unique style of his own in Qianlong and Jiaqing period. He learned from different poetry schools, but never attached himself to any of them. Without the support from poetry schools, it was hard to be famous for him, so the scholars who knew him or the research on his poetry were both very few. I expect that the research can arouse some attention in the academic field, and have new cognition and localization to him.Qin Ying was born in the Qin family of Xishan. The Qin was a large family in Wuxi which had displinary and precise tradition, virtuous inheritance, prosperous scholarly honor won in imperial exams, traditional literature origins. Deeply and expensively rooting in old poetics, their poems are elegant and gentle, but also express the true disposition. Those traditions all had a profound effect on Qin Ying.Qin Ying also was a brilliant officer who had the aspiration to bring comfort to the commons. As an officer, he was strict, impartial and cautious. He did many things to settle people’s problems and bring criminals to justice. However, corrupted administration had been confirmed habits which were hard to get rid of. QinYing wanted to abolish the problems, but he always met with barriers and felt helpless. He had resigned, but he never forgot the common people. In his sixties, he entered the officialdom again. Such experience and aspiration both effected Qin Ying and his poetry composition.As an official poet, Qin Ying maintained close contacts with many famous poets, such as Wang Chang, Fa Shishan and Weng Fanggang. Qin Ying learned strong points from them and formed his own poetry style. Mainly based on his family literary tradition, he developed the thoughts of expressing real feelings and nature, valuing the social functions and opposing the sectarianism.Qin Ying’s poems contain very rich contents. One is the poems revealing the social reality. Qin Ying described the wars, natural disasters and people’s sufferings, and even revealed the corruptive officials and border military suffering from corruption and poor discipline. The second part is the poems describing the natural mountains and rivers. Showing the natural beauty and anima and putting Buddhist tenets into the poetry are due to his appetite of the nature, Taoism and Buddhism. The third part is the poems which show the contradiction between aspiration of contributing to the society and desire for retiring from the world. The fourth part is the poems presenting the vicissitudes of life and expressing his real feelings. The last part is about the natural conditions and social customs of Liangxi. Those poems can be used as historical materials, and have some value in researching regional culture.The artistic characteristics of Qin Ying’s poetry are based on the blending of family literary tradition and the learning from different poetic schools. He carried forward the tradition of learning from the poems not only in Han, Wei, Jin and Tang Dynasties, but also in Song Dynasty. His style of poems ranged wide. The poems can be pure fresh, unadorned and antique, chilly, secluded and lonely and ethereal, but also profound and forceful, magnificent, deep depressed, reserved and moving.At last, the article appends a chronicle biography of Qin Ying. The chronicle biography reflects his life experience, social intercourse and literary creation. In order to be true and objective, the materials are mainly from the collection of Qin Ying’s poems and proses, and some from the collections and chronicle biographies of his friends along with the genealogy, historical biographies, epitaphs, local chronicles and so on.