"Snow Flowe,Thousands Of Empty Dreams" On Zhang Dai's Essays On Natural Aesthetic Connotation And Path

Zhang Dai's essays are the the pinnacle of of late Ming Dynasty. They have high esthetic value for both traditional and natural. He who was born at the time of alternation of China's dynasties experienced a unique life career. He used to be a coxcomb at the first half of his life and enjoyed good quality of life. While he lived his life as a old fogy at the second half of life. These two totally different lives enriched the content of his works, rated as the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival of late Ming Dynasty. His essays includes beautiful scenery as well as sad mood by a big change in life. By recalling and reproducing the good old days in a fantasy, poetic way, Zhang Dai shows us an artistic natural aesthetic scene, which makes us feel empty and illusory. He uses both recalling and dreaming to express the natural aesthetic whenever necessary. The recalling is aesthetic representation of natural features, and the dreaming is artistic expression of natural beauty. With gradualism and hierarchy of these two ways, his works shows the connotative meaning of natural beauty which is emptiness to achieve the philosophical sublimation of his work. He achieves natural aesthetic recall through looking back and sighs the limitation and variable of individuals through dreaming. He feels that everything in the real world is like a dream, and he thinks the whole time and life is like dreams within other dreams. It is empty. We find a big whole world in our minuscule and we face the world in a calm and nature state. Thus, recalling, dreaming and emptiness, the three cohere well together, showing the natural aesthetics implication and connotation of culture and arts.