On The Realistic Tendency Of Rong Yu's Poems

This paper mainly discusses the realist tendency of Rong Yu’s poems.As a distinctive poet in the Dali period,Rong Yu,though not totally detached from the pessimism of poetry in this era,paid close attention to the social reality.His poems reflect people’s miserable livelihood resulted by wars and he bore the country and the mass in his mind all the time,which showed a positive attitude different from those of the Dali period.Some of his poems are the embodiment of the conscience and responsibility of the Dali poets.This paper is divided into three chapters:Firstly,compare Rong Yu with other poets in the same period to illustrate his deep concern for the social reality.Then the realist tendency of Rong’s poetry will be analyzed via the exploration of his spirit of "Poetry as History" and the simple and clear writing style.Finally,the reasons for the formation of realist tendency in Rong Yu’s poems will be discussed from the influence of the times,personal character and his social re lations.The first chapter discusses the uniqueness of Rong’s realist tendency in the poetry community of the Dali era.The An Lushan Rebellion destroyed the hope and spiritual pillar of poets.With confusion and grief,they tended to get away with social and political relations and paid more attention to personal life.The themes of their poems were monotonous and stylized.They expressed appreciation for natural scenery and also extensive love for hometown,but all of these poems were embedded with sadness without profound thinking for the social reality.Many poets considered living far away from roar crowds as their aspiration but Rong Yu was not one of them.He was not content with the current situation in which poetry style were moving toward a dead end.In his poems,some great political events were criticized and he showed sympathy for ordinary people and the tough life of soldiers by describing the social reality.Meanwhile,Rong inherited the positive attitude of poets in the peak of the Tang dynasty by showing impassion in his poems.The second chapter illustrates the realist tendency of Rong’s poems.This feature shows the transitional characteristics of connecting the past with the future.He inherited Du Fu and expressed his true feelings without fixed patterns.His poems truly reflected the social tragedy after the An Lushan Rebellion and used satire to describe reality,showing the turbulence of the times and individual’s destiny.His realist tendency was closely combined with his personal experience,and what he wrote and felt was impressive and credible.On the other hand,as far as the overall style is concerned,the language of Rong’s poems is similar to the popular mainstream standard.He is good at depicting reality and has insights about subtle things in straightforward and plain language.Although sometimes he was over explicit,he can point directly at the problems of the society at that time,which starts the writing style of "plain,simple and straightforward" in the middle Tang dynasty.The third chapter focuses on the reasons for the realist features of Rong’s poems.Amid the gloomy era,Rong Yu inspected social problems and the main topic of his poems were wars and fights,which was due to the fact that the country was faced with internal concerns and external threats after the An Lushan Rebellion.His political life was filled with twists and turns.During this period he traveled many places where he witnessed the miserable life of ordinary people.Thus he had the belief to show the reality in his works.During the Dali era,poets lacked belief of victory for the wars against the aggression,therefore,they chose to ignore the real life by living outside cities.But Rong Yu,on the contrary,were not afraid of criticizing governments and revealing dark sides in the society.Besides,he rarely communicated with mainstream poets and therefore were not influence by their attitudes.Some poets such as Du Fu,Wang Jiyou and Cen Shen whose writing style was more realistic had affected the topics and writing style of Rong Yu and made his character different from other poets in that era.