Tang Shi is a huge house standing in our hometown, with countless doors and windows, and we sometimes want to go back to see it on the inevitable wandering, but we may not be able to find the entrance that is open to us immediately. If we want to truly enter the interior of Tang poetry, we also need to find a suitable way to enter, so that we will not let these great verses and the feelings and thoughts they carry suddenly flash in front of our eyes, and then disappear in an instant, and we will never get anything. In "Goodbye to the Shining Stars: Twenty Tang Poems", the author Jing Kaixuan uses an extremely broad vision and thinking path to "find concepts and values in Tang poems, such as the Chinese's heavenly and human moments, self-awareness, time concepts and ways of feeling, or the poet's mental journey, aesthetic taste, personality quality and artistic skills", showing readers the opening of many doors and their internal landscapes.
The concepts and values unearthed from Tang poems are the most thought-provoking part of the book. For example, when writing about Du Fu, the author particularly emphasizes Du Fu's "strong sense of individuality". "Individual consciousness" is a transformation of the mode of thinking in the long historical development, "the transformation of the public self in the thinking to the private self has contributed to the personalization of poetic feelings and the diversification of poetic themes." In this regard, the vivid and complex personality of Du Fu and his people that we feel from Du Fu's poetry, and the tiny life experience that belongs to him alone, are the manifestations and even publicity of Du Fu's individual consciousness. This made Du Fu Dufu, and to some extent, Du Fu became China's "greatest poet."
Recently, scholar Jing Kaixuan published a collection of Tang poems and essays, "Goodbye to the Shining Stars", and we also took this opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview with him. In this interview, some of the author's answers also show the importance of grasping ideas. "Nature" is an extremely important concept in Chinese culture, and almost everyone can recite landscape poetry, but the landscape in the poem is not just landscape, as the author said:
"The ancient Chinese poets meditated on 'nature', which is to solve the ultimate problem of life in a naturalistic way. In Chinese farming culture, this 'nature' that represents the true existence is presented through the landscape... We have had landscape paintings and landscape poems since ancient times, behind which is the recognition of the world and the recognition of the meaning of life, the ancients believed that all things have animism, and today they say that all things are interconnected. Tao Yuanming, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei, and Wei Yingwu all found a place to live in the landscape, and if we only read these poems from their techniques of describing landscapes, without realizing the concept of existence behind them, it would be superficial, as if you only saw natural landscapes, but the poet saw the essence of existence. ”
The exploration of concepts and values, as well as the aesthetic experience of ancient poetry, make "Goodbye to the Shining Stars" a wonderful combination of thought and beauty.
Written | Beijing News reporter Zhang Jin
Jing Kaixuan, Ph.D. in Ancient Literature, is a professor at the School of Overseas Education of Nanjing University, a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois, and has taught at universities in Japan and Turkey. His main research direction is Tang and Song Dynasty literature, and he is the author of "Examination of Tang Dynasty Literature" and "Between Experience and Transcendence".
01
"From the poetry of the ancients,
Seeking an intuitive and holistic world"
Beijing News: What is the origin of writing this collection of Tang poems and essays? Why did you want to travel the world of Tang dynasty poets and their poetry?
Jing Kaixuan: This idea has been moving for several years, and the study of Chinese and European literature has allowed me to look at ancient Chinese poetry from a new perspective. I have loved ancient poetry since I was a child, and after graduating from college, I was admitted to Nanjing University, a famous teacher, specializing in Tang and Song Dynasty literature, and later stayed in the university to teach and have been teaching ancient literature and writing academic papers in this area. For me, literature is not only a profession, but also a place to live. When a century-old pandemic hit humanity, I realized that everyone's destiny would change. During the epidemic, I have been thinking about the fate of people and their resistance to fate, thinking about the degradation of modern people's emotions and language, all of which have prompted me to revisit our classical traditions with warmth and pay tribute to the great hearts of the past. Everyone will grow old, but poetry will not grow old.
Beijing News: In this should be a long and rich spiritual journey and dialogue, what kind of personal feelings do you have?
Jing Kaixuan: The title of the book actually comes from the closing sentence of the first part of the Divine Comedy, Dante, under the guidance of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, came out of the darkness and saw the brilliant stars. I think the stars are also a symbol of poetry. This book was first written for myself, a personal aesthetic journey. In my dialogue with Tang poetry, I pinned my personal feelings about this changing world, and from the poetry of the ancients, I tried to seek the world of intuition and wholeness, and sought the realm of self-consciousness and transcendence. If there is a main thread that runs through this book, it is the fate and virtue of man.
"Goodbye to the Shining Stars", by Jing Kaixuan, Edition: Nanjing University Press, November 2021 (Click on the book cover to purchase)
Beijing News: In the preface to this collection of essays, you say that "you try to find ideas and values in Tang poetry, such as the Chinese's heavenly and human moments, self-awareness, time concepts, and ways of feeling." Your previous book, Between Experience and Transcendence, is a study of Eastern European ideas based on the literary works of Kundera, Javier, and others; the main thrust of The Belittled Mind is the search for "what is freedom?" Why is there so much emphasis on the study of ideas and values in literature?
Jing Kaixuan: I have always been interested in world literature and have read a lot of foreign literature since I was a child. Since the 1980s, I have become interested in translating Eastern European literature, where the writers are ideological and intellectual, they try to explain the problems of the times they are facing in literary works, so I have also read a lot of Western philosophy, understand the history of Western ideas, the history of ideas, I think that literature and philosophy are explaining the existence of man, explaining the meaning of life, the best literary works are philosophical, from Dante to Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kafka, From Qu Yuan to Tao Yuanming, Li Bai, Du Fu, Su Shi, and Cao Xueqin, this is all the case, and the concept determines the value of a work, not narrative technique or rhetorical kung fu.
Beijing News: So how do you see the relationship between literature, especially poetry, and ideas?
Jing Kaixuan: Literary works have always been the world created by the poets and writers' own minds, concepts are the structure of the soul, and good literary works are supported by concepts, or they express the overall view of literary scholars on the world, and at the same time reflect the concept of the times. As for the current ancient literary criticism, it is mostly rhetorical appreciation, or seeking the main idea from the background, which is of course also very important, but it often slides into social roles or artistic techniques, such as commenting that all good poems are "scene blending" and lack of understanding. I tried to switch from literature to philosophy, and then from philosophy to literature, hoping to truly enter the poet's spiritual world from the background of the times. Of course, the book is still literature-based, adhering to the self-discipline of poetry, while bringing out philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical questions from poetry.
02
Du Fu never escaped the true state of life
Beijing News: There are some comparative studies of Chinese and Western poetry in the book, such as the poems of Li Bai and Goethe, Tao Yuanming and Milosz. The afterword also mentions the different characteristics of Western poetry and Chinese poetry, saying that "Western poetry seeks infinity and is intended to be sublime; Chinese poetry is limited in thought, referring to the return to beauty." How to understand the "infinite" and "finite" mentioned here? What are the general cultural reasons for this distinction between Chinese and Western poetry?
Jing Kaixuan: The so-called infinite and limited, sublime and beautiful, is in terms of the totality and mainstream, and the book is only an overview. Everything that is generalized is incomplete, and if everything is to be comprehensive, there is no point of view, which is the limitation of rational thinking. As the modern philosopher Ziorang said, "The mountain gives you the impression of not infinity, but grandeur—what we feel is the sea and misfortune." For example, Du Fu's poetry has a sublime side, but the reverence for Du Fu is the result of the poetry education of successive generations, and ordinary people still prefer beautiful poetry instead of writing unfortunate poems. Xie Lingyun once lived in Wenzhou, which was close to the sea, but he was the first landscape poet, not to mention Wang Wei and Meng Haoran who lived in the Central Plains. In the West, starting from Homer to modern poetry, the imagery of the sea is often an important element in poetry, which is the difference between marine civilization and continental civilization. Western culture is a god-man relationship, is the god-based, man can never reach the ultimate thing, this infinite concept in the sense of beauty caused by the sublime; Chinese culture is the heaven-man relationship, is the human-oriented, because the heavens have no personality, heaven and man can be one, so only in this life can be focused, this limited concept in the sense of beauty caused by the beautiful.
Beijing News: In the preface, there is a summary of the history of Chinese poetry, saying that the development of poetry history is a historical process from holistic consciousness to individual consciousness, from pure perceptual thinking to rational thinking. What factors influenced such a process?
Jing Kaixuan: I think that the trend from holistic consciousness to individual consciousness is also the development process of the history of world civilization, that is, the rationalization process that Max Weber called. Of course, this process is influenced by socio-economic and cultural development and is a gradual process. Ancient people engaged in the same labor in order to survive, felt dominated by an unknowable common destiny, so their perception of the world was a kind of group consciousness, and then labor had a division of labor, people wanted to find the meaning of life from their own labor, deeply felt that personal destiny was different, had different interpretations, and thus produced individual consciousness and world view, thus producing different poetic themes and styles.
Stills from the documentary Du Fu: China's Greatest Poet.
Beijing News: Speaking of "individual consciousness", when chen Ziang, Du Fu and others are written in the book, they especially emphasize their "strong individual consciousness", especially Du Fu, and a strong individual consciousness is an important reason for Du Fu's greatness. In the context of the time, why did Du Fu develop a stronger sense of individuality than that of his contemporaries? How is "individual consciousness" embodied in Du Fu's poetry writing?
Jing Kaixuan: Du Fu was not very famous during his lifetime, but in the Middle Tang Dynasty, Han Yu, Yuan Shu and others began to vigorously publicize him, Yuan Shu still looked at Du Fu from the perspective of "literature and preparation", and Han Yu praised him from the perspective of reviving Confucianism. Du Fu is indeed the successor of the spirit of Confucius in the minds of ancient scholars, his spirit comes from Confucius, and there is an individual consciousness of the times, so he has formed his unique personality quality, most chinese poets feel beauty through the state of selflessness, the so-called "I will include a large piece, Haoran and Mingxi are the same branch", Du Fu is from the soul to feel the beauty, such poets are not many.
Beijing News: Today, Du Fu is almost universally recognized as China's greatest poet. Although, as mentioned earlier, Western poetry "intends to be sublime", you also use the word "sublime" on Du Fu. What do you personally think is the reason why Du Fu is "the greatest"?
Jing Kaixuan: Du Fu has a kind of generous sacrificial love, although he does not have much concept of transcending the world, but writes about his own misfortune everywhere, but he can sublimate his personal misfortune to an unprecedented height of fraternity. If Li Bai is crazy and Wang Wei is a fox, Du Fu is beyond madness, just like Confucius, although he can also appreciate this life choice of Li Bai and Wang Wei, but in his heart he knows that he can't do it, "Who is the disciple of the Wufeisi people?" "He never escapes the true state of life, but faces a bleak life. This may be the result of a great sense of mission.
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Li Bai poetically inhabited the earth
Beijing News: In Li Bai's chapter, he mainly writes about his "free spirit" and his dilemma in the face of the ultimate problem of the mortality of man, and in the end Li Bai can only rely on timely pleasure - Hu'er will be exchanged for fine wine - to temporarily dissolve. How do you position Li Bai's "freedom" or his "free life style"?
Jing Kaixuan: Li Bai's "freedom" belongs to the old Zhuang style of "leisure", which belongs to a way of not being bound by external objects and obtaining spiritual liberation, and he himself is also a Taoist, and he walks in the human world in this image, which amazes the people of the world. But Taoism has no other world, Li Bai obviously knows the "Immortal Prince Qiao, it is difficult to wait with the period" in the "Nineteen Ancient Poems", so he adopted the attitude of "for the pleasure of being in time, how can you stay in Laizi", which is also the life style of many scholars in ancient China, Li Bai's greatness lies in the fact that he created countless poems that praise freedom, "Niuzhu Xijiang Night, the blue sky without clouds", is this not what Heidegger said "the realm of clarity"? Li Bai poetically inhabits the earth and realizes his own meaning of life with his own artistic creation.
Stills from the drama "Li Bai".
Beijing News: How these poets solve the problem of ultimate care is one of the most core inquiries in this book. You say, "In terms of solving the ultimate care of life through poetry, Li Bai is the end of the previous era, and Du Fu is the beginning of the next era." "How to understand it specifically?
Jing Kaixuan: This point I have already talked about in the book, since the end of the Han Dynasty, the shortness of life is an unchanging poetic theme, from San cao to Ruan Zhi, Tao Yuanming, from Liu Xiyi, Lu Zhaolin, Zhang Ruoxuan to Li Bai in the early Tang Dynasty, still repeating this theme, but at the same time, the Buddhist concept of the afterlife has also spread into Middle-earth, gradually gaining the recognition of scholars and the public, Buddhism became a popular religion in China in the Tang Dynasty, it comforted people's desire for eternal life, so starting from Du Fu, the short life is no longer a poetic theme. Poets of the middle and late Tang Dynasties, although they occasionally had feelings of life, but because they accepted Buddhist ideas to varying degrees, they no longer felt anxious about it, but turned to the concern for the world and history, which is also the reason for the prevalence of ancient poetry in the middle and late Tang Dynasty. If we compare li bai with Liu Yuxi and Du Mu's nostalgic poems, we can see the difference between the two.
Between Experience and Transcendence, by Jing Kaixuan, Edition: Oriental Publishing House, December 2018
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The ancient scholars were constantly swinging between Confucian paths
Beijing News: The book says that from the Sheng Tang Dynasty to the Middle Tang Dynasty, poetry also changed from "poet's poem" to "scholar's poem". How to understand the "poetry of the scholar"? What are the reasons for this shift?
Jing Kaixuan: The Middle Tang Dynasty is regarded by modern historians as a period of changes in the Tang and Song dynasties, and one of the major transmutations was to shift from aristocratic society to bureaucratic society, forming a more bureaucratic management system. This is related to the change in the identity structure of the scholar, the Sui Dynasty began to implement the examination system, and the Tang Dynasty continued this policy of electing officials after its establishment, the purpose of which was to expand the basis of rule, inhibit the hereditary inheritance of the scholar clan by the door, and let the children of the commoners also enter the career. Emperor Gaozong's jinshi examination adopted poetry, and until the Dezong dynasty jinshi keda was extremely prosperous, and the jinshike was particularly important, so the scholars who started from the people increasingly appeared on the political stage, and the bureaucratic group composed of these scholars had more consciousness to participate in the governance of the country.
Among them, outstanding talents often have a sense of responsibility for the people, that is, Liu Zongyuan said "Li'an Yuanyuan (the people)", their main cause is in management, which makes them pay attention to the role of poetry in social life, in the work to show a strong concern for the real world, like Li Bai poets are difficult to appear, at the same time they despise the etiquette of the Door Valve clan, in the emotional emphasis on secular life, showing a side that breaks the class barrier, which is the main feature of the poetry of the scholar.
Beijing News: In the classical Chinese poetry represented by Tang poetry, "nature" has an incomparably important position, and there are many discussions on this point in the book. How do you see the role of "nature" in ancient Chinese poetry?
Jing Kaixuan: Chinese the original meaning of "nature" is to be free, in Lao Zhuang thought, the origin of all things is the Tao, that is, nature, and at the same time this word refers to all non-artificial things, so being in nature is being in the original, and the pursuit of nature is the pursuit of authentic life, which can make people get rid of the troubles of the world. I think that Lao Zhuang's concept of "nature" is the essence of Chinese culture, which is similar to Heidegger's concept of "world", and to live meaninglessly is to live without a "world". Both "world" and "nature" are holistic perceptions, and only poetry and thought can open them before us.
The ancient Chinese poets meditated on "nature", that is, to solve the ultimate problem of life in a naturalistic way. In China's farming culture, this kind of "nature" that represents the true existence is presented through the landscape, Confucius said: "The wise man enjoys the water, the benevolent one enjoys the mountain", which is to link the beauty of the landscape with ethics and wisdom, so we have landscape paintings and landscape poems since ancient times, behind which is the recognition of the world and the recognition of the meaning of life, the ancients believed that all things have animism, and today say that all things are interconnected. Tao Yuanming, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei, and Wei Yingwu all found a place to live in the landscape, and if we only read these poems from their techniques of describing landscapes, without realizing the concept of existence behind them, it would be superficial, as if you only saw natural landscapes, but the poet saw the essence of existence.
"The Belittled Thought", by Jing Kaixuan, edition: Guangxi Normal University Press, October 2012
Beijing News: Many of the poets mentioned in the book have a yearning for a secluded life, which is also a tradition of Chinese scholars. What is the relationship between seclusion and use for these poets?
Jing Kaixuan: This is a very interesting question, the world and the use of the world at first glance are contradictory, but in ancient China scholars can be integrated, Chinese culture lacks strong religious feelings, very early rationalization, but people's life, unsatisfactory things are often eight or nine, there must be some kind of spiritual comfort, this is constantly swinging between Confucianism and Taoism. Mencius said, "The poor are alone, and the poor are good at the same time." Laying the principle of the origin of scholars, Li Zehou proposed "Confucianism and Taoism complementarity" in the 1980s, and qian Mu earlier also said that Confucianism is a positive impetus for life, and poetry is a negative consolation in life. When you can use the world, you are active and enterprising, and when you can't use the world, you withdraw, at least not differently. This embodies a rational spirit of Chinese culture.
Of course, in today's view, this lacks a Promethean spirit, but this is also the spirit of the West after the emergence of the modern concept that man is the purpose. The scholars of the Tang Dynasty could not even reach the ideological realm of the three great Confucians in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and their concepts were always developed and developed in history, which was not their limitation, but the limitation of history.
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Literature, in the final analysis, is the "currentization" that transcends this existence,
Poetically inhabited on the earth
Beijing News: Entering the late Tang Dynasty, the book writes about Du Mu's fascination with decadent beauty. How does this aesthetic tendency relate to the atmosphere of the late Tang Dynasty?
Jing Kaixuan: In the nineteenth century, the French literary theorist Danner put forward the three elements of art: race, environment and era, which I think still have reference value today, and Liu Xun's "Wenxin Carved Dragon" in the Xiaoliang period also has the saying that "the change of literature is stained with the world, and the rise and fall is related to the chronological order", which has always been regarded as a guideline by Chinese literary critics. Du Mu's poetic style is related to his origin, but more to the times. He was one of the most politically insightful poets in the Tang Dynasty, but in the political decline of the late Tang Dynasty, he failed to realize his ambitions and establish his deeds in his lifetime, and the sensitivity of the poet made him always breathe an atmosphere of the times when the edifice would fall, of course, he would not know that he was in the late Tang Dynasty as later generations said, but he knew that the Kaiyuan prosperous era was gone, there was no world to use, and when a dynasty fell, the children of the family had the cultural capital to play decadent beauty, unlike other civilian scholars, who were miserable and fearful, and Du Mu used decadence to resist the helplessness of his heart Behind this is a deep understanding of the dynastic cycle, but in the end, as he himself said, the pill in his plate cannot jump out of the disk of the general trend.
Beijing News: When writing about Li Shangyin, there is a very revealing comparison in the book, comparing Li Shangyin with Kafka. What do the two have in common?
Jing Kaixuan: Li Shangyin and Du Mu were known as Little Li Du in later generations, which shows that their poetic status is very high. Later generations believe that Li Shangyin inherited Du Fu, mainly referring to his political poems, especially his "Xingci Western Suburbs composed a hundred rhymes", the pen strength is heavy and majestic, comparable to Du Fu's "Northern Expedition", I wrote Li Shangyin, did not discuss his political poetry, but focused on his love poems to go deep into his inner life. Comparing him with Kafka does not mean that they have the same style of creation, but that they have similarities in the emotional attitudes of men and women, and that they are afraid of the results of love, which makes their works difficult to understand.
Kafka had a lifelong engagement with two women and two lovers, but in the end there was no result, and the Czech writer Klima once interpreted the Trial based on his negotiations to dissolve the marriage. Although Li Shangyin was married and had a deep affection for the couple, he has always had feelings for other women, which made him create the poem "Untitled" and adopt a confusing brushwork, making it difficult for future generations to grasp its main theme. The profoundness of these two unrelated writers who were able to elevate the narrow experience of their individual lives into a metaphysical state of existence is precisely their profundity.
Beijing News: The appendix to this book is written about women's poetry, discussing female poets such as Li Ye, Xue Tao, and Yu Xuanji. Compared to the mainstream male poets, what are the particularly noteworthy and commendable qualities of their poetry?
Jing Kaixuan: The appendix writes about female poets, mainly want to say a few fair words for the female poets of the Tang Dynasty, these Tang Dynasty women wrote poems, the achievements are no less than those of those second-rate male poets, since the history of literature can be included in Yao He and others, why can't they be included in the history of literature? Although the female poets of the Tang Dynasty failed to jump out of the male-centered framework, and poetry was not their career, their poems had a female perspective and equal demands, especially Li Ye's "Eight To" poems, which wrote a certain universality of marriage in a paradoxical way. She obviously witnessed in her daily life the debauchery of many scholars, as well as the falsity of marriage in the patriarchal era, which was impossible for those male poets to write, so I think that women's poetry in the Tang Dynasty has not only social history, but also value in literary history.
Beijing News: Nowadays, there are many treatises on Tang poetry and Song Ci, and the number of hits on the interpretation videos of Tang poems on some platforms is also very high, how do you think about the public's love for Tang poetry today?
Jing Kaixuan: Today's young people like Tang poetry and Song Ci, I think it is a good thing, literature is the embodiment of people's hearts, modern people's material life has undergone tremendous changes, but at the same time people feel the emptiness of their hearts, become hollow people, poetry can make people think about the possibility of another attitude to life, free from anxiety, there was a period of time, Wei Yingwu's poem "I have a scoop of wine, can comfort the wind and dust", causing a warm solitaire on the Internet, is an obvious example. In fact, another poem by Wei Yingwu, "Want to hold a scoop of wine, far away from the wind and rain", is even more famous, and even Su Dongpo is very respected, and Yi Yun composed a poem. The public's love of Tang poetry shows that modern people still want to break away from the state of merely living, beyond what Heidegger called "currentization.". Literature, in the final analysis, is to transcend the "currentization" of this existence and poetically inhabit the earth.
"Examination of Tang Dynasty Literature", by Jing Kaixuan, edition: Nanjing University Press, June 2012
Beijing News: Although we have been in contact with Tang poetry for a long time due to educational reasons, it is still difficult to truly enter the world of Tang poetry. Is there some necessary knowledge or method to better understand Tang poetry and the spiritual world of Tang dynasty poets?
Jing Kaixuan: I don't have a special method in this regard, it varies from person to person. Poetry is the product of the poet's overall intuition, so the reading of poetry should also be the overall intuitive feeling, which is also in line with the principles of Gestalt psychology, and the whole is not the sum of parts. When I was a child, I read Song Zhiqing's "closer to homesickness is more timid, dare not ask people", at first there was no special feeling, in 1968 my parents were locked up in a cowshed, sent me and my brother back to my hometown in Shanxi, a year later back to Sichuan to visit my parents, I did not know their current situation, in the long-distance bus to see acquaintances, do not dare to come forward to ask, for fear of hearing any bad news, this time I suddenly understood this poem.
The emotions of ancient and modern people have not fundamentally changed, which is why poetry can be passed on to future generations. Therefore, my personal experience in reading poetry is that beginners do not need to make the background of the era of poetry very clear, especially primary school students read poetry, do not explain word by word, detailed analysis, afraid that children do not understand, we often ignore the child's mind is more sensitive than adults, still maintain a primitive feeling of the world, has not yet been fully rationalized. We teach poetry today, tearing it down into pieces, and what the child receives is also fragmentation, with neither pleasure nor feeling. It makes sense that when a child becomes an adult, he will naturally understand poetry from personal experience, just as Du Fu understands Song Yu's "Nine Debates" and has his own feelings. Mr. Yu Xiyun taught his young granddaughter to read poetry, wrote a book "Poetry In a Shallow Way", a few comments, is really understanding poetry, but also really understand teaching poetry. As for adults reading poems, after "feeling" the beauty of a poem, they can read about the background of the poem and understand the poet's life. But at the same time, we must also remember that there is an abstraction process in reading the poems of the predecessors, and the outstanding poets are writing about themselves and us. In short, from beginning to end, we must read poetry with our hearts and minds to understand our hearts in order to gain benefits.