How to Understand the Content and Context of "Thoughts of Autumn in Tianjingsha

Tianjingsha-Autumn Thoughts is a famous piece of prose composed by the Yuan dynasty composer Ma Zhiyuan. The song juxtaposes a variety of scenes and combines them into a picture of an autumn sunset in the countryside, allowing a wanderer to ride a thin horse on a bleak background, which reveals a mournful mood, expressing the miserable and sorrowful feelings of a wanderer who misses his hometown and is tired of wandering in the fall. This small order syntax is unique, the first three sentences are composed of noun phrases, a **** list of nine kinds of scenery, simple words but rich in meaning. The whole song is only five lines of twenty-eight words, the language is extremely condensed but the capacity is huge, far-reaching meaning, exquisite structure, staccato, known as "the ancestor of autumnal thoughts". Literary AppreciationThis small order is very short, a **** only five sentences of twenty-eight words, the whole song without a "fall" word, but it depicts a bleak and moving picture of the autumn countryside sunset, and accurately conveys the traveler's miserable state of mind. This successful song, praised as the ancestor of Autumn Thoughts, embodies the artistic characteristics of classical Chinese poetry in many ways. Firstly, the scenery is used to support the emotion, the emotion is embedded in the scenery, and the scenery and emotion are blended to form a kind of bleak and miserable mood. Classical Chinese poetry pays great attention to the creation of mood. Context is an important category in the aesthetics of classical Chinese poetry, and its essential characteristic lies in the blending of scenes and the unity of mind and matter. Whether the mood and the scene can be harmonized or not is the key to the creation of mood. Qing Wang Fuzhi "Xuanzhai Poetry" said: "the scene is called two, but really can not be separated. God in the poem, the wonderful combination of infinite." Wang Guowei's "The Remarks on Human Words" said, "All scenic words are emotional words." The first four lines of Ma Zhiyuan's poem are all about scenery, and the words "withered," "old," "faint," "thin," and so on, make a strong impression on the poet. The words "withered", "old", "faint", "thin" and so on make the rich autumn colors contain an infinite bleak and miserable mood. And the last line "the broken hearted man at the end of the world" as the eye of the song is more of a finishing touch, so that the scene described in the first four lines becomes the environment of human activities, as the broken hearted man at the end of the world of the sadness of the heart triggered by the emotion. The scenery on the song is not only what Ma Zhiyuan saw during his journey, but also the carrier of his emotion. But at the same time, they are also the carriers of Ma Zhiyuan's emotions, the objects in his heart. The whole piece has feelings in the scenery, feelings in the scenery, and the scenes are beautifully harmonized, constituting a touching artistic realm. Second, the use of many dense imagery to express the author's pain of travel and sadness and hatred of autumn, so that the work is full of rich poetic feelings. Imagery is an artistic image that appears in poems to convey the author's feelings and thoughts. Classical Chinese poetry is often characterized by the use of complex and dense imagery. Many poets in ancient China often arranged many images in their poems to express their meaning. Ma Zhiyuan's song clearly reflects this characteristic. There are ten kinds of images in the short 28 words, which are not only the real environment of the broken-hearted man's life, but also the carrier of his inner heavy sadness and desolation. Without these images, the song would not exist. Coexisting with the complexity of imagery is the singularity of imagery. In the same work, the status of different images is relatively balanced, there is no intentionally prominent individual, and its emotional direction tends to be consistent, that is, a large number of images tend to **** together to convey the same emotional tone of the author. This is also the case with this song. In order to express his melancholy feelings, the author chooses many objects to be included in the poem. These objects are able to convey the author's inner feelings, and the combination of feelings and scenery makes the emotional direction of the images in the work consistent and single. Many images are linked together by the same emotional thread of the author to form a complete picture. The combination of complexity and singularity of imagery is an important reason for the deep meaning, harmony and strong poetic flavor of classical Chinese poetry. The arrangement of images in classical poems is often characterized by many but not chaotic and clear-cut, and this orderliness is attributed to the author's habit of arranging the images in the normal order of time and space. Some people call Ma Zhiyuan's "Tianjingsha - Autumn Thoughts" a "juxtaposition of images", but in fact, the juxtaposition still reflects a certain order. Of the ten images in the song, the first nine are naturally divided into three groups. The first group is the arrangement from bottom to top; the second group is the arrangement from near to far; the third group is the arrangement from far away to the present, with a slight change in the middle; the third group is the arrangement from far away to the present, with a slight change in the middle. Due to the insertion of "west wind" in the middle to write the sense of touch, changing the angle of description, thus increasing the sense of jumping imagery, but this jump is still localized, not beyond the scope of the autumn scenery. The last image, "the setting sun", is the background of the whole piece, which integrates all the first nine images and creates a momentary scene of space and space. As it is also the product of a distant gaze, the work as a whole also shows a spatial arrangement from near to far. From the old tree to the flowing water, to the old road, to the sunset, the author's vision expands layer by layer, step by step. This is also one of the manifestations of the orderliness of the imagery. Thirdly, he is good at processing and refining, and uses extremely concise white description to outline a picture of a traveler's journey in late autumn. The imagery in Ma Zhiyuan's "Tianjingsha - Autumn Thoughts" is not new. The word "ancient road" first appeared in Li Bai's poem "Remembering Qin'e - The Sound of a Whistling Whistle" (忆秦娥-箫聲咽), which reads: "On the clear autumn day on the Leyouyuan Plain, the sound and dust on the ancient road to Xianyang are extinguished" (乐游原上清秋节). In Song Zhang Yan's "The Sky in a Pot - Ten Thousand Miles in a Small Boat", there is also the phrase "The old willow river, the old road with the slanting sun, the wind and the waves are still straight". In Dong Xieyuan's The Story of the Western Chamber, there is a song of Xianlv - When Enjoying Flowers: "The setting sun is crowing in the forest, the wind is blowing on the thin horses, and once I enter the end of the world, the desolate ancient shore is slippery with frosty grasses. I caught a glimpse of a lonely forest, and saw some ogonori grasses with shallow sand. An old man fishes and prawns, the bridge flows. The thatched cottage reflects the flowers of Ogi." Six of these images appear in the Maqu. There is also the Yuan dynasty's "Drunken Heaven" (see "New Sounds of Music"): "Old trees hang from vines, and the setting sun reflects the sunset. The old trees are hanging from the vines, and the setting sun reflects the sunset. The mountains look like pictures, and I don't bother to set up a whip to urge my thin horse. As the sun sets, people are living in bamboo fences and thatched cottages." There are also six images that are the same as those in Maqu. Obviously, "Drunken Heaven" is derived from "When Appreciating Flowers", and traces of simulation are still present. Though the imagery in the two songs is similar to that of Ma's, in comparison, they are not as pure, natural, and refined as "Tianjingsha - Thoughts of Autumn". There is no doubt that Ma Zhiyuan was influenced and inspired by Dong Qu when he composed "Thoughts of Autumn in Tianjingsha", but he did not just imitate it, but re-created it according to his own life experience and aesthetic vision. In the choice of scenery, in order to emphasize and strengthen the feelings of misery and sorrow, he chose ten images that can best reflect the bleak and desolate scenery of autumn and express the lonely and despairing feelings of the traveler, condensed his own feelings into these ten images, and finally revealed the theme of the whole piece with the stroke of a pen. He deleted some scenes which were beautiful but not in line with his feelings. For example, the cottage reflects the dirigible flowers, the sunset reflects the sunset, the mountains are like pictures, so that the imagery of the whole song has unity in the expression of emotions. In the refinement of words and phrases, Ma Zhiyuan fully demonstrated his talent, the first three sentences of eighteen words, all nouns and adjectives, no verb, the relationship between the various scenes and their respective dynamics and shape, all rely on the reader according to the organization of the order of the imagery as well as their own life experience to grasp. This kind of marvelous use of words is really rare in ancient times, Wen Tingjun "Shangshan morning walk" in "the sound of chickens in thatched stores in the moon, the frost on the boardwalk" is similar to Maqu's use of words, but its capacity is still not as large as Maqu's. The simplicity of Maqu's use of words is already very simple and concise. The simplicity of Maqu's words has reached a degree that can not be reduced, with the least amount of words to express the richness of emotions, which is precisely the "Tianjingsha - Autumn Thoughts", the first small order of the success of the art of one of the reasons. Fourth, the use of sadness of autumn as an aesthetic emotional experience to express the sadness of the traveler, so that the individual's feelings to obtain a universal social significance. Autumn sadness is a kind of sad and sorrowful emotional experience that people have in the face of the autumn scenery, because the autumn scenery (especially the late autumn) is mostly cold, dull, bleak, mostly accompanied by dusk, sunshine, falling leaves, withered branches, and become a symbol of the demise of everything, so the autumn scenery on the one hand can really give people a sense of physiological coldness, on the other hand, can trigger a variety of sadness inherent in the heart of the feelings. Song Yu is the first to open the Chinese autumn as the main form of aesthetic experience of sentimentalism literature, he through the description of the autumn "grass and trees fall and decline" of the desolate scene, express their own life and career disillusionment, and he will be facing the autumn produced by the bleak and sad mood described as if the journey. "Bureaucrat Ruoxi (bleak), as in a long-distance trip", "Kouluo Ruoxi (lonely and empty), detained and no friends to live". This shows that sadness for autumn and sadness for a long journey have the same emotional experience. After Song Yu, sadness for autumn gradually became one of the most common forms of aesthetic experience among Chinese literati, and it was closely associated with the lamentation of one's life. One example is Du Fu's poem "I have been a frequent guest for thousands of miles in sorrowful autumn". The same can be said of Ma Zhiyuan's little poem. Although the imagery in the song is not new, nor is the emotion expressed, it has gained immortal vitality because it uses a refined artistic expression to express a traditional emotional experience of Chinese literati, and thus can arouse the ****sing of future generations of literati. Through the above analysis, it can be seen that "Tianjingsha - Autumn Thoughts" is one of the most mature works of classical Chinese poetry. Though it is a Yuan dynasty poem, in fact, it embodies the artistic characteristics of classical Chinese poetry in many aspects. I hope it will be helpful to you! Hangtu