Understanding of China's Ancient Poetry

In our country of poetry, poetry has been the mainstream of literary history for thousands of years.

How did poetry come into being? Before the formation of literature, our ancestors compiled rhymes in order to pass on the experience of production struggle to others or the next generation for memory and dissemination. According to Mr Wen Yiduo's textual research, [poem] and [ambition] are originally the same word, and [ambition] belongs to [scholar] and [heart], which shows that what stops in the heart is actually memory. After the writing came into being, with the help of literature, there is no need for rote learning. At this time, all written records are called records. Desire is poetry. Have ambition in your heart and speak like a poem.

How did the title of the song come from? Poetry and songs are not the same thing Songs are produced by human labor at the same time, long before the formation of literature and long before poetry. At first, we only used sighs to express our feelings, such as ah, xi, oh, alas, and so on. At that time, these words were all pronounced with the same pronunciation: "ah". Song is a pictophonetic character, pronounced with "ke". In ancient times, [song] and [ah] were the same word, and the [ah] that people uttered in their labor was called composition. Therefore, the title of the song has been used.

Since poetry and song are not the same thing, why did they later be linked together and called [Poetry]? As long as we understand their relationship. At first, Song only used simple interjections to express emotions. With the appearance of language, people's understanding of objective things has gradually deepened and their emotions have become richer, so it is far from enough to express them with a few exclamations. So content words are added to the song to meet the needs. After the appearance of words, the combination of poetry and songs went further, and lyrics written in words appeared. At this time, a song includes two parts: one is music and the other is lyrics. Music is lyrical, and the lyrics are poetic and memorable. In other words, poetry is a song with music and a poem without music. The original poem can be sung with music. Songs are poems, and poems are songs.