The origin of Tang poetry

Yuan guang

 

Poetry is a form of art, a form of art to develop morality. The singing or shouting at work of our ancestors was a basic form of poetry. In face, a long time ago, poetry existed in the form of “Shijing” and “Chuci”. The first is from the North, mainly in the form of 4-character, such as the famous “Zhounan-Guanzhui”: “Kwan-Kwan go the ospreys, on the islet in the river. The modest, retiring, virtuous, young lady, for our prince a good mate she,” an example of the 4-character form. The later is from the South, long sentences with numerous characters. Take Yi Wang’s “Chuci Zhangju” as an example, “Once in a town at the south of Chu, between Ruan and Xiang. People there believed in ghosts and favoured offering sacrifices.” It looks like an article but in fact it’s a poem with various numbers of characters in a sentence. Shijing and Chuci seem to be not related, but how did they come together? The answer can be found in the Yuefu of Han Dynasty. It appeared in a neat form of 5 characters so the form of the poetry was settled. For example, the Mulan Ballad says “the sound of one sigh after another, as Mulan weaves at the doorway. No sound of loom and shuttle, only that of the girl lamenting.” The last tranformation of the poetry was in the Period of Disunity, the neat form of 7 characters became the Tang poetry. Poetry was the “pop” in Tang Dynasty. Famous poets at that time are countless. Tang poetry sprung up like mushrooms and brought endless art to people later on.
The Origin of Poetry