On The Annotation Of Song Poetry Of Qian Zhongshu

The following thesis is the author's personal understanding of Annotation of SongPoetry by Qian Zhongshu. It probes into Qian's artistic principles, poetic theories, as well ashis academic achievements, and it tries to make some comments on his Annotation of SongPoetry. The book, which is published in 1958, is his magnum opus of the 1950s and 1960s.The thesis explores its ideological basis from the perspective of his ideas on Song poetry andhis poetic thoughts. Mr. Qian makes some comments on Song poets and their works, and hebrings up many questions, which are of great creativity that were never thought about by hispredecessors. Anthology of Juhuai inherits a lot from the styles and skills of Song poetry;heputs forward the theory of "poetry should be divided into Tang and Song", which is producedunder the influence of Chenyan, the representative of the Tongguang Style;all of those ideascan be verified by his ideas reflected in his Annotation of the Song Poetry.On the basis of his affirmation of the values and characteristics of Song poetry, Qianchooses Song poetry according to his theories as "poetry can be used to express resentment","poetry should be divided into Tang style and Song Style", " the verve of poetry", "a poemshould be philosophical and entertaining", "treating what is folk as elegance, treatingconventional as being fresh". He thinks that "the poems showing resentments tend to bedulcet", and those poems are more likely to inspire the emotions of the readers and cause theirresonation. Although it does not mean the poems reflecting joy are necessarily bad, theexcellent poems reflecting resentments outnumber those of joy, so there are many such poemsin the Annotation of Song Poetry. Of course, Qian Zhongshu is unavoidably affected by theradical art and literary thoughts of the age. He tries to syncretize the Tang and Song poetryand his thoughts are embodied in his theories as "poetry can be used to express resentment","poetry should be divided into Tang style and Song Style", " the verve of poetry", "a poemshould be philosophical and entertaining", "treating what is folk as elegance, treatingconventional as being fresh". He believed that poetry should not be divided by its time, but itsstyle and Song poetry gets some inheritance from Tang Dynasty. He remarked in his prefaceof the Annotation of Song Poetry that "the authors of Song Dynasty got many 'minorachievements" in their experiments in poems". He also said in A Record of Remarks on Artsthat "the Tang poetry excels at verve and charm, while Song poetry at philosophies." He triedto join the their excellencies together and chose many such poems in his work. By doing so,he emphasized the Song poetry's inheritance of Tang, at the same time displayed the uniquecharacteristics of Song poetry.The last part of the thesis tries to make some comprehensive comments on the book fromits background, characteristics, standards as well as defects. It points out that the work ofediting such a book necessarily fell into his competence because of his collective mastering ofthe job and his wisdom. In that unusual age of 1950s and 1960s, Qian zhongshu used hisunique angel of view, his particular way to choose the poems and, based on years' of study inSong poems, he made great academic contribution by writing the preface of Annotation ofSong Poetry. Although the artistic values and innovations are regarded as the standard whenchoosing the poems, many excellent poems were neglected because of the influence of theage.