| Xu Fang was a famous diehard (a man who still loyalty to the old dynasty in the new dynasty) in the early Qing Dynasty, and his works are included in "The Juyitang Collection" and so on. He was born in the late Ming Dynasty, loved reading when he was young, because of the influence of his good family environment, he got the Juren-degree when he was just21-year-old. But soon the Ming Dynasty perished, So he hadn’t cooperate with the new dynasty and never went into cities from then on, demonstrated such a diehard’s noble qualities.Xu Fang’s writings reflect his unique in his literary thought. He inherited Sima Qian’s view of "Write a book after suffering", and Han Yu’s theory that "Article is to express grievances and dissatisfaction", He believes that an article should come from one’s heart, to express the feeling that one must speak out, so the readers could understand and then that can handed down to posterity. Xu Fang also pointed out many problems in the literary creation at that time, stressed the key to learn from the Han and Wei Dynasty’s prose was to grasp the true meaning, not only to learn it in the form.Xu Fang’s poetry can be divided into two categories:the description of painting and description of friendship. The main idea of his poetry expresses missing of the old dynasty, the praise of the heroes who resisted to the Qing Dynasty, but also reflect the feeling of longing for the hermit life. His poems on painting has Wang Wei’s poetry’s characteristics that "write a picture into a poem". His friendship poems has the characteristics of the literati-poetry of Han Dynasty, those are the concentrated reflection of his life experiences.Xu Fang learns from Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan on prose writing. His prose is really simple but not superficial. The description of the scene in his articles, often only the mountains and rivers around his hometown, the theme is not very special, the text is also not beautiful, but it’s fresh and clean to read. His arguments, based on the history, the views are different from others’, and the arguments are well organized, and often can make the readers be moved unconsciously. Because the noble sentiments and good writing skills, Xu Fang, worthy to be one of the distinguished representative of the Early Qing Dynasty diehard-poets. |
