Wen Ting-yun Qilu Research

Wen Tingyun is an important poet in the late Tang Dynasty. There are greataccomplishments in his poem and ci, which has influenced a multitude of poets in thelate Tang Dynasty and early Song Dynasty. While in the creation of ci, he is evencalled as the originator of the Flower School. In his existing337poems, there are87of them belong to seven-character-regulated-verse, one third of all. Thus we could seeseven-character-regulated-verse is a style he prefers more in the poem creation.Maybe the glory of his ci is too magnificent, his poem is always easily ignored by thelate generations. And poetic theorist of all time both in home and abroad has beencontroversial in the critic of his poem works, but overall criticism is more than praise.Yet, most of the praise goes to his seven-character-regulated-verse. In content, thepoem chanting the history and the ancient is the most sparkling works in his poem. Heinherits the tradition of using the past to satirize the present of the poem chanting thehistory and the ancient from earlier poets such as Dufu and Liu Yuxi. Besides that,Wen has also added sign of personal misfortunes and dissatisfaction of the presentsituation into them, making his poem read more striking. Love poems rarely appearsin his seven-character-regulated-verse, numbered only three or four, but moving andtouching without any sign of artificiality."Profusion" represents only one class of hispoems which mainly reflects in Yuefu poems while theseven-character-regulated-verse doesn’t infected too much by it. In contrary, hisseven-character-regulated-verse mostly are sincere and cheerful. In art, Wen Tingyunhas created many brilliant seven-character-regulated-verse. He has created works withrigorous rhythm, skilled design and concise language, by especially inheriting theartistic skills of Dufu while merging his own characters into it, using relatively trickyskills such as Niwan, loaned antithesis and intrasentential antithesis.In the actual poem creation, Wen’s seven-character-regulated-verse achievedgreat accomplishments both in content and art, getting him a reputation as high as LiShangyin, another great poet in the late Tang Dynasty and they were called together as“Wenli”. There must be something same or similar in their poem creation while they got their reputation. Pushing the seven-character-regulated-verse again to the top, theyplayed an important role in serving as the link between past and future under thecircumstance that all poem styles in the late Tang Dynasty sank in low spirits. Butdifferent social status decided there would be differences in theirseven-character-regulated-verse and goals for artistic creation. After all, Li served hislife in the government while Wen stayed as common people for his lifetime, onlybeing demoted in his late time when he offended the authorities. Li’s poem inclinededto obscurity while Wen’s poem was relatively more elegant and beautiful.The seven-character-regulated-verse of Wen Tingyun had a great influence in thelate Tang Dynast, the Five Dynasties and the early Song Dynasty. Many poets thenlearned after him such as Tang Yanqian, Ji Tangfu and Hanwo, etc. The Xi Kun Stylein the early Song Dynatsy esteemed Dufu and learned from Li Shangyin. They alsodid some research on Wen Tingyun but unfortunately they didn’t inherit theirtraditions in seven-character-regulated-verse but the profusion thing. In the importanttang poetry anthologies in the late generations, the editors put some attention to Wen’seven-character-regulated-verse. Some anthologies in the Ming and Qing Dynastyeven choose more than half of his seven-character-regulated-verse. Thus we could seethe important role of his seven-character-regulated-verse in the late generations.