逆境不氣餒，順境不懈怠。讀書是最好的充電，讓自己充實起來。當我讀到上海古籍出版社1979年11月版的《中國歷代文論選》時，深深被元好問的《論詩三十首》所打動。這位遼金時代的大才子，其文采剛好用八個字概括：“詞傾峽水，筆掃秋虹”。
首先，元好問是個有節(jié)氣的愛國者。元好問（1190—1257），字裕之，太原秀容（山西忻縣）人。他曾在遺山（今山西定襄縣境）讀書，師從著名的學者郝天挺，因此自號遺山山人。出身詩書門第，又受到良好的教育。懷有一顆愛國心。27歲時，蒙古軍南下，他從山西流亡到河南。他三十二歲時，也就是金宣宗興定五年（1221）考舉中了進士。做過南陽及內(nèi)鄉(xiāng)的縣令。后官至行尚書省左司員外郎。蒙古滅金后，他和北方人民共同遭受到空前災難，激起強烈的愛國思想。金亡不仕，致力于搜集金代史料，編成《中州集》和《壬辰雜編》等書。
其次，他是一個有杜甫遺風憂國憂民現(xiàn)實主義詩人。元好問生活在金元交替、江山易主、改朝換代的動蕩時期，備嘗家亡國破、顛沛流離之苦。因此，他寫了不少直接反映現(xiàn)實的詩篇。金哀宗天興元年（1232）正月，蒙古軍圍困汴京。十二月，糧盡援絕，哀宗出京。次年正月，兵敗，退守歸德（今河南商丘縣）。這時元好問任左司都事，居圍城中，目擊時艱，沉痛寫下了《壬辰十二月車駕東狩后即事》詩五首?！皯K淡龍蛇日斗爭，干戈直欲盡生靈。高原水出山河改，戰(zhàn)地風來草木腥。精衛(wèi)有冤填瀚海，包胥無淚哭秦庭。并州豪杰知誰在，莫擬分軍下井陘?！保ㄒ浴吨袊糯膶W作品選》江蘇人民出版社1979年月第一版第122頁）抒發(fā)了他面對創(chuàng)痍滿目、京城被困的殘局一籌莫展，悲憤難伸的傷痛。字里行間，流露對金室衰亡真摯的哀惋。汴京陷落后，他被蒙古軍驅(qū)遣到聊城，沿途見聞更讓他悲憤填膺，寫出了更激動人心的詩篇：“道旁僵臥滿累囚，過去旃車似水流。紅粉哭隨回鶻馬，為誰一步一回頭。白骨縱橫似亂麻，幾年桑梓變龍沙。只知河朔生靈盡，破屋疏煙卻數(shù)家。”（《癸巳五月三日北渡三首》引自同上書第123頁）金亡后，百姓生活在水深火熱之中，他沉痛寫道：“去年夏秋旱，七月黍穗吐。一昔營幕來，天明但平土。。。。。。。”反映了對蒙古統(tǒng)治者無視百姓死活，把稻田填平修路的野蠻專橫，表達了人民的憤懣心聲。
再次，元好問是一個論詩喜愛淳樸自然，反對雕琢華艷的嚴謹詩人。他的《論詩絕句三十首》系統(tǒng)地表明了他的文學主張。他喜歡陶淵明的淳樸自然，反對夸多斗靡：“一語天然萬古新，豪華落盡見真淳。南窗白日羲皇上，未害淵明是晉人。”（引自上海古籍出版社1979年11月版《中國歷代文論選》第215頁）他認為好的詩歌應該是清新豪放，能夠表達詩人情懷和遠大的抱負，所以他推崇這樣的詩歌：“慷慨歌謠絕不傳，穹廬一曲本天然。中州萬古英雄氣，也到陰山敕勒川?！保ㄒ酝蠒?15頁）他主張原創(chuàng)，反對模仿和投機取巧尋捷徑，批評唐人廬仝號玉川子詭異的創(chuàng)作風格：“萬古文章有坦途，縱橫誰似玉川廬？真書不入今人眼，兒輩從教鬼畫符。” 他更推崇贊揚蘇軾和黃庭堅的豪放詩歌和詩風：“奇外無奇更出奇，一波才動萬波隨。只知詩到蘇黃盡，滄海橫流卻是誰？”（引自同上書216頁）他推崇李白“筆底銀河落九天”，韓愈的“江山萬古潮陽筆”，而不滿孟郊的窮愁苦吟。推崇曹氏父子及劉琨等人的粗獷深沉的詩風，鼻斥溫、李新聲的柔靡。他認為杜甫的“畫圖臨出秦川景，”是因為“眼處心生句自神”只有細心地觀察和體驗生活，才能筆底驚風雨，詩成泣鬼神。因此他對那些只在家中閉門覓句的陳師道之流譏諷道：“可憐無補費精神”。他主張真誠，反對偽飾：“心聲只要傳心了”而批判那些“心畫心聲總失真，文章寧復見為人”的虛假偽飾的不良創(chuàng)作傾向?！吨袊膶W史》對元好問的評價說：“元好問這些意見是針對文壇時弊而發(fā)，具有重大的現(xiàn)實意義。同時，他這種以詩論詩的形式對后代影響也很大?！保ㄒ姟吨袊膶W史》卷三，人民文學出版社，游國恩、王起、蕭滌非、季鎮(zhèn)淮、費振剛主編，1979年11月版。第162頁）
再其次，元好問是一位遼金時期最杰出的詩人。他的詩詞歌賦“詞傾峽水，筆掃秋虹。”我最喜歡他的一首詩是《游黃華山》“湍聲洶洶轉絕壑，雪氣凜凜隨陰風。懸流千丈忽當眼，芥蒂一洗平生胸。雷公怒擊散飛雹，日腳倒射垂長虹。驪珠百斛供一瀉，海藏翻倒愁龍公?！保ㄒ姟吨腥A詩詞》元好問《游黃華山》） 寫景寫得如此壯觀，韻律工整，想象奇特，似看到“飛流直下三千尺”李白的影子，但是卻不同于李白。他的詞作也代表了金詞最高成就。如《木蘭花慢 游三臺》、《水龍吟》、《水調(diào)歌頭》等。
1257年元好問病逝。但是他為我們中華民族留下了寶貴的文化遺產(chǎn)。他的詩論在今天仍有現(xiàn)實意義。他主張淳樸自然、反對華麗雕琢，主張真誠，反對偽飾，主張細心觀察體驗生活，反對閉門覓句，主張原創(chuàng)，反對模仿和投機取巧，主張豪放，反對柔靡，對今天的詩歌以及文學創(chuàng)作仍有指導意義。特別是他愛國的氣節(jié)和為人民代言的現(xiàn)實主義創(chuàng)作風格，依然讓我們景仰，激勵我們做一個有氣節(jié)的中國人，做一個能為人民代言的中國人。
Words like Water Pour Out From the Gorge, and His Pen Could Sweep the Autumn Clouds—Reading Yuan Haowen
By Wang Yongli
A great man can be self-abnegated when adversity comes, and neither is slack when prosperity comes. Reading is the best way to recharge and enrich yourself. When I read Chinese Ancient Theory, published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House in November 1979, I found that Yuan Haowen's Thirty Songs of Poetry was very interesting and was deeply moved by it. He was a greatly talented person of the Liao and Jin era. His works can be defined with the phrase: Words like water pour out from the gorge, and his pen could sweep the autumn clouds.
Yuan Haowen (1190-1257) was a patriot. His pen name, Yuzhi, was from the Rong-Xiu of Taiyuan (Xin County, Shanxi). He was reading in Yishan (now Dingxiang County, Shanxi Province), under the guidance of the famous scholar Hao Tianting, therefore named himself like a mountain person of Yishan. He came from a family of scholars and received a good education so had a patriotic heart. At the age of twenty-seven, when the Mongolian army invaded the south, he was exiled from Shanxi to Henan. When he was thirty-two years old, during Jin Dynasty Emperor Xuangzong’s fifth year, the year of Xingding (1221) he successfully passed the imperial examination and became a Jinshi (a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations). Yuan Haowen became a magistrate in Nanyang and Neixiang County. Later he was promoted to official of the Left Secretary Chancery. After Mongolia conquered Jin, he and the northern people suffered unprecedented disaster, arousing his intense patriotism. He refused to be an officer for Yuan Dynasty, instead dedicating himself to collecting historical materials and editing them into Zhongzhou Selection, Renchen Series and other books.
Yuan Haowen was one of the realistic poets who inherited the style of Du Fu. Living in the alternating, turbulent period, changing from the Jin Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, he suffered pain from family damage and a ruined nation. He wrote many works directly reflected this reality. In the first lunar month, during the first year of Tianxing (1232) Emperor Aizong of Jin was besieged by the Mongolian army at Bianjing. In the twelfth month the city ran out of food supplies and without reinforcements the emperor had to flee from the capital. The following year in the first lunar month, Jin was defeated and retreated to Duide (now Shangqiu County, Henan). At the time, Yuan Haowen was the official of the Left Secretary Chancery in the city, so he witnessed the storm, and wrote the five poems of "The Record of December ". He described as follows "The snake and dragon are fighting horrifically in the day, killing and slaughtering all creatures. Water from the plateau changes mountains and rivers, and the wind from the killing fields makes the grass and woods smell of blood. The mythical Jingwei tries to fill up the sea with pebbles (a symbol of dogged determination), but Bao Xu cries in the Qin court without tears (Bao Xu, an officer of Chu State, went in 506 to the Qin court crying for help. He cried for seven days and nights and finally made the Qin troops save the Chu State). Who knows where the hero of the state is now? Don’t divide the troops in two to reach the city of Jingxing." (From Selected Works of Ancient Chinese Literature, Jiangsu People’s Press, 1979 first edition, page 122.) He expressed his nonplussed feelings facing this helpless situation of the Mongolian army besieging the city, destroying houses and buildings. In the poem he expressed his pain, grief and indignation as well as his love for the Jin Dynasty. After the fall of Bianjing the Mongols drove him to Liaocheng. What he saw along the road made him feel more grief and indignation, so he wrote poem: "Alongside the road lie stiff and motionless many prisoners, while decorated vehicles pass like a stream. Girls dressed in pink skirts weep following the Uighur horses, for whom do they look back to step-by-step? The white bones are as messy as knots, in only a few years the hometowns become wild sandy land. Hearing that livings no longer exist there, I see sparse smoke coming from several shabby huts." (“Third day of the fourth month, Guisi Era, Three North Ferry Poems” from the same book, page 123) After the fall of the Jin Dynasty, people lived in dire straits. He lamented: "Last summer and autumn was a drought, in July the corn sprouted ears. One evening the Mongol troops put camps in the field, the next morning the farmers found that all the corn fields had become flat earth." This reflects that the Mongol rulers ignored the means of people and turned the fields into roads in a brutal despotic manner. The poem expressed the people's anger.
Yuan Haowen was also a rigorous poet and advocated that poetry should honestly follow nature, against the polished flowery style. He expressed his literary idea system in his book On Thirty Jueju Quatrains (Jueju, a poem of four lines each containing five or seven characters, follows a strict tonal pattern and rhyme scheme). He loved Tao Yuanming's honest nature and was against fustian and pompous style: “One phrase is so natural that makes our immutable time become new, after luxurious falls you see truth and purity. The south window becomes white as the day begins, it does not matter that Tao Yuanming is Jin or not." (Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, November 1979 edition of Chinese Ancient Theory, page 215.) He believed that good poetry should be fresh and bold, and express the poet's feelings and lofty aspirations, so he highly praised honest poems: "Generous songs never run out, and the songs of yurts come from nature. The heroic lofty sentiments of Zhongzhou eternally reach the Chile Chuan, Yinshan." (From the same book, page 215.) He advocated original creation and was against imitation, gaining something by trickery, and shortcuts. He criticized Tang Lu Tong’s strange writing style: "Since ancient times, writing articles has been a smooth road, whether vertical or horizontal who does like Yuchuan Lu? The book cannot be read by modern eyes, he teaches his children to write something like scrawl handwriting." He more highly praised Su Shi and Huang Tingjian's poetry, with their bold and uninhibited poetic style: "Surprise after surprise and more surprise, one wave surges and ten thousand waves follow. I only know one poem to the end, one by Su Huang, he puts the sea in turmoil." (From the same book, page 216.) He respected Li Bai "letting stars fall down from the Heaven", and he loved Han Yu's "Eternal Chaoyang Pen", but he expressed his dissatisfaction with Meng Jiao's suffering writing. He praised Cao Cao and his sons’ articles, and Liu Kun's rough deep poetic style, but sniffed at Wen Tingjun and Li Xinsheng’s softness. He argued for Du Fu's "paint like the Qinchuan scene," because "looking and then writing comes from the heart, the words as marvelous as though they are from god." Only through careful observation and experience of life can a poet write something to make the rain surprised, and make the ghosts and gods sob. He therefore quipped against those who stayed in the home if Chen Shidao and his ilk, who tried to find some wonderful words for their poems: "What a pity it is! These works are nothing but totally wastes". He argued the "sincerity” was against camouflage: “the voice of the heart should express the heart’s meaning." He criticized those who "tried to express the heart’s voice but always totally distorted.” From one’s article he believed you would see his character, so he was against false pretense and adverse tendencies of creation. A History of Chinese Literature has a comment about Yuan Haowen: "Yuan Haowen’s opinions are directed toward thoughts of the malpractices of literary society, so have a practical significance. At the same time, how he commented on poems in the form of poem shows deep affection for his offspring." (See A History of Chinese Literature, volume three, People's Literature Publishing House, edited by You Guoen, Wang Qi, Shaw, Zhenhuai, Fei Zhengang, November 1979 edition, page 162.)
Yuan Haowen, finally, was the most outstanding poet of the Liao and Jin period. His poems and songs are "Words like Water Pouring out from the Gorge, and his Pen Could Sweep the Autumn Clouds.” I love his poem "Visiting Yellow Hua Mountain" very much. "The sounds of truculence turn the vast valley, the snowy air is cold with the wind. Suddenly a waterfall is suspended from a ten thousand li high cliff in front of my eyes, all annoyances are washed out of my chest. Angry thunder hits the flying hail, on the side, the sun shoots down a rainbow. One hundred boxes of pearls are pouring down, overturning the dragon who is hiding in the sea." (See “Visiting Yellow Hua Mountain" in Chinese Poems by Yuan Haowen.) He wrote of spectacular scenery, with prosodic, neat, strange imagination. I seem to see a similar imagination with Li Bai, "Flying current pours three thousand feet down", but unlike Li Bai his words also represented the highest achievement of Jin Dynasty. Some of his other good poems include "Magnolia Slowly Travelling Three Platforms", "Water Dragon Singing" and "Prelude to Water Melody”.
Yuan Haowen died in 1257, but left a precious cultural heritage for the Chinese nation. His poetry still has a realistic significance today. He advocates natural simplicity against magnificent sculptures. He advocates sincerity opposed to camouflage. He advocates careful observation of life’s experience, instead of sitting at home trying to find really great words. He advocates original creation, not imitation. And he advocates doing things by irregular ways, boldly and not softly. For today's poetry and literature he still offers guidance. His patriotism and integrity for the people's realistic writing style, has us in adoration, encourages us to be a person who can speak for the interests of the vast majority of Chinese people.
