Pre-Qin poetry and literature history

Author: Yang Zhishui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-04-01
Features: Unlike the usual approach to literary history, Shangqin Shifan Shi confronts the "original existence" of Shangqin literature and poetry directly, such as in the study of literary forms. The articles are highly readable and address many issues with great insight. The book includes photographs of recently unearthed precious artifacts, which are both aesthetically pleasing and broaden one's horizons. Yang Zhishui is one of the "Three Literary Talents of Beijing," and her works are worth collecting. The scope of Shangqin Shifan Shi is broadly speaking, also the non-unified world of early human civilization where everything was vibrant and delightful, with vehicles not yet aligned and scripts not yet standardized. Like the two Book of Songs works, it presents the humanistic atmosphere of that era in the spirit of "poetic meaning." Yang Zhishui's move to write Shangqin Shifan Shi after discussing the Book of Songs was not accidental but rather a continuation of her work, as both belong to the study of Shangqin society and literature, forming together a consciously constructed personal spiritual world. Her recent choice of this research topic and the construction of this spiritual world is both a compulsion and a heartfelt effort: it reflects her attachment to the origins of civilization, her appreciation for it, and her focus on the beauty we once had but have now lost. Zhang Zhongxing once quoted her self-explanation, saying that she chose the pen name "Yang Zhishui" "without any profound meaning, just that it felt fun when she repeated it." But I, in my own interpretation, always feel that she truly resembles a stream that flows gracefully from a pristine natural world, bringing to our noisy and turbulent era—