About the conversation under the book storage window,
People and flower hearts are fragrant.
-Talking about the traditional literati flower arrangement in China.
Arranging flowers is a good way to get rid of troubles. Being with natural things will be moved by the energy of life. In modern city life, there are few opportunities to get in touch with mountains, rivers and nature, but even if you insert a bottle of flowers representing emotional images and a plate of landscape flowers depicting natural scenery indoors, you can immediately forget your current troubles and get the relaxed joy of returning to nature in an instant. Flowers are powerful. They are natural languages, and they contain the meaning of life in the universe. You can read a world by reading a flower. Science and technology decode natural knowledge from it, and literature and art decode human stories from it.
Throughout the history of ancient literati arranging flowers in China, it is not difficult to see how ancient literati used arranging flowers as the expression carrier of their own times, telling the reflection between themselves and nature, between themselves and the times, and between themselves and the world.
Nan Gezi, an anonymous writer in the Song Dynasty, said: "Although the pavilion is small, it is not vulgar. There are several bamboos at the bottom of the window. Show the mountain scenery in the south of the Yangtze River, two or three. Yi Ding burns a special fragrance, and tender chrysanthemums are inserted into the bottle. However, I have nothing to worry about. Everyone is playing chess. In the lyrics, we can see the elegant taste of people's living conditions in the Song Dynasty. The bamboo under the window and the chrysanthemum in the bottle are the shadows of the art of flower arrangement in life.
Poetry and songs of past dynasties are also full of flowers, or dedicated to chanting flowers, or expressing their metaphors by borrowing the symbol of flowers in lyrics and songs.
The arrangement of flower arrangement has always been not only the elegance of women, but also the aesthetic taste and the presentation of literati's mind. The posture of appreciating flowers is also a state of moral cultivation. Many times, the literati's chanting of flowers is not a deliberate aesthetic, but a heartfelt chanting.
Today, people generally have a misunderstanding that "flower arrangement" is only a kind of "technology" to advocate the interest of life, which has nothing to do with art, but at most it is an "artistic ability", but an entertainment activity for women (usually women) in their leisure life. Or a "professional skill" that can only be used in weddings, meetings and ceremonies. It is no longer in the same breath as Tao. Even can't distinguish the similarities and differences between "China traditional flower pattern", "Japanese flower pattern" and "Western flower arrangement".
Mr. Huang Yongchuan, the founder of Taiwan Province Chinese Flower Culture and Education Foundation, once wrote in the book History of Chinese Flower Arrangement: "Flower Arrangement is an art of life, which rises and falls with the rise and fall of political and economic development. Therefore, although it was conceived in the Six Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties and flourished in the Song and Ming Dynasties, it never recovered after the Qing Dynasty. Until modern times, although the atmosphere was prosperous, all we saw today were Japanese schools. How can you not be embarrassed! (History of Chinese Flower Arrangement)
The public doesn't know that flower arrangement, as a way of life of literati, has been closely related to literati since the Six Dynasties. There were Geng Xin in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and seven sages of bamboo forest in Wei and Jin Dynasties. In the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei, Lu Hong and Lu Yu all had high attainments in arranging flowers, appreciating flowers and chanting flowers. In the Tang dynasty, the whole era was filled with the atmosphere of loving flowers. Poems are full of the beauty of flowers and trees, and the works about flowers are even more splendid, such as Li Zan's Flowers and Trees, Jia Dan's Hundred Flowers Spectrum, and Luo Qiu's Flowers and Nine Tin (the representative works of flower arrangement in Sui and Tang Dynasties).
Ouyang Zhan, a famous person in the middle Tang Dynasty, once wrote a poem "Ode to Spring Vegetables", saying: "A beautiful woman is full of troubles. It is expensive to make land with fake vegetables and sparse embroidery. The jungle is beautiful, and a hundred flowers are blooming. It shows that flower arrangement had formed philosophical concepts and aesthetic characteristics at that time, and gave full consideration to the form, color, flower device, flower material, line, conception and methods and skills to maintain the life of flowers. If we can get a glimpse of its splendor with a Tang poem, it may be a sentence by Juyuan Yang: "If you stay in a beautiful forest, you will be a flower watcher. "The flower-loving fashion of the Tang Dynasty is evident.
In the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, due to social division and long-term war, the feelings of literati have changed from a magnificent and free sigh atmosphere to a euphemistic expression of expressing their feelings through things. Due to people's chaotic life style, the flower arrangement following the literati has also turned to wild flowers and weeds, using local materials, and the forms are eclectic and handy. At that time, people advocated returning to nature, such as Tao Yuanming's "picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and seeing Nanshan leisurely."
Fortunately, at that time, the foundation of the prosperous Tang Dynasty had been laid, and people had a systematic understanding of the situation and character of flowers, flowers and their experience and research, so the most famous flower work in history-Flower Classic by Shu Han Zhang Yi was born, which simulated the official rank of human society according to the color, aroma, personality and temperament of flowers. This is also a typical symbol that literati place their ideal personality here with flowers as metaphors and flowers as pronouns. For example, in the Classic of Flowers, the flowers with nine lives and one flower are: orchids, wintersweet, peonies, flowers and purple flowers (Daphne odora). They are the most elegant, elegant and powerful flowers. What kind of flowers are planted is what kind of people are, and the evaluation and understanding of flowers in the heart also reflects a person's inner world.
Besides, Li Yu, the queen of the Southern Tang Dynasty at that time, was the founder who pushed the traditional flower patterns in China to the artistic peak. He is not only the inventor of "flower management" among the "six big flower devices" in later generations, but also the "Jindong Tian" he founded is the earliest and largest exhibition of flower arrangement art in history.
In Song Dynasty, Song Taizu made great efforts for urban peace, and the atmosphere of flower arrangement in various places was warmed up and improved. "arranging flowers, hanging pictures, burning incense and ordering tea" is regarded as the four major arts of life and has become an indispensable artistic accomplishment in everyone's life, even servants are no exception. At that time, the most famous "Flower Festival" was a grand flower viewing banquet held by Song people at the "Flower Festival" (February 15th of the lunar calendar). In the seventh year of Yuan You (1086), Luoyang satrap held a flower festival, in which "ten million flowers were used at a time", which was denounced as "wasting people's money and reaching the peak". There are more abundant flower arrangement works handed down to later generations in Song Dynasty, including Zhao Xihu's Clear Cave Map, Lin Hong's Clear Landscape Map, Su Dongpo's Wu Ge Xun Lun and Zhou Mi's Homecoming Miscellaneous Notes. The most famous articles at that time, especially Zhou Dunyi's Love Lotus, Zeng's Ten Flowers Friends, Huang Yu's Ten Flowers Guests and Zhang's Twelve Flowers Guests, have become the aesthetic standards for later literati to arrange flowers and enjoy flowers.
Later, in the Yuan Dynasty, it was an era of social chaos and war. The literati seek peace of mind under the oppression of other nationalities, so the style of emphasizing sensibility and expressing ethereal state of mind has become the mainstream of flower arrangement for the literati. Free and wanton presentation of spiritual images and frank self-expression make flower arrangement once again become another lip of literati, telling their own unclear feelings.
It was not until the Ming Dynasty, when the style of writing was at its peak, that the literati's flower arrangement was completely divorced from political ostentation and extravagance, forming a special academic type of world art, and a complete system of flower pattern works came out. The aesthetic style pursued by the whole era is "literati flower".
The most noteworthy work is The History of the Bottle by Yuan Hongdao in Ming Dynasty, which is the most academic and systematic classic in the history of flower arrangement. Later generations vie for translation and regard it as a standard. It has a far-reaching influence on the spread of flower arrangement art in later generations and overseas. Other classic works of flower patterns compiled by other scholars include Zhang Qiande's Flower Orchard, Chen Hongshou's Picture of Bottled Flowers, Wang Shimao's Flower Sparse, Chen Jiru's A Quiet Room with Colorful Vessels, He Xianlang's Flower Case, Gao Lian's Three Stories of Bottled Flowers, Caohuapu and Wen Zhenheng's The Position of Zhai Qing. It was an era when literati aesthetics became the mainstream aesthetics in society, and it was also a golden age when people rushed to follow suit and pursue the realm of literati flower arrangement.
However, in the Qing Dynasty, the national situation gradually declined, and academics went to the road of textual research. Scholars and flowers are declining, and people pay less and less attention to the beauty of nature, or their aesthetics are becoming more and more vulgar. The traditional flower patterns of China system declined with the holding of the National Games of the Qing Dynasty until they gradually disappeared.
Of course, the historical relationship between literati and flowers is not only covered by such a superficial overview, but also the intertwined relationship between them is worth writing in a lot of space.
Yuan Hongdao in the Ming Dynasty said in his book The Orchid of Flowers that flowers are formed by "subtle qi of heaven and earth". The word "smart" contains an anthropomorphic feeling, just like flowers are animals, with perception, emotion and spirituality. Flowers are indeed the most external expression of life in all plants. Collect plant essence. Bai Juyi once wrote: "There is a national quintessence between heaven and earth. All kinds of people can get it, but most people, including literati, get it." The elites in the human world use the flowers condensed by the "essence" of nature as a metaphor, and the gesture in the middle is also worth pondering.
I often wonder, what should be the practical significance of traditional flower patterns in China? After all, this is not a skill related to food and clothing, nor is it an art that people just need in their lives. In the past, its existence had a higher meaning of "educating and helping others" besides the high-level demand for life aesthetics. Now, does it still have such a role?
In an article, Mr. Zi Zhongyun casually mentioned: "Pursuing truth, goodness and beauty, and hating falsehood, ugliness and ugliness should be an ordinary human nature, but with too much experience and joining the WTO, the aesthetic nerves may become numb ..." I think the so-called "life aesthetics" is precisely here. Beautiful function, no matter how subtle, is a subtle inner education. Therefore, Mr. Zi also said: "If you have enough perception of beauty, you can't help sighing and laughing at those ugly people who are not surprised and indifferent, such as drowning in the throat." 」
And this rare "like a fish in the throat", I think, is not only the insistence on "beauty", but also the bottom line of "truth" and "goodness"