On Fan Feng-yi's Poetic Theory and His Creation

There is a strong moral sense referring to Fan Feng-yi's poetic theory,in which he argued that the quality of poems depends on the poet's quality and creation attitude.What's more,Fan Feng-yi comes up with functional theory on peotry which stands that poets should create poems in view of morals and manners,disposition and reality,so that,the poet can certainly earn the fame forever.When referring to the poetry heritage,Fan carried forward the tendency towards idolizing the ancients of the Sevens.Fan thought that we should learn from The Book of Songs,ancient Han Dynasty Poems,Five and seven-word ancient Poems,Tang Dynasty Poems and the Sevens,not the poems in Song Dynasty.Fan gave three reasons to explain his view points about the forefathers's poems.The ancient poems are graceful,they follow certain rules and they should be readable.Fan's standards didn't mean he was digging his heels but it was a way to develop his own style by learning the experience from forefathers.Fan argued that the style of poem should be natural,and that the character of poem should fit the poet's nature not just language fluency.Fan Fengyi tried his best to make his poems creative based on carrying forward the Sevens.He was good at all kinds of poetic forms,in which,he learns most from the classical writers' different poetic forms of former dynasties.Han Dynasty Poems carry on the tradition of feeling from sorrow and joy while express is from the reality,to describe current affairs,but the language of which is a bit of stiff because of its imitating ancient Han Dynasty Poems on purpose.Five-word ancient poems pursue the beauty of simple and unsophisticated design on purpose,but some of the creations take the charm of Cao Zhi while many have the characteristic of Song Poems.Seven Word ancient poems set the Tang Dynasty's poets as the example,but they did not stick to one school,they learn more from Li Bai and Du Fu.Few Five Word poems are connected to politics because most of them are results of wine and romance as well as ascending high.As a result,the style of the poems is monotonous and contains the pursuit of simple beauty and unsophisticated design as well as bland.Seven-character poems learn most from Du Fu.They focus on the fitness of words and sentences while pursing the complicated design.There are few Five-character quatrains,which take beauty of simple and unsophisticated design seriously.On the contrary,there are more seven-character poems.Besides,they contain the rich contents and have different styles.When getting a perspective from the literary history,Fan Feng-yi's poetry was lack of innovation,but his literary activities made a poetic tradition for the Fan of NanTong.