An Analysis on Liuyi in Preface to Mao Poetry——Memoir of Reading The Book of Songs in Study(I)

Borrowed from Liushi in Rites of Zhou,Liuyi is endowed with new meaning by Mao.The difference is that Liushi is the musicians’ singing and performing skills of poetry taught by taishi,and Liuyi is the creative idea of the author to the theory and practice of poetry writing.Xing in Mao’s Liuyi includes what we refer to today--bi and xing,in other words,metaphor and symbolism.When he referred to bi in Daya.Huangyi,Mao explained,‘To choose the right one’ is ‘bi’.It means selecting right material when it is used to talk about poetry writing.Fu,in fact,means pushing on the promotion of culture among poets when in writing poetry.Liuyi is the theory and practice of poetry writing concluded by Mao on the basis of Confucianism.Although it seems na?ve and imperfect,it helps form the foundation for Chinese traditional poetry theory.