China News Agency, Chengdu, July 11th: Can Tang Poems and Song Poems be interpreted with big data?

　　——Interview with Wang Zhaopeng, chair professor of liberal arts at Sichuan University and president of the Chinese Ci Studies Association

　　China News Agency reporter He Shaoqing

　　Bai Juyi's poetry volume ranks first among Tang Dynasty poets, but his influence is not in the top ten; the most famous poems in Song Dynasty are not Su Shi and Xin Qiji but Zhou Bangyan; the comprehensive influence index shows that Du Fu is higher than Li Bai, Xin Qiji is stronger than Su Shi; Zhang Ruoxu " Spring River, Flowers and Moonlight Night" and Lu You's "Bu Shuanzi: Plum Blossom" have only begun to attract attention in modern times... Using big data to display and verify Tang poetry and Song poetry, the conclusion is beyond the imagination of many people.

　　Tang poetry and Song Ci are two peaks in the history of Chinese literature, but can the Tang poetry and Song Ci, which belong to the category of aesthetics, be interpreted with big data?

What new discoveries have been made in the study of Tang poetry and Song poetry by big data, and what are the limitations?

Wang Zhaopeng, chair professor of liberal arts at Sichuan University and president of the Chinese Ciology Research Association, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency "East and West Questions" and made an in-depth interpretation.

The following is a summary of the interview transcript:

China News Service reporter: Tang poetry and Song poetry are two peaks in the history of Chinese literature.

From the perspective of big data, have Tang poetry and Song poetry reached an unprecedented height?

What are the characteristics of each?

Wang Zhaopeng:

Data shows that the volume of Tang poetry and Song poetry writers and works has reached an unprecedented peak.

At present, there are more than 50,000 Tang poems handed down, and there are only more than 5,000 poems from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the end of the Sui Dynasty for nearly 600 years.

Tang poetry has increased by more than 7 times compared with the previous eight generations of poetry, and the number of poets has increased from more than 600 to more than 3,000. The number of poets and poems has reached an unprecedented level.

　　Song Ci is the first peak in the history of Chinese Ci, with 1,497 Ci writers and 21,085 Ci compositions.

Compared with the Tang and Five Dynasties, the number of ci writers has increased by more than 10 times.

Song Ci has nearly 900 kinds of tones, and more than 700 kinds have been added on the basis of Tang and Five Dynasties.

More tones mean the richness of words.

Among the poets of the Tang and Five Dynasties, only Wen Tingjun, Feng Yansi, Li Jing, and Li Yu have a collection of poems handed down, while more than 300 poets in the Song Dynasty have a collection of poems handed down.

The poet has a collection of words handed down, which means that there are many works, high popularity, and great social demand.

One of the important reasons why Song Ci is not as popular as Tang poetry is that Song Ci is sung orally, which is equivalent to current popular songs.

Many of the works that have been sung orally have been lost.

　　To measure the development of literature, the number of works is an important aspect, but the most important thing is to have excellent works.

To say that the dynasty that produced the most great poets and poets in Chinese history is undoubtedly the Tang and Song Dynasties.

Although it is still difficult to accurately measure the artistic value of a work with the existing technology, big data can be used to measure the influence of a work, and to analyze which work is most popular with the public.

The actor recites Li Bai's "Will Enter the Wine".

Photo by China News Agency reporter Yang Huafeng

China News Service reporter: Tang poetry and Song poetry belong to the category of aesthetics. Why did you think of using big data to analyze Tang poetry and Song poetry?

Wang Zhaopeng: Ranking

literary works, assigning A and B, is not a fashion that only exists today, but has existed since ancient times.

The first person to classify poets was Zhong Rong of the Liang Dynasty in the Southern Dynasty.

In his "Poems", he divided the poets since the Han and Wei Dynasties into three categories, upper, middle and lower, to evaluate their pros and cons.

In Tang Dynasty Zhang Wei's "Picture of the Subject and the Guest", some poets in the middle and late Tang Dynasty are divided into the main, the room, the hall, and the door, etc., which is also a kind of critique.

　　In ancient Chinese literary criticism, it is often seen that someone is praised as the first, a certain poem is the first.

For example, "Song Shu Xie Lingyun Biography" said that Xie Lingyun "the beauty of the article, and Yan Yanzhi are the first in Jiang Zuo".

The Song Dynasty Xu Yi's "Yan Zhou Poems" said that "Meng Haoran and Wang Mo's poems, starting from Li Du, should be the first."

　　However, the poetic criticism of the ancients, whether it is ranking or ranking, is based on individual subjective likes and dislikes.

Since everyone has different aesthetic tastes, the same person and the same piece of work often have different evaluations.

For example, Jin Ren Yuan Haowen, Zhao Bingwen and Wang Ruoxu all praised Xu Dongpo's words "because of the decline and prosperity, it should be the number one in ancient and modern times", but Pan Deyu in the Qing Dynasty disagreed, thinking that "the promotion is too much".

　　Modern quantitative history can measure history with data, and ancient literature also belongs to the category of big history.

Since history can be measured, why can't literature be measured?

Through big data, you can find a greatest common divisor, use the model to analyze and determine, and get a relatively objective answer.

China News Service reporter: How did you come up with the top ten Tang poetry, Song poetry, poets, and poets?

From the perspective of big data, who has the most works in Tang poetry and Song poetry?

Are poets and lyricists with a large volume of works influential and well-known?

Wang Zhaopeng:

We determine the weighted calculation based on the frequency of selection of poems in the anthologies of past dynasties, the frequency of evaluation by poet critics of past dynasties, the frequency of being followed up by later generations, the frequency of research by contemporary scholars, and the frequency of descriptions and comments on web pages. The influence of a poem, and the most influential one is regarded as a masterpiece.

　　Now it is impossible to directly examine how many kinds of poetry collections of Li Bai and Du Fu in ancient times and how many were printed, but it is possible to calculate how many kinds of poetry collections of Du Fu and Li Bai were published.

According to this calculation, in the Song Dynasty, Du Fu's influence was much greater than that of Li Bai. There is a saying that Qianjia Zhudu, Du Shi and Korean is a model for all scholars.

　　The data shows that Du Fu ranks first in the overall influence of Tang Dynasty poets, followed by Li Bai and Wang Wei.

Bai Juyi, who has the largest number of works, ranks outside the top ten in terms of influence.

The most influential Song Ci is Xin Qiji, Su Shi and Zhou Bangyan are the second and third respectively.

　　Poets with great influence have many famous works.

Among the 100 famous Tang poems, Du Fu owns 16, Li Bai 13, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi both share 12.

Among the 300 famous Tang poems, Du Fuhao took 52, accounting for one-sixth, Li Bai had 38, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi had a total of 29.

Among the hundred famous poems of Song Dynasty, Zhou Bangyan won 15, Xin Qiji won 12, Su Shi 10, Jiang Kui 7.

Expanded to 300 famous songs of the Song Dynasty, Zhou Bangyan captured 40, Xin Qiji and Su Shi each accounted for 23, Jiang Kui 11.

Among the 100 famous poems of Song poetry, Su Shi alone accounts for a quarter, which is higher than Du Fu's famous poems in Tang poetry.

A special exhibition of Su Shi's paintings and calligraphy in the Palace Museum collection.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Du Yang

China News Service reporter: The poet Zhang Ruoxu "covers the whole Tang Dynasty" with a poem "Spring River, Flowers and Moon Night", but he only has two poems that have survived.

For such a poet, can big data analysis be used?

Will big data be used to analyze foreign poetry in the future?

Wang Zhaopeng:

Now everyone is familiar with Chen Ziang's "Deng Youzhou Taiwan Song" and Zhang Ruoxu's "Spring River, Flowers and Moon Night", and their influence only gradually became larger after the 20th century.

"Spring River, Flowers and Moon Night" had no influence in the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was not until Wang Kaiyun praised it as "a solitary piece, but it is for everyone." A poem lifted to supremacy.

　　The same is true of Lu You's "Bu Shuanzi·Yongmei" (beside the broken bridge outside the station).

Mao Zedong once used the poem "Wind and rain send back the spring, and flying snow welcomes the spring". A generation of great leaders and leaders enhanced the influence of this poem with their political influence and poetic status.

Liu Yong's "Butterfly Loves Flowers" (Relying on a Dangerous Building with Thin Winds), had little influence before the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but since Wang Guowei listed "the belt gradually widens and never regrets, making people haggard for Yixiao". After the three realms of life, the poem began to be familiar to readers.

　　Du Fu was almost a nobody in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.

When Li Bai became famous, Du Fu was just an ordinary literary youth.

He and Li Bai are 11 years apart in age. He is Li Bai's "fan brother", so you can see many poems by Du Fu who miss Li Bai, but rarely see Li Bai's poems to Du Fu.

Many years after his death, Yuan Zhen discovered his brilliance when he wrote his epitaph.

Later, Han Yu said in "Tiao Zhang Ji" that "Li Du's article is here, and his brilliance is shining", and the recommendation of the literary leader further expanded Du Fu's influence.

The play "Du Fu".

Photo by China News Agency Shi Chunyang

　　Some poets and lyricists may be more influential in foreign countries than in China.

Han Shan's poems were once popular in the United States, but not many people in China knew about him.

In the West, the most translated Chinese poets are not Li Bai and Du Fu, but Wang Wei; the most translated poets are not Xin Qiji and Su Shi, but Li Qingzhao.

　　There are certain accidental factors in the development of literature. For example, Li Qingzhao's works had many versions in the Song Dynasty. In today's words, many publishing houses in the Song Dynasty published her poetry collections, but all of them were lost in the Ming Dynasty.

Her works can only be found in the anthology, and in the end, only more than 40 songs were found.

In addition, Zhu Shuzhen, a female lyricist at the same time as Li Qingzhao, was not very influential at that time, but all her hundreds of works have been handed down.

　　There are also many ancient smash hit poems, but no one cares about them today.

Such as Ouyang Xiu's "Butterfly Loves Flowers" (Haiyan Shuanglai Returns to the Painting Building), Nie Guanqing's "Dori" (thinking about life), Zhou Bangyan's "Side Crime" (Muxia Jiyu), Wang Guan's "Flower in the Rain" (Hundred-foot Qingquan Sound) One after another), they were selected as 17, 18, 19, and 20 words in the 22 kinds of words selected in the Ming Dynasty, which are almost the must-selected masterpieces for the selection of Ming people's words.

But by the 20th century, its influence and popularity had declined to a minimum.

The reasons are worthy of consideration and discussion.

　　The influence of ancient poems is always changing, and it is difficult to draw a comprehensive, objective and accurate judgment through one or two materials, while big data can fully show the changes in the influence of a poem.

　　I used data to analyze ancient poetry for the first time in 1992, and now the data is constantly enriched and the model is constantly improving.

After 2000, in addition to the collection of ancient Chinese poems from different historical periods in China, the large database also includes data on ancient Chinese poems from Europe, America, Japan and South Korea.

　　At present, we are building a big data platform integrating ancient and modern Chinese and foreign poetry.

The platform has collected millions of Chinese classical poems, and is collecting foreign poems with Chinese translations since the 20th century, as well as more than 100,000 new poems since the May Fourth Movement.

　　No big data can exhaust the sample, but we hope to draw conclusions with the smallest error with the help of artificial intelligence.

The poets Guo Moruo, Hu Shi, and Wen Yiduo after the May Fourth Movement, who has more influence?

Is Pushkin, Tagore or Goethe the most influential foreign poet in China?

We will speak with big data.

(Finish)

Interviewee Profile:

Wang Zhaopeng.

Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan

　　Wang Zhaopeng, chair professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University.

Now he is the president of the Chinese Ci Studies Association, the president of the Chinese Li Qingzhao Xin Qiji Society, the executive vice president of the Chinese Song Dynasty Literature Society, and the editor-in-chief of the "Song Dynasty Literature Research Yearbook".

He mainly studies Tang and Song literature and digital humanities, and presided over 2 major projects of the National Social Science Fund.

He has published more than ten monographs such as "The Complete Tang and Five Dynasties Ci", "The History of Ci History in the Tang and Song Dynasties", and "History of Ci Studies", and published more than 300 academic papers.