Abstract

Wang Yuyang's entire life took place in a period of initial calm and stability after a torrential storm. This poet, with his extraordinary sensitivity for nature, witnessed the chilling of the birds and the decay of the trees and grasslands on the green hills of the land of old that he recalled. He witnessed the passages of the mountains and the rivers, the joys and melancholies of the affairs of man, the separations and the reunions of people. He was moved by the fading into sad memory of the old courtyard romances in the southern capital of the Ming dynasty. His sensitive soul was often set trembling by all these happenings. And yet, because the regime of the Qing dynasty had come to be stabilized in his time, and Emperor Kangxi did indeed adopt a series of measures that had the effect of bringing about economic recovery and stabilization of the people's lives, a whole set of intricate and complex elements were added to Wang Yuyang's aesthetic feelings about the things and sights of nature. On the one hand, he vaguely sensed the melancholy of the "eternal waters of the Qinhuai River" that had "survived the battles on the southern banks of the Great River."