What does wasp waist and crane knee mean?
Bee's waist and crane's knees, a Chinese idiom, pinyin is fēng yāo hè xī, which means two of the eight rhythm problems in poetry, and generally refers to problems with the rhythm of poetry. It comes from "Shi Pin" by Zhong Rong of the Southern Dynasties.
Two of the eight diseases of poetry. Bee waist means that the second and fifth characters of a five-character poem are pronounced in the same tone, thick at both ends and thin in the middle, like a wasp's waist; one theory refers to the whole sentence having voiced sounds but one word in the middle having a voiceless sound, which is called wasp waist. There are three ways to say "Crane's knees": one is that the fifth and fifteenth characters in the couplet of a five-character poem have the same tone; the other is that the first and last two characters in the whole sentence have a flat tone and the third character has an oblique tone; the other is that the whole sentence is clear and one character in the middle is voiced. .
Zhong Rong's "Poetry" of the Southern Dynasties: "As for going up to the level and entering, the remaining diseases will not disappear; the waist of a wasp and the knees of a crane will already be there."
"Shipin" is the earliest extant monograph on poetry. Its appearance marks a new stage in the development of ancient Chinese literary theory and literary criticism. This book occupies an important position in the history of Chinese literary criticism and has had a profound impact on the poetry of future generations. It is regarded as the ancestor of poetry in all ages.
The influence of "Shipin":
The emergence of "Shipin" is a direct reflection of the style of character in the field of literary research during the Eastern Han, Wei, Jin and Southern Dynasties. In his "Preface to Poems", Zhong Rong admitted that his writings were influenced by "Nine Grades on People and Seven Strategies on Scholars". However, "Shipin" is very different from the current times and its bold criticism of the modern poetry world makes it surpass a large number of similar works on artworks in the same period and become a work full of challenges in the cultural history of the Southern Dynasties.
From the perspective of the history of literary criticism, the special form adopted by "Shipin" in criticizing poets of all dynasties has been imitated by later generations and has become the "ancestor of poetry for a hundred generations." Although the research method used in the book to trace the origin of the poet's style is not without some flaws in its specific implementation, its conception is quite inspiring and is therefore highly praised.