Studying Ancient Chinese Literature Meaning and Experience

Good luck with your studies! The first part of our motherland has a long history. The long years have produced many great and outstanding writers and poets who have left behind a great deal of precious heritage. If we want to understand and appreciate ancient literature today, we are bound to come into contact and deal with this heritage. Generally speaking, literary heritage is mainly the works written by the ancients, including collections of poems and texts, novels and plays, and some books recording the life stories of writers. However, some artifacts can also help us understand the works, such as the colorful murals painted on the four walls of the main hall in the Ming Ying Wang Temple in Daojue Township, Hongzhao County, Shanxi Province. On that painted in the Yuan dynasty theater situation, there are actors and actresses Zhongduxiu costume, and flute and drum musicians. According to today's research says that the painting is a Yuan dynasty miscellaneous drama "Su Jia Da Dai ì Fan Shu" of the fourth fold. And from the horizontal title on the tent "Daxing Sanle Zhongdu Xiu here for the field", you can also know that there was a mobile theater troupe. The study of ancient literature is mainly about the works of writers. These writers and works are ancient, not contemporary. It is easy to figure out the lives of contemporary writers, but not so easy in ancient times. There are no records, no materials, which is often encountered. Contemporary works are also easy to find, ancient times are different, some of them have been dispersed and have not been handed down. So we have some writers who have no works, such as the Historical Records - Qu Yuan Jia Sheng Liezhuan, which says, "Qu Yuan died, and there were Song Yu, Tang Le, and Jing Chai's disciples in Chu, all of whom were good at rhetoric and known for their fugue." The works of Tang Le and Jing Chai can no longer be seen today, and there is a piece called "The Great Recruitment", which is rumored to have been written by Jing Chai, but it is not yet reliable. In the Western Han Dynasty, there was a man named Yan Shu, whose works have not been handed down either, so they all became writers without works. There are some writers whose works have been handed down, but they have been scattered a lot. Among the four great poets of the Southern Song Dynasty, You (袤), Yang (杨万里), Fan (范成大), and Lu (游), the works of You (尤袤) have been handed down to very few people, which is incompatible with the name of the "great poet". Therefore, comparing the reading and learning of ancient literature with contemporary literature, it is more difficult in terms of materials. Naturally, there are not only material difficulties, but also linguistic and textual difficulties. Literary works are the reflection of social life through the writer's understanding, or the expression of the author's thoughts and feelings. The tools used to reflect life and express emotions are words and language. The social life of an era changes frequently. Although language and writing change slowly, the difference between ancient and modern times is still very significant. Han Yu said, "The language is difficult to pronounce." It is because the language has changed, it is very difficult to read. Many people do not recognize the oracle bones, but also due to changes in the text. Not only the shape and sound of the characters have changed, but also the meaning of the characters. For example, the character "烦", which is interpreted in the Shuowen as "heat and headache", a phenomenon of illness, is now said to be "烦", which does not mean illness anymore. This difficulty brought about by the change of language and writing is the first problem to be solved in reading and studying ancient literature. Of course, the works of the ancients that we see today, manuscripts are very few, usually copied, after the Song Dynasty there are engraved, but there are still people copying. It is always unavoidable to make a mistake in copying or engraving. There is a very famous article, Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Garden" which has a sentence "I heard that, and I was glad to go." Su Shi copy and some later carvings are all for "personally to", only a Song carving for "regulation to". It is true that it is better to understand the words "personally going" than "planning to go", but the following goes on to say: "without success, I sought to die of illness." Since "pro to" is to go, how to say "not fruitful", is not self-contradictory? It seems that the word "pro" is a mistake and should be written as "规". The word "to" means "to go". There are many such typos in the works of the ancients. When I was in college, a teacher lectured on Zhuangzi, and he said that there was a sentence in Zhuangzi, "And now it is about women", and there was a history of philosophy on this sentence, which talked about Zhuangzi's view on women and how it was. In fact, there is a typo in this sentence, it should be "and now Angui", the word "women" belongs to the next sentence reading, there is no "women" this two words, copy the wrong, carved the wrong, pitied people. It seems that poor handling of typos in the works of the ancients hinders a correct understanding of the ideological content of the works. Sometimes the wrong words also destroy our enjoyment of the artistic beauty of the works. For example, there is a line in "The Nine Songs of Xiangjun" that reads, "The beauty should be subtle, and it is appropriate to repair", and Mr. Wen Yiduo said in his "Chu Rhetoric Supplement", "It is an error of appropriate to repair, which is a mistake of appropriate to smile, and the sound of repairing and smiling is close to the blackmail." The phrase "to smile" means to show one's snow-white teeth when one smiles, which is similar to the phrase "to look and to smile" in "Mountain Ghosts". It describes the beauty of a person's posture, which is very visualized. According to Wang Yi's commentary, "脩" is interpreted as "饰", and "宜脩" means "宜飾", which is very abstract and tasteless. What attitude should be adopted toward the typos in the works of the ancients? In the Ming Dynasty, when people engraved books, when they came across something they did not understand, they would correct it arbitrarily, and many people were dissatisfied with this practice. We certainly cannot adopt this approach. We can't just change whatever we want. Even if it is a typo, the reason for the change must be stated when it is made. As a matter of fact, the problem of typos in the works of the ancients, especially in literature, is sometimes very complicated, and not only is it just a matter of smoothness or incomprehensibility, easy to understand or not, but there is also a question of beauty. We are all familiar with Wang Bo's "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion", there is a sentence "Gege Ship Maze", the word "Maze", some books for the word Lian, and some books for the word Yizi. The word "Lian" and the word "Mi" are easy to understand, but only the word "Maze" is not easy to understand. But from the perspective of literary appreciation, it is precisely this not very understandable word, but call people feel beautiful. It is really difficult to tell what kind of character is on the author's manuscript. Chinese characters actually include three aspects of form, sound and meaning, here Lian character and the word similar to the shape of the word fan, Mi and fan, the same sound, in fact, the original manuscript is what the word, how to error, it is not easy to figure out. However, it is also possible that it was originally a Lian character. Wen Feiqing "to send Chen Yuzhi Bao Houguan and Jane Li Changshu" poem said: "spring clothes shine dust even grass color, night boat smell rain drops reed." Lian a for fan, can be seen even fan two characters shape and body similar, easy to get it wrong. Wrong into the word fan, some puzzling, because of which some people read the same sound and then changed to Mi. Naturally, this is only a speculation, a possibility. We read ancient literary works, in addition to the possibility of encountering some copying the wrong carving the wrong word, the most important is the interpretation of the meaning of the word. The meanings of ancient and modern words have changed, and the literary language is not well understood when it is detached from the spoken language. In the Song Dynasty, there was a writer who wrote "Night dreams are ominous, but the door of the book is auspicious." He wrote "Night sleep is unlucky, the door of the book is auspicious." He wrote it that way to take advantage of the changes in the meanings of ancient and modern words. Whenever you turn to the Book of Songs, you'll see the words "My Fair Lady". What is meant by "My Fair Lady"? It is not easy to understand, but if you replace it with "a slender and steady young woman", you will understand it very well. Ancient and modern changes in the meaning of words, as well as rules and regulations, the name of things change, of course, you can look for tools, look up the dictionary, but sometimes the dictionary does not work. For example, "Dream of Red Mansions" in the Wu Jin Xiao's rent on the list of "dragon pig twenty", what is called "dragon pig", the dictionary is not out of it, now most of the red scientists can not figure it out, it is really not easy to read. Reading is not easy to encounter difficult words, do not know; difficult words, do not understand, this is a common thing. Is to recognize, explain up is not so simple. There is a line in the Poetry Scripture, "Not a vegetarian meal", which is not a difficult word, is it? But how to explain "vegetarian meal"? Before the liberation, a university professor called "vegetarian meal" as "vegetarian" and "eating white rice", and he was dismissed from his job. This is because "vegetarianism" has always been interpreted as "eating for nothing", so to speak, and "one is willing to accept a salary only if one has done something meritorious". Gong Zizhen also wrote a poem saying, "I have the responsibility of having a vegetarian meal, and I sincerely feel ashamed of the people of Vatan." In fact, "eat white rice" or "white meal" or, are wrong. According to the Maoist legend, "Vegetarianism is also empty." Empty can be interpreted as empty, "Analects - Advanced" Confucius said to Yan Hui said "its concupiscence repeatedly empty" the "empty" word for "empty" solution, "not". The word "empty" is interpreted as "empty", and the phrase "no food" means "no worries about not having food". "He is a gentleman who does not have a vegetarian diet!" That is to say, "Those lords, they don't worry about having nothing to eat!" Under the words, it naturally means that the woodcutters are all worried about clothes and food. In short, to read, to read ancient literature, first of all, we have to translate the poems written by the ancients into the same as today's contemporary writing, can be easily understood, which is to learn a school survey and exegesis. The main purpose of collation is to solve problems such as the removal of typographical errors and mistakes, which I learned from Mr. Xu Weiyu when I was in college. Once Mr. Liu Wendian said to me: "I heard Mr. Xu say that you learned collation from him, which is very good. Proofreading Well, once upon a time, people only school history, and then some people school book, as for the collection of the Department is not good to do, because proofreading at best can only solve the text through the pass, can not be solved, good or bad. There is a kind of people engaged in the collation, said what to choose the good from, that is the most to be avoided." Of course, Mr. Liu's opinion may be a little biased, but what do you mean "choose good"? Just change the word. For the collation is not enough for training. As for exegesis, a scholar in the Qing dynasty said: "Song Confucianism is not clear exegesis, Zhu Zi know a little but not very good." The requirements are high. When I went to college, I listened to Mr. Luo Changpei lecture on exegesis, did not learn well, and still a layman. Mr. Wen Yiduo taught us to read, read the poetry of the ancients, to read the white text, do not start to read the notes. That is to say, we should use the knowledge of collation and exegesis to read the white text directly, and not rely on the commentaries, as the short man observes the scene and follows the likes and dislikes of others. Of course, the annotation for a beginner, is not a brick, but to liberate the mind, do not be superstitious authority. The above is only the first step in reading ancient literature, to overcome the difficult language and text. But after breaking through this barrier, there are still many questions, for example, who is the author of this work? What did he do in his life? Did his work reflect the times? Did people like his work at the time? Were the characters and storylines portrayed in his works true to life? He was born at a different time from us, so why do his writings still give us a sense of beauty today? And so on, if you are willing to think about it, the more questions you ask, the deeper your understanding will be. Reading can not just rely on the eyes to see, but to use the mind to think, learning without thinking is not able to make a correct evaluation of literature, from which to absorb useful nutrients, so that the spiritual life is rich and noble up. Therefore, after breaking through the language and writing barrier, reading and studying ancient literature should also stand on the position of the proletariat, and use Marxist-Leninist viewpoints and methods to analyze, criticize and evaluate the works we read. Since we are reading ancient Chinese literature, and most of these works were produced in a class society. Lu Xun said, "Literature has a class nature, in a class society, although the literati think that they are 'free' and think that they have transcended their class, unconsciously, they are also dominated by the class consciousness of their own class, and those creations are not the culture of another class." Lu Xun is only briefly talking about the relationship between literary creation and class, but in fact the class analysis of literary works is very complicated. There is such a wind that doubts that literature has a class character in a class society, and they use landscape poetry as an example to vigorously deny the class character of literature. It is also suggested that people have ****ness, i.e., human nature. Man? One is to survive, the other is to live. Although each class has a different life, but the survival is **** the same. The so-called "food, color and sex", love and death are permanent and universal themes in literature. There is nothing new here, just a rehashing of the same old arguments of Liang Shiqiu and others. Of course, Marxists do not think that a person eats and sleeps, that every move he makes, every word he opens, every sentence is crammed with classiness. But in a class society, people are classed. The author must always affirm or deny, love or hate, the phenomena of life he describes, that is to say, show the author's inclination, and this inclination embodies the class nature of the work. This tendency reflects the class nature of the work. The class nature is always revealed through the author's attitude towards the people or things depicted in the work, more or less, more or less, more or less, more or less, more or less, more or less, more or less, more or less, more or less. Therefore, when we read ancient literature, we must pay attention to what the writer praises and what he condemns. We must not try to catch up with the fashion of "humanism" and look at the literary heritage from a superclass point of view, for it is impossible to truly recognize its value in that way. In reading ancient literature from a Marxist point of view and methodology, we must also regard the literary phenomenon as a product of objective existence under certain historical conditions. It does not exist in isolation, but in interconnection with other things. In this way, it is necessary to pay attention to the relationship between literature and political economy, philosophy and religion, science and art, as well as the mutual influence between them. Without clarifying the socio-political and economic situation and the religious arts of the Tang Dynasty in eighth-century China, it is difficult to recognize the profundity of Du Fu's poetry in depicting reality. "The vermilion door stinks of wine and meat, and the road is frozen with dead bones." Not empty words, but real life. To read "The Line of Watching Gongsun Damiang's Disciples Dancing with Sword and Instrument," without understanding the state of the art world at that time, one would probably only remain at the stage of plausible comprehension. Similarly, if one is not familiar with the history and society of the Middle Tang Dynasty, one will not be able to understand Han Yu's "The Original Way" and "The Teacher's Discourse" thoroughly. Lu Xun said in a letter to Xu Maoyong: "The relationship between literature and society is that literature is sensitive to the depiction of society, and if it is powerful, it will turn to influence society and bring about change. This is just like sesame oil, which is originally made from sesame seeds, but when it is soaked in sesame seeds, it becomes more oily." Literary works are not only objective reflections of social life, but also if the works expose the irrationality of social life and cause people to be dissatisfied with reality, so that they rise up to demand that the irrational society be changed and made reasonable, and that social life be transformed. Literary works, in this case, become "the light that guides the future of the national spirit". In the past, some leaders of peasant revolts read the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", from which they learned many strategies of struggle and used them to defeat their enemies. The Water Margin was forbidden to be read by the ruling class of feudal landowners, who considered the novel to be "preaching theft" and feared that people would rise up against them after reading it. The Story of the Western Chamber was also considered by them as a book of "lust", for fear that people would read it and strive for "lovers to be united in love", thus destroying the rituals they advocated. We Chinese have always advocated applying what we learn to what we use. Learning and reading ancient literature, but also from which we should absorb some useful things, do some good for the people. Literature is spiritual food, and the study of ancient literature is also to make oneself an idealistic, moral, noble and pure person. Of course, there are many ancient literary works which are dross and need to be criticized. We often say that ancient writers had the limitations of their time and class. Since most of the ancient writers came from the landlord class, even if they were progressive in ideology and politics, they only demanded the elimination of social ills in order to safeguard the survival of the class society to which he belonged. He sympathized with the poverty of the peasants rather than favoring their revolt. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty there was a group of literati who wrote poems sympathizing with the people's plight and cursing the peasants at the mention of their rebellion. The authors or editors of Water Margin sympathized with the people's resistance to the oppression of corrupt officials and bullies on the one hand, and praised the suppression of peasant revolts by the feudal regime on the other, and extolled a group of "reformed" people who served the feudal rulers with their dogs and horses on the other. This highlights the class limitations of these authors. Although the times are different, and the "feelings" are justifiable, it is still necessary to criticize the bad influence of these authors in today's society. Criticism is not the same as the total rejection of a writer or work, I think so, and do so. The second part of a good reading of the ancient language to learn Chinese ancient literature, must first pass the reading of the ancient language, that is, to be able to read and understand the Chinese language. If we can't read or understand the Chinese language, then the analytical comments we make on the works, as if the building is on the beach house, is very easy to collapse. To read and understand the literary language, we mainly rely on reading more and more. Read more works and choose a part of good works to read them over and over again. It is only through reading more and more that one can gradually master the rich vocabulary and grammatical laws of the literary language. In the process of reading a lot, we can combine it with reading some books that introduce the laws of ancient Chinese to help us improve our reading ability. Nowadays, there are many young comrades who like ancient literature, often starting from the love of Tang poetry and Song lyrics. Many excellent chapters in Tang poetry and Song lyrics are indeed the essence of our ancient literature and should be recited and studied. However, in order to cultivate the ability to read ancient literature, we must read more prose; because, the grammatical structure of prose is more formal than poems, unlike poems such as inversion, ellipsis and other phenomena, from the laying of the foundation, read more prose is more effective. Reading prose, you can first read some of the more shallow works, like "Tang and Song Dynasty Legends", "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and so on, and then further, you can read the "Ancient Writings Guanzhi", "Historical Records", "Book of Han", "Spring and Autumn Left Biography" and other books, the ability to read the ancient language can be said to be a basic solution. To cultivate a good reading ability in ancient languages, as in learning foreign languages, we must work hard and spend several years to read more and more, now seventy or eighty years old, they read a lot of ancient books when they were young, so the roots are good; now the young comrades, due to the different conditions, generally read fewer, or even fewer, ancient books, and therefore the roots are shallow. If you are going to study ancient Chinese literature in the future, you have to make up your mind, arrange time, concentrate on reading some works and related literature, and get through the reading of ancient texts. Second, pay attention to several relationships between the study and research of ancient literature, need to pay attention to deal with several relationships. One is the relationship between point and surface. Ancient Chinese literature is a large range of surface, it can be divided into the pre-Qin, two Han, Wei, Jin, North and South Dynasties, Tang and Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and other historical periods, and each historical period and poetry, prose, novels and other genres of work. For this wide range, we can find one or two Chinese literary histories and selected works of the past generations to have a general understanding of the important writers and works of each period. This is the general knowledge of classical literature that one should have. In ancient Chinese literature, for example, the poems of the Early Tang Dynasty and the Sheng Tang Dynasty are partially narrowed down. As for Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, etc., they are points. In order to y understand the points and the works of some important writers, we must examine them in the literary environment of the time in which they lived, and also in the process of the development of literary history; therefore, we can't study one point in isolation, but must combine the points and surfaces. The second is the relationship between left and right, before and after. The so-called left-right relationship refers to a writer's contemporaries and their closer characters, who often inspire and influence each other in their creations, and should be linked together for study. For example, Bai Juyi, his friendship with Yuan Zhen, Zhang Ji, Liu Yuxi and other poets, with some **** the same creative tendency, should be linked to the study of close creative writers, often forming a school, we have to study individual writers and the school he belongs to put together to examine. By backward and forward relations is meant the succession of a particular writer to his predecessors and his influence on literature. In comparison, it is especially important to understand the relationship with the literature of the previous generation; because one of the important criteria for us to evaluate a writer is to see what new things he has provided more than the literary scholars of the past times, and if we don't know the literary scholars of the past, we can't make a judgment in this respect. Before I studied Li Bai's poetry, I had a period of time to study the literature of the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, and carefully read the Selected Writings of Zhaoming and the Collected Poems of the Lefu, so I understood more clearly how Li Bai's poetry inherited and developed the excellent traditions of the poetry of the literati of the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, as well as the folk songs of the Lefu. Third, the relationship between exposition and intensive reading. In reading ancient works and related literature, it is necessary to differentiate between extensive and intensive reading, and not to use the power evenly. Important books should be read carefully and repeatedly, while the general ones can be skimmed. When researching, one must focus on these key books. When I was studying the Lefu poems, I carefully read the Collected Poems of the Lefu Poets, and thus gained a clearer understanding of the classification, system, and origin of the Lefu poems, as if I had grasped the outline, and it was easy to recognize and grasp many issues. Many of the preface and captions in the Collected Poems of the Lefu Poetry are informative and rich in citations. I have read them many times, and based on the clues they provide, I went to consult the relevant materials, and my understanding of the Lefu Poetry was gradually deepened. It is also very important to have a broad understanding of the subject. A lot of surface knowledge related to the point of study must be understood. Browse the surface to be broader, but can read faster, thicker, China in the event of a close relationship with the object of study should be scrutinized. Third, expand the field of cultural knowledge to study and research of ancient Chinese literature, reading should be broader. First of all, we should read more history books. The relationship between literature and history has always been very close in China. Literary works are produced in a certain historical environment, and their contents reflect a variety of historical and social phenomena; in order to have a deeper understanding of the ideological content of literary works, one must be familiar with history. Many works by great poets like Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Lu You, and Xin Qiji were closely related to national events at that time, so it is especially important to be familiar with history when reading them. I studied in the university, read the "Zhaoming Wenxuan", feel very difficult to understand; graduated from work, systematically read the "Book of Han", "Book of Han", "Book of Jin", "Southern History", the history of the Han, Wei and the six dynasties have a more specific understanding, back to read the "Zhaoming Wenxuan", in terms of understanding there has been a great deal of progress. One should systematically read several historical books to have a more complete understanding of the historical phenomena of a period; in this way, when one reads literary works, a concrete impression of the historical background in which they arose emerges in one's mind. Reading more history, especially like the "Records of the Grand Historian", "The Book of Han", "The Book of the Later Han", etc., not only enriches the knowledge of history, but also helps a lot to cultivate the ability to read ancient languages. The Shiji, Han Shu and other articles not only written well, the language is more standardized to help us grasp the laws of ancient Chinese, and contains a large number of often used for later generations of allusions, familiar with these allusions, to remove the obstacles to the reading of ancient languages is also an important condition. Fourth, find a good guide, master the weapons of China's ancient set of books is very rich, in front of this vast canon, we must read a little catalog book, as if to find a guide, easy to find the information you need to read. In terms of catalog books, "Han Shu . Arts and Letters", "Sui Shu. The book is fundamental, must be read carefully. A kind of reading guide prepared by modern people, such as "the key books to solve the problem and its reading method" (Liang Qichao), "the general theory of the group scriptures" (Zhou Yu Tong), "the scriptures to solve the problem" (Lv Simian), "the ancient Chinese historical records to cite" (Zhang Shunhui), etc., are better into the book, which can help us to recognize and learn the original text. In addition, you can find one or two books written by today's tools to use the law of a class of books to see, as a guide. We analyze and evaluate the works of ancient writers, we must master the theoretical weapons of Marxism. We should carefully read the works of some Marxist classic writers, especially the works on historical materialism and literary theory. The letters of Marx and Engels on historical materialism, Marx's Louis . Bonaparte's Eighteenth Day of the Misty Moon, Engels' Ludwig. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy" by Engels, and "Letters Without Address" by Plekhanov are important principles and examples of how we should evaluate historical figures and culture, and should be studied carefully. The principles and attitudes toward ancient culture and literature set forth in Comrade Mao Zedong's Theory of New Democracy, Address at the Yan'an Literary and Artistic Symposium, and other writings are also very important, and should be well appreciated. In general, in order to study and research ancient Chinese literature, it is necessary to: find materials, be able to read and understand them, and be able to analyze and criticize them. Knowing cataloging and familiarizing oneself with the categories and origins of ancient literature is to be able to find materials smoothly. The main reason for reading more ancient texts, more ancient history and other related literature is to understand these materials and to place the object of study in concrete historical conditions. Serious study of Marxism and mastery of ideological weapons is to be able to correctly analyze and evaluate ancient literature.