Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional virtues - A high school language question

A high school language question

The image of "fisherman" first appeared in the book Zhuangzi. In "Zhuangzi - The Fisherman", the author portrays the fisherman's father as an opponent to Confucius, the representative figure of Confucianism. The author writes specifically about the fisherman's answer to Confucius, which resulted in Confucius "worshipping the fisherman". This allusion is missing from the Analects, and it is clear that the author is using him as a spokesman for his own ideas to attack Confucianism. But the image of the fisherman in this essay is not fleshed out, because the author is simply describing a passage of polemical language.

The first to establish the image of the "fisherman" and to give it a profound ideological connotation was the article "Fisherman" in the Chu Shu, in which the author pretended to be Qu Yuan. Later, the Western Han historian Sima Qian thought that this article is realistic, the full text of the "Historical Records - Qu Yuan Jiasheng biography" in the high school text six books "Qu Yuan biography", works, the author through simple language and action description, sketched out a rich ideological connotation of the "fisherman" image. When the fisherman met Qu Yuan, he asked, "Is the son not a dafu of Sanlu? Why have you come here?"

When listening to Qu Yuan's reply to himself, "The world is muddy and I am alone clear, and the people are all drunk and I am alone awake, which is why I see the release", the fisherman said: "The world is muddy, why not dig up its mud and raise its waves? All people are drunk, why not feed its bad and sip its sweet? Why not think y and raise high, and make yourself seen to be released"? He skillfully took over Qu Yuan's words of "clear", "turbid", "drunken", "awake" metaphor, on the situation to develop, to lead to "digging up mud and raising its waves". He introduced the new metaphor of "digging up mud to raise the waves" and "feeding the lees to sip sweet wine", and tried to enlighten Qu Yuan with the opposite life. Qu Yuan is an active man who practiced "killing oneself to become benevolent", while the king's authoritarian system of rule frustrated his ideals time and again; while the image of the "fisherman" is a nobleman who held the attitude of letting nature take its course and being contented with the situation, and who was outside of the current customs. He advises Qu Yuan not to be obsessed with disputes over right and wrong, and to follow the sage's example of "not being stagnant in things", which represents a kind of Taoist thinking in the world, and the image of the "fisherman" is no longer a person who makes a living from fishing. His words of advice to Qu Yuan and the words he sang when he "drummed the hammer and left", "The water of Canglang is clear, I can wash my tassel; the turbidity of Canglang is cloudy, I can wash my feet", proved that he was not a "fisherman" equivalent to a general fisherman, but a recluse with a certain degree of knowledge. But a hermit with a certain degree of knowledge, this hermit, "know it is not possible to do not do, know it can be also not to do", is clearly a reflection of the Taoist idea of "conformity to nature".