"Peony Pavilion" has been adapted into various forms as a classic repertoire of traditional Chinese opera
"Dream of Visiting the Garden" is a piece of the traditional Chinese opera "Peony Pavilion". The author is Tang Xianzu, a Chinese opera composer of the Ming Dynasty, and the most fascinating of these is the love story of Du Liniang and Liu Mengmeina:
Du Liniang was deeply bound by feudal etiquette, one day, carrying her parents and the master, and Yahuan Chunxiang to the back garden to swim in the spring, flowers and birds, touching the scenery and hurting, after swimming tired, go back to the room to rest. In the dream, he meets the scholar Liu Mengmei in the garden, and many flower gods come together to match them. After returning, he actually had a cloud and rain love in the garden with a boy with a broken willow in his hand, and after waking up from the dream, he went into the back garden alone to find the amorous man in his dream. Du Liniang's mother came to the bed to wake up her daughter, and the mother saw her daughter in a trance; she told her to go to the back garden less in the future. Although Du Liniang agreed, her heart was still chasing the dream, and soon she became depressed, died of love, and came back from the dead. From this, there are also several scenes in "Peony Pavilion" such as Du Liniang's "Garden Tour", "Frightening Dreams" and "Dream Hunting".
Tang Xianzu's "Peony Pavilion" still has obvious progressive significance in the present, not to mention that at the beginning of its appearance at that time, it shocked many souls who pursued freedom and happiness, before that, the most influential love theme drama work in China was "The Tale of the West Chamber". It has been commented that after the work of "Peony Pavilion" came out, "it was recited from house to household, and the price of "West Chamber" was reduced several times" (Shen Defu's "Wan LiYe Zhi Zhi" volume 25), which can be called the greatest legendary romantic masterpiece in the history of Chinese opera.
Why can Tang Xianzu single-handedly push the creation of ancient Chinese opera to a new peak and achieve such a masterpiece of opera as "Peony Pavilion"?
Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall
Although Tang Xianzu also wrote poetry and so on, the highest achievement was still legendary. There are five main types of his theatrical creations, namely the "Four Dreams of Yumingtang" (or "Four Dreams of Linchuan") and the "Purple Remembrance". The four plays "ZiChao", "Peony Pavilion", "Handan Chronicle" and "Nanke Ji" are all related to "dreams" and all have the theme of "love", so they are collectively called "Four Dreams of Linchuan" or "Four Dreams of Yumingtang".
Tang Xianzu and "Peony Pavilion" on stamps
Tang Xianzu (1550-1616), a native of Linchuan County, Fuzhou Prefecture (present-day Linchuan District, Jiangxi Province). It is said that he was unusually intelligent since childhood, and he made up xiucai at the age of fourteen, and took the township examination at the age of twenty-one, but he was born with a straight nature and offended the magnates, and it was not until the age of thirty-four that he was given a jinshi birth. But even so, compared with the experience of Pu Songling in the Qing Dynasty who really participated in the township examination, Tang Xianzu was already a young man, after all, Pu Songling had trekked for decades on the road of the imperial examination.
Tang Xianzu's literary achievements also appeared early, at the age of 26 when he engraved the first collection of poems,"Red Spring Yicao", at the age of 29 when he engraved the second collection of poems," at the age of 30 when he created The Book of Purple Spoons, at the age of 38 when he completed the Book of Purple Spoons, and at the age of 49, he returned to Linchuan to create "Peony Pavilion", and completed the "Nanke Ji" and "Handan Ji" in the next three or four years. From this creative chronology, Tang Xianzu has always been a model of unremitting pen cultivation, and his life after resigning from the government revolves around the creation of opera, reading and writing, visiting relatives and friends, doing as he pleases, and wandering around.
In Tang Xianzu's creative experience, "Wen Ruqiren" makes sense, and for a while he described his life as follows: "Swim by candlelight in the early night, and see people sleep during the day" ("Da Long Jun Yang Sequence"), which is also frank enough, and also said that after he entered the shi, he "coveted the embroidery dance, and stepped on the flowers and branches". He also wrote to a friend that his writing "Brother can never make affectionate remarks to heartless people." Tang Xianzu adhered to the principle of people-oriented and sentiment-oriented in the creative practice of writing, which is also the core of his ideological expression and creative practice in his creation.
Tang Xianzu said in the "Peony Pavilion Record • Inscription", "Why should the love in the dream not be true?" "This is a world of passion, a dream world for the objective world, and a world of gods that mocks and subverts the rigid ethics and morality of the real world.
Du Liniang's body is the manifestation of awakened life and youth
Tang Xianzu also said in the inscription: "Women in the world have feelings, would rather be like Du Liniang?" Dreaming of a person is a disease, and a disease is a milian, so that the painting describes the transmission of the world and then death. After three years of death, he was born of the person who regained his dreams. If you are a beautiful woman, you can say that you have a lover's ear. Emotions do not know what to do, and go deeper, the living can die, and the dead can live. Those who are born and cannot be with death, and those who die and cannot be resurrected, are not the most emotional. Why should the feelings in dreams not be true, and how can there be few people in dreams in the world? He who will become a relative because of the pillow, and who will be kept secret by hanging the crown, will also be a skeleton. (Tang Xianzu Poetry Anthology, vol. XXXIII)
"I don't know what to do, but I go deeper, and the living can die, and the dead can live." The extent to which this phrase has been circulated does not need to be repeated here.
"Peony Pavilion" can portray the character of Du Liniang so deeply in the hearts of the people in that era, which is enough to see that people's understanding of the beauty of life and natural emotional needs in people's hearts has irrefutable rationality, which is actually the concept of humanistic care.
"Humanistic care is a spirit of advocating and respecting human life, dignity, value, emotion and freedom, which pays attention to the all-round development of human beings, the state of existence and their destiny and happiness." Humanistic care has always been the theme of all excellent literary works, it is the ultimate value embodiment of "goodness", and together with historical reason, it has built a value system of literary truth, goodness and beauty.
Du Liniang and Chun Xiang's "Frightening Dream" folded
After listening to the teacher's lecture, at the instigation of the maid Chunxiang, she sneaked out of the boudoir and came to the back garden where she had lived in taishou Yamen for three years but had never been. Like ordinary people, seeing the vibrant natural beauty and falling in love with the beauty of this garden, she said: "I was born in the eunuch family, grew up in a famous door, the age is over, can not become a good match, sincerely for the waste of youth, time is like a gap in the ear." Unfortunately, the color of the concubine's body is like a flower, and her life is like a leaf! ("Frightening Dreams")
The image of Du Liniang in the work negates the antiquated feudal etiquette and rigid ethics and morality, and yearns for the "Heavenly Dao", which is the reasonable "Heavenly Dao" in traditional Chinese culture.
The passion of life cannot be imprisoned, and the spring tour in the back garden awakens Du Liniang's youth consciousness and the emotional needs of being a person:
It turned out that Zi Yan was red all over the place, and it seemed that all of them were paid with the broken well, the beautiful scenery of the good day, and the pleasure of whose courtyard. Towards the twilight roll, yunxia cuixuan, rain silk wind piece, smoke wave painting boat, Jinping people look at this Shao Guangli. ("Frightening Dream, Soap Robe, The Original Zi Yan Red Open All Over")
The spring tour in the back garden awakens Du Liniang's youthful consciousness and the emotional needs of being a person
In the original work, Du Liniang has a beautiful face and is young, but she has to be sealed by her father Du Bao in a palm-sized room, and various rules restrict behavior, and the back garden of the official court is not allowed to get involved, and the two birds embroidered on the day and the dress will be reprimanded by the mother, worried about violating women's morality. Chen Zhiliang, a school teacher, is an outsider she can see except for her parents and maids, but she is also a stale old pedant, Du Liniang is naturally "a lifelong hobby is natural", and she can only be "plainly wounded by spring" ("Su Yuan").
After "Dreaming in the Garden", Du Liniang spent her whole life pursuing love and happiness, and fortunately got her wish
Du Liniang in the play dreamed of the scholar Liu Mengmei, in the dream to make a good relationship, after waking up the soul of the dream, worried into the disease, hate and hate and die, buried under the garden plum tree, and later Lingnan scholar Liu Mengmei road through Nan'an, living in the plum blossom view, accidentally picked up Du Liniang's self-portrait before death, and felt admiration. Du Liniang was grateful for her sincerity, met him in a dream, and privately decided to live forever.
Liu Mengmei helped send a coffin to retrieve the body in Shi Daogu, so that Du Liniang could be reborn, so she became a husband and wife, and went to Du Bao and his wife. The later plot is very emotional: Du Bao did not believe that his daughter could be revived, but falsely accused Liu Mengmei of being a tomb robber, tortured Liu Mengmei severely, and later presided over the court defense by the emperor, and Du Bao still insisted on not recognizing this so-called self-made marriage without the order of his parents and the words of the matchmaker.
It should be pointed out in particular that the awakening of human nature in the romantic trend of the middle period of the Ming Dynasty, represented by Tang Xianzu and others, is different from the previous, truly people-oriented, love-based "love-reason construction" method, which is in the same vein in many literary chapters of the later Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi" and is more obvious:
In the pre-Qin period, the awakening of human beings refers to the awakening of human beings as a whole;
The awakening of people in the Wei and Jin dynasties refers to the awakening of the pursuit of personal personality values, and begins to attach importance to the experience of perceptual life, seeking common ground while reserving differences;
The awakening represented by Li Bai in the flourishing Tang Dynasty was that people could exert maximum perceptual publicity, but they still had to rely on the realization of political ideals to discuss the embodiment of personal social values and the success of life, so Li Bai sighed loudly when he did not agree with his words: "An can destroy the eyebrows and bend the waist of the magnates, so that I cannot be happy!" Behind the scenes, he still dreams of realizing his political ambitions to "hang on to the clouds and sail the sea";
The Song Dynasty emphasized more that the emotional life should be reflected in the realization of cultural values, and Lu You's career and love can well explain the recognition of this life choice at that time;
The awakening of human nature in this romantic trend of thought in the middle of the Ming Dynasty is reflected in the fact that "human existence is the first", and people should have "reasonable and open emotions" as individual ontology, which is the initial appearance of "humanism" in nature, of course, there is still a longer historical process from the real "liberation of personality".
Today, "Peony Pavilion" is also one of the sources of creation in various art forms
Generally speaking, Tang Xianzu and Xu Wei and Li Zhen are recognized as the representative figures of the romantic trend of thought in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Xu Wei and Li Zhen are more concerned with the irrational reality of society and how to save the people from water and fire; Tang Xianzu mainly uses his own creations to negate the antiquated feudal etiquette and rigid ethics and morality, and uses "Garden Dreams" to deduce "the feelings are unknown, always deep." The living can die, and the dead can live" is a passionate tragicomedy of love; in essence, the same thing they strive for is how to break up and rebuild old ideas.
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