Do you dare to believe that you have memorized the "natural I am born to be useful" for so many years, and the author is not Li Bai? The ancient style "Will Enter the Wine" is the most inspirational long poem of all Li Bai's poems.
The style of the poem is heroic and free from the dust. The sentence "I am born to be useful" in the poem shows the arrogant self-confidence of a generation of talented poets in the midst of life's adverse journey, and the strong spiritual will to never return.
How many generations of Chinese, once they encounter setbacks in their lives, will recite this poem to encourage themselves. However, everyone does not know that this inspirational quote that has been circulated for thousands of years was confirmed by the "Dunhuang Testament" unearthed in Dunhuang in 1900 to be modified by the Song people.
Not only that, but the title of the poem "Will Enter the Wine" has also been revised, because its original title was "Xi XuanKong". The sentence "will enter the wine, the cup will not stop" in the poem is not written by Li Bai, but was originally created by the "anonymous family" of the Song Dynasty.
I. "Will Enter the Wine" in the "Dunhuang Testament"
There are currently three older manuscripts of the Will Drink, codenamed P2544, S2049, and P2567. These three editions of the manuscript are all from the ancient book "Dunhuang Testament" excavated in the Dunhuang Grottoes in 1900.
Among them, the two manuscripts of P2544 and S2049 are now stored in museums in France and the United Kingdom, respectively, and only the manuscript of P2567 is extant in China.
P2567 This version was copied in 1913 by the famous epigrapher Luo Zhenyu of the Republic of China from the "Photo Photocopy" of the "Dunhuang Testament", with the title "Tang Dynasty Selected Tang Poems", and the poem was titled "Xi Xuankong".
At the same time, in these three manuscripts, there is no sentence "I am born to be useful". In the P2544 and S2049 versions, only "Born wu tong has handsome talents", while in the P2567 version, it is "born with talents".
The two versions of P2544 and S2049 were most likely copied by hand by monks or craftsmen with low cultural attainments in the Tang Dynasty. One version even copied the word "River" from the "Yellow River."
Based on this situation, the "born with talent" in the existing P2567 version in China does not rule out that Luo Zhenyu made a "correction" based on the harmonic sound of "Wu Tong" and then with reference to ancient books, and it is not the original version.
The era is second only to the three Dunhuang manuscripts of "Will Enter the Wine", from the "Heyue Yingling Collection", which is the work of the Song Dynasty Yin Fan. In this collection of poems, the sentence "I was born to be useful" appeared "for the first time", and the content of the poem is basically the same as that of today's popular texts.
In addition to the sentence "I was born with handsome talents", the Dunhuang codex is different from today's popular version, and there is also a sentence of "Gaotang Mingjing Sad White Hair". In the three Dunhuang manuscripts, this sentence is "bedside mirror sad white hair".
In today's popular version, the sentence "Please listen to me", the two versions of P2544 and S2049 are written "May the King Pour for Me" ;P the 2567 version and the "Heyue Yingling Collection" both write "Please pour for me".
In the two versions of P2544 and S2049, after "Cen Fuzi and Dan Qiusheng", it is written "Please Junge A Song". The P2567 version and the two versions of the "Heyue Yingling Collection" are written as "a song with Junge".
In addition, in the four versions mentioned above, after the sentence "Cen Fuzi and Dan Qiusheng", there is no common version of the sentence "will enter the wine, the cup will not stop".
Therefore, it is suspected that the sentence "will enter the wine, the cup will not stop" is a sentence added after the Song Dynasty revised the title. Or maybe because I added this sentence and made other changes, I took the opportunity to rewrite the title.
Second, the similarities and differences between "Xi Xuan Kong" and "Will Enter the Wine"
The three Dunhuang manuscripts unearthed in 1900 are also significantly different from the Song version of the Heyue Yingling Collection. Below we quote the P2567 version to give you a detailed introduction to the similarities and differences between the Dunhuang codex and the current popular version.
Let's take a look at the P2567 version of "Xi Xuan Kong":
You don't see the water of the Yellow River rising from the sky, rushing to the sea and never returning.
Jun did not see the bedside mirror sad white hair, towards the clouds twilight into snow.
Life must be full of joy, do not make the golden bottle empty to the moon.
I was born with talent, and I have come back after a thousand golds.
To cook sheep and slaughter cattle for pleasure, one will have to drink three hundred cups at a time.
Cen Fuzi, Dan Qiusheng, and JunGe a song, please Jun pour for me.
Zhong Gu Yu Shuai is not expensive, I hope that I will not wake up when I am drunk.
All the sages of the past died, but the drinker kept his name.
King Chen used to feast peacefully and enjoy it, fighting wine and ten thousand people's indulgences.
What the master says is less money, he must sell it to the king.com.
Five-flowered horses, thousands of gold coats. Hu'er will exchange it for fine wine and sell the eternal sorrows with Er.
Excluding the subtle differences of "facing down to Qingyun", "facing like Qingyun", "Gaotang Mingjing" and "Bedside Mirror", the biggest difference between the Dunhuang codex and the current popular version is the following three.
First, "Born with talent" is the opposite of "born to be useful";
Second, the emotions of "all the ancient sages are dead" and "the ancient sages are lonely";
Third, after "Cen Fuzi, Dan Qiusheng", the passage book has one more sentence: "Will enter the wine, the cup will not stop".
Why, then, do we say, "I am born to be useful" and "the sages of ancient times are lonely", which were later modified sentences? Is it possible that the original version is the original version and the Dunhuang codex is the modified version?
When arguing the original title of "Will Enter the Wine", some scholars mentioned that the sentence "All the sages of ancient times are dead" is actually in line with the emotion of "self-abandonment" expressed by "I was born with talent" in the previous article.
The poem was written in the second year of Tianbao (743 AD), after Li Bai was "given gold and released" by the imperial court. When he went to Beijing that year, he was full of spirits, and once wrote a poem yun: "Go out laughing in the sky, my generation is a basil person."
As a result, in less than two years, Li Bai was expelled, which made him feel very frustrated. It happened that his Daoist friend Yuan Danqiu invited him to Song Mountain as a guest. Also present was a guest named Cen Xun, who was a "fan" of Li Bai.
Among the three people present, Li Bai and Yuan Danqiu were both frustrated people. Li Bai and Yuan Danqiu met around the eighteenth year of the New Century (731 AD).
Later, they all entered Beijing through the introduction of Princess Yuzhen. Yuan Danqiu went to the Western Beijing Jokhang Temple and became a mighty instrument in it, while Li Bai entered beijing as a Hanlin.
In the second year of Tianbao (743 AD), Li Bai was given gold and released. In the third year of Tianbao (744 AD), Yuan Danqiu left the Xijing Jokhang Temple and returned to the Song Mountains to live in seclusion. It can be seen that Yuan Danqiu was not satisfied with the Xijing Zhaoguan Temple.
So, from the beginning, they planned to borrow wine to pour sorrow. But I didn't expect that at the banquet, there would be no more wine while drinking. Li Bai, who was originally full of interest, felt very sorry, so he wrote this poem, so the name of this poem is very appropriate.
Because Li Bai was carrying an indignant mood at that time, his verses in the poem appeared very decadent, and even with a bit of "self-abandonment" and a broken jar.
So at this time, the meaning of this poem is that I have a talent, but it is useless, and it is better to spend the rest of my life drinking and singing. Don't you believe that the sages of ancient times did not all die in the end?
Master, you don't have to be afraid to drink and spend money, after the money is spent, you can save again! When you don't have money to buy wine, you will take all the flowers and BMWs and mink coats in your house, and then don't you have the money to buy wine?
When we look at Li Bai's behavior now, it is a typical "indignation of others", and he will certainly not have physical pain. From this point of view, the poem in the Dunhuang manuscript, from the thought and emotion to the title, is very suitable for "Xi Xuankong".
In addition, some people use the law of rhyming in ancient poetry to prove that the sentence "I am born to be useful" is also the result of the revision. Because it has a little problem with the "rhyme" of poetry.
Although the poem "Will Enter the Wine" is an ancient poem, in fact it also speaks of rhyme. There will be a "rhyme" in the middle of this kind of poetry, but the first sentence at the beginning of the "rhyme" must be rhyming.
The first and second sentences of "Will Enter the Wine" are the rhyme of "Ten Grey Rhymes", the third and fourth sentences of the rhyme of "June, Nine Chips", and the fifth and sixth sentences, if they are "Born with talent, thousands of gold scattered and returned", it is exactly the return to the "Ten Gray Rhymes".
However, if it is the sentence "I am born to be useful, and I will come back when all the money is scattered", then the word "use" becomes "two Song rhymes". There are some problems with the rhyme, so it is slightly unnatural.
However, "Pingshui Rhyme" was only formed during the Song Dynasty, and the Tang people may not write poetry according to this. Tang Dynasty ancient poetry is relatively free in rhyme. And the Tang people's rhyme is different from that of the Song people, which is also an important reason for the Song Dynasty to revise a large number of ancient poems in the Tang Dynasty and before.
It is very likely that the Song Dynasty people found that Li Bai's poem was no longer rhyming when read at that time, so they would add a sentence after "Cen Fuzi, Dan Qiusheng", "Will enter the wine, the cup will not stop".
At the same time, because the revisionists of the Song Dynasty felt that Li Bai's original poems were too decadent and not positive enough, and then through the hands of one or more Song Dynasty literati, they were changed to the popular version we see today.
epilogue
In fact, the works of many ancient poets, including Li Bai and Wang Wei, will have some words in the process of copying. Some of these "in and out" changes were unintentional, and some were "deliberately" done by literati after the Song Dynasty.
The literati of ancient China have always regarded the works of previous generations of writers and thinkers as a collective heritage, and they do not have the "copyright consciousness" that modern people have clearly distinguished. Because they just want to make those works better and leave them to us who will be hereafter.
Therefore, some of the poems of Li Bai that we see today are the works of Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty; the other part is not only the works of Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty, but also the crystallization of the collective wisdom of the literati of all generations after the Tang Dynasty.