In the "Hall of Eternal Life", which depicts Li Yang's love, there are four main groups of opposites: real and false, strong and weak, loyal and adulterous, and luxury and poverty. Among them, the real and the virtual, the strong and the weak are hidden in the love narrative thread of Li Yang's love, and the loyalty and adultery, luxury and poverty are hidden in the historical narrative thread of the Anshi Chaos. Based on these two main narrative threads, we can judge that "The Hall of Eternal Life" has two themes: celebrating true feelings and satirizing. Through the opposing structure hidden in the narrative, we can see the creative ideas behind Hong Sheng's dual creative methods of romanticism and realism.
First, the compensatory psychology and progressive concept of love
The real love of Li Yang ended with Yang Guifei's tragic death in Ma Songpo, which is an out-and-out tragedy. However, "The Hall of Eternal Life" only spends less than half of its space describing this real history, which also contains many fictions, and the second half is almost a mythological brushwork to describe Li Yang's love, so that it finally gets a happy ending. For Li Yangzhi's love, the end of the real writing is a tragedy, while the imaginary writing means the beginning of the reunion.
From this, it is not difficult to see that Hong Sheng deliberately turned tragedy into comedy when creating "The Hall of Eternal Life", and the mythical color of Li Yang's body is actually a compensation for reality. In fact, this kind of compensatory psychology is reflected in many literati works, such as the many flower spirit fox girls in Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi", which is a kind of compensation for the reality of loneliness and suffering.
The strength and weakness of Li Yang's love relationship in "The Hall of Eternal Life" reflects Hong Sheng's progressive view of women. In feudal society, it was extremely normal for men to have three wives and four concubines. As an emperor, Li Longji coveted the beauty of the three and four, which actually did not violate traditional values. However, Hong Sheng arranged a play in the "Hall of Eternal Life", portraying Xuanzong as an ordinary husband. In fact, this not only reflects Xuanzong's love for Yang Guifei, but also conveys the author's progressive concept of "monogamy".
In fact, the "Biography of Huo Xiaoyu" in the three major love legends of the Tang Dynasty has already revealed this progressive concept of love, Huo Xiaoyu "concubines are eighteen years old, Juncai is twenty-two, and the autumn of the Junzhuang Room is still eight years old." A lifetime of love, may this period be completed" is proof of this. Of course, the reason why Hong Sheng has this concept of love is related to his personal emotional life. When Hong Sheng himself was hit by reality, his wife always accompanied him, giving him great spiritual comfort.
2. Be loyal to the king and patriotic and sympathize with the weak
In the Hall of Eternal Life, Hong Sheng completes the historical narrative of the An Shi Rebellion through the clues of Yang Guozhong's misfortune, An Lushan's rebellion, and Guo Ziyi's counter-rebellion. However, if we want to make historical attribution to the Anshi chaos, it is easy to fall into the quagmire of "dialectics". Although there are many references to the faults of Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei in the Hall of Eternal Life, they are not conclusive words.
Hong Sheng mainly used a more literary method to express his idea of loyalty and patriotism through loyalty and treachery. In the first play of "Scolding the Thief", Hong Sheng exerts his loyalty and patriotism to the fullest through the mouth of the little person Lei Haiqing:
That Manchu Dynasty Wenwu, on weekdays, high-ranking officials Houlu, Yinzi sealed his wife. Enjoy the glory, receive the rich. That one is not court grace! Now one by one, they are greedy for life and afraid of death, ungrateful and ungrateful, and fight to surrender. Just try to be happy for a while, that Gu is cursed for eternity! Oh, shame on you, don't you hate!
In addition, although Hong Sheng sang praises Li Yang's true feelings, he did not glorify Yang Guifei too much because of this. In particular, the release of "Into the Fruit", which links Yang Concubine's eating of lychees with the survival of the poor people, not only expresses her resentment towards the luxurious life of the nobility, but also reveals her sympathy for the weak.
It is worth noting that the reason why he does not hesitate to reveal the survival dilemma of the weak is somewhat related to his own experience. In fact, Hong Sheng himself is a "weak person" in reality. In his early years, he wanted to enter the army through the Guozi Prison, but he did not get an official position. Later, due to the "change of heaven", he was exiled and impoverished. Even after he became famous, his life was not rich because he did not have a stable career. Therefore, Hong Sheng has a deep understanding of the survival dilemma of the "weak".
epilogue:
Through the analysis of this article, it is not difficult to find that "The Hall of Eternal Life" has the dual themes of "love theory" and "irony theory". In addition, through the confrontation between virtual reality, strength and weakness, loyalty and adultery, and extravagance, we also find that Hong Sheng's love narrative is dominated by the concept of compensatory psychology and progressive love, and when carrying out historical narrative, it is dominated by the ideas of loyalty and patriotism and sympathy for the weak.