Every day poetry hunting, pay attention to the reading dogs!
In the masterpieces of world literature, there are four extremely greedy and stingy misers, namely Sherlock in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", Abagon in Molière's "Miserly", Grande in Balzac's "Eugenie Grande", and Pryushikin in Gogol's "Dead Souls".
Of the four miserly ghosts, Sherlock is greedy and vicious, Abagon regards money as his destiny, Grantai is a possessive miser, and Pryushkin is a rotten miser. In the original novel, the image of the four miserly characters is extremely distinct, which makes people feel both interesting and hateful, and feels deeply sad under close reading.
In fact, in the history of Chinese literature, there are also four major miserly ghosts, namely Jian Hehou in Zhuangzi's "Foreign Objects", Lu Zhi in Xu Fuzuo's "Yiwen Qian", Yan Jiansheng in Wu Jingzi's "Ru Lin Wai Shi", Li Meiting in Qian Zhongshu's "Siege of the City", and so on.
There are also works dedicated to miserly ghosts in ancient poems, such as the following yuan song composed by anonymous people:
Drunken Taiping sneers at the greedy and profiteer
Yuan Anon
Take the mud swallow mouth, cut the iron needle, scrape the golden Buddha face and search carefully: find nothing out of nothing.
Peas are found in quails, herons split flesh on their legs, and mosquitoes have grease in their abdomen. Thanks to the old man!
In the Tang and Song poems, although there are also many realist poems, the Tang and Song poems are biased towards Yazheng, and there are very few poems that directly portray the image of greedy and miserly characters. In the Yuan Dynasty, due to the dark social turmoil and the low social status of Han Chinese and literati, the Yuanqu that was close to the bottom of society shined. Literati devoted themselves to the writing of miscellaneous dramas and scattered songs, exposing the darkness of social reality and satirizing the powerful and the unkind in society. There are many humorous and spicy satirical songs, and this "Drunken Taiping" is one of the classics, and between laughter and anger, it portrays a character who is stingy and extremely greedy.
The first three sentences of this song are very straightforward to describe the behavior of the characters: "Grab the mud swallow mouth, cut the iron needle, scrape the golden Buddha face and search carefully"! Snatch mud from swallows, cut iron on needles, and scrape gold on Buddha statues in temples. As we all know, swallows come to nest in spring, they are all stacked with mud one by one, the embroidery needles are extremely small, and most of the Buddha statues in the temple are clay sculptures, but this person is strong mud from the swallow's mouth, the needle is iron, and the Buddha statue is scraped with gold, which shows that he is insatiable. The author finally summed up this person: "finding something out of nothing", scavenging from places that are invisible to the eyes of ordinary people, both greedy and poisonous.
Then the author further portrays his greedy and miserly image: "Quail is looking for peas in its throat, herons are splitting flesh on their legs, and the mosquitoes are fat-butter in their abdomen", the peas that the quail swallows into the stomach he wants to dig out, the only meat on the slender legs of the heron he has to chop down, the little grease in the mosquito's stomach he has to scrape out, it can be said that he can do everything he can, he has to try to get everything he can, even if it is a little grease in the mosquito's stomach!
The last sentence of "the old man lost his hand" is like admiration and ridicule, summing up the image of the "greedy and profit-seeking" in the title clearly and prominently. This meta-song portrays characters extremely exaggerated and humorous, portraying a greedy, miserly and petty obscene character image to the fullest, which makes people can't help but be amused when they read it.
In fact, this song is based on the social reality of the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, the local officials of the Yuan Dynasty were greedy, plundering the wealth of the people on a large scale, and plundering the people's fat and people's ointment everywhere, even the iron pot in the people's homes. The "old gentleman" in this song represents the corrupt officials of the fish and meat people. Although this song is a famous work, the laughter and anger are a profound satire and criticism of those who are greedy and miserly, vivid and vivid.