press
About author:Huo Huotongyun, a native of Changsha City, Hunan Province, a construction engineering cost engineer, loves to think, loves to write, and pursues a beautiful and noble spiritual world.
author
Fire clouds
After the completion of "Liaozhai Zhiyi", the author Pu Songling invited his friends Gao Heng and Tang Mengben to write the preface. Many literati in the early Qing Dynasty also wrote inscriptions and treks on the book.
Most of the current publications of "Liaozhai Zhiyi" do not have these contents, which is a very regrettable thing. Pu Songling's friend undoubtedly knows him better than we do; the literati who are close to him are certainly more profound than our understanding of the works. Their evaluation can make us better read and understand the work.
Let's start with Pu Songling's self-prologue to see how he positions his work. For the theme of "Liaozhai Zhiyi", Pu Songling concisely summarized a sentence in the preface that was not noticed by people:
In the vast six ways, how can it be said that it is unreasonable?
What are the six paths? The Six Paths is a Buddhist term that refers to the Path of Heaven, Humanity, asura, Hell, Hungry Ghost, and Beast, which is the whole space of the universe. In the Buddhist view, everything in the world exists in these six sets of spaces.
"How can it be said that there are six vast paths?" This sentence is the author's philosophical reflection on the world. He believes that there is a certain moral philosophy in the entire universe, no matter which of the six paths there is. It is precisely in order to explore his reasoning and write a book to express his views on the world.
This should be the purpose of the author to spend his life writing "Liaozhai Zhiyi". "Liaozhai Zhiyi" expresses the author's view of the "reason" of the world. For the author's creative purpose, the author is estimated to be difficult to understand by the world, so he sighed in the preface:
Those who know me, in the midst of Qinglin Hesse?!
The term "Qinglin Hesai" is derived from the first poem of Du Fu's poem "Dream li bai". The poem reads as follows:
Death has swallowed, and life is often compassionate. Gangnam miasma, no news of evictions.
The old man entered my dream, and I remembered it. I am afraid that it is not an ordinary soul, and the road is far from unpredictable.
The soul came to Feng LinQing, and the soul returned to Guan Sai Black. Junjin is in luo net, why do you have wings?
The falling moon fills the beams of the house, and hesitates to illuminate the color. The depth of the water is wide and the waves are wide, and there is no dragon to get.
Du Fu and Li Bai had a deep friendship and were deeply concerned about their distant friends. "The soul comes to Fenglin Qing, and the soul returns to Guansai Black", describing Du Fu's dream soul in the fenglin and guanzhong deep search for friends, qing and black are described as deep and far. "Green Forest Hesse" is a metaphor for sparsely populated and difficult to reach.
Pu Songling lamented that almost no one could understand the creative purpose of "Liaozhai Zhiyi". This is the same as Cao Xueqin's lament in "Dream of the Red Chamber" that "who understands the taste".
His exclamation has been recognized by some people at the time. A typical representative of this is Wang Shizhen, an ally recognized by the literary circles in the early Qing Dynasty. He wrote the following inscription for the book:
The aunt listens to the vain words, and the bean shed melon rack rains like silk.
It is expected that he should be tired of being a human language and love to listen to the autumn grave ghosts singing.
Wang Shizhen estimated that "Liaozhai Zhiyi" is not a "human language" in the eyes of the world, let alone an understanding of the author's creative purpose, but is only regarded as an ordinary ghost fox biography. His foresight was so accurate that until the cultural popularity of the contemporary era, many people really regarded the book only as a large collection of strange things.
In his preface to Liaozhai Zhiyi, Tang Mengben directly pointed out that these people's views were "the views of Xiao Ru Zhiyi", and they read "Liaozhai Zhiyi" as "Xia Worm Yu Bingye".
In the preface, Tang Mengben began with "seeing a camel and a horse's swollen back", profoundly pointing out that the world's people do not see the essence of the world when they look at things through phenomena, and even criticize the unhealthy trend of people not seeking to understand and using Confucius's phrase "strange power and chaotic gods" as an excuse.
He pointed out that when people face things, they must not "be alone with ghosts and foxes and blame them", but must "see and not see them, and hear but cannot hear them", so that they can acquire knowledge of seeing and hearing and understanding the nature of things.
In other words, it is impossible to see that "Liaozhai Zhiyi" is written about ghost fox things, and it is regarded as a strange phenomenon and a strange species. Think about the deep meaning of the thing itself.
Tang Mengben believes that "no matter how strange things are, they are harmful to people as demons", and "Liaozhai Zhiyi" "its judgments are based on the purpose of rewarding goodness and punishing adultery and peaceful life, which is enough to open things and become a business".
Gao Heng is also a confidant of Pu Songling, and in his preface to "Liaozhai Zhiyi", he clearly pointed out that "the righteousness of all saints can be consistent", and "the vast six paths, how can it be said that it is unreasonable?" "One word in one breath.
For those who could not understand the theme of "Liaozhai Zhiyi", Gao Heng bluntly said that they were "people who were in the ruins of the future generations, their pupils were like beans, a leaf was lost in the mountains, they could not see, and the rate was based on Zhongni's 'no words'".
Gao Heng does not deny the existence of strange things, and lists some historical strange things in the preface, so how should we view strange things?
He believes that we cannot look at strange things with a sluggish vision and an old-fashioned concept, just as the so-called "heaven and earth are big, everything is everywhere, ancient and modern have changed, and there is no glue boat", and the current society is already "the rivers and rivers are falling day by day, people and ghosts are quite the same", and even question "the world is not all gentlemen, yin and cao are all righteous people." ”。
Therefore, Gao Heng hopes that "a person who reads books must have deep wisdom and wisdom, his vision is like electricity, his walls are all clear, and he can know the author's intentions."
The excellent literary works passed down from generation to generation are often profound in meaning, and cannot be appreciated simply by reading superficial stories.
Today, "Liaozhai Zhiyi", created in mandarin, has an additional layer of comprehension barriers for contemporary people than the classical literary works of vernacular. In other words, Qinglin Hesse is more distant. Therefore, we need to read the prologue inscriptions of Gao Heng, Tang Mengben, Wang Shizhen and others to deeply understand the works.
I sincerely hope that the publishing house will continue to reprint "Liaozhai Zhiyi" and print these contents as well. Perhaps more dreams can be returned to between Qinglin Hesse and obtain a nobler and better spiritual harvest.
Disclaimer: This article only represents the personal views of the author and has nothing to do with the position of this public account. Some of the illustrations come from the Internet, if there is infringement, please contact to delete.