Recently, I often saw this sentence in the comment area, and they used this sentence as an argument to prove that Dai Yu was of high character.
There are two major fallacies in this logic: First, "the essence of the essence is clean and clean" is Daiyu's own words, not the author's objective evaluation. Sage Kong said, "I began with men, listening to their words and believing in their deeds; now I am also in men, listening to their words and judging their deeds." Yu Give and Change yes. (The Fifth Analects of Gongyechang) The evaluation of a person cannot be judged by what he says, but by what he does. Second, judging from the eighty-fold text, it is really impossible to see any purity in Daiyu's behavior.
However, seeing that so many people like this sentence, I took a moment to study the original work in depth and found that Daiyu's "essence is clean and clean" is exactly a pandering to Baoyu's "daughter theory".
"The essence of purity comes and goes", Dai Yu uses the flying peach blossom as a metaphor, indicating her ultimate pursuit of cleanliness.
Reading books is the most taboo for self-touching, subjectively giving emotional colors to the characters or plots in the book. For such a huge work as the Red Chamber, it is especially impossible to take it out of context, and it must be understood in combination with the context in order to strive for objectivity and comprehensiveness.
"The essence of the essence is clean and clean" comes from the "Funeral Flower Words" created by Daiyu. Daiyu's funeral flower is not only a famous scene in the Red Chamber, but also an important plot to show daiyu's personality characteristics.
First of all, we must clarify why Dai Yu buried the flowers.
On the twenty-third time, Bao Yu read the "Hui Zhen Ji" alone under the peach blossom tree, "I was seeing the 'falling red into a shower'", only to see a gust of wind pass by, blowing the peach blossoms on the tree in half, and falling all over the place with books." Baoyu "I'm afraid that my footsteps have trampled on it, so I have to take the petals and come to the edge of the pool and shake in the pool." The petals floated on the surface of the water, fluttering and fluttering, and even flowed out of the Qinfang Gate. ”
Baoyu loves beauty, but also pities beauty, and can't bear to trample on the falling flowers, so he shakes the petals into the water. This is the normal thinking of beauty lovers.
However, daiyu, who subsequently appeared, objected to Baoyu's behavior:
"It's not good to be in the water. You see the water here is clean, only first-class out, some people's places are dirty and smelly, and the flowers are still collapsed. I have a flower mound on that deformed corner, and now I have swept it away, put it in this silk bag, and buried it with soil, but it has become clean with the soil for a long time. “
In Daiyu's view, it is not good to let the fallen flowers flow out with the water, because the water in the Grand View Garden is clean, but after it flows out, it will flow to a dirty and smelly place, and the flowers will be wasted. Therefore, it is better to dig a pit and bury it, in order to ensure that the fallen flowers will always stay in a clean place.
This is the original intention of Daiyu's funeral flowers: clean.
This cleanliness cannot rise to the level of purity in character. Some people say that Dai Yu agrees with Bao Yu's opposition to the "Career Economy", which is the embodiment of high character. Please, Dai Yu said clearly, "The water here is clean, some people's places are dirty and smelly", "the water here" is the water of Jia Fu, if Jia Fu can not represent the "Shitu economy", where else can it represent the "Shitu economy"? "The place where there are people's homes" refers to the place of the city outside the Rongguo Mansion, that is, the place where the people live. In the eyes of those who oppose the "career economy", will they feel that the people are dirty and smelly?
Therefore, the cleanliness that Dai Yu refers to is clean in the original sense. The water in the Grand View Garden is for ornamental purposes and is of course clean. The flowing water in the city is closely related to the people's eating and drinking, washing vegetables, washing, washing and taking out garbage, etc., of course, it is dirty and smelly.
Dai Yu likes to be clean and loves to be clean, which has nothing to do with character, she just wants to pursue a clean and elegant life, and she is not willing to be contaminated with a little dirty smell. It is conceivable that if the peasant uncle, who had just worked in the fields, passed by her, she would surely cover her nose and avoid it, and show a look of disgust.
It is based on the ultimate pursuit of "clean" that Dai Yu appeared in the "Funeral Words" sentence "The essence of the essence is clean and clean".
In Daiyu's view, of all things in the world, only flowers are the cleanest, because flowers have always grown on the branches high above, not stained with dust, and because they are beautiful and weak, they can be appreciated and pitied by the world.
Dai Yu uses flowers as a metaphor for herself, "lonely and self-promising", she not only thinks that she is the most beautiful and weak, but also believes that she deserves to be appreciated and pitied the most. If you meet someone who can appreciate and pity her, you will treat her like she treated falling flowers, and you will not bear to let her flow to a dirty and smelly place, but build her a tomb of incense, "if you don't collect the bones in the bag, a pure land to hide the wind", which is what she once said to Baoyu, "put it in this silk bag and bury it with soil". If you can get such an ending, it is "the essence of the essence is clean and clean", from birth to death, it is not polluted by dirty smell, it does not enter the homes of ordinary people, and it is "stronger than dirt and ditches".
It can also be seen from here that Dai Yu enjoys the life of "peace and prosperity" in Jia Fu and enjoys Bao Yu's pursuit of her. She called this way of life, which was far from the laborer, "clean."
This kind of "cleanliness" not only has nothing to do with Gao Jie, but also "sees some miscellaneous books and moves the temperament", "after reading books, it is even worse", and forgets the book.
"The essence of purity comes and goes", Dai Yu is pandering to Bao Yu's "daughter theory".
Reading the original work carefully, it is not difficult to find that Daiyu's "essence is clean and clean" seems familiar. Yes, this view is very much in line with Baoyu's "daughter theory".
Baoyu also loves cleanliness, but his understanding of cleanliness is slightly different. Baoyu has a famous "daughter theory":
"Daughters are flesh and bones made of water, and men are flesh and bones made of mud." When I saw my daughter, I was refreshed; when I saw a man, I felt foul and smelly. (2nd time)
"A girl is not married, she is a priceless jewel; when she is married, she somehow conjures up many bad problems, although it is a pearl, it has no glorious treasure color, it is a dead pearl; when she is old, it becomes not a bead, but a fish eye!" (59th)
"Strange, strange! How come these people, only married to men, stained with men's smell, just like this, more than men can kill! (77th)
(Baoyu) only heard that the day of marrying relatives was very urgent, but this year, it was going to pass through the door: I saw Lady Xing waiting for Jia Mu to take Yingchun out of the Grand View Garden and other things, and more and more swept away the excitement, daily dementia, do not know what to do. After hearing that he had accompanied the four servants, he even fell to his feet and sighed: "From now on, there will be five fewer cleaners in this world!" (Seventy-ninth)
To sum up these theories: the core idea of Baoyu's "daughter theory" is that all people in the world, only unmarried girls are clean. Men are not clean, and after the daughter gets married, she is contaminated with the man's breath and becomes unclean.
The cleanliness here, too, has nothing to do with character. You know, throughout the ages, there have been many men and women of high moral character. The evolution of society towards civilization is driven by these mature men and women who are well versed in the world.
Therefore, the cleanliness that Baoyu likes is a special habit, just like only admiring beautiful flowers.
Therefore, we can find that Daiyu's "quality can be clean and clean" and Baoyu's "daughter theory" are actually the same: a young girl is like a flower, and her life ends at the flower stage, is not it the daughter who never gets married?
Dai Yu only wants to make flowers, not to make ripe fruits, and even more unwilling to be a flower protector, just because she wants to cater to Bao Yu's "obedient and evil" nature of only loving her daughter.
Some people may ask, why is it said that Dai Yu is pandering to Bao Yu? Can't they be in tune with each other and have the same point of view?
Of course, there is a basis for me to say this, and the basis is in the original book.
In the original work, it is clearly written that Baoyu is born "obedient and evil", and his words and deeds are very strange, even if he is often beaten by his father, he has not changed in the slightest.
Therefore, Baoyu's "daughter theory" is his original, a point of view derived from nature.
Dai Yu is different, before entering Jia Province, Dai Yu is a genius type of normal person, words and deeds are in line with the thinking of normal people, but much smarter than normal people. After entering the Jia Mansion, she sat with Baoyu "day and night", and she looked up to Baoyu and became a replica of Baoyu, so she had "two jades" in Jia Mu's mouth.
This just verifies Bao Yu's theory: "Only once you marry a man, you are stained with the smell of a man, and you are mixed up like this, which is more killable than a man!" Although Dai Yu did not marry Bao Yu, because she had been with Bao Yu day and night for a long time, she was inseparable, and she was infected with the smell of Bao Yu and became as strange as Bao Yu, even more strange than Bao Yu, which led to her strange burial behavior, as well as the strange "essence of the essence is clean and clean".
Flowers blossom and fall is a natural phenomenon, after the flowers fall, the best destination is "into spring mud to protect the flowers", Dai Yu thinks that "turning into spring mud" is unclean, and uses this to flaunt that he only wants to be a "clean" person in his life to cater to Baoyu's preferences.
Therefore, the poem created by Daiyu, "The essence of the essence is clean and clean", not only does not have the meaning of high character, but on the contrary, dai Yu, under the influence of Baoyu, the "chaos demon king", abandons the high purity given to her by the Lin family and becomes a ridiculous mixed world.
If you look at Bao Yu's "daughter theory", Dai Yu has indeed achieved "the essence of purity and purity", and has not married into a woman until her death. But if from the perspective of high character, Dai Yu only achieved "quality and purity", she brought the gao jie of the reader into Jia Province, but failed to achieve "clean and clean", she was seriously polluted by the extravagant style of "peace and prosperity and honor" in Jia Province.