Excerpt from the Internet; Qiao Guanghui Rare Ancient Books
When it comes to famous novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties, everyone will think of "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", in fact, there was also a "New Words of Cutting Lanterns" that year was also very famous. It was written in Nanjing, and is the first novel in the history of Chinese literature to be banned by the authorities. It is worth mentioning that it was later widely circulated in neighboring countries and had an important impact on the development of Asian literature.
It was banned because the principal of the highest university in the Ming Dynasty wrote a letter to the initiative
"Cutting the Lantern Xinhua" was written in the 11th year of Hongwu of the Ming Dynasty (1378), re-edited and published in the 19th year of Yongle (1421), and banned in the 7th year of orthodoxy (1442).
The reason why it was banned was related to the Guozi sacrificial wine at that time, that is, the principal of the highest school in the Ming Dynasty - Guozijian.
This person's name is Li Shimian, and he had only been in office for a few months at that time, but he was very depressed, why did he walk to the lecture hall full of energy and enthusiastically preach the outline of the four books, but the students still dozed off? So he went to the student dormitory at night to communicate and asked what books everyone was reading, whether it was "Spring and Autumn" or "The Book of Songs"? Unexpectedly, the book that the students read the most was actually a "New Tale of Cutting the Lantern."
Li Shimian was very surprised, he knew that this was a novel written by Qu You, the assistant teacher of Guozi, and he heard that this person was rich and wealthy, and he once taught "The Biography of the Zuo Family in the Spring and Autumn Period" in Taixue, but he had not read it himself. The principal was a little paranoid, and during his presiding over the work of Taixue, he advocated "being sincere and upright", and novels could not be read.
So the principal borrowed a book from the students and went home to read it at night. Looking at it, he felt that something was getting more and more wrong, so he wrote a note to the emperor overnight, and rushed to the palace the next day to report the matter to the emperor. At that time, President Li wrote to the emperor to talk about a lot of content, and the emperor felt impatient, so he asked Hu Ying, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, to hold a small seminar, and the people at the meeting felt that President Li was reasonable, so the first banned novel in the history of Chinese literature was produced.
For this incident, the history books record it like this:
Recently, there are vulgar Confucianism, pretending to be weird things, decorated with rootless words, such as "New Words of Cutting Lanterns" and the like, not only the light and thin people in the market compete to recite and practice, as for the scholars of Confucianism, they do not talk about it, and they memorize it day and night to talk about it. If it is not strictly prohibited, it is not a trivial reason to fear that heresy and heresy will flourish day by day and confuse people's hearts. The Ministry of Begging and Rites is responsible for the internal and external yamen and the promotion of the school and the imperial history of the school, and patrols the places according to the judges, and all such books are banned and destroyed, and those who print and sell them and those who collect them are questioned as if they were lawful, so that people can know the right way and not be confused by evil and delusion. The edict was issued to the Ministry of Rites. Shang Shu, Hu Ying, etc., are more reasonable and feasible with their words...... The emperor is his opinion.
Is this novel really a "heretical heresy".
So, is "Cutting the Lantern Xinhua" really a "heresy and heresy" made by "vulgar Confucianism" as Li Xianjiu said? What content of the novel does Li Shimian have an aversion to?
Themes: "Pretending to be weird"
Li Shimian has a unique vision, and he can see at a glance the difference between "Cutting the Lantern New Words" and the Four Books and Five Classics. The essence of fiction is fiction, and of course it is necessary to "pretend to be weird". "Cutting the Lantern New Words" travels through time and space, breaks the boundaries of time and space, and allows the ancients to dialogue with the present, and the dead and the living to dialogue, which is its unique narrative mode.
Many articles in "New Words of Cutting Lanterns" write about the love between people and ghosts, such as "Teng Mu Travels to the Scenery Garden", "The Peony Lantern", "The Biography of the Man in Green" and so on. Through the strange event of Teng Mu coincidentally meeting the late Song Palace man Zheng Fanghua and living with him for 3 years, "Teng Mu's Journey to the Gathering Garden" expresses the author's nostalgic feelings, expresses his deep sympathy for the fate of the palace maid in troubled times, and reflects the author's broad humanistic care. "The Legend of the Man in Green" praises the spirit of young men and women pursuing the freedom of love through the ghost love story of the woman in green and Zhao Yuanren, and exposes the cruel and tyrannical behavior of the adultererous minister Jia Yidao. The former focuses on expressing the sense of the rise and fall of history and expressing sympathy for the fate of the palace maids, while the latter incorporates the political connotation of anti-power and rape into the love of people and ghosts.
These articles are entirely "fictitious" by the novelist in order to express specific thoughts. In Li Shimian's words, it is "pretending to be weird". "History of the Ming Dynasty" records that Li Shimian "has a strong sex and takes the world as his own responsibility", and he can't understand why he can only use "vulgar Confucianism" to denounce him as a fictional novel.
Technique: "Decorated with rootless words"
Li Shimian also accurately grasped the characteristics of "Cutting the Lantern New Words" that is good at "embellishment". This was actually the unanimous conclusion of commentators at the time. Zhao Xuan, the secretary of the Ministry of War, and Tang Yue, the waiter of the Ministry of Rites, both believed that "Cutting the Lantern New Words" "is strange and good at described", Hu Ziang said: "Mr. Yue said many modern facts, modeled affection, brewed words, rich and beautiful, twists and turns, flowing out of the heart, suddenly as if witnessing and hearing, punishing good and evil, wonderful crown in the present and ancient, reciting it makes people feel emotional!"
Because he is good at rhetoric, his works are written in a real and touching way. Gui Heng's feeling when he read "New Words on Cutting the Lantern" was "sunny and rainy, sad and joyful". However, Li Shimian is conceited with his science and advocates "saving heavenly principles to destroy people's desires", so he naturally cannot understand the artistic charm of the novel with emotion.
Ideologically: "Heresy and heresy are growing day by day"
The science of the development of traditional Confucianism has become the guiding ideology of the state in the early Ming Dynasty. Li Shimian admired "people who are virtuous and righteous and who have made a name for themselves", and advocated that literature and art serve politics. The value of "Cutting the Lantern New Words" is precisely that it makes a profound reflection on the traditional Confucian ideal of using the world.
The "Biography of Xiuwen Sheren" is a representative. The article describes a literati named Xia Yan, who is obsessed with his own writings, hoping to "not rot with the grass and trees", but academics cannot support his family, and as a result, he dies in Runzhou. One day, a friend of his former met him and learned that Xia Yan had been appointed as a "cultivator" in Yinsi. Xia Yan talked about the justice and selflessness of the underworld and the darkness of the world, and also entrusted a friend to write about his writings during his lifetime, "Carved Tongzi, passed on to good things", and the friend agreed. Afterwards, Xia Yan was very grateful, "his family's misfortune and good fortune were all reported in the early stage", and later recommended a friend to take over the position of "Xiuwensheren".
This novel is very intriguing, the surface of the text means to set off the darkness of the yang world with the justice of the underworld, but Xia Yan later recommended a friend to take over his official position, and the sick friend only heard Xia Yan describe that there was such an official position waiting for him, so he "no longer treated, and ended up in a few days", revealing how profound the Confucian sense of fame is to corrode an ordinary person!
In fact, since the author of the novel lived in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, the work describes the impact of the development of the commercial culture of Jiangnan towns on the citizens in the late Yuan Dynasty, marking a specific era in the late Yuan Dynasty, revealing ideas that are different from the tradition. This is unacceptable to Li Shimian, a physicist who is a sacrificial wine.
A number of imitations have appeared in neighboring countries, which have had a huge impact
Because of the ban, "Cutting the Lantern New Words" circulated relatively little in China, and many Chinese did not know about it. However, Qu You, Li Shimian and others would not have thought that this novel did not lose its due charm because it was banned and destroyed. Later, this forbidden novel aroused the interest of the Korean Li Dynasty, and they came to the Ming Dynasty to get the novel, and later spread it to Japan and Vietnam, which had a great impact on Asian literature and became a rare case in the history of Chinese literary communication.
At that time, the Korean Li Dynasty was actively advocating the learning of Chinese, and "Cutting the Lantern New Words" was written as a civilian story, and it was good at love, and the text was very simple, which made people very moved after reading it, so it became a Chinese textbook they liked to see. Lin Qian, a literati in the country, even made a detailed annotation of the novel, namely "New Sentences for Cutting the Lantern", which analyzed the pronunciation and semantics of some Chinese characters in the novel in detail, and also made extremely detailed annotations on some rare and rare animals, plants, fruits, etc. in the Li Dynasty.
In the beginning, the Korean Peninsula only knew poetry and lyrics, but it did not know that there was such a genre as novels. Kim Si-hee, a famous writer of the Korean Dynasty of the Yi Dynasty, wrote "Kim Ao Shin-hua" in imitation of "The New Words of the Cutting Lanterns", and from then on the Korean Peninsula had their first novel of their own. Kim Shi-xi was able to grasp the artistic charm of "beautiful as spring and like clouds" in "New Words of Cutting Lanterns", and at the same time had first-class literary literacy, carried the cultural relics of the Korean Li Dynasty in the Qu You model, and integrated his own national culture and his own independent thinking into the novel, opening a new chapter in the history of Korean literature.
The influence of "Cutting the Lantern New Words" on Japanese literature has also undergone a process of infiltration from form to content, from appearance to spirit. First translated, and then created, from "Strange Tales Collection" and "Jia Wanzi" to "Ancient and Modern Strange Tales of English Papyrus" and "Tale of the Rainy Moon", all of which have the shadow of "New Words of Cutting the Lantern".
However, the circulation and acceptance of "Cutting the Lantern News" in Japan also reflects the differences in aesthetics and culture between China and Japan. Following Qu You's trajectory, the Japanese writer Ueda Akinari further deepened his thinking, and his "White Peak" objectively affirmed the spirit of rebellion and the spirit of the "devil's way" that abandoned moral considerations, forming a work with a unique Japanese style.
In Vietnam, there are also imitations that have had a huge impact on their literary works. His famous writer Ruan Yu imitated "Cutting the Lantern New Words" to create "Legendary Manga", and the two writers carried out cross-ethnic and cross-era exchanges.
An American scholar said that "Cutting the Lantern Xinhua" is the earliest classical novel with transnational influence in Chinese history, and its literary dissemination value is very large. Fortunately, around the 20s of the last century, this novel was reintroduced from Japan, and the Chinese people were able to re-understand this novel and rebuild the classics.
(Qiao Guanghui)