The Paper's reporter Gao Dan
On October 19th, the "70th Anniversary of the Publication of Classical Literature of the People's Literature Publishing House and the Publication and Reading Sharing Meeting of the 'Chinese Classical Literature Reader Series' were held in Beijing.
The "Chinese Classical Literature Reader Series" (hereinafter referred to as the "Reading Series") is an introductory book and classic book series for reading classical literature launched by the People's Literature Publishing House. The "Reading Book Series" covers the representative works of "Literature of a Generation" from the pre-Qin "Book of Poetry" and "Chu Ci", to the Literary Endowments of the Six Dynasties of the Han Dynasty, the "Records of History", the Lefu, and then to the Tang poems and Song Ci, jinyuan opera, and Ming and Qing prose.
The "Reading Book Series" was reorganized and republished at the end of 2017 in the form of "collections", and has now launched three series, with 36 kinds of poetry selections (several kinds of famous selected books and several kinds of comprehensive anthologies), 8 kinds of word selections (several kinds of famous selected books, several kinds of comprehensive anthologies), and "Selected Texts of Past Dynasties" (from the pre-Qin to the Qing Dynasty, divided into 7 volumes, including more than 840 articles).
"Reader Series"
In the 1950s and 1960s, there were three main groups of authors in this series: some of them were from the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Founded at the end of 1952, the Institute of Literature brought together a group of first-class scholars such as Zheng Zhenduo, He Qifang, Yu Pingbo, Yu Guanying, Qian Zhongshu; some scholars from domestic colleges and universities, such as You Guoen, Pu Jiangqing, Zhu Dongrun, etc.; of course, there were also classical literature editors of the Humanities Society, that is, from the beginning of the establishment of the Humanities Society, that is, from the nationwide mobilization of professional scholars to form a classical literature editing room, Wang Liqi, Shu Wu, Gu Xuejie, Chen Yidong, Zhou Ruchang and others entered the work of the Humanities Society in this way, and they are all famous contemporary "scholar-type editors". They not only participated in the collation of books such as the "Four Masterpieces", but also wrote a variety of classical poetry anthologies.
Since the 1970s and 1980s, there have been new changes in the group of authors of the series, editors have withdrawn from the ranks of authors, and scholars from literary research institutes and domestic universities have become the main body. For example, Cao Daoheng was an expert in the literature of the Wei and Jin Dynasties and wrote "The History of Literature of the Southern and Northern Dynasties"; Deng Shaoji was an expert in jinyuan literature and wrote "History of Literature in the Yuan Dynasty"; Chen Tiemin wrote "Notes on the Annotations of Wang Weiji"; Xiao Difei was the editor-in-chief of "Annotations on the Complete Works of Du Fu"; Liu Xuekai and Yu Shucheng co-authored "Li Shangyin's Poetry Collection"; Xue Tianwei was one of the authors of "Notes on the Chronicles of Li Bai's Complete Works" and was the president of the China Li Bai Research Association, and so on.
Take the "Selected Histories" that Wang Boxiang was responsible for as an example. According to Wang Boxiang's diary, he was invited by Zheng Zhenduo to join the Institute of Literature, and his first job was to compile and select the Selected Histories. On December 12, 1952, Wang Boxiang received a letter of appointment from Ma Yinchu, president of Peking University, and officially became a member of the institute. He began to work on the 15th, and his work plan was to first circle the "History", then use the important version to do proofreading, and finally make annotations. Later, some adjustments were made, and after the completion of the Honji Department, I began to make a selection of proofreadings. In early September 1953, the content of the proposed writing was requested from colleagues in the institute, and on January 4, 1954, the Institute printed the "Biography of Sun Wu Wuqilie" for solicitation of comments. A year later, on May 10, 1955, "the selected edition of the Historia was completely exhausted, pending the writing of the preface and the re-correction of the book." On January 25, 1956, "Wang Liqi of the People's Literature Publishing House came to visit and made dozens of annotations to the Selected Histories of Shang Reform. Because of the sitting opposite, revise them one by one, and arrive at noon." In April 1957, the Selected Histories were officially published. There are 20 selected articles in the book, and a total of 5382 articles have been proofread, with a total of 411,000 words.
It took Wang Boxiang almost 4 and a half years to write and proofread this book. Generally speaking, for scholars of literature and history, 45 to 70 years old is the most precious period, when they are both young and powerful, but also mature in learning, and the two are superimposed, and they can produce the best products. Mr. Wang was 62-67 years old when he did the "Selected History", and his academic accumulation was integrated into this book.
Selected History Of Wang Boxiang
In the 1950s, Dai Hongsen worked as a proofreader in the proofreading section of the Humanities Society, self-taught, and later served as a classical literature editor, and successively punctuated and sorted out "Golden Plum Words", "Old Remnant Travels", "Notes on the Poetry of Kun Zhai" and so on. He once described his work attitude:
I only know how to be stupid, tell the truth, do not look at people's eyes, no matter the size of the head, confident that I will never mix the personal "lamb goose" (gift) component of "courtesy and exchange" in the statement of the weight of the manuscript. In terms of the standard of "persistence and reasoning", I strive to be strict in terms of basic academic quality. I have done my best to misinterpret the meaning of the text, misrepresent the quotations, poor literary reasoning, poor logic, even broken typos, punctuation and misreading, etc. (Mr. Dai's 1983 Business Autobiography)
In the continuous reprinting and publication, these works will also be constantly adjusted, taking Qian Zhong's "Selected Notes on Song Poems" as an example. The book was published in 1958, revised in 1964, revised again in 1978, and by 1988 it was the sixth revision and the seventh revision in 1992. Qian Zhongshu died in 1998, and in 2005 Yang Dai sent a number of revised messages.
Qian Zhongshu's Selected Notes on Song Poems was revised in 1964
In 2005, Yang Dai sent a number of revised messages.
At the symposium, scholars also expressed their views on the series.
Zhou Xuanlong, editor-in-chief of Zhonghua Bookstore, said that he had worked in the Humanities Society for twenty-three years, was very familiar with the "Reading Book Series", and had invested a lot of energy in its pioneering development. He said that in the process of successively publishing this set of books, the variety has been continuously enriched, the anthologies have been continuously updated, and the content has been continuously polished. The authors of this set of books were all scholars at that time, who invested all their academic accumulation and commented on words and sentences, which were not only clear and accurate, but also permeated with the control and understanding of literature. At that time, the editor of this set of books was both a responsible editor and the author of a number of anthologies, and was very knowledgeable. These editors put aside their professional research and used what they learned to help authors constantly enrich, process, and revise manuscripts, and this traditional People's Literature Publishing House has continued to this day.
Zhao Minli, a professor at Capital Normal University, said that after teaching at universities for decades, she increasingly felt the importance of popularizing work. Its importance comes from two aspects: first, the vast number of classical Chinese literary works, but up to now, the public's understanding of ancient books is still far from enough, and some popularization work needs to be done; second, this popularization work must be done well, which is actually very difficult.
Qian Zhixi, a professor at Peking University, believes that the quality of annotations should be high, and the explanations should not only be literary and rational, accurate and appropriate, but also be full of literary heart and heart, and sometimes have wonderful comments, and the higher requirements are to highlight the characteristics of a certain generation of poetry articles, highlight the personality and unique vision of the selectors. To highlight personality, the selector must first be familiar with all the works of the writer, and must have his own vision, so that it is possible to select more personality or novelty, these new articles will also make the really good poems emerge, and the classics may slowly change.
At the event site, the Humanities Society also displayed the precious editions and published historical materials of some books in the "Chinese Classical Literature Reader Series". Among them are the important editions of the Selected Poems of the Song Dynasty and the annotated editions of Mr. Qian Zhongshu; the important editions of the Selected Poems of Du Fu in various periods, some important manuscripts, letters, and archival materials of some authors and editors; the important editions and related materials of the Selected Historical Records, as well as the 1958 classical literature publishing plan of the People's Literature Publishing House, and so on.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Yijia Xu