01
Walking along, walking to a cool place, it is inevitable to stop, take a deep breath, and then look far away. At this time, I only felt that the heavens and the earth were particularly open and close, and I also became angry.
There was also a high-altitude place in front of it, and I wanted to arrive quickly, but, looking down, there was a jungle in the middle. There must be a lot of hills, swamps, smoke, tigers roaring, and wolf howls in the jungle, right? It's intimidating. However, for the brave walker, this is the place where they want to go deeper. It's not just about crossing it to another cool place, it's inherently beautiful.
I would love to talk about history through this travel experience.
The Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty were obviously the highest places of history. We sometimes like to refer to Chinese civilization as "Han and Tang civilization", which is really overwhelming. However, do not forget that between the two historical highlands of the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty, there is also a historical jungle area, that is, the Three Kingdoms and the Two Jin Dynasties.
In this jungle area of history, there is no unity of heaven and earth, no cheerfulness that overlooks everything, chaos and strife everywhere, running away and death all the time, every corner is a conspiracy, and every figure is a string of stories. However, even adding all this chaos together is not frustrating. Because, between the cracks of the chaos, there are still some glittering pictures. You see --
Where the linen robe flashed, the elder Hua Tuo was still practicing medicine; the fire was lit at night, and the alchemist Ge Hongming had clearly become an outstanding primitive chemist; the Central Plains fluttered and groaned, which was the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" talking and drinking; the south also laughed faintly, it was Wang Xizhi and his friends were gathering, and in the blink of an eye, the "Orchid Pavilion Sequence" was dripping with ink; the great painter Gu Kaizhi's "Female Envoy Zhentu" had just been painted, and the mathematician Zu Chongzhi had already built a guide car, compiled the "Daming Calendar", and calculated the pi, while the geographer Li Daoyuan's "Notes on the Water Classic" Then exactly half written...
It's all that makes us fall in love with that chaotic world.
Culture produces a special charm in a troubled world. It is no longer pure, but always with darkness as the background, evil as the neighbor, and uneasiness as the expression. Most are evil and evil, black and white, and even, as Baudelaire put it, the "flower of evil."
There is nothing more reflective of this cultural charm than the historical jungle areas of the Three Kingdoms, the Two Jin Dynasties, and the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
At this point, our eyes have already glanced at the court of power under the mist that has been praised and denigrated.
One father, two sons, the one on the edge of the jungle, the Cao family.
02
Let's talk about that father, Cao Cao.
A strong man in the jungle once almost unified the world order and rebuilt the norms of mountains and rivers. For this reason, he could not but use all his means to compete for other powerful territories in the jungle. He failed again and again, succeeded again and again, and finally defeated all his opponents, but he was unable to overcome himself, and he died before the final success.
If he himself succeeded in the end and created another relatively long-lasting prosperity, then all the previous schemes and means would be stained golden. However, he was not so lucky, and his son was not so capable, so he could only permanently bury his political achievements under the mud and sand of criticism.
Everyone can guess him, talk about him, and demonize him from different aspects. His entire actions and achievements have been called into question. There is only one thing indisputable: his poems.
Thinking of his poems gave me a strange idea: if the confrontation between the three kingdoms was not from a military point of view, but from a cultural point of view, how would they be able to compete with each other?
The first to go out should be the Sun Wu Group in the east. The backbone is a group of young soldiers, heroic. Zhou Yu was only thirty years old when he fully commanded the Battle of Chibi to defeat the Cao army; Lu Xun was only thirty years old when he fully commanded the Battle of Yiling to defeat the Shu army. The Qing Dynasty scholar Zhao Yi said in the "Twenty Historical Notes" that when the Three Kingdoms were opposed, Cao Cao Zhang Luo was a combination of power and art, Liu Bei Zhang Luo was a combination of temperament, and Sun Quan Zhang Luo was a combination of intentions. Following this saying, the young soldiers under Sun Quan at that time were indeed full of spirit. Such a young soldier, who pursues the dashing image in the flames of gunfire every day, completely disdains poetry composition. This mentality also affects the overall atmosphere of the upper class, so there has been no cultural phenomenon in the Sun Wu group that is worth talking about today.
By the way, in the Eastern Wu region at that time, the economy of Nongsang was good, and the navigation industry was also relatively developed. However, the economy, like the military, has no direct access to culture.
For the Bashu clique led by Liu Bei in the west, it could not have held much hope in culture. Who knows, Zhuge Liang's two military documents have changed this situation. One is a macroscopic analysis of the military situation, called "Longzhong Pair"; the other is a political exhortation before the expedition, called "The Table of Departures".
The literary value of "Longzhong Pair" lies in the clear sorting out of the chaotic world. Clarity may not have literary value, but great clarity in the midst of great chaos produces a sense of logical pleasure. When this logical pleasure is transformed into mercury-like momentum and rhythm, literary value also appears.
In contrast, the literary value of the "Table of Teachers" is much higher. This value, first of all, comes from the overall background of the entire interpersonal relationship behind the article. Zhuge Liang has been fully assisting Liu Bei since he was twenty-six years old, and he was forty-six years old when he wrote the "Table of Teachers", exactly twenty years. At this time, Liu Bei was dead, leaving Zhuge Liang with an unconcealed mess and a cowardly and incompetent son. Liu Bei's will once said that if his son really could not do it, Zhuge Liang could "lack the highest position of power." Zhuge Liang did not do this, but continued to lead the expedition. Before this expedition, he felt that victory or defeat was uncertain, so he had to give Liu Bei's son a good advice. In order to show his right to speak, he also had to talk about his emotional relationship with Liu Bei, and as soon as he said it, the tears came out.
This scenario is the origin of a good article. At the beginning of the article, he simply and neatly pointed out the danger of the situation: "The first emperor has not yet started a business, and the middle road has collapsed, and today it is three points, Yizhou is tired, and this is also the autumn of the critical survival"; in the middle of the article, from the overall situation of the military and politics to personal feelings: "The subject is clothed, he is cultivating in Nanyang, he is full of life in the chaotic world, and he does not seek to reach the princes"; at the end of the article, it is even more the tears of the old ministers before the Ten Thousand Horse Array, which is enough to make everyone moved: "Now when you are far away, you are on the verge of zero, and you don't know what to say." "Such an article, the aesthetic effect is strong, of course, can be retained.
I have always believed that apart from the fictional image in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the reason why the real Zhuge Liang was able to gain an extraordinary reputation in Chinese history is mostly because of this "Table of Teachers". There are too many people in history who have more political energy and military achievements than him, but they have not left such a literary mark, so they have all withdrawn from people's memory. And once there is a literary imprint, then even a failed action will make generations of descendants with heroic feelings feel empathy. Du Fu's poem "Dies before leaving the master, and makes the hero cry for a long time", which is what it means. Of course, as soon as Du Fu wrote it, the literary status of "The Table of Teachers" was even more consolidated.
Having said that, Zhuge Liang, we are going back to Cao Cao.
No matter how highly people give the "Table of Teachers" and no matter how much people feel good about Zhuge Liang because of the "Table of Teachers", I still can't help but say: In terms of literary status, Cao Cao is not only higher than Zhuge Liang, but also too much higher.
The same works in the battle front, Cao Cao's poems, are enough to make him a first-class literary scholar in Chinese history, but Zhuge Liang is not. It is difficult to imagine that any "history of Chinese literature" omits Cao Cao, and it is difficult to imagine joining Zhuge Liang.
So, where is Cao Cao's literary superiority over Zhuge Liang?
It's about the pattern of life.
Zhuge Liang expressed the feelings of the monarch in literature, and Cao Cao expressed the life of heaven and earth in literature.
Cao Cao obviously looked down on the tears before the battle. The heavens and the earth before him looked like this:
To the east, it is bordered by Jieshi to view the sea. The water is thick and the mountain islands are standing.
Trees are overgrown and grassy. The autumn wind is cold, and the flood waves are rising.
The journey of the sun and the moon, if out of it. The stars are brilliant, if out of it.
Luckily, even Ya, the song is sung in Yongzhi.
The life in his heart goes like this:
Although the turtle lives long, it is still timely. The snake rides the fog and eventually becomes earth ash.
The old Ji Futuo is determined to be in a thousand miles; the martyr is in his twilight years and his heart is full of heart.
The period of surplus and contraction is not only in heaven; the blessing of nourishment can be obtained in heaven and year.
The heavens and the earth and life have a contradiction, and he disposes of the position of life in this way:
What is life like for wine? For example, the morning dew, going to the day is more bitter.
It is unforgettable to be worried. How to relieve worries, only Du Kang.
Qingqing Zizhen, leisurely my heart. But for the sake of the king, he has been groaning to this day.
Yo yo deer singing, eating wild apples. I have guests, drummers and trumpeters.
……
Moon stars are rare, and black magpies fly south. Three turns around the tree, what branches can be relied upon.
The mountains are not tired of height, the water is not tired of deep, Zhou Gong spits and feeds, and the world returns to the heart.
As I transcribe these familiar sentences, I can't help but marvel at the calm atmosphere of them. A person can disguise and disguise his own motivation for behavior, but he cannot hide and disguise his own life style. These poems convey a powerful life caught in the chaos of the world and with a heart in the vastness of time and space, so powerful that no life that is not strong enough can be imitated.
These poems also show that Cao Cao worked very hard to be a military giant and a political giant, but did not work too hard to become a cultural giant.
However, this is not an accidental gain. Unlike Zhuge Liang, who drafted military documents, Cao Cao wrote poetry as if it were real poetry. Unlike the politicians who have always liked to write poetry, he did not have the slightest suspicion of being subservient and elegant. That is to say, he has full literary self-consciousness.
What he expresses is a grand statement, which is easy to be empty, but he dissolves into a strong personality. This ability to combine grand discourse and personality characteristics to brew a strong atmosphere comes from literary self-consciousness. In addition, in poems such as "But East and West Doors", "Bitter Cold Line", and "Artemisia Line", he frequently uses symbolic techniques, and even experiences displacement with ancient soldiers and contemporary soldiers, further proving his professional standards in literature.
Cao Cao's poems, clean and simple, simple and concise, are just the opposite of the extravagant shop Chen that I have always been bored with, which makes me even more fascinated. If the pattern of human life is large, it will not sink on trivial makeup. Truly confident people can always be simple and powerful.
03
What is even more muzzling about the cultural confrontation of the Three Kingdoms is that two of Cao Cao's large number of sons are very outstanding. The three fathers and sons came together, taking up more than half of the Chinese culture at that time, which can really be described as "three points of the moon in the world, and two points in the Cao family." ”
The Cao family on the edge of the jungle is really a good life!
I can't remember which famous and prestigious family could catch up with the Cao family in the high-hanging area of history, as long and stable as the Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, and Song Dynasty. Some people think that it is almost over, and if you look at it from a distance, it is still completely incomparable.
Why can such an unprecedented Cao family only be formed in a chaotic world instead of a prosperous world?
I have not yet found a definitive answer to this question, so let me think about it later.
Before we understand, we may as well push the door in and go to Cao's house to have a look.
Older brother Cao Pi, younger brother Cao Zhi, the brothers have an awkward relationship. There is a legend that everyone knows, which is not very beneficial to Cao Pi. It is said that after Cao Cao's death, Cao Pi succeeded to the throne, and he thought of Fa'er persecuting his younger brother Cao Zhi, and once forced his brother to write a poem within seven steps, otherwise he would be executed. Cao Zhi immediately chanted four sentences:
Boiled beans burn beans, beans cry in the kettle.
Originally born from the same root, why is it too urgent to fry each other?
The authenticity of this legend cannot be verified. I remember that Liu Yiqing's "The New Language of the World" has been recorded, but the verses are somewhat different. My judgment is that the legendary Cao Pi's actions that day were too brutal and childish, not quite like the behavior of a smart man who wanted face; but the metaphors of these four poems are quite appropriate, and it is likely that they were indeed from Cao Zhi's mouth, but the legends have fictionalized a face-to-face discourse situation.
Chinese can't withstand the impact of legends. If the legend is dramatic and irritating, it will become a kind of love and hatred for eternity. However, the more dramatic and exciting it is, the farther away most of them are from the truth, so many ancient loves and hatreds are always suspicious, and it is really scary to think about.
The legendary Cao Cao was against the ethics of the imperial court, and the legendary Cao Pi was against family ethics. The mainstream thinking of ancient China was nothing more than the ethics of the imperial court plus the ethics of the family, and as a result, it was all subverted by the Cao family. Father and son have become the negative typical of mainstream thinking.
In history, Cao Pi ascended to the throne, and Cao Zhi was frustrated all his life, but this was talking about politics. If you look at it from a cultural point of view, their height should be exchanged, that is, Cao Zhi's status is much higher than That of Cao Pi.
It should be said that Cao Pi was also an outstanding literary scholar. I think roughly at the moment and can say three reasons. First, he wrote many good poems with folk song overtones, half of which were Lefu lyrics, and he pioneered the complete form of seven-character poems; second, he wrote the literary theory work "Classic Treatise", which for the first time discussed the meaning, genre, style, and temperament of literature in a macroscopic way; third, he was an enthusiastic literary leader, surrounded by many literati of the time, and formed a literary group.
Cao Pi's works were also very readable, especially like the two "Yan Song Xing". But he was unfortunately surrounded by a contrast, with a father on the top and a brother on the bottom. One than that, than down.
His younger brother Cao Zhi was frustrated by the officialdom, but it gave him another bleak and desolate poetic temperament. His poems, in the early stage, revealed the heroism, elegance and emptiness of the noble prince, and in the later period, under the close supervision of Cao Pi's father and son, life became more and more difficult, and the illusion of pure beauty and despair of life appeared in his pen, and the poetry was greatly advanced. The representative works should be "Roselle Endowment" and "Gift to the White Horse Wang Biao". His style, Zhong Rong summed up in "Poetry" as "extremely high bones, words and luxuriant words", is roughly appropriate, and slightly overdone. In my opinion, Cao Zhi's problem may lie precisely in the "words are gorgeous". Fortunately, he loves folk songs and still preserves a lot of simplicity. When commenting on this evaluation of the "Poetry", the later Huang Kan felt that Cao Zhi still had the side of "not departing from the quality of Lu Li's songs", which was a necessary supplement.
How should the literary achievements of the father and son be ranked?
First of all, we must grievance Cao Pi, ranking third. It didn't matter, he was the third in the family, but among the chinese emperors, he could rank second, and the first was given to Li Yu, who was more than seven hundred years later than him.
So, how should the first and second in the family be arranged? Most literary historians would rank Cao Zhi first, while I would think of cao cao. Cao Zhi certainly constructed a beautiful spiritual garden, and Cao Cao's poems are cast iron on the reef.
04
Father and son, the three people, the power of the disparity, the ecology is different, the personality is different, but when they encounter literature, they all invariably feel that the world is dangerous and the life is impermanent.
This is the common language of the family on the edge of the jungle.
Or rather, it was the common language of all the wise men of that era, but it was most deeply felt and solemnly expressed by the three of them.
Logically, the one who lacked this kind of understanding among the three was Cao Pi, but this was not the case in reality. For example, when he was thirty years old, he was made crown prince, which should be the most proud of the spring breeze, but in this year, the plague epidemic in the Central Plains, it turned out that Cao Pi's literary close friends "Seven Sons of Jian'an" only four sons, namely Xu Gan, Chen Lin, Ying NFDA4, Liu Zhen, all died in that disaster, which made Cao Pi extremely sad. In a letter to another friend, Wu Qian, he recalled the lively scene of the literary community activities in that year, feeling that those young talents were happy and unaware, and were sure that they could live a long life. But in just a few years, all of them withered and died, their names entered the ghost record, and their bodies turned into dung. From this, Cao Pi thought that although these deceased friends were not as good as the ancients, they were all outstanding, and the living could not catch up with them, and as for the younger generation, it was frightening and not to be taken lightly, but we probably had no chance to interact with them. Think about yourself, the quality is only like a dog and sheep, but the appearance is like a tiger and leopard, there are no stars around, but it is blinded by the false light of the sun and the moon, and every move has become the object of people's observation. When will this scenario change?
This private correspondence has become a good essay because it is written realistically.
From this letter, it can be seen that this prince who is sought after by thousands of people is also sober and sad in his heart.
People who are sad in their hearts do not have too many moral obstacles when entering and leaving the position of power. In this regard, Cao Pi and his father Cao Cao had something in common, but they were much smaller in temperament.
As for Cao Zhi, a kind of powerless sadness ran through the second half of his life, and he almost doubted the essence of life. The Mandate of Heaven is suspicious, the gods are suspicious, the time is suspicious, everything is suspicious. Read his poem to his half-brother Cao Biao.
These feelings of the Cao family are most concentrated in the final destination of their lives, the tomb.
Cao Cao, who regarded life as "chaolu", could make a vigorous and vigorous life for a limited life, but he would not pile up gold and silver treasures in the tomb after death to enjoy the vain eternity. As a strong man of life, he rejects the luxury of boredom after the end of his life. He even felt that those overly extravagant tombs were frequently stolen, and they really deserved it.
In the years of military service, many large and small military teams would supplement their salaries by digging up the graves of the rich on the spot. It is said that Cao Cao also ordered the sergeant to do such a thing, and even set up an official position in the army to develop the tomb hill, called "General of the Fa Qiu Zhonglang". The name, a bit humorous.
Cao Cao despised thick burials and feared that his tomb would be stolen, so he vigorously advocated thin burials. When he died, his will was "to serve in time and not to hide gold and silver treasures." The so-called "time clothes" are the clothes that are usually worn.
His will was like this, but would his successor still be buried out of a mournful reverence? It depends on Cao Pi.' He is the successor, and it is up to him to decide everything.
We don't know how Cao Pi did it at that time, but from his own will when he died seven years later, it can be inferred that seven years ago it was impossible to go against Cao Cao's wishes for a thin burial.
Cao Pi's will is very specific about the principles and methods of thin burial. He said that if you are buried in the mountains and forests, you should be in harmony with the mountains and forests, so you should not build a sleeping hall, a garden, or a Shinto. He said that burial is hiding, that is, people can't see it, and even future generations can't find it, which is good. He said, "Since ancient times and today, there has been no immortal country, and there are no tombs that have been excavated", especially thick burials will lead to tomb robberies, resulting in a wilderness of violent corpses, and only thin burials can make the ancestors quiet a little. Finally, he made the heaviest curse to prevent future generations from changing their wills, saying, "If you violate this edict and change your mind in vain, I will be killed underground, kill and kill, and die and die again." It's really heartfelt, and there is no room for promises.
Well, I'm sure that the Cao father and son are indeed buried thinly.
Because they firmly believed that burial was Hidden, and that they wanted to hide it so that the present and future generations did not know where it was, over time, the legend of "Cao Cao's Seventy-Two Doubtful Tombs" was born.
Probably from the Song Dynasty, it is said that Cao Cao built seventy-two tombs in the Zhanghe area in order to prevent others from stealing the tombs, and only one of them is true. Later, there were rumors that someone had found it, whether it was a fisherman or a farmer, as if they had found the real one, and it seemed that it was outside the seventy-two tombs...
So at that time, some literati wrote poems to ridicule Cao Cao:
Before he was born, he deceived the heavens and destroyed the Han Dynasty, and after his death, he deceived people to set up doubts,
Life is a rest with wisdom and death, why spare time to go to the hills?
I don't doubt what people say, I have a dharma that I don't know.
Straight whiskers are full of doubts about the seventy-two tombs, and there will be one tomb to hide the corpse of the king.
As soon as the poem came out, some people immediately praised it as "the axe of poetry". In today's terms, it is to use poetry as a weapon to stab Cao Cao nine hundred years ago.
This is the Chinese literati I dislike very much. According to one rumor, he immediately said "I have no doubts", and at the beginning it rose to a political verdict, asserting that Cao Cao's crime was the exoneration of "Han unification". According to our previous analysis, Cao Cao's poems alone are enough to show that he is a qualified successor to Han culture, and what they call "Han unification" probably refers to the imperial bloodline of the Han Dynasty. If so, then, what dynasty and what system did the Han Dynasty itself extinct? What about before? And then what? Born nine hundred years later than Cao Cao and experiencing the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Sui and Tang Dynasties, but still pursuing the blood of the Han Dynasty, such a literati is really infuriating.
What is even more infuriating is that this poet somehow suddenly inflated himself, and actually spoke to Cao Cao in the first person, saying that he had come up with a trick to completely destroy Cao Cao's suspicious tomb plot, that is, to dig up all seventy-two tombs.
I don't know how the reader feels when he hears this trick of his, but I think he is really like many Chinese literati, who regard stupidity as wisdom and are not afraid of other people's teeth. With such intelligence and such writing, did he dare to have a dialogue with Cao Cao?
I think that even if such a low-intelligence group is removed, the Cao family will not be able to find an interlocutor in most cases. There had been some before, but they all died in that plague. Therefore, they can only disappear into the depths of the earth.
Yes, the burial is hidden, wearing the usual clothes to melt into the mountains and forests, there is no inscription, no utensils, no cemetery, so that everyone can no longer find.
If not, how can you find it?