Old Texts (21)
Ben Yan: Since the mid-1980s, I have successively written hundreds of thousands of words for several ancient novel reference books, which laid an important foundation for me to write the "Compendium of General Bibliographies of Chinese Literary Novels" later. However, most of these entries were written in handwriting on paper, and the original manuscript was handed over to the publisher without a manuscript. Fortunately, now that there are advanced technical measures, it is no longer too difficult to copy the text in the publication into a document. Therefore, I hope that these words will be re-collected, preserved, and made public. It can also be regarded as the loss of the east corner, the harvest of mulberry elm.
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II. Appreciation Dictionary of Classical Chinese Novel Art (all one volume)
Editor-in-Chief: Duan Qiming, Beijing Normal University Press, 1991
Associate Editors-in-Chief: Watson, Tang Zhihui
I am on the editorial board, writing twenty-six articles, and organizing the preparation of some entries.
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Liu Yueshi
(original)
Huan Wen was a man of his own majesty and was a member of Sima Xuan's reign, Liu Yueshi; There are great generals who are more than the king, and the meaning is very uneven. Zheng Fu Qian returned, and yu Yiqiao became an old maid in the north, but she was Liu Yueshi's maid. At the sight of the warmth, I wept. Wen asked why, and replied, "The official family is very similar to Liu Sikong." Wen Da Yue, that is, went out, trimmed his clothes, and entered again, calling out, "Where do I seem to be in the sky?" The maid replied, "The eyes are very similar, and the hatred is small; The face is very similar, hate thin; Sideburns are very similar, hate red; Shape is very similar, hate short; Sound very similar, hate. Xuanwu then untied the crown and slept unconsciously, and the unhappy ones slept for several days.
Excerpted from the 1947 edition of "Ancient Novels Hook Sinking", Lu Xun Complete Works Publishing House
This story is the most splendid of the surviving stories of the Yulin that are not included in the New Language of the World.
In the atmosphere of The Wei and Jin people's appraisal of goods, "fame is destroyed, it is decided by words", and the upper class attaches great importance to the personal evaluation of others. Sima Xuanwang, sima yi, and Liu Yueshi, or Liu Kun, were all highly rated and highly reputable figures at that time. Although Huan Wen was a major minister who held real power during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, he was despised by the scholars because he abused his military power and specialized in imperial politics. Through Huan Wen's self-perception and the serious discord between the outside world's comments, the article portrays Huan Wen's role, which is both ridiculous and pathetic, and profoundly reflects the major impact of the atmosphere of human object evaluation on people's reasoning.
The novel is commendable for its artistic merits: The centimeter is first and foremost a suspenseful setting. The author ultimately wants to deny the character of Huan Wen, but at the beginning it is implicit, using the technique of wanting to capture and indulge, deliberately explaining Huan Wen's own self-feelings in detail. The author understands that the higher this sense of self, the better, and the greater the blow to him later. Writing in this way itself implies a teasing of the temperature of the frame, and at the same time sets the foreshadowing for future suspense. After Liu Yueshi appeared, she immediately took the lead and was anti-guest-oriented, and through her cry and answer, she immediately brought Huan Wen and the reader into an unknown question mark, thus formally explaining the suspense. But the author was still not enough, and through "Wen Dayue, that is, going out, trimming his clothes, and entering, he exhaled: 'Where do I seem to be in the sky?' The suspense that has been tightened is pulled to the extreme. Then, the author let the maid taunt with great pleasure, and the bitter teasing, punctured Huan Wen's dream of urgent expectation, and beautifully ended this suspense.
Secondly, the use of contrast techniques is an important means for the author to achieve the purpose of taunting Huan Wen, and the evaluation of human goods is a matter of high society, but the author prefers a maid of low social status to issue such a worthless evaluation of Huan Wen, a generation of tyrants who are in the limelight and murderous. The disparity in social status between the two has greatly strengthened the depth and intensity of this evaluation. At the same time, the work also portrays Huan Wen's pathetic character well through the contrast between Huan Wen's "Great Joy" before the suspense is solved and "unhappy people for several days" after the suspense is solved
Third, the style of sadness and joy. On the surface, this story is a comedy of lighthearted stealing, but through the curtain of this comedy, you can find its tragic connotations. Originally, the original appraisal of human objects was to commend those outstanding and outstanding personalities of literati. However, in order to get the same evaluation from others, the later scholars adopted the method of Dong Shi To imitate others, and did not hesitate to sacrifice their own personality. This casts a sad overshadowing of their quest for personal fame, and Huan Wen is one such figure. This is the reason why this ridiculous character looks pathetic. As Belinsky said, "A comedy digs deeper into tragedy." (Ning Jiayu)