The best biography of a writer is written from his work. Years after Tang's death, his most successful play, Peony Pavilion, continued to be staged, when the study of intellectuals and the desk of the deep girl of yahao literature and art could be found everywhere in various versions of the play, and its popularity was as popular as the "Young Werther Fever" of the late eighteenth century in Europe. A female poet in Huizhou named Cheng Qiong once said that when her daughter's family gets together to be a female red, she will bring a book to make a new kind of clip bag, and after cutting the sample, she can be entertained, for a period of time, her girlfriends brought all the "Peony Pavilion".
For the loveless women, reading has become a religious act, and they throw themselves into the vain world of love with a kind of lamp moth-like determination, like a sacrifice, declaring their rebellion against the repressed life. The following story shows that this over-engaged reading is often fatal.
The young girl Chen Tong, a native of Huangshan, Anhui, was given to Wu Wushan, a native of Hangzhou, as his wife. She is a fan of the play, often immersed in the "Peony Pavilion" can not extricate herself, she got a well-bound copy of the "Peony Pavilion" from her sister-in-law, often wrote notes on it, Chen Tong's mother saw that she was sick and stayed up late to read, out of concern for her health, simply confiscated all her books and burned them. But that didn't stop Chen from losing weight day by day. Finally, she died shortly before the wedding. Her husband, who had never met her before, heard the bad news and was so sad that he dreamed of her for three consecutive nights and wrote a poem "Lingfei Fu" in her memory. Later, Chen Tong's nursing mother came to meet him and told him that Chen Tong's description before he was alive was very similar to what Wu Wushan had dreamed. Chen Tong's nursing mother also brought the first volume of the Peony Pavilion, which was pressed under the pillow and not burned (she used to embose the sample and concealed it from the eyes of the housewife), which was stained with tears and dense annotations written by Chen Tong before he died. The old woman sold the half-volume book that had escaped the fire to her unfortunate husband for one or two pieces of silver, along with a pair of shoes as souvenirs, which Chen Tong had made for his future aunt when he was in his boudoir.
Wu Wushan was also a fan of the play, although he did not win the meritorious name, but also a small famous figure in the literary and art circles of Hangzhou, with the famous writers wang Shizhen and Chen Weisong at that time, and the poet Mao Xianshu was a neighbor, and it is said that he also commented on the playwright Hong Sheng's "Hall of Eternal Life". His alcohol intake is very good, but he is easily drunk, and when he is drunk, he scolds the streets in the city, and it is not strange that people see more. He was very fond of the small annotations that Chen Tong wrote on the page of "Peony Pavilion", and although these annotations had been altered in many places, it could still be seen that the author's talent was soaring, especially those words full of Zen epiphany that made him admire the literary talent of his deceased wife. He commented on Chen Tong's fragmentary words as "also obsessive and delusional, also illusory and Zen", and has a deep understanding of the people in the play. He was very sorry for the second volume of the book, which had disappeared in the fire.
In 1672, Wu Wushan married a second wife, this person named Tan Ze, Zi Shouzhong, a native of Qingxi, Hangzhou, was also a talented woman and a fan of books, and the side of the mirror was often piled with books. After Tan Ze married into her husband's family, she found the comments written by her predecessor on the page of the book, loved them, and almost memorized them all. She wanted to imitate Chen Tong and continue to write the comments, but she was bitter that she could not find the base used by Chen Tong, so she was always unhappy. Later, Wu Wushan traveled to The Dragon Creek, bought the same version from a Wuxing bookseller, and returned home to give it to his wife in a hurry. Tan ze was overjoyed to get this book, she never drank alcohol, she even drank eight or nine porcelain cups at lunch, and slept until the next day when the sunshine hook did not wake up. Many days later her husband teased her about it.
Imitating Chen Tong's brushstrokes, Tan Ze wrote a comment on the next volume of "Peony Pavilion". It was as if Chen Tong's soul had entered her body, and what she had written was almost the same as what Chen Tong had written. She copied all of their comments on the book her husband had brought from Amaranth Creek. Tan had lent the book to one of her nieces, but she herself did not want to come to the front desk, falsely claiming that the comments were made by her husband. Soon, The literary and art circles in Hangzhou were talking about Wu Wushan's comments on "Peony Pavilion". When Wu Wushan went to Beijing, he visited his old friend Hong Sheng and discussed "Peony Pavilion" with his two wives from the perspective of commenting on dreams and feelings, and the leap in his realm surprised Hong Sheng greatly.
In the third year after marriage, the frail and sickly Tan also unfortunately died early. Out of guilt for the first two wives, Wu Wushan did not remarry for more than ten years. After he was over forty years old, he remarried a woman named Qian Yi (zi in the middle) in Gudang, Hangzhou. Unlike his first two wives, who were full of talent, this Qian Yi was not from a scholarly family, almost uneducated, illiterate, and a chaotic appearance. Wu Wushan asked her sister-in-law Li Shu, who was able to write and paint, to teach her to read and write, and soon Qian Yi was able to read through the Peony Pavilion and the commentaries written by the two "sisters", needless to say, how pleasing it was to her. For Wu Wushan, since his first wife, Chen Tong, died before he passed the door, he has been subconsciously looking for a woman who is cool to his wife, hoping to find his original love in her. Usually for a man, the rediscovered woman is like an object, preserving and awakening the ghost of the original lover, satisfying the man's fascination with the deceased body. But Wu Wushan had never met Chen Tong after all (he dreamed of her being another matter), and he could not find this woman by appearance, but fortunately, with a wisp of incense in "Peony Pavilion", he quickly found a second wife, Tan Ze. Now he asked the female relative Li Shu to teach Qian Yi to read and write, and tried his best to shape her according to the appearance of the two ex-wives, and subconsciously hoped to see the resurrection of the two dead wives in this young woman.
Qian Yi was unusually intelligent, and in three years he read literary classics such as "Gule Yuan" and "Poetry of the Six Dynasties of Han and Wei", and had his own unique insights at the time. One day, Qian Yi opened the box and read the commentary written by the first two women, which also resonated. In her opinion, the young lady, the beauty, the sister casually screaming lover Liu Mengmeicheng can be described as the world's first lovely man, and Qian Yi, who is involved in wenmo, has also begun to try to write annotations to "Peony Pavilion". But unlike Tan, she did not imitate either of the two "sisters", but wrote some intuitive words by her own heart, and in order to show the difference with them, she also deliberately marked her name under the text she commented.
She commented on "Label", "Frightening Dream", "Round Driving" and so on, all of which are fresh and gratifying, and sometimes there is a flash of inspiration:
Qian Yue: Liu changed his name because of his dream, and Du Yin felt sick from his dream, all of which took dreams as true. Only when you think it is true, it is true. For example, the Zheng people cover the deer with bananas, this dream also, and the song is sung along the way, and the Chinese people think it is true, and they get the deer between the bananas. (Title Review)
Qian Yue: "Peony Pavilion", the Book of Love also. The beauty of the four hours is in the spring, and the spring is not before the plum and willow, so the meaning of the willow dream plum and the dream of Du is also the meaning. The title is "Peony Pavilion", which is taken from its temple Chunye, so how to take advantage of Yun Chungui to reflect it. The feeling of the time after this paragraph is written, which leads to a dream of beautiful love and returns, is the most vigilant and obsessive. ("Amazing Dreams" review)
Qian Yue: Children and daughters are long-lasting, and people are easy to drown; there must be no two resurrections from the dead. There is no shortage of lovers in the world, reversing karma, wandering life and death, for this thought, can not be born, please be brave and repent. (Round Drive Review)
It is precisely because of this reading behavior of her not to talk to the undead, but to talk directly with herself, so that she avoided the bad luck of the early death of her two "sisters" and survived by chance.
The volume of "Peony Pavilion" that was handed down from Chen Tong's hand to Qian Yi was full of time, the bamboo paper was obliquely cracked, and it was still broken, and Qian Yi was very eager for the commentary written by her and the two "sisters" for this book to be officially published, after all, there were too many tears and laughter in it. She believes that this is not only a remembrance of the deceased, but also a regret that she did not meet them, but also a way to make herself a true confidant of them. She said to her husband, my family's "Peony Pavilion", Sister Chen commented on half of it, and Sister Tan continued to write the second half, but outsiders thought that you wrote it, if they knew it underground, how sorry they should be. She said that she was willing to sell the jewelry she married and sponsored the engraving of the manuscript to be printed in the world. Her husband seemed to be moved.
At the beginning of 1694, this collection of female commentaries jointly written by three women was finally published, and indeed, in this well-integrated collection, the upper volume of Chen Tong's commentary and the lower volume of Tan Ze's commentary were already inseparable from each other, and Qian Yi's annotations were difficult to recognize if they were not marked with names, as if the breath and soul of the three people had really become one in this book.
Wu Wushan may have spoiled his women too much. He spent a fortune helping his wives publish the book, but it still attracted fierce criticism. The envious person said with jealousy that a man has married three talented women as wives, which is really too bizarre, and the real author of this book may not be three women, but Wu Wushan's knife and pen. Indeed, there are some unscrupulous booksellers, in order to increase the circulation of books for profit, often piece together fabricated reviews, impersonating the names of famous artists to publish in the world, not long ago exposed "Three Gentlemen Commenting on the West Chamber" fake Names of Tang Xianzu, Xu Wei, and Li Zhen is an example. For these malicious speculations and doubts, Wu Wushan did not want to explain anything, he only said one sentence: doubters doubt themselves, believers are confident. Believe it or not.
There is also a harsh opinion that Wu Wushan's doing this just exposes that he is too stupid, blinded by emotion, and disregards righteousness. This sound mainly comes from some old scholars who eat the ancients. They quoted the ancient classic "Book of Rites" to say that women's voices have never been able to produce "阃", even if your Wu family has such a pleasant rhyme, you can only talk about it from home behind closed doors, not to mention that many of the songs in this play are not suitable for women to talk about, how can they be engraved and circulated?
Soon after the book was published, it was soon the Lantern Festival of this year. That night, Qian Yi, then twenty-two, erected an altar in his garden with a portrait of Du Liniang and a plum blossom in full bloom. Qian Yi lit an incense candle and respectfully offered wine, fruit, and the book of their three women's cooperation. At the same time, she read aloud a tribute to the two "sisters", saying that like them, she was also a "broken intestine" who was hurt by love:
The second sister's tomb is surrounded by trees, and it is not judged that the spring road is acacia, what is the time? If the grass is sad in spring, the poplar is hated in autumn, the world is parted, and there is no past and no present. Zichen wind and rain miserable, the corner of the green calyx plum, yesterday began to flower, can not help but pity. Because of the wine in front of the flowers, calling Chen sister and talking about the soul of the sister, can also recognize Meibian Qian, is the same person who broke the intestine?
When Qian Yiyi was doing this at a glance, her husband said with a reproachful tone, "You are too stupid, how can you take the fictional characters so seriously?" Qian Yi said that if there is no life, natural things can also be endowed with divine power, then fictional characters should also have this power, whether there is a beautiful lady in this world, and can you and I determine? Wu Wushan still wanted to rap, but when he saw her tears rolling down her cheeks, it seemed to arouse endless thoughts. Seeing her like this, Wu Wushan stopped speaking and let her do it.
A few years later, through the introduction of an old friend named Wang Huan, Wu Wushan met Zhang Chao, the author of "Shadow of Dreams" and a famous essay writer. Zhang Chao was touched by the book co-authored by the three women and included it in a series of books he had compiled. In his reply letter to Wu Wushan, he expressed great envy for three such talented women who had married a husband one after another, saying that Brother Wu you are really a person with eyesight and who knows how to love women, because since ancient times, there have been few people who pity talents and many people who are jealous. At the end of the letter, he offered to give away his own writings, and stated that a separate copy was for money, because it was a woman worthy of his respect:
There are several kinds of small carvings, one to please be generous and generous, and one to present The makeup of The Lady of honor. Can Mr. Non-Trial not be guilty of his abruptness?
In his reply, Wu Wushan thanked Zhang Chao for the gift, saying that the small book engraved by the family was not enough to be viewed, and thanks to Mr. Mister's false praise, he received the great work of the gift, "reciting with Han Jing, it is particularly beneficial and shameful."
Zhang Chao replied:
Mr. Anderson and Mrs. Zun gave it a look, which was enough for the life of the lower riba, and it was fortunate to be like this.
This article is excerpted from Nanhualu: A History of the Lives of Southern Scholars in the Late Ming Dynasty, by Zhao Baitian, Peking University Press