"Qingfeng can't read, why should he turn the book?"
Under the prison of the Qing Dynasty's writing, everyone was in danger. So how can publishing and editing work under such intense pressure "self-censorship" avoid lawsuits? We will explore the phenomenon of self-inhibition of publishers from a series of processes such as book manuscript arrangement, printing, distribution, shoveling, etc. during the Qing Dynasty's literary prison period.
- the self-report of the publish -
"Survival Consciousness" I: Self-examination of publishers and engravers
Under the prison of words, publishers are a group of people under a lot of pressure. First, avoiding which books not to publish is a big consideration. If you carefully examine the publishing history of the Qing Dynasty, you can find that some books have been broken for a long time and have not been "reproduced", such as Wen Tianxiang's collections, from Yongzheng to Daoguang, which have not been published for more than one hundred and twenty years.
Publishers also try to confuse people in various ways when publishing books that they think or are likely to go wrong. For example, when engraving a book, the age of the engraving and the person who carved the book are not indicated, and the engraver does not leave a name, or the author does not sign the real name, but signs some strange aliases and aliases.
There are also some bookstore owners who advertise "Kyomoto" when they publish novels to indicate that this is from Kyoshi. Some are marked with the words "Honya Hidden Plate", which makes people mistakenly think that it is a book engraved in a government office. Some are used to improve their identity, but some may be to avoid trouble.
Editors, like the authors, must secretly check themselves under intense pressure, from choosing content to arranging order, to the abundance of narrative, complex psychological activities can be seen.
- literature has been left -
"Survival consciousness" two: literature is left behind or omitted
Jiang Fan's "Records of the Sinologists of the State Dynasty" places Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi in the "supplement" at the end of the book, and this arrangement is closely related to their early anti-Qing background. In a book on the academic development of the Qing Dynasty, Gu and Huang's academic status in the early Qing Dynasty and the relationship with the development of Qing Studies cannot be omitted, and the person who compiled the book must not only include them, but also indicate that he has noticed their background of not being in the Qing Dynasty, so they are placed at the end of the volume.
Qu Dajun was an extremely active literati in the Lingnan region in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, when there were "three great people in Lingnan": Qu Dajun, Chen Gongyin, and Liang Peilan, and Dajun was the leader of the whole line. On the achievements of poetry, Liang Peilan cannot be compared with Qu Dajun and Chen Gongyin. The actions of Ke Qu and Liang against the Qing Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty made Wang Falcon compile the Selected Poems of the Three Great Poets of Lingnan, with Liang Peilan at the head and Qu Dadu at the end.
During the Jiaqing period, Qu Dajun had already become the target of public criticism because of the involvement of the Yongzheng and Qianlong Dynasties' writing cases. Shunde Luo Xuepeng's compilation of "Guangwen" lists Wang Bangqi, Cheng Keze, Liang Peilan, Chen Gongyin, Fang Dianyuan, and Fang's two sons, Fang Chao, and Fang Zhao, who are also the seven sons of Lingnan in the early Qing Dynasty, and deliberately omit Qu Dajun. This omission is very intentional, Wang Falcon compiled the book in the early Qing Dynasty, when Qu Dajun was killed by the palace because of his participation in the anti-Qing.
- change with political climate -
"Survival consciousness" three: change the content as the political climate changes
Because of the increasing tension of the political climate, there are many cases of digging and shoveling before printing, so that there are often examples of shoveling and digging beyond recognition and meaning.
In "From the Case of Zeng Jing to the Social Mentality of the Early Eighteenth Century", the book "The First Draft of Xiaoshan Poems" by Wang Shixiang of Taicang, Jiangsu Province, was cited as an example. The book should be edited on demand, so the whole process of publishing has dragged on for many years, with the first being issued and the latter still being engraved.
When this book was carved, the "Records of the Mysteries of the Great Righteousness Consciousness" had been promulgated to be recited by the disciples of the world, and the author had a poem entitled "Reading the Mysteries of the Great Righteousness", but when it had not yet been completely engraved, Qianlong took the throne and ordered the banning of the "Records of the Mysteries of Consciousness", so the poems that were originally intended to praise Yongzheng were now taboo, and the main text was hastily deleted, but the catalog had already been engraved and could not be changed, so the phenomenon of being blind and unwritten was formed.
In the Zeng Jing case, Lü Liuliang was killed in a coffin, which made all the people in the world feel particularly nervous about the three characters of "Lü Liuliang" in the writings of the whole world, and Lu Longqi's descendants belonged to one of them. Lü Liuliang was an important leader in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas of the early Qing Dynasty, who turned to advocating Zhu Zixue in the air where Wang Xue was prevalent, and firmly supported the propagation of Cheng Zhu's theory.
Lü Liuliang was the most crucial person in the development of Lu Long's thought, but this level of relationship could not be seen when reading the "Lu Pinghu Anthology" or the "Lu Longqi Chronicle" compiled by his descendants. Lü Liuliang was implicated in Zeng Jing's case, and Lu's descendants quickly changed the chronology. The anthology is either vague or replaces Lü Liuliang's name with a space, and those who are not really familiar with the actual situation of Lu's ideological negotiations cannot know why.
- burn and secret to collect -
"Survival consciousness" four: the burning of published books, the secret is not revealed
Since the Ming Dynasty, a book with multiple orders has been popular, and it is often repeated, and this habit of flaunting often presents a person's dating circle clearly. In the late Ming Dynasty, this habit of flaunting was not dangerous, but under the political pressure of the Qing Dynasty, it became the basis for melon copying.
The Yongzheng Emperor once used some minor questions in Wang Jingqi's "Essays on the Western Expedition of the Reading Hall" as an excuse to kill Wang Jingqi, and although the "Essays on the Western Expedition of the Reading Hall" was a small work with no sizable value, he invited Zhu Yizun, Xia, and seven or eight other people to write the preface. However, according to observation, none of the prefaces have survived in the prefacer's own anthology, only Zhu Yizun's "Collection of Exposed Books" volume 20, and five poems sung in harmony with Wang's West Lake.
After the book has been published, there are also many examples of urgently retracting, modifying, or keeping the book secret when the air is not right. Some books, after a few moments of printing, waited for a long time for economic or other reasons to be printed, but while waiting, they changed dynasties.
In the forty-second year of Qianlong (1777), when the air in the literal prison was greatly strained, Lu Shihua of Taicang suddenly remembered that there was a defamatory sentence denouncing Manchuria in his "Records of Calligraphy and Paintings Seen by Wu Yue", and quickly burned the remaining plates and tried his best to recover the books issued and burn them. It can be seen that "there are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom", and sometimes "there are countermeasures at the bottom" is to help the government expand its prohibition power.