Liaozhai Zhiyi ("Liaozhai Zhiyi" ("Liaozhai", commonly known as "Ghost Fox Biography") is a collection of short stories created by the Chinese Qing Dynasty novelist Pu Songling, and the earliest manuscripts have been circulated during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty. There are 491 short stories in the book, which either expose the darkness of feudal rule, or attack the decay of the imperial examination system, or resist the shackles of feudal etiquette, and have rich and profound ideological content. The largest number of works depicting the theme of love in the whole book show a strong anti-feudal spirit. Some of these works, through the charm of the flower demon fox and the love of people, express the author's ideal love.
Pu Songling is a master of portraying characters, and he uses the romantic technique of combining fiction and reality to create many memorable ghost and fox demon images for literary galleries. There is no ghost god fox fairy in the world, which is well known, and those distinctive ghost fox images in "Liaozhai Zhiyi" are the literary images that the author absorbs the essence of folklore and exerts his imagination to invent. Therefore, the images of ghost foxes that shuttle through the corridors of literary characters and bustle are not whimsically conceived by the author, but the product of the combination of the author's imagination and reality, which is a distinct reality.
For example, the greedy and treacherous third-level meditative official in "Xi Fangping", the rich and gentle Pi surname Fox Weng in the "Fengxian" chapter, the ghost of Ye Sheng who borrowed someone else's "Fuze" in the "Ye Sheng" section to "exhale for the article, so that the world knows that half of his life has fallen, not a war crime", the Dengzhou Song surname in the "Si Wen Lang" chapter who repeatedly failed to succeed in his birth and "tried his best to attack his mountain" on other readers after his death, although they are foxes as ghosts, they can find the blueprint of their personality in real life.
Pu Songling's worldview is very complex, so the ideal character he has created has different practical significance. Most are positive and progressive, while others have obvious limitations. In terms of their positive, progressive idealistic personality, one of their outstanding characteristics is "truth."
The author once lamented that "the flowers meet each other, the world is like a ghost, the scab addiction is the same in the world" ("Luochahai City"), this reality has aroused the author's yearning for innocent human nature, prompting him to create many ghost fox images that "return to the truth and return to simplicity".
Xiao Cui ("Xiao Cui") jumps and teases arbitrarily, Baby Ning ("Baby Ning") always laughs like flowers blooming, Miao Sheng is so bold and frank in his interactions with people, and he sings when his son gets married: "I have a good child, I don't envy noble officials, I have a good wife, I don't envy Qi Ling", it is so open-minded and elegant... Many of these images have the characteristics of bodybuilding innocence, which is in stark contrast to the pathological images of the world such as fame and fortune, scrooge, miserly ghosts, frivolous children, and fraudsters created in "Liaozhai".
Xiao Cui
Another prominent feature of these ghost fox images is "goodness". In real life, many officials are fierce and cruel, local tycoons and inferior gentry are arrogant and abusive, and even between fathers and sons, brothers, couples, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, and grasshoppers in many families, they are also deceitful and cruel to each other.
While profoundly reflecting this realistic relationship, the author also gives the characteristics of "goodness" to many ghost fox images.
Hongyu ("Hongyu") took the initiative to help the poor soldier Feng Xiangru, who was destroyed by the bully Song Yushi, Shunhua ("Zhang Hongyi") helped him return to his hometown to reunite with his family when Zhang Hong gradually denounced the persecution of the county order, Zhang was arrested and helped him escape, Feng Sanniang ("Feng Sanniang") enthusiastically and actively helped Fan Eleven Niang choose a son-in-law, and also used the spell to make Fan Eleven Niang resurrected after death to help - a pair of lovers married, and Ping Ping not only healed the wounds of Luo Zifu, who was lured by bandits to do a narrow evil tour when he was a teenager. And it also skillfully guards its weakness and cultivates its healthy thoughts and feelings... These ghost foxes, who are kind to people and have good hearts, bring warmth and light to the human world, and also form a sharp contrast with the cold reality relationship.
These ghost fox images are innocent and kind, but when they conflict with reality, they often burst out the spark of resistance spirit.
The crow head ("crow head") pursues sincere love, does not want to be the mother's "money tree", and flees with her lover to a hundred miles away, when her sister is ordered by her mother to find her and scold her, she retorts sternly: "What is the crime of the one who is from the one?" Yun Cuixian ("Yun Cuixian") found that Liang Youcai, whom he relied on, wanted to sell himself as a prostitute to pay gambling debts, so he cleverly earned Liang to his mother's house, reprimanded him, and resolutely broke with him, and returned him to the true face of a "poor ghost", Shi Xiaolian's fox woman ("Wu Xiaolian") saved the dying Shi Xiaolian with pills, and later found that Shi was ungrateful and even added up with a knife blade, so he asked back the pills that Shi had swallowed, so that Shi Xiaolian's old disease was repeated and he died at half a year.
This kind of painful resistance to the evil forces is a special manifestation of their "true" and "universal" personalities in adversity, which gives us a glimpse of their "truth" and "goodness" from another angle.
Cloud Cuixian
In feudal society, people's minds are poisoned by the imprisonment of gangchang lichenism, and in complex class relations and social relations, they have to consider all kinds of interests, and the character of "truth" and "goodness" can neither be universally produced nor can it grow perfectly.
The author writes this character so perfectly and numerously, it is obvious that the author's conception is retrograde with reality, and these ghost fox images have a strong ideal color. Pu Songling said in the "Letter to the Brothers and Nephews": "It is clever to multiply the intention, it is strange to turn the pen in the air, and it is dangerous to reverse the vibration." The shaping of these ghost fox images reflects the creative principles of "flipping" and "reversing vibration".
Any artistic image can only have a sense of reality if it is inextricably linked to reality. Although the ghost fox image in "Liaozhai" has more idealism, they are not colored grievances in the air, fake flowers made of paper, they have both the characteristics of retrograde with reality and the side of conforming to reality, and ideality and reality are combined.
An important way to combine ideality and reality in the image of the ghost fox in "Liaozhai" is to collect the seeds of the ideal character from reality, conceive it in the author's ideal, and use the characteristics of the ghost fox to improve and enlarge it, so that the two factors of ideality and reality are mixed together.
Here, the image of the Phoenix Immortal ("FengXian"),which bears the obvious imprint of Pu Songling's thoughts, is slightly illustrated.
Fengxian is the youngest daughter of Fox Weng with the surname Pi, and is married to Liu Chishui, a reader who is "not in the family". His second sister, Narcissus, married Ding Lang, the "son of Dajia". At the family banquet where Weng's son-in-law gathered, Pi Weng loved and hated the rich and the poor, pleasing Ding Lang and neglecting Liu Sheng. Feng Xian was greatly indignant and said to her husband, "Junyi husband, can't you breathe for the bedside person? Inspired by his wife, Liu Chishui "succeeded in one fell swoop" two years later.
The image of Fengxian bears the characteristics of certain women of the small and medium-sized landlord class in real life. In the era in which Pu Songling lived, the tilt within the landlord class was already very fierce, and the small and medium-sized landlords were not only at risk of being annexed economically, but also politically discriminated against by the manchu and Han landlords. Therefore, some of them, who are considered to be knowledgeable and ambitious, fantasize about changing their political and economic status through advancement. The image of Fengxian is the artistic summary of this kind of person, and the reality is very prominent. But the author does not stop at the reality of this image, but elevates it to the ideal state.
Phoenix
Let's look at Feng Xian's actions at the family banquet:
The two sang and danced, and the maid entered the fruit with a gold plate, but they did not know what its name was. Weng Yue: "This was brought from Chenla, and the so-called 'Tian Bora' is also." Before sending several pieces to Ding. Feng Xian was not pleased with it: "Does the son-in-law love and hate rich and poor?" Weng Wei did not say a word. The Eight Immortals said, "Grandpa is a different county than Ding Lang, so he is a guest ear." If you talk about the elderly and the young. Feng Xian was finally unhappy, xiehua makeup, beat the maid with a drum, sang "broken kiln" a fold, and burst into tears. The Eight Immortals said, "Son-in-law Joe is still alive." But he chased after it, and he did not know where he was going.
Here, the kind of "displeasure" and "unhappiness" that Fengxian's father's actions aroused in Fengxian's heart are extremely realistic, but when she vents this feeling in front of her father and family, she is so unscrupulous, unabashed, and obviously impossible for ordinary young girls in feudal society, and the character characteristics of being competitive and competitive, arrogant and innocent and frank, with obvious ideals.
It can be seen that the image of Fengxian is both realistic and ideal, and it is the author who has elevated the backbone personality in reality to the ideal height.
Later, Fengxian gave her husband a mirror that could show her two images of "Qi" and "Laughter" to encourage her husband to read hard, and she herself was lying in a cave to "share the bitterness" with her husband, and through this fantasy plot, fengxian's wisdom and bone qi were magnified, making the ideal color of this image more intense. Pu Songling's position and feelings are closely related to the small and medium-sized landlord class, and in the order of many He people and children with other surnames, he has inspired the readers of small and medium-sized landlords to forge ahead with the yinzi of the Emperor, and Feng Xian's personality has incorporated this ideal of life of Pu Songling.
Although Pu Songling's thinking and the image of Fengxian have obvious limitations, the shaping of this image can make us clearly see how the author unified reality and idealism into the artistic image.
This characteristic is particularly prominent in the image of Baby Ning. Baby Ning is a fox girl raised by a ghost mother, she loves flowers and laughs, like a mountain stream flowing through the bushes of flowers and trees, wherever she goes, she spreads cheerful laughter wherever she goes, she is innocent and frank, like a blooming Orchid, always showing her smile and heart to people.
Baby Ning
In short, her character is characterized by a pure nature that is not subject to feudal etiquette and moral norms and is not tainted by the evil habits of the world. In feudal society, feudal boudoir training required women to "speak solemnly and behave in a dignified manner", and even required "all laughter, high voice", and many women were like grass pressed under a big stone, yellow and thin, losing the color of life. Obviously, this kind of personality of Baby Ning is with a strong idealism.
However, if we carefully observe Bao Ning's smile and smile, line by line, we will find that behind the ideal aperture of this personality, there is another characteristic.
See, her ghost mother said several times that she "taught less lessons" and "taught the sea less", and told her to go to the Wang family to "primary school poetry ceremonies, but also good things Weng Gu." But after she arrived at the Wang family, she did not learn poetry, that is, she knew that I would come to examine (my aunt) and that the girl was exquisite, and she bluntly said in front of the ghost mother that the eldest brother wants me to sleep together, which is really stupid. After marrying the prince, "born with his foolishness, afraid of leaking hidden things in the room, and the woman is secret, and refuses to say a word." Let's look at this passage again:
Overnight, zero nose for life. Different. The woman choked up and said, "I am afraid that I will be frightened by the fact that I am shallow from the sun." Today, Chagu and Lang, both love without dissent, directly or without harm? The mother came to go, entrusted the ghost mother with a concubine, and relied on each other for more than ten years, and there was today. Concubines have no brothers, and only kings are the ones who are ashamed. The old mother Cen Shan' Ah, no one pitied and closed the house, and the Nine Springs were mourned. If the king does not hesitate to bother, so that the underground people will dispel this resentment, and the adopted daughters will not tolerate drowning. ”
These words and deeds of Baby Ning and the thoughts and feelings they express made the innocent and laughing Baby Ning's image faintly print another Baby Ning. This baby Ning is by no means ignorant of etiquette and lacks teachings, but a hard-working, courteous, wise and deeply affectionate person.
Pu Songling said in the "Alien History Of the Clan": "Looking at his diligent laughter, he seems to have no heart at all; and the pranks under the wall are very bad." To the miserable love of the ghost mother, laughing back into crying, my baby would rather be hidden from the laughter. ”
This tells us that Baby Ning is a "hermit" hidden in "laughter", "diligently laughing", as if the heartless liver is only her external characteristics, and behind the curtain of "laughter", Baby Ning has another personality.
The character of this latter baby Ning is exactly what can be met in life, with a distinct brand of reality. The two personalities of Baby Ning contrast with each other, making the characteristics of rationality and reality that they embody more and more distinct, and also increasing the sense of reality of the image as a whole.
A character has two faces, but the ghost fox that is good at change can do it. Baby Ning is not a real person, but a fox girl raised by fox ghosts, so writing Baby Ning makes her have the special authenticity of the image of "fox girl". Later, Baby Ning's innocent and rambunctious personality was not tolerated by reality, and her mother-in-law thought she was "too raw". Then he was almost arrested and taken to the public court, and after a reprimand from his mother-in-law in feudal etiquette, Baby Ning "stopped smiling", and his innocent and innocent ideal personality disappeared.
From the perspective of the whole text, although the work is full of bright colors because it highlights the ideal side of Bao Ning's personality, the ending is a tragedy of character. Pu Songling wrote this sharp contradiction between the ideal character and reality, reflecting how subtle his understanding of reality is, and the realistic side of The Infant Ning's personality finally replaces the ideal side, although it cannot help but make the reader feel regretful, but it conforms to the cold life law of feudal society, and undoubtedly further enhances the reality of the image of Baby Ning. The author's unique artistic ingenuity in "Baby Ning" is really amazing.
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