-(1) the story about stone
Writer Er Yuehe prefaces the Romance Series of Twenty-Five Histories written by Mr. Cai Dongfan, and there is a classic saying: "Good literary works have no class." China's four classical literary works are indeed so. Both the emperor and the people like it, and they have always liked the development of modern high technology. National leaders, entrepreneurs, migrant workers, migrant workers, students and ordinary people still like it. But A Dream of Red Mansions is different from the first three novels. Her main feature is that she is full of holes and difficult to understand, which is one of the most attractive reasons for readers. Now most writers and film and television works like to create suspense. There is no such word in past literary works and creations. Today's "suspense" is developed from the "dream, case and mystery" in the past novels. "Dream" in A Dream of Red Mansions means "mystery". My grandmother's family is Manchu and her family is Han. Most of the Han people in southern Liaoning were "following the flag" during the Manchu rule, that is, the capitulators at that time. Every summer evening, after dinner, the family often gathers under a big tree, and the old man begins to tell stories or children who have broken their dreams. This statement is rarely heard now. "Dream" in A Dream of Red Mansions means "mystery". The title itself is a big mystery. Many readers (it can be said that most readers) have neglected the solution to this big mystery. What makes the author (if the author can live to this day) regret is that people have not paid attention to the evolution relationship between the other four titles he proposed-The Story of the Stone, The Record of Love Monks, The Beautiful Mirror of the Moon, Twelve Women in Jinling and A Dream of Red Mansions.
Why does a book have so many titles? How do they relate to A Dream of Red Mansions? Are these titles worth discussing? I think it is necessary! The charm of A Dream of Red Mansions lies in that all the "mysteries" in his articles are developed and created around the central theme of imperial power politics, which makes it difficult for readers to solve. Riddles, riddles, riddles and stories are mostly anecdotes and secret history of royal courtyards in past dynasties, and Jia's house is the condensation of royal clans in past dynasties. According to the theme of imperial politics, her story cannot be coherent; But they are all displayed and unfolded around the theme. Let's explain one by one according to the title.
(1) the story about the stone
When friends haven't confirmed that the theme of A Dream of Red Mansions is imperial politics, they will certainly be dismissive when they see the other four titles in A Dream of Red Mansions for the first time. How can The Story of the Stone be equated with A Dream of Red Mansions? If The Story of the Stone in the 1980s and A Dream of Red Mansions in the 1980s are basically similar, why are the titles so different? But if we take the politics of imperial power as the theme, we can clearly analyze the practical significance of The Story of the Stone.
A Dream of Red Mansions begins with a fairy story about a stone-the goddess mending the sky. A stone left over from mending the sky, ashamed of his lack of talent, begged a passing monk to turn himself into a jade the size of a fan pendant and bring it to the world of mortals. Thus began a series of stories about Jia Baoyu's birth and Yiyu and his family.
After the story of "this bunch of evil spirits" ended, the psychic Baoyu recovered and returned to the foot of Qingji Peak on the barren hills and cliffs after several generations of robbery. At this point, the handwriting on the stone is clear and vivid. -There is a cloud behind:' No talent can fill the sky, and it is many years to enter the world of mortals; This department is behind us. Who will remember to make a strange biography? " "
This fairy tale leads to the theme of this book in a very subtle way: moreover, this seven-line poem is a riddle. Tell the story first.
Nu Wa is the maker of zenith stone and their mother. In China, before the slave society, the primitive capitalist era, the leaders of all tribes were women. Later, due to the development of productive forces and the change of production relations, matriarchal society gradually changed into paternal society. This man became the leader of the tribe. Starting from Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Qin Shihuang unified the six Central Plains countries, and history pushed the slave society in China to the feudal monarchy society. It is the emperor (mainly men) who rules the country. By the time the Manchu people (Nu Wa was the symbol of Manchu when Huang Taiji was in power) occupied Beijing and unified the Central Plains, the feudal society in China had spanned over 1800 years (2 10 BC-A.D. 1644). In this long time tunnel, the Central Plains sometimes fell apart and sometimes United. Peasant uprising, natural disasters, court coup, frontier conquest, warlord melee, etc. It's all "the sky is falling." The uprising was suppressed, the new dynasty was established, natural disasters disappeared, the coup ended, the battle was won, and the new emperor was crowned. People regarded it as "mending the sky". According to the dialogue between Leng Zixing and Jia Yucun, this is called "robbery and luck".
For the Manchu Dynasty, which just unified the Central Plains, Shunzhi and Emperor Kangxi (in fact, the campaign of Jiangnan West lasted for more than 40 years) were very aware of the benefits of "descending the sky" and "mending the sky". It boils down to the consolidation and construction of imperial power politics. In addition to mastering the political power of one's own generation, it is more important to pass on the political power, that is, "heaven", from generation to generation intact; The country of the Qing Dynasty will always be complete. This is the idea of the emperor in the early Qing Dynasty, and it is also the idea of the founding emperor of Kaiyuan in every dynasty in history. The fifth dialogue between Zhongning Palace and Jinghuan Xiangu in A Dream of Red Mansions illustrates this truth:
"Since the dynasty of Dingding, my family has enjoyed fame, wealth and prestige. It's been a hundred years. It's irreversible. Although we have many children, we have no successor. The only Sun Baoyu is eccentric. Although he is smart and wise, he is likely to succeed, but my family's luck is coming to an end, and I'm afraid no one will lead him in the right direction. - "
In order to make the imperial power be passed down forever, emperors in all previous dynasties ordered their subordinates to sort out and summarize the experience and lessons of the previous dynasty's rule and collapse. Therefore, the feudal dynasty of China has left a history of 25 years of imperial power in this span of 1000 years; Also known as the official history, there is almost no dating. So is the story of the stone a variation of these historical records? Don't! This is probably the imagination and imagination of the author. He can't be carved on Geng Qingfeng's big stone. Think about A Dream of Red Mansions itself. This novel with millions of words is carved on a big stone. What a huge project this is! Some people have the confidence of the foolish old man, and such a huge stone wall is hard to find! I wish I had this huge stone record, so that the study of A Dream of Red Mansions would not be delayed so far. It seems that this is completely a fairy tale.
Then how do we understand the title of the myth "stone"? There are two ways to solve the mystery of this stone. One is the imperial edict; It represents the existence of an emperor, a dynasty and an empire. On the other hand, it is the mausoleum of the emperor; It records the merits of a king, a dynasty and an imperial power. Understanding these two aspects can open our minds.
Because A Dream of Red Mansions is a mystery novel, the imperial seal is not disclosed publicly in the book. Only in episode 109, before she died, Jia Mu gave her grandson Jia Baoyu a Han Yu Zan that had been in her closet for more than 60 years. This is actually a shot of the "son of heaven" taking over. Jia Baoyu in the book is now in a state of mental dullness and madness. Because Lin Daiyu died, her psychic Baoyu was also lost. The psychic Baoyu is the embodiment of the stone in the book; In the category of solving puzzles, it is a metaphor for the seals of emperors in previous dynasties. The imperial seal is the theme riddle of this book, which appears in
In the book A Dream of Red Mansions, there is no direct reference to any emperor's tombstone except that big stone with clear handwriting and vivid compilation (one of which is Yang Di's mausoleum). This made the Taoist monk ask the big stone a question: which generation is the story you recorded? Which emperor is it? Stone's answer is very interesting:
"Why is my teacher so stupid! I think all the dynasties in unofficial history used the names of "Han" and "Tang", which was nothing more than what I recorded on this stone. They don't use this set, they just follow their own things, but they are fresh and unique. -ups and downs, ups and downs in the meantime, all follow the traces, and dare not walk a little until they lose their truth. - "
In fact, this answer also implies that when reading this book, we should not search for specific dynasties and emperors in a limited way. "Jia Jia" is actually a "fake home"; It can also be called "true home" (Zhen Shi). The second mansion of "Rong Ning" is the condensation of many royal families. My writing on the big stone is also combined with many imperial inscriptions. Therefore, the archetypes of historical stories created by the two schools of "Jia Zhen" are real royal stories, but they are not coherent.
No one has seen the original "stone". It is not so much the existence of this book as the fiction of the author; In this way, the story myth will attract readers. It's not so much a former name as a false one. If the author directly tells us that the answer to the whole novel is a stone tablet, it will not be revealed. Like the jade seal, the book does not directly talk about the emperor's mausoleum and inscriptions. But there have been poems, riddles and controversies about graves. The seven wonders we mentioned before:
"No talent can fill the sky, if you enter the world of mortals for many years;
Who will remember to give this department a wonderful biography? "
This is a double-bottom riddle. When the emperor was alive, it was an imperial decree. After the death of the emperor, it can be said to be a mausoleum. Both are stones. There is a poem in the first "Fairy Song", "A pile of grass is gone in the barren grave". Back to the 22nd, Jia Tanchun's riddle:
"When the child is on his back, Qingming makeup is the most appropriate.
Don't blame the east wind for parting when the hairspring is weak. "
A poem and a riddle are combined into a grave and a mausoleum. In the fifty-first riddle and the argument between Mrs. Kim, five ancient tombs appeared successively. The fourth riddle is to borrow Han Xin's grave; The title of the poem is "Huaiyin Nostalgia". The fifth riddle is to borrow the tomb of Emperor Yang Di. The title of the poem is Looking Back in Guangling. The seventh riddle is to borrow Wang Zhaojun's tomb; The title of the poem is Qing Mausoleum Nostalgia. The eighth riddle is to borrow Yang Guifei's grave; The title of the poem is "Ma Wei Nostalgia". In the guessing game, it caused controversy among the ladies and raised the question of the authenticity of the cemetery. Only Yang Guang is the emperor, others are not emperors and queens, but their fame is closely related to imperial politics. Their inscriptions all tell stories about the rise and fall of the royal family and the honor and disgrace of the royal family.
When it comes to stone tablets, it is easy to think of the emergence and development of this thing. Stone tablets are developed from boundary markers and horse piles. Because it is related to the region and mileage, people often plant it on the roadside and in front of their homes. The army and the county government are mostly buried in the border and the county division. This is how milestones are produced. According to Sima Qian's Records of the Historian, after Qin unified the Central Plains, Ying Zheng, the king of Qin, believed that the great cause of Qin's reunification was indispensable in history. So, he called himself "the first emperor" and "I" and ordered craftsmen to carve their merits on a big stone wall to show future generations. But this huge inscription is said to have been destroyed by later rebels and emperors. Only the stone carvings left by him when he meditated on Mount Tai and went to the East China Sea (now Yantai, Shandong Province) to find medicine (also a cruise). The stone carvings in Qin Shihuang period played a certain role in promoting the cultural development of China. Because paper had not been invented at that time, it was quite difficult to unify the characters in a short time after the Seven Kingdoms War subsided. Although the remains of stone carvings in Qin dynasty are few, it seems that this problem cannot be explained; But as you can imagine, although the stone carvings at that time were not as colorful as those in commercial advertisements now, there must be many large stone tablets standing in the open space without stone walls. In the development of history, stone tablets have gradually added two meanings of existence-standardizing words and recording merits.
During the Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to the development of China's calligraphy and the prosperity of Buddhism, stone tablets, stone carvings and Buddha statues developed to a greater extent. There are stone tablets or stone carvings in scenic spots, temples, Taoist temples, yamen and academies. At that time, the stone tablet was not only a symbol of the mausoleum, but also a symbol of cultural development and dissemination. Later, due to the war and the overlapping dynasties, many stone tablets were destroyed by soldiers. Generation after generation, generation after generation, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, except for some tombstones in the protected imperial cemetery, most of them were hard to find. Since ancient times, if these stone tablets are not destroyed, China must be the largest country in the forest of stone tablets and be recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records. But that will greatly affect our life and development today. This is also the benefit that China people have inherited the development genes of the culture of survival of the fittest since ancient times!
In order to better explain the story of "The Story of the Stone", I visited the tombs of Qin Huang Hanwu and Tang Zongsong Zu on the Internet, but unfortunately I didn't see their tombs. Most emperors built their own tombs when they were alive, but most tombs were erected by later generations. Qin Shihuang began to build his own mausoleum when the Central Plains was not unified. According to the analysis of historians, later generations did not erect a monument to him because they were afraid of grave robbers, so this sub-item was reduced. The mausoleum of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was stolen by Wen Jun, and the website did not mention whether his mausoleum was built or destroyed. There is no monument in Zhaoling of Emperor Taizong. But interestingly, his first lady, the eldest grandson queen, died before him. He erected a monument for his wife and wrote the inscription "The name of the hot spring". Emperor Taizong had three original intentions: one was to mourn his beloved wife; Empress Grandson helped Tang Taizong with many good ideas on some important decisions of governing the country. Second, I want to leave my own running script style handwriting (I want to show off myself). The third is to announce to the world (especially grave robbers) that I am an advocate of thin burial, and my wife and I will not have treasures in our graves in the future. But Zhaoling was stolen, and the third will was broken by grave robbers. "There is no silver here for 320" has become a real joke in the history of literature. Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin's grave is even sadder. It was destroyed and stolen by the nomads from the south. This mound was later restored by the Southern Song Emperor. Except for a few pairs of stone statues standing quietly in the weeds, what we can see is really a scene of "a pile of grass gone"
As we all know, there is a kind of stone tablet that is special: there is not a word before or after the big tablet of Empress Wu Zetian. I don't know if it was her own idea or the topic set by later generations. People all know this unique "tablet without words". There is a saying in Chairman Mao's poem "Niannujiao Kunlun": "Who commented on the crime of the Millennium?" This heroic problem is probably caused by the "no word tablet", right? Similar to the "tablet without words", it is located in the Ming Tombs in Changping County, Beijing. Except for the epitaph of Yongle Emperor Judy, the epitaphs of the other twelve emperors all have their names in front of them, but there are no words behind them.
Speaking of these strange tombs and unmarked imperial tombs, I am asking myself: am I wrong about the story of the stone? Isn't this an opportunity for the opponent? Inscription on the big stone: "Who will remember the biography of Li Qi?" Isn't this the same question? How can I read an article with clear handwriting and vivid narration?
In fact, the title of the Stone itself is a mystery. The decree and epitaph we mentioned earlier are two concrete answers. What we are going to solve is an abstract mystery-the title of the book. As we mentioned earlier, Shi immediately answered a word "chi" in a passage of Taoist Kongkong and a word "chi" and a unique title of twelve women in Jinling. These two words are "stupid". First, on behalf of the author, they advise readers not to be too stupid; One is to say that the author is "dreaming" from the standpoint of the reader. No matter who is crazy (in fact, we readers are crazy), the mystery book has been out for nearly 300 years and we haven't solved it yet. ), I think the author has been reminding us that reading and studying, like doing things, should not be too rigid and dogmatic, but flexible. In order to explain this problem, the author provides us with a dialogue at the end of the book A Dream of Red Mansions, which is also an important condition for solving puzzles. Let's read it more carefully.
"Empty monk firmly remember this sentence, also don't know how many times. Sure enough, there is the Hongxuan Memorial Hall, where I saw Mr. Cao Xueqin reading ancient history (friends should pay attention to this' ancient history'). The ethereal Taoist showed this "stone" what Jia Yucun said. Mr. Xueqin smiled and said, "This is really what Jia Yucun said!" -"Say you are empty, so your stomach is empty. It is a "fake village dialect", but there is no contradiction between Lu Yu and absurdity. I am happy with Comrade Eelsen. I have enough to eat and drink. In the rain under the window, I feel lonely together, and I don't have to pass it on from generation to generation. You're asking questions like this, you're carving a boat for a sword, and rubber columns are playing drums. Hearing this, the empty Taoist laughed, dropped the manuscript and drifted away. As he walked, he said, "What a perfunctory and absurd thing! Not only the author, the copywriter and the reader don't know. However, the game pen and ink, Tao Qing is just right! "Later generations saw this legend and wrote four poems to make the author's words of origin more interesting:
When it comes to suffering, the more ridiculous it is, the more pathetic it is. From the same dream, don't laugh at the world "
This paragraph should pay attention to the ancient history read by Cao Xueqin and the codex thrown by the empty Taoist priest Everything they come into contact with is books. At the beginning of this article, we have already mentioned the Twenty-Five History of China (the last one is the Draft of Qing History, written by Zhao Erxun and others after the Revolution of 1911). When studying A Dream of Red Mansions, we can refer to the political affairs in the middle period of Qianlong. Mainly based on its previous twenty-four histories. )。 At the same time, it also mentions the efforts made by emperors in past dynasties to consolidate their political power and sum up the experience of past dynasties (in fact, most of them are the efforts of politicians and historians around the emperor). In this way, every overthrown dynasty is the head of a new dynasty. It can also be said that it is the beginning. For the Manchu dynasty, each of the twenty-four histories is the beginning of the Qing history. Twenty-four histories began with Historical Records written by Sima Qian. Combining the analysis of the title of The Story of the Stone and a method of solving puzzles in A Dream of Red Mansions-homophonic, we can understand The Story of the Stone as The Story of the Stone or The Beginning. This is my personal understanding of Stone, the first title of A Dream of Red Mansions.