Personality charm under the pressure of multiple tragedies
This paper attempts to explore the causes of Yu Xin's tragic personality in his later period from the aspects of life experience, family background and the influence of Confucianism. And through the attempt of self-soul in the creation of works, it shows its unique personality charm.
Throughout the long history of China, many historical figures in ancient times have received different opinions. It's really hard to build a coffin. Yu Xin, who lives in the confrontation between the north and the south and whose ethnic relations are extremely complicated and chaotic, has a more bumpy fate behind him. Generally speaking, Yu Xin is regarded as a sorrowful "homesick poet", or as a humiliating "northern courtier", and some even accuse him of being a shameless villain who defected to the enemy. In the face of such opinions, the author believes that the critical study of writers in the history of literature should adopt an original ecological approach, which aims to make the cognitive subject as close as possible to the cognitive object, and make the generation of objects within the boundary of the subject have richer original colors as far as possible, so as to minimize the simplification and even distortion that will inevitably occur when the original existence of history is transformed into the existence of people's cognition.
The way to grasp the original ecology is to deepen the objective requirements. For the study of writers and works in the history of literature, it requires: first, to show the spatial diversity of literary activities. The development of literature is accompanied by many other factors, and literati often rise in the form of blocks. Blocks and groups, based on multiple relationships, constitute a cultural network that is both competitive and communicative. In addition, the development of literature has far-reaching significance, because it is related to other ideological fields such as history and philosophy. If the study of writers and works is only from the perspective of pure literature, apart from trivial textual research, rigorous text analysis and even platitudes, the discussion of the law will mostly be empty talk.
Second, in the randomness of the development of literary history, contingency factors and the role of individuals should be paid attention to. Any individual has accumulated the existence of social and cultural significance in himself. Personality is not only the product of the influence of external environment, but also the result of self-selection in the process of establishing his own life. We should pay attention to individuals with different personalities, ambitions, temperaments, ways and methods of studying and aesthetic tastes, and what contingency and particularity they brought to the spiritual life of the nation at that time; And how does this contingency and particularity get meaningful publicity in the feedback of social identity caused by certain historical atmosphere and value expectation, thus settling down in a specific position in the national spiritual life.
In a word, the grasp of the original ecology inevitably requires researchers to have a strong perceptual life experience in their unique cognition. Because the closer we are to the original existence of history, the more we can cut into the living state of people in that era and grasp the writer's heart, which will certainly arouse the researcher's own life experience, especially in the face of the huge disasters and national chaos that have occurred many times in history, which will further form a tragic sense of existence.
Causes of tragic personality
Yu Xin, one of Du Fu's six quatrains, said: "Yu Xin's articles are older and more mature, and Ling's brushwork is vertical and horizontal." It is pointed out that Yu Xin's literary achievements in his later period are the combination of the North and the South, and his literary theory of "no danger and suffering, only sorrow" has laid the tragic color of his personality. The author believes that the reasons for this phenomenon should be discussed at least from the following aspects: first, the tragic experience of social life awakened him; The second is the origin of family studies; The third is the influence of Confucianism.
First of all, the tragedy of survival
Yu Xin experienced two major changes in his life, the biggest one being the Hou Jing Rebellion. This war took place in the second year of Liang Wudi Taiqing, when Liang Dujian fell and Yu Xin fled to Jiangling. During this period, the people suffered great disasters. His two sons and a daughter also died in this war. Followed by the disaster of Jiangling, in October of the third year of its prosperity, the Western Wei attacked Jiangling, which fell, and Yu Xin became the ambassador of national subjugation.
The tragedy of the demise of the Southern Dynasties, the reality that the people in the South were plundered and migrated, the pain of national subjugation, and his own detention in the North, the humiliation suffered by Qu Shiwei and Zhou, all became an indelible traumatic memory in Yu Xin's heart, a kind of eternal pain, and a theme that will never linger in his later works. The most direct consequence of traumatic memory is abnormal emotional response, which increases the sensitivity of identifying foreign objects. Yu Xin always regards himself as a stranger in a foreign land, and observes foreign things from this perspective, which makes his works have a strong "Yu Xin perspective". When he saw the unique fruit betel nut in the south, he immediately felt nostalgic for his hometown. "Don't talk or do things in Wan Li, we once met" ("See Betel Nut Suddenly"); Looking at the Weihe River, the poet will see Jiangnan in a trance. "The tree is like a new pavilion, and the sand is like Weilong Bay. If you still talk about singing songs, you should return the sails "("Looking at Wei Water "); From Yu Xin's perspective, we can also see his unique use of animal images such as birds, geese, fish and apes in his later period. The birds in his later works are "frightened birds" and "birds that fall when they hear the strings" (Wen Fu You Hunting); Goose is a "goose that has lost its flock", and "the cold goose that has lost its flock is pitiful, and it flies alone in the middle of the night" ("Goose Alone in Autumn Night"); Fish is "dried fish", "dried fish often thinks of water" (quasi-chanting). Yu Xin's traumatic memory is displayed through the image of a wounded bird, especially in his contact with southern scholars. When he came into contact with his friends' books, such as "Send Xu Ling" and "Send Wang Lin", that short poem contained thousands of feelings in the poet's heart; When seeing a friend off to the south, it is sad to leave soon, but it will hurt you not to return, such as "In another week, Zheng Hong, a senior minister". Tears welled up in people's eyes, and the bitterness and sadness of entering the north were beyond words, such as "The mountain is bleak and the dragon water is cut off" ("Xiao Yuan Fu")
The suffering of the times and personal misfortune made a decisive turning point in Yu Xin's later thoughts and feelings. His vision turned from the individual to the times and history, and to the rise and fall of the whole Liang Dynasty. His feelings changed from emptiness and pallor to anxiety and depression, full of passionate feelings of life experience and the pain of national subjugation; His creative theme changed from singing and entertainment in the court to expressing the danger and sadness of "the geometry of life", and his artistic expression changed from simple description to strong lyricism, forming a deep and sad style. His poem "Quasi-Forever" represents the highest achievement of Yu Xin's later literary creation, and it is also a self-portrayal of Yu Xin's outspoken and miserable tragic image.
Second, the tragedy of cremation
Yu Xin was born in the Yu family, one of the four great families in the Eastern Jin Dynasty: Wang, Xie, Tao and Yu. Yu Tao, the eighth ancestor, made outstanding contributions. He crossed the south with the Kim family, rode away as an official, and served as a regular waiter. His family moved to Jiangling. Yu Yi's grandfather was a quiet hermit. Father Yu Jianwu is good at poetry and fu, and he is Xiao Gang's "Bachelor of Gaozhai". Born in such a bureaucratic family with a scholarly family for generations, Yu Xin was influenced by: first, literature; The second is the influence of the concept of gate valve. In particular, the concept of gate valve and gentry inevitably left a deep imprint on Yu Xin's thought.
The demise of the Liang Dynasty dealt a devastating blow to the gentry group, and also made the life individuals attached to the group, such as Yu Xin and other gentry intellectuals, suffer from the ruin of their country and were forced to surrender from south to north. From a deeper perspective, the sufferings of Yu Xin and others are the product of the collision between the cultural value system of aristocratic families in the Southern Dynasties and the cultural value system in the Northern Dynasties, which also has a direct impact on Yu Xin's literary creation. So that his creative thinking mode and psychological schema formed under the guidance of aristocratic family value system in the early stage were destroyed with the collapse of aristocratic family value system, so that it was difficult to fully express the great contradiction and pain caused by the collision of his rich life experience and two cultural value systems in the later stage with the old artistic expression. It can be seen that Yu Xin's later literary creation is actually facing a "transformation". Yu Xin is keenly aware of this with his unique sensitivity and intuition.
When life itself became the embodiment of tragedy, Yu Xin, as a representative writer of "Gongti" literature, had a fundamental change in his creative concept. This fundamental change made him consciously identify with the tragic literary traditions of Qu Yuan and Song Yu, and denied the five ways of music and literature creation of intellectuals from the Western Jin Dynasty to the Southern Dynasties to Liang Dynasty, which made the appreciators feel relaxed and happy. It highlights the important value of focusing on sadness in literary creation, and "no danger and no pain, but focusing on sadness" became his theoretical declaration of later literary creation.
Therefore, Yu Xin consciously explored the root of the rise and fall of the Liang Dynasty and put forward the famous conclusion that "Zaiheng takes war as a joke and the gentry takes talk as a temple policy". It also deeply analyzes the disadvantages of the Liang Dynasty and even the Western Jin and Southern Dynasties, such as the supremacy of extreme culture and the neglect of real life. At the same time, Yu Xin made it clear that he wanted to speak for the poor and sing for the workers. This is actually to explore the root of individual life through the artistic expression of individual life tragedy. The tragic fate of group life and individual life expressed in Mourning for the Royal Family and Mourning for Life Experience not only artistically reproduces the suffering soul of individual life in aristocratic families; It also reproduces the high sense of responsibility and mission of Yu Xin's literary creation to the culture of the historical era. Judging from the preface of Jiangnan Fu, this cultural reflection on "the sorrow of life experience" and "the sorrow of the royal family" can be traced back to the reflection on the rise and fall of the history of the gentry since the Western Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasties.
To sum up, in his later period, Yu Xin paid attention to grasping the essence of the era of "leaving chaos" and understanding and reflecting on the tragedy of group life, and deeply explored the feeling of "sadness", thus making his later literary creation achieve great achievements, reaching the peak of the literature of the times and further contributing to the formation of his tragic personality.
Third, secular tragedy.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Confucianism dominated, and Yu Xin was influenced by it since childhood. He "read widely" and praised Zuo Zhuan in the Spring and Autumn Period. Yu Xin is most proficient in this Confucian classic. The ethical concepts such as "Debate between China and Foreign Countries", "Loyalty, Filial Piety and Righteousness" in the book are all adhered to by Yu Xin. Yu Xin accepted this idea and used it as a yardstick to measure the value of behavior. He not only uses it to measure others, but also uses it to demand himself. As for his personal official position in the north, he commented on his dishonesty and said, "Fire goes into the hollow, paste flows out" (dead tree fu); For the civil servants and military commanders who died in the national disaster, he labeled them as loyal, "generously protecting the army, pledging allegiance to the death ... the Lord humiliated the minister to death and lost his reputation" ("Jiangnan Fu"), so the roots of contradictions and pains in Yu Xin's thought are undoubtedly profound.
After Confucius, the national consciousness of "the debate between China and foreign countries" was regarded as "the meaning of the Spring and Autumn Period". Since then, it has become an important part of Confucianism and even China's humanistic tradition. Especially since the Northern and Southern Dynasties, with the establishment of the northern minority regime, the threat to the Central Plains or the Southern Han regime has become increasingly serious, and the "dispute between China and foreign countries" has especially become a topic of constant debate in cultural concepts. For southern Han scholars, this debate is manifested in the superiority of their own culture and the rejection of northern minorities. In the eyes of the Han scholar-officials, the entry of "aliens" into the Central Plains was not an orthodox inheritance, but a national disaster, which precisely constituted the cornerstone of patriotism in history. Su Wu and other national integrity are rooted in the heterogeneous national consciousness of China people and foreigners, and the behavior of southerners such as Yu Xin who are officials in the north will undoubtedly be more despised or suffer more pain in their conscience, which is related to ".
The humanistic tradition formed for thousands of years gave Yu Xin an invisible moral pressure, so that he felt guilty when he returned to the new dynasty. This tragic personality distortion led to his contradictory mentality. Therefore, Yu Xin wrote many confessional poems in the Northern Dynasties to judge his soul, hoping to get out of those troubled cities.
Personality charm
Under the special historical conditions in China, few people are lucky enough to get rid of the psychological mode of Confucian scholars, and Yu Xin is not immune. His tragic personality is manifested in the internal contradiction between knowledge and practice of China intellectuals. What he did in his later period presented a true self and a "frank" personality with distinct personality. He dared to dissect his unconventional personality and became a typical specimen of early intellectuals in China. In a sense, Yu Xin's personality strength is more "historic" than his early poems, which set a personality model for future generations not only in literary creation but also in personality.
Yu Xin, a southerner and northern official, together with his contradictory and split personality psychological structure, constitutes a unique personality model that transcends time and space. Obviously, it is different from the personality model formed by Zhuang Zhou, Qu Yuan and Tao Yuanming, but it has an inclusive influence on similar figures in later generations, which is undoubtedly huge. During the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, who didn't have the shadow of Yu Xin in his heart? Who doesn't mention him in the handed down collection? As a result, Yu Xin became the first of the two ministers in the past dynasties, and the precedent of southerners being officials in the north.
As two early representatives of ministers, Yu Xin's personality is quite representative. The dual personality and ambivalence of wanting to be an official in the new dynasty and cherishing the old country, self-denial and self-defense, constitute the noble intellectuals' faith and unique personality charm.
As a writer, Yu Xin's personality charm is often intertwined with the evaluation of his literary character, although under the tradition of China's criticism of "moral articles", there is often a "bad habit" of wasting people because of people. However, judging from the historical evaluation, Zhang Pu's inscription on Collected Works of Han, Wei and Six Dynasties 130 not only highly praised Yu Xin's work style, but also defended Yu Xin's personality. Even Du Fu, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, was particularly impressed when he mentioned Yu Xin. In one of the few essays on poetry, such as Six Famous Dramas, Yu Xin wrote: "Yu Xin's prose is older and more successful, and Ling's brushwork is vertical and horizontal. Today's people bite Fu, and they don't feel that the former sages are afraid of the afterlife. " Among them, he spoke highly of Yu Xin's poems in his later years, and at the same time he was angry with Yu Xin because of his own views. Du Fu, as a model of loyal to the monarch and patriotic "never forgetting the monarch at every meal" among the literati of past dynasties, has been recognized and appreciated by poets in his works, and his personality charm should be undeniable.
Yu Xin, his extraordinary personality charm, comes more from his sincere repentance for his soul as a gentry intellectual.
Repentance is a unique psychological activity of human beings, and it is a kind of missing and unbalanced psychological state caused by realizing that individual behavior deviates from reasonable moral requirements. Yu Xin doesn't want to wash white, forgive herself. He thinks that he has forty-nine rights and wrongs in the way of establishing himself, "thirty-six water changes, forty-nine rights and wrongs" ("Give Huainan Gong"). The loss of soul and the existence of body made Yu Xin feel strongly guilty, so she resolutely picked up the sword of repentance and dissected herself mercilessly. And those noble personality spirits that adhere to integrity have become his ideals and are constantly being publicized. Boyi and Shu Qi have become synonymous with integrity in Yu Xin's works, because they don't eat Zhou Su. Yu Xin took the initiative to show his disgraceful behavior, and deliberately put himself on the opposite side of Boyi and Shu Qi for criticism and reflection. "Afraid of rain in Nanshan, I suddenly practiced Qin Ting; Let the coast of the East China Sea eat Zhou Su. " (preface to mourning for the south of the Yangtze river) he clearly admitted that he had just stepped out of the court of the Liang dynasty and boarded the northern dynasty. "I have tasted Yin, and now I am a guest" ("I intend to sing my heart" IX); Such shameful words often appear in other works: "I forgot about Chu Cao, but I don't want to eat Zhou Wei." ("Give Huainan Gong"). In almost the same sentence, Yu Xin told a fact that he himself was unwilling to accept: becoming a courtier of the "Yi" dynasty. All this adds to Yu Xin's infinite sadness, so he often compares himself to an old locust tree that has lost its vitality. "My worries are falling, and my center is violating. I feel sorry for my career and surprise the locust tree." (Quasi-chant) 2 1). Yu Xin sang a sense of loss and disillusionment with his own soul elegy. All this is because Yu Xin standardized himself according to traditional Confucianism. He consciously shouldered the cross, put his soul in the traditional moral court for repeated torture, exiled himself from the loyalty hall, and preferred to let his soul wander. He frankly admitted his dishonor, did not hide it, and arranged mental torture for himself. He described himself as "no one can pick bitter plums, and autumn melons are worthless" ("Returning to the Field"), and sometimes thought he had lost his life. "A dirty horse is priceless for a thousand dollars" (Zhun 22). Four years later, Qi sent envoys to Zhou, but Yu Xin received the envoys of Qi as Zhou Dachen in the north, which undoubtedly revealed the sadness of being out of his mind. I feel ashamed to say goodbye to helping others. "An old friend asks me, my life seems to be where I have been" (Ju Zhou Gong Lian Sentence) has a very obvious meaning of self-mockery. This kind of confession is not only regret, but also shame, a lingering feeling of guilt and shame.
Lu Xun called Dostoevsky "a great interrogator and a great prisoner of the human soul." Yu Xin built a trial platform for herself. He told the story of his crime. On the one hand, he admits his mistakes, on the other hand, he defends himself to show that he has no intention of being an official, and sometimes he tries his best to express his loyalty: "I heard that loyalty is in sight in one city and ten rooms; Within five steps, the incense can be recorded, which is a dried clam in southern Japan, still containing the pearl of the bright moon. The dead trees in Longmen still hold the song of Xianchi. " (quasi-Julian, volume 31). Yu Xin was in the Northern Dynasties, and his heart was in the South. During his 28-year life in the Northern Dynasties, he was always in the pain of separation of spirit and flesh. Endless remorse and guilt gnaw at his heart all the time, as if he had entered a sad city: "The sad city will never be broken, and the door of sadness will never be opened ... Who knows that an inch of heart has Qian Qian sorrow." ("Sorrow Fu")
It should be said that Yu Xin's confession is largely for his own peace of mind, but Yu Xin chose to be an official, which determines that he will always fall into contradictions and cannot extricate himself. As long as he lives, he can't get rid of the tragic duality of his own existence and the tragedy of his personality. He can only live like a phoenix tree for half his life. "Why did Gui Pin die? What is the death of a child? " (Ode to the Dead Tree), but one thing is certain, his confession itself is sincere, Yu Xin sincerely examines himself and dares to take responsibility. The contradiction between living in reality and traditional ideal personality makes Yu Xin deeply analyze himself, and at the same time injects profound significance into his personality. It is the rather difficult course of soul purgatory, the thrill of soul, the depression of spirit and the persistence of emotion that gave birth to Yu Xin's emotional works in his later years, and also continued the psychological course of China intellectuals who dared to judge and reflect on themselves for thousands of years, which is undoubtedly his great personality charm as an ordinary person.
Concluding remarks
Yu Xin's life is a sad life without his own way of life. However, although I lost my inner life, I created excellent works. Fortunately and unfortunately, they often care for each other, and the unforgettable suffering has grafted a literary achievement that both the north and the south have. It seems that this is the compensation given by history!