As the first book of the Book of Songs, Guanju has always been the most concerned by scholars who study the Book of Songs, but its interpretation is different at each stage, even at the same stage. Let's take a look at it together. The following is an analysis of Guan Ju's Book of Songs that I have compiled for you. I hope you like it.
The Book of Songs was called "The Book of Songs" or "Three Hundred Poems" in the pre-Qin period. During the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Confucianism was honored as The Book of Songs. As the first book of the Book of Songs, Guanju has always attracted much attention. From its birth in the Western Zhou Dynasty to the present, the interpretation and inheritance of its true connotation has gone through a long process. Due to the complexity of traditional poetics itself and the reality of social background, there are many different versions of the interpretation of Guanju in the past dynasties. What kind of process has Guanju experienced in the interpretation of past dynasties? This paper combs and analyzes the representative interpretation of each important historical stage.
Guan Yu
Poet: The Book of Songs
Dynasty: Pre-Qin
Guan Yu's dove was in the river continent.
a gentle and graceful lady is a gentle and graceful gentleman.
ragged shepherd's purse flows from left to right.
my fair lady, please ask for it.
I'd love to.
leisurely, tossing and turning.
pick the ragged shepherd's purse from left to right.
my fair lady is my friend.
ragged shepherd's purse, left and right.
my fair lady, the bells and drums make her happy.
1. The "Ritual and Music" Function of The Book of Songs during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period and before
The Yao Dian of Shangshu was the first to judge poetry: "Poetry expresses ambition, and songs always say". It starts with the function of "poetry", which is obviously full of utility. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, The Book of Songs was the external embodiment of the patriarchal clan system of "rites and music" governing the country, which was mainly used in various important occasions such as sacrificial ceremonies, banquets, court engagements and celebrations of princes and nobles. According to the regulations of etiquette at that time, the corresponding music was played on specific occasions. The "Ji Zha Watching Music" recorded in Zuo Zhuan's twenty-five years of Xianggong was the scene of the governors' string poems and songs. According to Yili, Qing Temple was used for the worship of the imperial ancestral temple in the Zhou Dynasty, and Guanju was used for the drinking ceremony, shooting ceremony and wedding ceremony in the countryside.
From the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, The Book of Songs was the carrier of ritual and righteousness. Confucius not only used the Book of Songs as a textbook to teach his disciples, but also evaluated the Book of Songs from many aspects. From the perspective of the functions of the Book of Songs, The Analects of Confucius in Yang Huo explains four ways of "serving the monarch" and "serving the father" with "xing", "viewing", "group" and "resentment", while Taibo regards the Book of Songs as the supreme position with "xing in poetry, standing in ceremony and becoming in music". Confucius' judgment on Zhongni Yanju in the Book of Rites is different from that in The Analects of Confucius. These reputations not only focus on the self-cultivation of individuals, but also on "keeping the family in order" and "governing the country" under the patriarchal clan system, which reflects the relationship between poetry, ceremony and music at that time and its important role in all aspects of social life under the patriarchal clan system.
Guanju, as the first book of the Book of Songs, can't be avoided by all the families who study and evaluate the Book of Songs, and Guanju is often studied as the program of the whole Book of Songs.
Confucius said, "Guanju is happy but not lewd, but sad but not hurt", which means that Guanju is not too sad, although it is full of joy. "Don't be lewd" and "don't hurt" are in a gentle and honest degree. There is also a detailed discussion on the change of the gentleman from lewdness to propriety in Guan Ju in The Book of Poetry on the bamboo slips of Shanghai Bo, which just annotates Confucius' summary of "thinking innocently" in The Book of Poetry, that is, although there are many poems about love and appeals from the lower classes such as "changing wind" and "changing elegance".
accordingly, Guanju can be understood as follows: by the river where the dove and the singing river meet, the gentleman fell in love with the "My Fair Lady" at first sight and pursued it enthusiastically, but he got what he wanted because of the lady's rejection, and the gentleman who was hit by a wall couldn't sleep because he missed the lady. On the one hand, he was full of yearning for the lady he wanted, and on the other hand, he reflected on himself. Because the bell, drum, harp and instrument itself is a symbol of ceremony, using the harp and instrument to make friends and be happy with her is exactly the meaning of treating a lady with courtesy. Therefore, the process of a gentleman from lewdness to "resisting courtesy" is exactly the process of the discovery and application of courtesy, so the evaluation of "the change of Guanju, which is beneficial to his thoughts" is an appreciation of the gentleman's reflection and return to the ceremony. It can be seen that from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, from the perspective of the function of poetry, it was the basic feature at that time to explain the Book of Songs with the ethics under the integration of ritual and music culture.
Second, the infiltration of Confucian Classics into Guanju in Han Dynasty
With the infiltration of Confucianism into society, Dong Zhongshu's ideas of "divine right of monarch", "feeling between man and nature" and "unification" conformed to Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty's imperial ambition of establishing centralization, and made him adopt "to oust a hundred schools of thought and respect Confucianism alone". Confucianism has risen from the theory of one family to the status of national ideology, and Confucian classics have also been regarded as the "classics" of the source of knowledge and thought. Confucian classics have also become the only way for scholars to learn and apply their knowledge, which has subsequently dominated the world, resulting in the popularity of Confucianism in the whole society of Han Dynasty. Therefore, there has also been a prosperous situation in which many scholars interpret poems, resulting in the "Book of Songs" or "Book of Songs Interpretation", the most famous of which are the "four poems" of Lu, Qi, Han and Mao; Shen Pei of Lu people, Yuan Gu of Qi people, and Han Ying of Yan people belong to modern poetics, also known as "Three Poems", which is very popular in the Western Han Dynasty. And set up a doctor of "Confucian classics", but most of the three poems have been lost, and Wang Xianqian, a Qing dynasty, compiled them. However, Mao Heng, a native of Lu, and Mao Ji, a native of Zhao, belong to ancient Chinese poetics, that is, what scholars call "Mao Poetry".
Guanju was placed at the beginning of The Book of Songs, and it has always been the object of attention in poetics. Many scholars in the Han Dynasty have repeatedly scrutinized Guanju in their interpretations of The Book of Songs, which can be seen from the fact that all four poems have interpreted Guanju as the focus of attention.
The poems of Lu, Qi and Han are almost the same, and they all regard Guan Ju as a satirical work. Lu's poem "Kang Wangde was short of room, and the minister stabbed him, so he wrote a poem"; Qi's poem "Yesterday, Yingmen fell, and Guanju stabbed the world"; Han's poem "Guan Ju" is also a thorn. The "Three Poems" all promoted the ordinary love work between men and women in Guan Ju to the poem about the relationship between a monarch and a concubine, and made the attached poem of Guan Ju a thorn poem, satirizing Kang Wang's obsession with women's sex and delaying the state affairs. I hope that the love between men and women in the poem will eventually end in ceremony, and use the ancient lessons to satirize the monarch to abstain from lewdness and lewdness, and ask the empresses to be "ladies" and be chaste and quiet, so as to achieve prosperity and rejuvenation. The reason why the three poets in modern Chinese attributed the theme of Guanju to the poems that satirized the monarch's empresses is related to the social reality of the Han Dynasty and the political demands of the scholars in modern Chinese literature.
Human beings have entered an era of civilization and order from barbarism. In the process of social development, moral and ethical concepts are increasingly strengthened. From reflection and summary, we realize the importance of strengthening the stable relationship between men and women, so the ceremony of men and women is placed in the important position of "the beginning of all ages". In the ethical relationship between husband and wife, father and son, monarch and minister, and up and down. The preface to the Book of Changes puts the ceremony of "couples" in the first place, and points out that the way of couples also needs to be constant for a long time. For the country, the marriage matching of emperors has a direct impact on the rise and fall of the whole country. After Liu Bang's death in the early Han Dynasty, Lv Hou was autocratic and almost subverted the Han state. Later, Dou Taihou and the Queen Mother intervened in the political affairs continuously, and the Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty favored empresses and influenced politics to varying degrees many times. Compared with the virtuous and virtuous lady praised in Guanju, they are far from each other. At that time, for the sake of the country's long-term stability, scholars described Guanju, which is a social representative discourse, as a thorn poem, reflecting that the scholars of the Western Han Dynasty advised the emperor to correctly treat the "beginning of human relations" wedding, not to be too greedy for beauty and ignore virtue, but to match the love for talented women and ensure the long-term stability of the world. According to the theory of "cultivate one's morality, manage the family, rule the country and level the world", the emperor should first manage the harem, then from the inside out, from oneself to others, from near to far, and finally realize the rule of the world. Mao's poems came out later than those of the three schools, and were mainly spread among the people. In order to get involved in politics, Mao's school must have political advantages, so it did not follow the footsteps of the first three schools in satirizing and remonstrating. Instead, it emphasized "weathering the world from the top" based on praising the virtue of empresses, and interpreted Guan Ju as a "couple by classics" from the perspective of imperial rule. Mao Shi widely absorbed the research results of predecessors' poetics, and on this basis, it improved its academic and political significance. Finally, it collected the achievements of the study of the Book of Songs and was made a scholar at the end of the Western Han Dynasty. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, Mao Shi gradually weathered the world, while the other three poems gradually declined, and most of them died later. The Justice of Mao Poems in the Annotations to the Thirteen Classics is the Mao Poems transmitted by Mao Heng.
every poem in Mao Shi is orderly, and all the other poems are short in preface. Only Guan Ju has a long preface, which is called "Preface to Poems", which is called "Preface to Mao Shi" by scholars. At the beginning, Mao Shi praised the figurative beauty of Guanju as "the virtue of empresses", and also made a programmatic theoretical summary of The Book of Songs, regarding it as a tool to carry forward the voice of kingliness, and then to weather the world. An important reason why Mao Shi didn't interpret Guan Ju as a "thorn poem" is its theory of "elegance is changing". The Preface to Poems holds that Nan Zhou and Zhaonan in the early Western Zhou Dynasty represented the kingly voice of "the way to start is the foundation of Wang Hua", while the satirical works in the political decline in the late Western Zhou Dynasty were called "changing the wind" and "changing the elegance", and it is believed that the direct reason for the rise of the creation of "changing the wind" and "changing the elegance" is that "the kingly declined, and the etiquette and righteousness were abolished" Then there will be the "change of wind" and "change of elegance" when satirizing the world. Guanju is the first poem in Nan Zhou, and it is the voice of Wang Ji, a model of propriety and righteousness, and an example of "the way to start is the foundation of Wang Hua". Therefore, Mao Shi can't take Guanju, the first poem in Nan Zhou, as a thorn poem, but pay attention to the virtue of empresses and the weathering of the world from the inside out.
Third, Zhu Xi and his descendants' new interpretations of Guanju
The interpretation of Guanju has not changed much since the Eastern Han Dynasty, and it was not until the Neo-Confucianism period in the Song Dynasty that there was a new interpretation. The master of Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi, had a very different interpretation from Mao Shi. In his later years, Zhu Xi wrote Biography of Poems with the aim of "doing away with the Little Preface and cleaning up the old theory". However, he did not "abandon the old theory", but carried out many sublations. The theory of "the virtue of empresses" is still used in the figurative meaning of Guanju. Zhu Xi did have his own insights in the interpretation. He used the viewpoint of "self-cultivation, keeping the family in order, governing the country and leveling the world", and finally put Guan Ju on "ruling with a gentleman". However, the inherent saint complex in the history of ancient China made Zhu Xi attach the gentleman and lady in Guan Ju to King Wen and Da You. Gentleman, refers to the king of Wen also ... Zhou Zhiwen was born with virtue, and the saint Si thought it was worthy. " In their view, the thoughts and actions of saints in history have directly played an exemplary role in educating the world, and they believe that Guanju is to teach future generations, taking the marriage of King Wen and Da You as a model.
Zhu Xi explained it from Guanju to Nan Zhou: Guan Ju, Tao Yao, Rabbit and Ge Tan in Nan Zhou all express the virtue of concubines, and Guanju is only an individual representative among them. From this, he extended self-cultivation and family discipline to governing the country and leveling the world, demonstrating his way of governing the country from the inside out. Zhu Xi's intention of putting gentlemen and empresses into King Wen and Da Yi may not be attached to the history, but setting the King Wen and his wife, who have lived in the mountains for a long time, as a model for the later generations to follow, on the one hand, it provides historical examples for this poem, which conforms to the world's saint-setting complex; On the other hand, it is also proved by Wen Wang's literary martial arts that "self-cultivation and family planning" can make the country rule the world.
Guanju, as the first book of the Book of Songs, has also attracted the attention of future generations of masters. With the development of "poetics", scholars in Qing Dynasty no longer adhered to the path of Chinese and Confucian interpretation of the Book of Songs. Yao Jiheng's "General Theory of the Book of Songs" thinks that this poem is only the work of the poet Mei Shizi at the beginning of his marriage to a princess, and neither a gentleman nor a lady is a specific reference to someone, let alone an attachment to Wen Wang and his wife. Cui Shu's Reading the Wind and Fang Yurun's Original Book of Songs explain Guan Ju, and they are no longer constrained by the virtue of empresses. In particular, Fang Yurun thinks that it is appropriate to use the country and the country. Obviously, it has expanded outward through the barrier of Confucian classics interpretation, and began to tend to take care of Guan Ju from the aesthetic aspect of poetry.
under the influence of the spirit of the may 4th movement, the modern "poetics" initiated by the school of distinguishing ancient history has jumped out of the tight encirclement of the interpretation of Confucian classics and started to really examine Guanju from the perspective of literary aesthetics. Modern "poetics" basically regards Guanju as a poem about love and marriage, but there are also differences in specific views. Wen Yiduo and Hu Shi thought Guan Ju was a love song to show the love between men and women in the early days, while Mr. Zheng Zhenduo interpreted it as a wedding music to describe marriage.
to sum up, we can see from the studies of Guanju by scholars of past dynasties that the literary works in different periods in history and some interpretations of the outstanding works of our ancestors are not groundless, and each family will closely connect their own works or interpretations of their predecessors' works with the social background at that time. Because the mainstream ideology more or less embodies the dominant political tendency at that time and has the right to speak. Once academic discourse is combined with mainstream consciousness, it has a solid foundation and backing, thus becoming a power discourse. This is why some literati politicians try their best to bring their writings closer to authoritative discourse.