in the long history of human culture, wine is not only an objective material existence, but also a cultural symbol, that is, a symbol of Dionysian spirit.
In China, the Dionysian spirit originated from Taoist philosophy. Zhuang Zhou advocated the unity of things and me, the unity of heaven and man, and the unity of life and death. Zhuang Zhou sang the song of absolute freedom and advocated "swimming by things", "swimming beyond the four seas" and "the land where there is nothing" Zhuangzi would rather be a free turtle wagging its head in a muddy pond than a bound swift horse. The essence of China's Dionysian spirit lies in the pursuit of absolute freedom, forgetting the benefits of life and death, honor and disgrace.
There are striking similarities in world cultural phenomena. Dionysus, the god of grape planting and wine making, is the symbol of Dionysus in the west. In the ancient Greek tragedy, Dionysus rose to a theoretical level, which was sublimated by the philosophy of the German philosopher Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that Dionysus' spirit was a symbol of emotional venting, a survival experience of abandoning the traditional bondage and returning to the original state, and human beings gained great pleasure in life in the desperate and painful cry of disappearing individual and the world.
In the kingdom of literature and art, Dionysian spirit is omnipresent, which has a great and far-reaching influence on literary artists and their masterpieces. Because freedom, art and beauty are trinity, art is due to freedom and beauty is due to art.
The freedom of art due to drunkenness is an important way for artists in ancient China to get rid of bondage and gain artistic creativity. Liu Ling, a famous person in Wei and Jin Dynasties and the first "drunkard", said in Ode to Wine Virtue: "There is a gentleman, who takes heaven and earth as a day, ten thousand periods as a moment, the sun and the moon as a moment, and eight droughts as a court." "The curtain is on the ground, and the meaning is as it is." "I am drunk, but I suddenly wake up. I don't listen to the sound of thunder, and I don't see the shape of mountains. I don't feel the feelings of cutting muscles in cold and summer. Overlooking everything, disturbing it is like duckweed in Jianghan. " This "ultimate human" state is a typical embodiment of China's Dionysian spirit.
"Li Bai wrote hundreds of poems about fighting wine. When he went to sleep in a restaurant in Chang 'an, the son of heaven called him and didn't get on the boat, claiming that he was a wine fairy." (Du Fu's "Song of the Eight Immortals in Drinking") "When you are drunk, you are a guest, and poetry becomes a god." (Du Fu's "Poem by One's Own Action") "Pitching to one's own interests leads to a poem of wine." (Su Shi's Drinking with Tao Yuanming) "A cup of unfinished poetry has been completed, and poetry is shocking every day." (Yang Wanli's Biography of Going to Wanhuachuan Valley in February after the Ninth Festival). Zhang Yuannian, a political poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, said: "After the rain, flowers fly to know the base, and drunkenness wins freedom." Examples of drunken poems handed down from generation to generation can be found everywhere in China's poetry history.
Not only for poetry, but also in painting and artistic calligraphy unique to China culture, the spirit of Dionysus is more lively. Among the painters, Zheng Banqiao's calligraphy and painting can't be easily obtained, so the seekers treat them with dog meat and wine, and those who seek calligraphy and painting in Zheng Banqiao's drunkenness can get their wish. Zheng Banqiao also knew the tricks of the painter, but he couldn't resist the temptation of wine and dog meat, so he had to write a poem to laugh at himself: "Look at the moon, you might as well go all out, but you only hate the wine for coming late. Laugh at him for asking for a book generation and asking his husband to get drunk. " Wu Daozi, the painter of "Wu Dai Dangfeng", must be drunk before painting, and then start painting after being drunk. Huang Gongwang in "Yuan Sijia" is also "too drunk to paint". Wang Xizhi, a "book sage", wrote Preface to the Lanting Pavilion when he was drunk, saying that he was "charming and healthy, and there was nothing like a generation", but when he woke up, he "read dozens of books, but he couldn't reach it". Li Bai wrote about Huai Su, a drunken monk: "When my teacher was drunk, he slept in bed and swept thousands of sheets in a moment. Flying showers are shocking, and falling flowers and snow are boundless. " Huai Su was drunk and splashed ink, only to keep his "Self-Narrative Post" which was surprised by ghosts and gods. Zhang Xu, the sage of grass, "Every time he gets drunk, he calls for madness, but he writes", so he has his "Four Poems of Ancient Poetry".
wine is a stunner between heaven and earth. Although it also enters the belly, it can't satisfy hunger or quench thirst, and it only acts on people's minds. As soon as the heart-nerve wine is moistened and stimulated, it will produce inexplicable changes, and the inexplicable strangeness will be unusual when it is manifested in words and deeds. Therefore, with wine in the world, human life will be colorful, human history will be colorful, the vast world will add many interesting scenery, and a short life will add many long flavors. If our ancestors were not inspired by the sour smell of rotten wild fruits and leftovers and invented winemaking, then the voluminous twenty-four histories would be much more boring, and the social life of past dynasties would be much less bleak. When we look back on the past, we may lose a lot of interest. History is a long river. When the wine is right in the river, the river will flow more romantically and vividly, and the billowing waves will still make people feel wonderful after the ages.
from the palace to the street, the noble and the humble all drink. The emperor in the Jin and Yuan Dynasties gave a banquet, and the old man in three village exchanged it. Although the grades were different and the styles were different, it was the same to drink the fine wine or the old fermented grains and taste the wonderful process. Compared with lawyers, businessmen, craftsmen and farmers, literati seem to have more fate with wine. First, scholars are addicted to alcohol. Wine can stimulate inspiration and activate image thinking; When you write poetry after drinking, there is a beautiful sentence. Drinking itself often becomes creative material. A history of China literature, almost all pages exude the fragrance of wine. Li Bai and Du Fu, outstanding representatives of China literati, are both lifelong alcoholics. Li Bai called himself "Brewmaster", and Du Fu was named as "a wine magnate" by Mr. Guo Moruo because of a saying that he was "sexually ambitious and addicted to alcohol". Guo Lao also took pains to count that among their existing poems, Li accounts for 17% and Du accounts for 21%. This makes us think that if there is no wine, Li Du's poems will lose a lot of charm, and the collections of Li Taibai and Du Gongbu we read today will also be much thinner. Second, literati pay special attention to the process of drinking, especially to the set of red tape in the process of drinking. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate a rather strict decree, and it is necessary to dance with a variety of wine orders. That drinking order is not fun, but a severe test of people's intelligence, knowledge level, literary accomplishment and adaptability; If you are not full of poetry books and smart, you will make a fool of yourself on the spot. Literati simply put this set to a wonderful extreme, and simply included cultural contents such as hundreds of classics, poems, songs, proverbs, allusions and couplets into the wine order. As a result, the banquet is always full of thick and continuous bookish and cultural flavor. In the interweaving, we not only enjoyed the mellow beauty of wine, but also enjoyed the fragrance of culture. We can't see with our own eyes the elegant taste of ancient literati when they feasted, but we can only get a glimpse of it from novels such as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Garden of Flowers in the Mirror, and books recording alcoholic drinks. Because of the participation of literati, drinking is a grade, a realm and an infinite scenery. The splendid part of wine culture is really created by literati. After the May 4th Movement, modern literati often get together for banquets, and even Mr. Lu Xun has participated many times, which is often recorded in Lu Xun's Diary. His poem "Self-mockery" (in the poem, "Look at a thousand fingers coldly, bow down and be a willing ox" became a famous couplet), which was made at a banquet hosted by Yu Dafu. Yu Dafu is more addicted to alcohol. He once said, "Drunk for 3, days, drunk for another ten years". Drunk in wine, he made many good poems on impulse. The elegant collection of new literati is still full of cultural flavor, and it is still a major theme to talk about poetry and improvise. Feng Zikai once wrote: "The best thing in the world is wine and food, which is like a poem." The May 4th Movement, with its rapid development, cleansed the old world, but the wine culture handed down through the ages is still in the same strain. The new literati who created a new culture, as soon as they picked up their glasses, still looked like their ancestors.
When talking about the relationship between wine and literature, ancient Greece and Rome especially loved to talk about the role of Dionysian spirit in literary creation. China is a country with underdeveloped myths, and wine has not yet risen to the position of "God" in the relationship with literature, but it plays an important role in catalyzing writers' literary thinking or poetic interest.
China's ancient literature has two important features: First, lyrical works occupy the mainstream position. Needless to say, lyric poetry is very lyrical even in the works described or endorsed. It goes without saying that lyrical literature is catalyzed by wine. Another feature is the individuality and self-entertainment of the work. Most of China's traditional literature is not facing the society (although saints have this requirement and think that literature should play a role of education), but entertaining themselves. Therefore, it is less controlled by external factors (such as considering economic factors in the face of the market), and it is more personal and will not care too much about the consequences of wine on literature. Of course, this influence has both positive and negative effects.
the book of songs? "Ji has won Chu": "Ji has won Chu, and it is a branch. Wo Wo in death is ignorant of fun. The poet suddenly sighed when he saw the lush peach trees shining in the sun, admiring the ignorance of vegetation. However, people can't be unconscious, and the suffering in the world requires people's feelings to savor carefully, and the more sensitive the poet feels, the more painful it is. Perhaps the memory of heaven is still preserved when people are born, so the pursuit of beauty is almost the essence of human beings. But how many people can get their wish? The pursuit of failure has deepened people's suffering.
in order to get rid of the pain, the most convenient way is to drink and anesthetize yourself. For example, Cao Cao said in "A Short Song": "When drinking is a song, life is geometric. Morning dew, for example, is much harder to go to Japan. Be generous, and worry is unforgettable. How to solve your worries? Only Du Kang. "This kind of consciousness does not begin at the end of the Han Dynasty," The Book of Songs? There is a sentence in "Curled Ears" that says, "If I think about it, it will never hurt me." When the self-awareness of life is more awakened, this desire to eliminate anxiety becomes stronger. By the time Li Bai arrived in the Tang Dynasty, this sorrow became "eternal sorrow", and it needed wine of "thousands of bells" and "thousands of welcome" to wash it away: "Five flowers and horses, a thousand golden qiu, and hand them to the boy to exchange for good wine, together with you, sold eternal sorrow. Even so, it will still be: "but since water still flows, though we cut it with our swords, it is even more sad to raise a glass to dispel your worries. Since the world can in no way answer our craving, I will loosen my hair tomorrow and take to a fishingboat. "("a Farewell to Secretary Shuyun at the Xietiao Villa in Xuanzhou ") A man can lie in the wine country for a while, but what will happen after he wakes up?
In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, people felt the catalytic effect of wine on the accomplishment of artists' personality and artistic creation. Tang people have a deeper understanding of this aspect. Du Fu's Song of Eight Immortals in Drinking depicts not only a group of alcoholics, but also a romantic art group. Wine makes their artistic temperament vivid. For example, the romantic poet Li Bai: "Li Bai has a hundred poems in a bucket, and he sleeps in a restaurant in Chang 'an." The son of heaven didn't come aboard, claiming that I was a fairy in wine. Another example is Zhang Xu, the master of calligraphy: "Zhang Xu's three cups of grass are sacred, and before he took off his hat and exposed his head to the maharaja, he waved his paper like a cloud." These artists and poets are in a semi-conscious state, and their usual "rational evil influence" such as political philosophy and moral norms has been broken through by alcohol. At this time, they seem to be dominated only by intuition or subconscious, thus liberating the human nature hidden in psychological energy to the maximum extent.
Although Confucianism pays attention to people, this "person" refers to groups, not individuals, and tends to use groups to suppress individuals. Wei and Jin Dynasties are the times when scholars' individual consciousness awakens. When they confront the mainstream consciousness with their initially awakened self, they often feel that their internal force is insufficient, so these scholars have to rely on wine to support them. On the surface, they indulge their emotions, borrow wine to make themselves dirty, and destroy the famous religion and confront the mainstream society with all kinds of shocking behaviors. These scholars often say, "Is courtesy for our generation? They yearn for a laissez-faire attitude towards life and explore human nature from nature.
this point was developed by Tao Yuanming. For the first time, he combined poetry, wine and nature, and sought the true nature of human beings, that is, human nature. He said in the poem "Drinking": "The mountains are getting better every day, and the birds are returning. There is truth in this, and I have forgotten to say it if I want to argue. He also said: "If you don't know me, knowing things is more valuable. The wine has a deep taste because of the lingering fascination. The so-called "true meaning" and "deep taste" refer to the realization of the true meaning of life and the natural nature of human beings when drinking. These have been inherited by people who pursue individual liberation in later generations. Li Bai's "drinking Alone with the Moon" says: "Three cups lead to the road, and a fight is natural. I just get drunk fun, this taste can not be handed down to the people! The so-called "fun in wine" is to get rid of the shackles of daily etiquette in a drunken hometown and gain spiritual freedom in the dark.
Li Bai's drunken song: "since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!, spin a thousand pieces of silver, all of them come back!. "("I will enter the wine ") This is self-confidence; "oh, how can I gravely bow and scrape to men of high rank and men of high office, who never will suffer being shown an honest-hearted face! "("tianmu Mountain Ascended in a Dream ") cast a great contempt for the powerful; "I broke the Yellow Crane Tower with a hammer for you, and you also fell for me! "("Jiangxia gave Wei Nanling ice ") showed great anger. These are not only drunken ravings, but also poems that can best express Li Bai's true self. Song people accused Li Bai of having wine in his poems. In fact, wine liberated many poets and artists from trivial matters and restored their true artist demeanor. It is hard to imagine that Li Bai, who is always awake, can write so many immortal poems.