Shuo Shu comes from Wei Feng·Shuo Shu in the Book of Songs.
Wei Feng·Shuo Shu
Wei Feng·Shuo Shu is a poem in the ancient Chinese realist poetry collection "The Book of Songs". This poem reflects the workers' hatred of the greedy exploiters and their yearning for a better life. The poet vividly compares the exploiters to fat and big rats, showing that they are greedy, slippery and cunning.
Never consider the life and death of others, so that workers cannot continue to live here, but have to find their ideal paradise. The whole poem consists of three chapters, with eight lines in each chapter. It is purely metaphorical, using a big rat as a metaphor for the exploiter. The metaphor is precise and appropriate, and the meaning is relatively straightforward. In terms of emotional expression, it is as wonderful as singing three sighs.
Wei Feng·Shuo Shu is a poem that has been recognized throughout the ages as an accusation against exploiters, but there are slightly different opinions on the specific target of the accusation. "Preface to Mao's Poems" says: A big rat has heavy thorns. The people of the country thorn in their kings and try to suppress others, cannibalizing the people, not repairing their government, being greedy and fearful of others, like rats. "Zhu Xi's "Preface to Poetry": "This is also entrusted to Shuo Shu to stab his Yousi poems, but he may not necessarily compare Shuo Shu to his king. ”
Since mankind entered class society, the struggle of the exploited class against exploitation has never stopped. In slave society, escape is the main form of slave resistance. From the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, with the decline of slavery, slaves developed from fleeing to gathering in crowds to fight. For example, "Zuo Zhuan" records the robbers of Zheng Guo and Chen Guo. The poem "Wei Feng·Shuo Shu" was written under this historical background. Extension:
This poem is purely metaphorical, and the metaphor is precise. It compares the exploiter to a big rat that everyone hates. It is very appropriate that there are only three such poems in the "Book of Songs", and this one. The two poems are "Zhou Nan·Katydid" and "Bin Feng·Owl". The most common feature of these three poems is that they use objects to describe people, but this article is slightly different.
The other two poems are different. Considered as an allegorical poem, all metaphors and allegorical meanings are contained in the chanting of objects. Although the use of a rat to describe an exploiter is the same as the use of an owl to describe a villain, in the second half of "Bin Feng·Owl", the bird is still used to accuse the owl. Expansion, the meaning is included in the overall image, and it is easy to have differences in understanding.
The second half of this article is about the man accusing the rat. The meaning is relatively straightforward, and the metaphor and the metaphor are basically one-to-one correspondence. "Preface to Mao's Poems" believes that rats are greedy and fearful of people, and those who are greedy "cannibalize the people...just like rats." The understanding of the moral is very similar to that of today's people two thousand years later. This is the reason.