I have a convenience, worth a hundred pieces of training.
We fight each other for a long time and hide the weak, and we will not enter the county until death.
Others ride big horses, and I ride alone on the donkey.
Looking back at the man who carried the firewood, I feel more confident.
Wang Fanzhi's poems were widely circulated in the early Tang Dynasty, but later they were regarded as "lower Riba people" by the feudal orthodox faction and could not enter the halls of poetry and art. In terms of content, a considerable part of the existing Brahma poems are poetic moral maxims to encourage the world and encourage good deeds. Such poems have little literary value. The most literary value of Brahma poetry is those humorous and satirical pictures of worldly conditions and human feelings made intentionally or unintentionally, just like this poem.
This poem is recorded from the third volume of the Dunhuang scroll "Wang Fanzhi's Poems". The poem is written in the first person voice, which is similar to the "Tao Bai" in opera. He boasts that he has a magic weapon in life, which is to be at peace with the world and stay calm. This kind of "sexual appearance" of people in the old days has been personalized in the poet's writings. The concept of "not fighting against the world" is not expressed directly, but expressed through the vivid language of the people in the poem: "Fight each other and subjugate the weak, and we will not enter the county until death." Being bullied to the extreme, but refusing to go to the county government office to complain, preferring to suffer a loss, is a further example of "fighting against each other and subjugating the weak", and not even having the willpower to "be intolerable". The image of the poem is branded with the weak in the feudal era and exudes the breath of life ("fighting", "subjugating the weak", and lawsuits all come from life). The boast of being "worth a hundred horses" is enough to show the identity of the character (taking "a hundred horses" as valuable is naturally not the consciousness of the rich), and shows that although the character is in a humble situation, he does not realize how sad it is. Through the character's language, the poet portrays the image of a small person who is willing to be weak and not compete with others.
This poem is recorded in Volume 10 of Fei Gun's "Liangxi Manzhi". Like "I Have a Handy", this poem is also written in the first person, but it shows an interesting dramatic scene of "three people". Those who ride big horses and those who carry firewood are the two poles of the gap between rich and poor. As a donkey rider between these two extremes, his mood was very contradictory: he was not as good as his superiors and was quite dissatisfied (this can be seen from the tone of the word "lone"), but when he saw the man carrying the firewood, he I immediately felt at ease again. The technique used by the poet here is to first list three images and end them at the last sentence, which is full of interest. The composition is also very unique.
This poem truly or slightly exaggerates some common behavioral and psychological problems in the world, which makes people laugh and make them reflect. This poem can be understood in two ways: it can be seen as serious and persuasive, and it can also be read as teasing and satirical. However, it is shallow to understand it from the front, and it is wonderful to understand it from the negative side. This poem is a simple exhortation to people to be content, but a caricature of a mediocre person is lifelike.
Fan Zhi's poem may not necessarily have no persuasive meaning. The poet also appreciates and sympathizes with the characters he writes. However, the poet did not give conceptual boring preaching, but adopted "xiangjiao" - that is, to vividly display the principles. And what he took was not a conceptual image made out of thin air, but directly extracted from his keen observation and accumulation of life. It is not only true but also typical. When the poet is only content to express the images without comment, these images will have a certain degree of relative independence and flexibility for the poet's thoughts. When readers observe it from a new and higher perspective, they will find many profound meanings contained in the image that are not necessarily realized by the author. Wang Fanzhi's humorous sketches with an anatomical style and sharp writing styles are more readable and artistically superior than the sharp-tongued satires.