Where there is Bole, there is a swift horse. A thousand miles away, there are not many boles. Therefore, although there is a famous horse, it is humiliated by a slave, and it is not called a thousand miles to die in a trough.
A horse can travel thousands of miles, and a stone can eat it all. Horse eaters don't know that they can eat thousands of miles. This is a horse. Although it has the ability to travel thousands of miles, it looks beautiful only because of lack of food and physical strength, and it can't compete with an ordinary horse at all. Let's hope it can travel a thousand miles.
If you don't follow its path, you can't make full use of your food, but you can't understand it If you implement your strategy, you will face it and say, "There are no horses in the world." Oh! Are you sure you don't need a horse? I really don't understand horses!
The translation is as follows:
Ma Shuo Han Yu
Only when there is Bole in the world can there be a swift horse. There are often swift horses, but Bole is not often. Therefore, even a vigorous horse can only be humiliated by servants and die in the stable with ordinary horses, and will not get the title of swift horse.
A horse that walks thousands of miles a day may eat a stone of grain at a meal. People who feed horses don't know how to feed them according to their ability of thousands of miles a day. Although such a horse has the ability to travel thousands of miles a day, its talent and good quality will not be shown if its food intake and physical strength are insufficient. If it is impossible to be on an equal footing with an ordinary horse, how can it be required to travel thousands of miles every day?
Push it. If you don't feed it in the right way, you can't let it give full play to its talents. Listen to its bray, but don't understand its meaning. Stand in front of it with a whip and say, "There is no swift horse in the world!" Alas! Is there really no maxima? In fact, they really don't know maxima!
Appreciation of Ma Shuo
Han Yu was a master of prose in Tang Dynasty and a poet who had a great influence on writers in Song Dynasty. People talk a lot about his "poetry as poetry" (writing poetry in prose), but seldom pay attention to his more prominent feature "poetry as text" The so-called "writing with poetry" refers to writing prose with poetic and lasting appeal characteristics, that is to say, poetizing prose (but this does not mean the new style of "prose poetry" introduced from the west). We say that prose is poetic, or that prose is poetic, and it is not limited to writing natural scenery, lyric sketches, typical characterization of characters and artistic description of events; On the contrary, you can also use the mood and charm of poetry to write reasoning or comments. One of the characteristics of Han Yu's prose is here.
It is said that Bole was a native of Qin in the Spring and Autumn Period. He is good at watching horses and distinguishing what a swift horse is. This was originally a character in a story told by a man named Han Ming to Chun Huang Xie in The Warring States Policy and Chu Ce. This story may be an ancient legend, or it may be a fable made up by Han Ming with art. The allusions of Bole have been quoted by Han Yu many times (see his Preface to the Letter of Recommendation, Sending the Text to the River and Yang), which shows that Han Yu has great feelings for Bole's story of identifying a swift horse due to the ups and downs of his own fate. But to be fair, his Ma Shuo is the best one, and readers like to read it because it is written like a poem.
One of the main characteristics of poetry is to resort to thinking in images, and its creative techniques are often based on metaphor. Of course, a good poem is always more subtle and tortuous than prose, with endless aftertaste. From the perspective of common sense, a reasoning essay is basically based on logical thinking. Ma Shuo by Han Yu is definitely a reasoned essay, but it is like a fable, but it is not a fable. Using metaphor to reason can not directly expose the arguments held, let alone impose personal views on readers. The whole article almost describes the experience of a swift horse through image thinking, presenting only living facts but omitting the pen and ink to tell the truth, which can be said to be the writing of poetry. More skillfully, the author uses the indispensable function words (auxiliary words, exclamations and conjunctions) in ancient Chinese, which embodies the interest and artistic conception of lyric poetry. Although we read it as an essay, it is like a lyric poem that is fully developed. This technique of "writing with poetry" began with Sima Qian in the Western Han Dynasty (no one ever admitted that Sima Qian was a poet) and was further developed by Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan. Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi (especially Ouyang Xiu) reached a new height in the Song Dynasty. This is a new topic that we should pay attention to when we study the history of China literature and classical prose.
The first sentence of the article is the major premise: "There is Bole and then there is a swift horse." But this proposition itself is illogical. Because of his sense of determination, Bole's knowledge and experience in treating horses well must be obtained from a large number of swift horses in society (or nature) and then gradually summarized. So in the past, some people thought that Han Yu's sentence was putting the cart before the horse and idealism. We don't deny that according to the principle of materialism, his judgment is wrong. But taking it as the language of poetry, it is a thought-provoking epigram and a famous saying full of emotion. Because there are too few people in the world who have the knowledge and skills of Bole. So the author immediately points out the main idea from the front below, and there is no room to pour out the infinite grievances of Maxima. It is precisely because "Bole is rare" that many swift horses not only can't find an average herdsman, but are "humiliated only by slaves" and suffer a lot from ignorant villains. What is even more distressing is that these BMWs actually died in pairs. The unfortunate and painful ending they suffered is indescribable. Of course, the result is even less satisfactory. No one calls these valuable gods swift horses, and their deaths are naturally meaningless. The phrase "not a thousand miles" means that no one sympathizes with them, let alone expresses regret, regret and regret for their death. From the surface of the article, the author has done quite thoroughly; In fact, I don't know how much bitterness and pain there are, but it seems unrestrained, but its connotation is very rich. In fact, it is implicit (saying that his writing is graceful and restrained may be unacceptable to readers, but the author really didn't finish it). This is really a lyric poem.
The author focuses on the contradiction between "horse eater" and swift horse, and compares it, which not only writes the anguish of swift horse, but also writes the ignorance and domineering of those who don't know the real talent and practical learning. Maxima is useless when no one creates favorable objective conditions for it; Or although I want to show my strengths, I have nowhere to make it, even to the point where I can't make it. In this way, it can't even compare with an ordinary horse. How does it realize its special function of traveling thousands of miles every day? Therefore, its treatment is naturally not as good as that of a "regular horse", and it is not surprising that it was humiliated to death and will not attract people's attention. Not only that, even such a swift horse can't compare with "Changma", because it can't do its duty faithfully, it will be greatly blamed and punished, and it is often beaten innocently ("the policy doesn't go its own way", so it is unreasonable to beat it), and of course the treatment is even worse ("food can't make the best use of everything"). On the surface, the "horse eater" is not Bole and does not understand horse language; But there is a meaning in the bones that it is useless for people without talent to complain to those ignorant and overbearing rulers.
At this point, the author still seems to feel that he is not thirsty enough, so he continues to make a further description from the aspect of "people", with the meaning of "singing without understanding its meaning" This not only makes the article more vivid and profound, but also shows the author's more angry feelings. The author did not immediately condemn this "man" as blind as a bat and ignorant of horses. Instead, let him pretend that he doesn't understand this swift horse, and sighed with compassion: "There is no horse in the world!" " In other words, such "people" are still self-righteous in their subjective motives. It's not that he doesn't want to select talents. It's not that he doesn't have the heart to seek and use talents. Unfortunately, there are too few talents to find. "Where will there be real talents in the world?" Obviously, there is something wrong with "people" subjectively, but it pushes the formation of this situation to the unsatisfactory and unsatisfactory objective conditions. At present, a swift horse is humiliated to pieces, but laments that there is no horse in the world, thinking that people are not as good as "regular horses". This is not only a wonderful irony, but also an extremely severe and intense theory. At this point, the article has been written naturally, and the author just stood up and pointed out the topic, ending with the following three sentences of "alas", sharply proposing the contradiction between "no horse" and "no horse" ("no horse" is a congenital natural defect, and "no horse" is a man-made crime the day after tomorrow), forming a climax, which is extremely depressing and frustrating. The ancients said that the Yangtze River is majestic, and this concise and concentrated method is the result of Han Yu's writing. Of course, we can't help but be overwhelmed by the author's ups and downs and sad feelings, but we can't help but be impressed by his concise pen and ink.