One day in March 2021, a video of an internal speech by Professor Kang Zhen of Beijing Normal University suddenly appeared on the Internet to the "principal of the middle school". The video lasted 5 minutes, but the result was a stone that stirred up thousands of waves, causing an uproar in public opinion.
Because netizens were surprised to find that Professor Kang Zhen subversively interpreted the theme in Du Fu's "Stone Trench Official" as a praise for the "patriotic spirit" of the old woman in the poem. Such an interpretation makes many people unable to understand.
As a cultural expert, the well-known professor Ding Qijin, after seeing Kang Zhen's interpretation of "The Stone Trench Official", directly criticized Kang Zhen on the Internet as misinterpreting Du Fu's works: "one step further than Guo Moruo" and "I don't know whose IQ I am insulting."
Does the old woman in "The Stone Trench Official" have a patriotic spirit?
"The Stone Trench Official" – Tang Du Fu
In the village of Twilight Stone Trench, there are officials who arrest people at night. The old man walked over the wall, and the old woman went out to watch.
Whoops! What a pain! Listen to the woman's speech before: Three men Ye Chengshu.
One man attached a letter to, and two men died in the new war. The survivors are alive, and the dead are long gone!
There was no one in the room, only the grandchildren. There are grandchildren who have not gone, and there is no end to the skirt.
Although the old woman's strength is weakened, please return from the night of the official. In response to the Heyang Campaign, Judah had to prepare for the morning cooking.
The night is long and silent, like a weeping cry. Tianmingdeng has a future, and he says goodbye to the old man alone.
We all know that Du Fu is the greatest people's poet in Chinese history. Because he often wrote poems to speak for the people at the bottom, "Stone Trench Official" is the best documentary poem in Du Fu's "Three Officials and Three Distinctions".
In the poem "Stone Trench Official", Du Fu successfully portrayed three different characters of the old man, the old woman and the stone trench official. With the Spring and Autumn brushwork of "praise and depreciation in one word", it vividly reproduces the heavy disasters brought to the people by the corruption of the military system during the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty.
In this poem, although Du Fu did not directly discuss the conscription behavior of the stone trench officials, he already expressed his emotional tendencies with words such as "anger" and "bitterness". It is also described in obscure details, which clearly points out that the old woman's initiative to request to join the army is forced.
Kang Zhen's subversive interpretation is equivalent to completely erasing the sympathy of the author himself for the old woman's family shown in this poem, so many people on the Internet have attacked Kang Zhen as an "imperial restorer".
However, when you take a deeper look at the situation, you will be surprised to find that Kang Zhen's interpretation is not his original, in fact, he only borrowed from other people's views.
As early as the 1980s, some people pointed out that there was an interpretation of the "Stone Trench Official" in the "Teacher's Teaching Book": Du Fu wrote this poem to praise the spirit of the old woman's initiative to apply for conscription, because the enemy is now, and the people should make sacrifices for it.
At that time, academics had already written articles criticizing this formulation. Then around 2013, the question of whether "Stone Trench Stone" was singing the patriotic spirit of the old woman was actually turned over again.
Personally, I think that Du Fu, as the author of "Stone Trench Official", actually supports "conscription". This can be easily seen from his works such as "New Marriage Farewell" and "New Security Official".
However, anyone who believes that the old woman in "The Stone Trench Official" "took the initiative to apply for service" out of patriotism did not understand this poem. Because the old woman's "active request" was obviously forced.
Before talking about this topic, we must first emphasize one sentence: Du Fu wrote poems that objectively showed the lives of the people at the bottom during the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty, and there was no conflict with supporting the use of troops by the imperial court. Why, then, is it said that the old woman's application for military service was forced?
Because the poem is written very clearly, when the stone trench official went to knock on the door to catch people, the old man had already climbed over the wall and walked away. The old woman went out to see first, and found that the attitude of the stone trench official was very bad, so she began to complain.
The old woman said that her three sons had all gone to defend Yecheng, and two of them had already died in battle, and only survived. At that time, the old woman also had a daughter-in-law and a grandson who nursed.
However, when the old woman faced the stone trench official at that time, she did not tell the truth to the stone trench official at first, because the poem first wrote that "there is no one in the room", and the next sentence is "only the milk of the grandson".
Ancient Chinese poetry used words and always pursued simplicity. If Du Fu was just trying to express here that the old woman's family only had a daughter-in-law and a grandson, why did she combine the two sentences into one and write "there are only milky grandchildren in the room"?
In fact, Du Fu's intention in writing this way is obvious. This is because the old woman is worried that the young and strong daughter-in-law will be arrested and sent to serve, and then there will be no one to take care of the "nursing grandson", so she first "cunning" and says that "there is no one in the room".
However, in the old woman's house, there was obviously a baby and the mother of the baby. The attitude of the stone trench official was very fierce, and the roar was like thunder, and when the baby heard it, it would surely cry when it was frightened.
The cries of the babies together, then the stone trenchers will surely hear. In this case, the old woman could not hide it before she confessed, and there was a grandchild in the house. Finally, it was said that the grandson was with his mother.
The order of this explanation is actually quite exquisite. And after the old woman said that she also had a daughter-in-law, she repeatedly excused her daughter-in-law for not being able to go out to see people, saying that she "had no end to the skirt."
In the end, the old woman was afraid that after her daughter-in-law was captured by the stone trench officials, her grandson would be starved to death without anyone to take care of her, so she "took the initiative to apply for service." Such behavior has nothing to do with the "spirit of patriotism."
And what made people feel even more miserable was that the old woman tried her best to cover up in front of the stone trench officials for half a day, but in the end her daughter-in-law was arrested with her and went to cook.
In this long poem, Du Fu uses a very clever and obscure technique, in the penultimate sentence of the poem, "The night is long and silent", and the last sentence, "Alone and farewell to the old man", hinting at the unfortunate ending of the old woman's family.
"The night is silent" because the daughter-in-law and the old woman were both arrested at that time, and the old man went back to the room alone, only daring to secretly cry. "Farewell to the old man alone" is even more obvious, and the daughter-in-law did not know where she had been caught.
Then, in the poem "Stone Trench Official", why did Du Fu record the things of "silence for a long time" and "farewell to the old man alone" so vaguely? The reason is actually quite simple.
Because Sima Guang once said in the "Continued Poems": "The ancients valued poetry more than words and made people think about it, so those who say it are not guilty, and those who hear it are enough to abstain." In recent times, only Du Zimei has the most poetic body. ”
Sima Guang means that the ancients wrote poetry in a subtle way, with no revealing being superior. Deliberately written obscurely, through individual words to stimulate the reader's associations, the reader will naturally understand the true meaning of the poem.
In this way, you feel as if he wrote something, but it seems that he didn't write anything. The advantage of doing so is that the person who writes the poem will not be guilty of his words, and the person who reads the poem will be able to grasp the true meaning of the poem.
Once upon a time, Guo Moruo had criticized Du Fu's poem, exposing that the stone trench officials were not direct enough, and that there was a motive and possibility for the "stone trench officials" to cover up their crimes. Now there are Kang Zhen and others who simply believe that Du Fu is not exposing the face of the recruiters, but singing the praises of "old women".
The evaluation of these two can be summed up in a word: it is either stupid or bad. The former statement is that it does not understand the aesthetic requirements of the creation of ancient Chinese poetry, while the latter statement is completely a deliberate distortion of the facts in "The Stone Trench Official".
Ancients Cloud: The rise and fall of the family country, the pi fu has the responsibility. As a citizen of the Tang Dynasty, we should understand a just war waged by the Tang court, even if it will bring misfortune to individuals and families. However, the Tang court also had an obligation to show compassion for the people.
Although Du Fu supported the Tang Court to fight this war, this did not mean that he necessarily agreed with the violent way of war in his heart, just as it was called: "Soldiers, weapons, and saints have to use it as a last resort." ”
Conscription and war are not to give any emperor the opportunity to make meritorious achievements, but to bring long-term tranquility to a country and peace and happiness to the people.
Therefore, the misfortune brought to the people by "conscription" should not be ignored. It should be recorded truthfully, so that people of insight can see it, and then think about ways to achieve a balance between the two.
epilogue
From the above analysis, we can see that Kang Zhen's statement was not originally created by himself. It was already being proposed in the mid-eighties, or earlier.
So in the past forty years, almost every ten years, some people will bring up the old thing about whether the "old woman" is patriotic or not, and cause a discussion.
Personally, I think that the old woman may still have a patriotic spirit. The poem mentions "Three Men Ye Cheng Shu", and the three sons all defended the city, but did not mention whether they were captured or not. Therefore, it cannot be completely ruled out that some of the three of them joined the army on their own initiative.
However, when the old woman went to the door to arrest people and chose to take the initiative to follow the stone trench official to join the army, she may not show a patriotic spirit, but more likely to be a helpless choice made for the sake of her family.
In addition, ordinary people have the obligation to be patriotic. But two of the old woman's three strong men were dead, and the other was still half dead, and one of them could not return home. How are they going to live with nursing babies, old wives and old men left in the house?
Most of the ordinary people in ancient times made a living by farming. Farming requires physical strength, and men's strength is greater than women's strength, and they are the main force of farming. But because of the war, the old woman's family was finally left with only one laborer, the old man.
Therefore, when the old woman and her family eat, they will eventually have to rely on this old man who still has the strength to climb over the wall. However, if the stone trench officials had captured the old man, then the old woman's entire family would have no one to farm, and they would all starve to death. They are going to starve to death, so how can they be patriotic?
Du Fu was a patriotic poet, and in his "Three Officials and Three Distinctions", there are also many sentences about "patriotism" and advocating that the common people take into account the overall situation and make sacrifices for the country. For example, in "New Marriage", the sentence "Don't think about the new marriage, try to do things".
But in this poem "Stone Trench Stone", Du Fu adopts another perspective of sympathy for the people at the bottom of the "conscription". Since ancient times, it is difficult to be loyal and righteous, and the contradictions and conflicts between the state, the family, and personal interests are sometimes difficult to avoid.
As a "people's poet", Du Fu did not need to whitewash anything. He just wants to be impartial, to present these things truthfully and artistically, so that future generations can slowly think and understand the true meaning of them.