Chinese name: Pu Songling

Mr. Liu Xian, also known as Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, was named Chen Jian by the laity Liu Quan.

Gender: male

Year: Qing Dynasty

Ethnic group: Han nationality

Date of birth and death: 1640 ~ 17 15.

biography

Pu Songling (1640 ~ 17 15) is a writer in A Qing. Liu Xian, alias Liu Quanju, was born in Zichuan (now Zibo), Shandong Province. There was a literary name at an early age, which was highly valued by history and Wang Shizhen. After many rural examinations, they all came last and became Gong Sheng at the age of 7 1. In addition to middle age, he also worked as a curtain in Baoying and a teacher in his hometown until his death. Poor family, contact with the bottom people's lives. Can write poetry, good at writing folk songs. For decades, he wrote a collection of short stories, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, which was constantly revised and supplemented. His book used the style of tang legends's novels, criticizing the society and politics at that time by talking about ghosts and foxes. He also wrote Collected Works of Liaozhai, Poems of Liaozhai, Folk Songs of Liaozhai and various popular books about agriculture and medicine.

Living in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, ethnic contradictions and class contradictions were unprecedentedly acute. Born into a family of small landlords and businessmen, he was very dissatisfied in the imperial examination, full of practical knowledge and failed repeatedly. 765,438+0 years old to get Gong Sheng. He was full of complaints, so he turned his story into a serial novel.

Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is a collection of short stories in classical Chinese, with 43 1 short stories. Its content can be roughly divided into four parts: first, with resentment towards the real society, it exposes and mocks the greedy and vicious faces of corrupt officials and bullies, and points the pen at the feudal political system. This kind of novels, poems and literary works are the most representative, such as Promoting Weaving, Xi Fang Ping, Shang San Guan and Xiang Gao. Second, Pu Songling has a personal experience of the decadent imperial examination system. Through articles such as Si Wenlang, Exam Cheats, and Book Idiot, the author mercilessly uncovered the darkness of the imperial examination system, outlined the face of the examiner's ignorance and greed, analyzed the imprisonment and corrosion of the imperial examination system to the intellectuals' souls, and condemned the wind of graft in the examination room. Third, give sincere praise to the faithful and pure love in the world and the bottom women and poor literati who struggle for this love. Representative chapters include Crow's Head and Western Empress. There are many love stories of foxes, ghosts and elves and people in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, which are quite romantic. In these stories, many beautiful and pure female images were created, such as Redjade, Ying Ning, Yu Xiang, Qingfeng, Jiao Na and Lianxiang. Four, some short stories are moral stories to explain ethics and morality, which are of educational significance, such as Painted Skin and Laoshan Taoist.

Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is an active romantic novel and a poetic literary work. Its romantic spirit is mainly manifested in the shaping of positive ideal figures, especially in the female image transformed from a seductive fox. In addition, it is also reflected in the use of romantic techniques. The author is good at using dreams and a lot of fictional plots to break through the shackles of reality, express his ideals and solve insoluble contradictions in reality.

Pu Songling was born in a long-term declining family. His father abandoned Confucianism and went to sea because the imperial examination was not obvious, but he still could not forget the recovery of the motherland. Pu Songling studied with his father since childhood. /kloc-at the age of 0/9, he was the first doctoral student in county, prefecture and Dao, and was praised by Shi. Since then, the title of the article has been greatly improved, and he speaks highly of himself. However, after that, his experience in the examination room was always depressed. It was not until he was in his sixties that he accepted his wife's advice and gave up his career fantasy. It was not until he was seventy-one that he got a meaningless name-Gong Sheng. During his decades in the imperial examination hall, he first worked as a short-term screen guest, and later worked as a private school teacher in an official family for a long time to make a living. From middle age, he wrote Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio while teaching until his later years. Before this book was written, it was circulated among peers and gained the common sense of Wang Shizhen, the leader of the poetry circle at that time. Besides Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, he also has a considerable number of poems, words, essays and folk songs. , compiled into Pu Songling's anthology.

There are nearly 500 articles in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, which actually contain two different types of novels, poems and literary works:

A short story, which belongs to all kinds of strange theories; The other kind is novels in the true sense, which are mostly anecdotes about ghosts, foxes and flowers. The number of articles in the two categories is about half, but some are in between. The source of these novels, poems and literary works, according to the author's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio at the front of the book, is that he "happily talks about ghosts and smells them with a pen" and "people from all over the world send them in the mailbox", which has accumulated for so long. In addition, it is said that Pu Songling often prepares rock tea on the roadside for pedestrians to enjoy, and takes the opportunity to chat with him and collect records of anecdotes (see "Three Borrowing Stories from Lu"), which is not very credible, but many contents in "Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio" come from folk rumors, which is beyond doubt.

Pu Songling's thoughts and feelings are very mixed, which also causes the content of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio to be mixed. This can be analyzed from several aspects: first, he was brilliant and down in the world all his life, suffered mental torture for decades in the imperial examination, and sat in a rich gentry's house as a scholar, which caused him great psychological depression. This repression is often manifested as a sharp attack on unreasonable social reality, but sometimes it is also manifested as an interest in some brutal and dark phenomena (such as dog rape is a remarkable example). Secondly, his rational views on many social problems are really not brilliant. Therefore, when he takes real people as the leading role in his novels, he often preaches stale ethical codes, such as "Geng 18" and "The Color of Golden Destiny", all of which strongly criticize women for being unconscious and even think that they deserve a tragic ending, while "Du" is about a woman who becomes a pig because she is not filial to her mother-in-law, and the county magistrate ties her up for public. As for promoting reincarnation, it can be seen everywhere. However, as an artist with rich emotions and outstanding imagination, he wrote many beautiful dreams that belong to human beings when depicting the image of fox and ghost in a completely fantasy realm. Of course, the dominant novels, poems and literary works in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio are all criticisms of social reality and illusions about a better life, which is why people like this book.

Pu Songling suffered from the imperial examination all his life. Every time he talked about it, he felt mixed feelings and bitter. There is a chapter in Sansheng in the book, in which a famous person in the Tang Dynasty was dismissed by an examiner and died in anger, and became an enemy with the examiner's successor in three generations. At the end of the article, the author commented: "Three generations at a time, even resentment!" The "resentment" puzzled by this famous artist is also a reflection of Pu Songling's own mentality. So there are many places involved in the imperial examination in the book. However, Pu Songling did not deny the imperial examination system itself. He particularly criticized the examiner's "blindness or blindness" (Pu Songling's "Show you, you, the cloud after the exam"), so that he could not tell the good from the bad. For example, Jia's article, every time Jia took a good article to take the exam, always fell behind, and finally wrote the "shameful sentence" in writing, but won the first place in high school. Another example is the article "Si Wenlang", in which a magical blind monk can sniff out things burnt to paper ash with his nose. He sneered at the examiner's article and immediately "spit on the wall, out of breath", which is really called "fart article" In this kind of story, the author's subjective emotion is the strongest, and the sharpness is of course sharp, but it is inevitable to exaggerate. The most meaningful works to attack the drawbacks of the imperial examination should be novels, poems and literary works that reflect the examinee's great mental pain and distort his soul. For example, in Wang Zian, he wrote about Wang Zian. He was drunk near the bank. For an instant, he dreamed that he was a juren, a scholar and an academician. So he repeatedly called the newsboy a "reward" and thought that he should "show off his hometown". Because of the delay of "long shift", what's the point of him "beating his feet and cursing" as a slow slave? ""after waking up, I don't know the falsehood. This description is really penetrating and contains the author's profound psychological reflection. At the end of the article, the discussion of "different stone artists" summarizes the sudden madness, sudden depression and ecstasy of scholars before and after entering the tomb, which is quite touching.

On the one hand, Pu Songling's social status is not high, and he knows well the sufferings of the people. On the other hand, he has many contacts with officialdom figures and knows the disadvantages. Therefore, he wrote some excellent novels, poems and literary works that exposed the political darkness. For example, "Xi Fang Ping" wrote that the underworld was greedy and took bribes, and the wronged people were hard to stand up and were devastated by terror. This is really a dark microcosm of the real society. Another example is "Promoting Weaving", which is written because the emperor likes to fight cricket, officials at all levels pay tribute to invite pets, and Xu Li takes the opportunity to gather people, causing the tragedy of people's misery. This kind of novels, poems and literary works with practical significance occupy a considerable proportion in the book.

However, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio has always been loved by people. Mainly because there are many beautiful stories about the love between foxes and ghosts. Such as Jiao Na, Qing Feng, Ying Ning, Lian Xiang, Grandma, Qiao Niang, Pian Pian, Crow Head, Jin Ge and Xiang Yu. , are very touching. The main images in these novels are women. Most of them take a positive attitude in their love life, or they are simple and willful, cunning and wise, or delicate and gentle, but they are generally full of vitality, dare to pursue a happy life and satisfy their feelings, and are less bound by human relations. Just like the fox woman Ning, she always smiles innocently, frolics and plays without scruple, and has never been polluted by the laws of human civilization. Another example is the fairy in Pian Pian, who makes brocade with leaves. Whenever a lover is interested, he quietly changes his clothes back to yellow leaves and makes a fool of himself on the spot. The author's superb artistic creativity lies in his ingenious combination of real human feelings with fantastic scenes and strange plots, from which he reflects the ideal brilliance of the world.

The story of fox and ghost has a long history in China's ancient novels, and Pu Songling is particularly concerned about and good at it, which is worth studying. As a talented writer, there is no doubt about his inner emotional activities; In his painful life experience, he naturally longed for some kind of emotional comfort. However, as mentioned earlier, the resurgence of feudal ethics and Cheng Zhu's Neo-Confucianism in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties made the social ideological trend of pursuing individual liberation in a downturn, and Pu Songling was deeply influenced by it. On the other hand, since this trend of thought has emerged, it is impossible to completely cut off the requirements of satisfying natural affection. However, when the novel focuses on women with real social identity and real social relations, the author and readers will put forward realistic ethical constraints on them; Only when writing female images such as foxes and ghosts, because these characters are detached from the inherent structure of society and cannot be measured by moral norms, the author's inner desires will naturally become active, and people's natural feelings will be expressed more freely in an illusory scene of "ethical isolation". This should be the reason why Pu Songling is particularly interested in foxes and ghosts. But even so, the author's psychological shadow will still have an impact on the novel. The brief combination of those people and fox ghosts lacks the brightness and cheerfulness of secular life, but it always gives people a sad feeling.

The predecessors compared Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio to the poetry of Jingling School, which is not unreasonable in terms of its psychological factors.

If Sanyan, Erpai and Strange Stories from a Lonely Studio are regarded as the representatives of short stories in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, we can really see the decline of the vitality of literature by comparing vivid vernacular with elegant classical Chinese, earthly stories full of local customs and tragic stories of foxes and ghosts. Stylistically, at the end of the long story, Pu Songling imitated the style of praising "Tai Shi Gong Gong Yue" in Historical Records and added a comment of "Different Shi Shiyue". From the current trend of getting rid of the influence of historical biography and reducing the discussion of classical Chinese novels, there is nothing to admire. Besides, although there are some wonderful comments, most of them are meaningless, and Pu's strength is not here.

However, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is a brilliant work after all, which inherits some important positive factors of the previous novels and still has a unique position in the history of China's novels. It not only combines the traditions of two classical Chinese novels, namely mystery novels and legendary novels, but also absorbs some advantages of vernacular novels, forming a unique style. In some excellent chapters, the author can construct bizarre plots with rich imagination, and at the same time, he is good at detailed and realistic description in this bizarre plot, shaping vivid and humanistic artistic images, and immersing people in the fictional dream scene and atmosphere of the novel. The narrative language of the novel is simple and elegant classical Chinese, while the dialogue of the characters in the novel is mainly classical Chinese, but it is relatively simple, and sometimes it is skillfully integrated with vernacular elements, which not only destroys the overall language style, but also overcomes the problem that the expressions and voices of the characters in the dialogue in classical Chinese novels are difficult to imitate to some extent, which is a very rare achievement. Take Ping Ping as an example. After the prodigal Luo Zifu was taken in, a "Miss Flower City" visited:

One day, a young woman smiled and said, "Happy kid! Xue Jiazi has a good dream. When will it be ready? " The woman greeted her with a smile and said, "Flower City Lady, you have been involved for a long time. The southwest wind is tight today, blow! Did the little brother hug? " Yue: "Another handmaid." The woman smiled and said, "Mrs. Hua is a kiln worker! Will Fu Na come? " Yue:

"Yes, but he sleeps." So I sat down to drink.

After that, I wrote that Luo Zifu stole the Flower City twice, and both of them were "turned into leaves". I was too scared to think about it again-

Huacheng said with a smile, "But a little loafer is a big mistake! If my husband is Mrs. vinegar gourd, I am afraid of jumping into the sky. " The woman also said, "If you are lucky, you will freeze to death!" " Clap with each other. Huacheng left the table and said, "I'm afraid I'll cry and be heartbroken." The woman also said: "I am eager to attract other men, so I don't remember Xiaojiang crying."

The style of writing two women as jokes is ingenious, and there is no obstacle for readers with a little cultural accomplishment in the old days.

Due to the combination of various factors, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio further enhances the artistry of China's classical novels. Since then, although many similar novels, poems and literary works have come out, they can't be compared with them.