Among the essays of pre-Qin philosophers, Zhuangzi has the highest literary achievement. Zhuangzi consists of thirty-three articles, which are divided into three parts: internal, external and miscellaneous. It is generally believed that the inner chapter was written by Zhuangzi. The foreign articles and miscellaneous articles are all from Zhuangzi's post-school.
Zhuangzi's name is Zhou, a Mongolian in the Song Dynasty during the Warring States Period, and once worked as a painter. Living in poverty, but despising wealth, power, fame and fortune, trying to maintain an independent personality in troubled times and pursue the spiritual realm of "carefree travel"
1, Zhuangzi's main ideas:
(1) Comply with nature, live in peace and govern by doing nothing. Zhuangzi's philosophical thoughts originated from Laozi and developed Laozi's thoughts. "Tao" is the foundation and highest category of his philosophy. He believes that Tao is "innate", tangible and intangible, natural and eternal, mysterious and unknowable. Therefore, he advocates nature, advocates doing nothing in heaven, and opposes the role of human beings in nature. People can only adapt passively and resign themselves to fate.
(2) the spiritual freedom of "carefree travel". "Heaven and earth coexist with people, and everything and I are one" (On Homogeneous Things). Starting from the concept of homogeneous everything, living and dying together, Zhuangzi fantasized about an absolutely free spiritual world without any conditions, in order to achieve the realm of "not for yourself, the immortals are useless, and the saints are nameless". He imagines that once the human spirit rushes out of the small individual, the short life will merge into the universe, soar in the "land without things", cross the limitation of time and space, and enter the realm of "sitting and forgetting" without ancient and modern, life and death, and detached things. However, reality can't be detached after all, and the ethereal world can only be a short-term narcissism after escaping from reality.
(3) Dialectical thinking develops towards relativism and sophistry. He denied the difference between things and the standard of right and wrong. He once said: If I argue with you, you can't argue with me. Can you prove that I am "yes" and you are "no"? Or prove that you are "yes" and I am "no"? Who will decide? Those who agree with me, those who agree with you, or those who disagree with you and me can't judge who is right or wrong. So there is no right or wrong standard. Not only that, he also thinks that there is no difference between life and death, small and big, long and dead, poor and rich, beautiful and ugly. This is actually a sophistry that obliterates the differences between things.
(4) A fierce attack on the darkness of reality and the benevolence, righteousness, propriety and music. Zhuangzi didn't really forget politics as he said. In fact, he cared about the world. Zhuangzi is still full of angry words. For example, "when the party is today, it is only exempt from punishment" ("Human"), "Those who steal the hook will be punished, and those who steal the country will be punished; Benevolence is the only thing that exists in the door of a vassal, and "saints never die, thieves never stop" ("saints never die, thieves never stop") and so on, precisely because of their incomparable disgust for reality. It's just that Zhuangzi chose a passive way to escape, advocated "abandoning wisdom" and sketched a social blueprint of "a world of supreme virtue".
Second, Zhuangzi's artistic achievements:
"Zhuangzi" prose "meaning out of the dust, strange writing" ("art? The outline of the text is very romantic.
1, in the choice of themes, deliberately widen the distance from reality, mainly fables and myths.
"Zhuangzi" claims that its creative method is "taking words as rambling words, emphasizing words and taking fables as broad models" (the world). Fable Nineteen is a book, in which fable is its main form of expression. According to statistics, Zhuangzi contains more than 200 fables, involving fairy tales, historical legends, plants in nature, birds and animals, etc. Most of them are fiction. His fables pay attention to detail description and exaggeration, imagination and fiction, which are absurd and varied, and have the characteristics of "containing truth in Christmas and metaphysics" (art outline? The characteristics of the text "). For example, in order to repay the chaotic hospitality of the central emperor, the emperor of the South China Sea and the emperor of the North China Sea suddenly dug a hole for their day and died in chaos on the seventh day. How strange and bold imagination is. This story is intriguing to illustrate the harm of "promise". Others, such as Skillful Understanding of Cattle, Looking at the Ocean and Sighing, Learning from the East and Coming from the West, Frog at the Well, Confusing Two Questions and Dreaming Butterfly in Zhuang Zhou, are still widely read, which shows their influence.
(note 1 fable, that is, the words of others. People are used to taking "I" as the standard of right and wrong. In order to avoid being subjective and one-sided, to make the truth clear, and to win people's trust, it is necessary to "talk outside" (fable).
2 restatement; One is that it is impulse, that is, repetition and gain; One kind of thinking is tautology, that is, relying on the words of elders, venerable persons and celebrities, let your own truth be accepted by others, and entrust yourself to elders and venerable persons in order to be believed.
(3) speech, that is, out of unintentional and natural language, emerges endlessly, loosely spreading the truth and can be passed down forever. 〕
2. Rich imagination and bold exaggeration constitute a strange image world. These complicated artistic images are full of romance, which is the artistic charm of Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi's philosophical thoughts are profound and profound. Instead of symbolizing hints through imagination and fictional image world, it is better to express them directly through concepts and logical reasoning. The difference between his prose and that of other schools is that his reasoning is not based on logical reasoning, but shows a complex argumentation style. Fables are often used to replace the exposition of philosophical views, and metaphors and symbols are used to replace the exposition of logical advancement, so that readers can appreciate and understand philosophy from strange, absurd and vivid fables. The image of the book is imaginary, which often goes beyond the limitation of time and space and the difference between things and me. It is colorful, bizarre and incredible. Like a fish in the north, it turns into a Peng and flies angrily. If its wings hang the clouds in the sky, the water will hit 3,000 Li, and it will soar to Wan Li (Happy Walk). Ren Gongzi fished with 50 cows as bait, crouched in Huiji Mountain and threw a shot in the East China Sea. The next year, he caught a big fish, white waves were like mountains, and the sea and sky shook thousands of miles. People in eastern Zhejiang and north of Cangwu have eaten this kind of fish (exotic). Others, such as its incomparably huge Kunpeng, the deity on Mount Dai (Wandering), chaos without seven senses (The Emperor) and so on. , with strange and incredible images.
3. In the detailed description of objects, there is a strong subjectivity and lyricism, which realizes the blending of philosophy and poetry.
Zhuangzi didn't completely escape from reality. Although he advocates selflessness and selflessness, many of his works are full of critical spirit and permeated with strong personality and emotion. In the snail's corner, the Tush family and the Man family fought for land, buried millions of corpses, and rebelled for five days after ten days (Zeyang). It was during the Warring States period that "fighting for land and killing people was profitable; Fight for the city, kill the city "("Mencius? Li Lou) is a reflection of this social reality. The Qin Dynasty made Cao Shang win a hundred battles in the East, and he got carried away, depicting the villain's face of pursuing wealth by hook or by crook. "Licking hemorrhoids and breaking carbuncle" is the most pungent satire on this villain ("Lieyukou"); In Chu's crazy songs about Yu, the despair and sadness of being born in troubled times (The World) are shown. In the last paragraph of A Happy Journey, the author describes his pursuit of spiritual freedom with great emotion, which is full of poetry and painting.
4. The article Wang Yang is wanton, with ups and downs, changeable writing style, strange and rich language, vivid and pungent rhythm and harmonious tone, which has the characteristics of poetic language. A large number of fables are full of "absurd words, absurd words, groundless talk" (the world), which makes Zhuangzi's composition endless and unpredictable. For example, in the first half of "Happy Travel", fables, tautology and exaggeration were widely used, from Kun Peng spreading his wings to Liezi riding the wind. These are not the main themes of the works, but their own "carefree" is used to set off people's "carefree", while the ambiguity and secrecy in the structural clues of the theme sentence "There is no one but yourself, the immortal is useless, and the sage is nameless" in Zhuangzi does not mean that the structure of the article lacks internal connection, but that profound thoughts and strong emotions are integrated into the writing, which links all the stories to form a whole and forms a unique serial structure. Zhuangzi's sentence patterns are complex and changeable. He likes to use extreme words and strange words, and is interested in pursuing novelty. For example, in "The Theory of Everything", he wrote the sound of strong wind as flowing water to describe it. Body and things are nuanced, and shape and spirit are clear.
Second,' Zhuangzi' artistic features
The most literary feature of Zhuangzi is its romantic expression. As a thinker, Zhuangzi, when discussing serious academic issues and expounding his own views, did not sit solemnly and unsmiling like most scholars, and expounded his thoughts with meticulous thinking, rigorous reasoning and clear language, but expressed his thoughts with strong feelings and artistic images, which made the book Zhuangzi have a strong romantic color.
First, use fable to write a composition, and directly use image reasoning.
Zhuangzi described his expression in this way: "With absurd words, absurd words and unprovoked cliff words, it is arbitrary at the moment, otherwise, it is not a matter of opinion. The so-called fable is the language to express what you want to say in other people's affairs and other things. The so-called tautology is to quote others' words to enhance credibility and respect your own language. The so-called speech is an impromptu language that naturally emerges from the heart with the change of the situation. In fact, there is no essential difference between them. They are all "absurd words, absurd words and unfounded cliff words", that is, the figurative language created or borrowed by Zhuangzi.
The content of Zhuangzi is "fable 19, restate 17, say sunrise and sky." In other words, fable is the main part of this book. The fables in Zhuangzi include some fairy tales, historical stories and stories usually implied by things. It is not uncommon for pre-Qin philosophers to reason with fables, but other scholars often take fables as examples to prove their views, and Zhuangzi used fables to make them a tool to express his thoughts directly, which created a new reasoning method-image reasoning. Such as Happy Travel, Life on Earth, Dechong House, Autumn Water, etc.
The reason why Zhuangzi uses images to reason is because he thinks that "Tao cannot be said" (traveling in the north), that is to say, the expressive force of logical language is limited, and some subtle truths cannot be explained clearly by logical language. At the same time, because he "takes the world as a dark cloud and can't talk to Zhuang", he simply presents fables to readers as things themselves, so that readers can understand them themselves. For example, in order to explain that society should not be artificially governed, he told such a story: "Our emperor is Shu, the emperor in Beihai is nothing, and the emperor in the center is chaos. Shu and Shi meet in the land of chaos, and chaos is good for them. Shu and Hu suddenly reported chaos, saying,' Everyone has seven senses to listen and observe food. This is unique, so try to chisel it. The sun cut a hole, but the chaos disappeared. "(The Emperor) here is just a story without judgment, but this story clearly expresses his view that the governance of the ruler is the destruction of human nature. The language images in Xin Zhai and Yan Zuo, the Master in Human Life, all reflect the thoughts and methods of the other. Wait, and so on. The book Zhuangzi is full of fables, which fictionalize all kinds of people, things, words and things. He made up stories at will to form articles; Faithful hands drive fictional people and things, such as clouds of heaven and earth, rivers, mountains and rivers, vegetation and rocks, ghosts and gods, and even shadows and dreams, as symbols to express his thoughts. It is Zhuangzi's original creation to express his thoughts mainly by images.
Second, the imagination is strange and the image is novel.
Zhuangzi's fable is full of strange imagination, and the images it creates constitute a novel image world. As the predecessors said, "the pen is surprisingly unique when it comes to dust." Some of them are eager to spread their wings in the world. They are magnificent and brilliant. For example, the fish in the northern ghost, thousands of miles away, turned into a bird named Peng, flying with angry eyes and wings hanging like clouds in the sky. Peng moved to Nanming, and when he took off, the water column stirred up was as high as 3,000 Li, spiraling and rising until Wan Li was high. ("Happy Travel") Ren Gongzi fished, squatted on Huiji Mountain, used fifty cows with long hooks as bait and threw them into the East China Sea. "The big fish ate, the huge hook didn't come down, and it was exciting. If Bai Bo is a mountain, the sea will fluctuate and ghosts and gods will be scared for thousands of miles. " Some of them are filled with mustard seeds, and the caves are mysterious and secluded, showing tiny subtlety. For example, the expert's blade, with excellent flesh and blood texture (health master), touches the savage country and fights fiercely on the tentacles of snails. ("Zeyang") Some shapes are weird and shocking; Some of them are eccentric and shocking. The former is scattered like a mountain tree ("Mountain Tree") ("World History"), while the latter is like Zhuangzi who lost his wife and sang ("Happiness"); You look like a rat liver (Great Sage) or something.
The image created by Zhuangzi is not only novel in image and unique in behavior, but also that everything in the world is affectionate and trustworthy. For example, if you are confused, you can ask the shadow, the skeleton can talk about it, the butterfly and Zhuangzi change each other, and the wooden chicken wins with virtue, and so on. He vividly demonstrated his idea of equality and mobility of all things with his own image. What literature has left us is beyond imagination.
The image created by Zhuangzi is typical. For example, the image of "real person": "It's not difficult to climb high, it's not easy to get into the water, it's not hot to get into the fire, but it's just cognitive ability and so on. The real people in ancient times, sleeping without dreams, felt carefree, unwilling to eat, and sucked deeply. The real people in ancient times didn't know how to live or die, and they were unhappy. When they left, they came. Don't forget the beginning, don't ask for the end; Enjoy it and forget it, that is to say, don't hurt the Tao with your heart, help the sky with people. Yes, just a real person. If so, his heart is forgotten, his silence is tolerated, his sadness is like autumn, his warmth is like spring, and his emotions are connected for four hours. " This real-life image of (master) has not only become an ideal personality of Taoism in later generations, but also often appears in ancient literary works.
There is also the character Zhuangzi in Zhuangzi, which is very typical and has been admired and imitated by many intellectuals for thousands of years. Another example is Kun Peng, Chen Xiao, He Bo, Yi Ding, Jiang Shi, Bhikkhu and Sam. They are eternal literary images hanging in the gallery of China's literary history.
Third, it is intended to take the heart and make good use of metaphors.
Zhuang Zi's skillful use of metaphor has always been praised by people for its ingenious use and superb performance. His metaphor is apt, clever and vivid. Mysterious philosophy, once it has metaphor, immediately receives the effect of turning mystery into habit and boring into machine interest. For example, "when the spring is dry, fish get along with the land, asking for help, caring for each other, caring for each other, if you don't forget each other in the rivers and lakes." ("Tian Yun") "Well frogs can't talk to people in the sea, but they are confined to the air; Summer insects can't talk to ice or time; Qu's family can't talk to Taoists, but should be tied to religion. " ("Autumn Water") "It is useless to use words only when you know them. Heaven and earth are neither wide nor big, and people can use them for their ears. However, if the toilet is full and the cushion is dead, is it still useful? " The first metaphor is used to illustrate the relationship between interpersonal relationship and social environment. It vividly shows that in a good living environment, everyone can be self-sufficient and enjoy themselves, and the indifferent interpersonal relationship naturally formed between them is far better than the intimate interpersonal relationship formed by helping each other in a difficult environment. The second metaphor illustrates the cognitive limitations of empiricists. The third metaphor illustrates uselessness. These metaphors are concise and vivid, a little more, and the function of a metaphor is almost equivalent to a paper.
The metaphors in Zhuangzi are varied and eclectic. Have a plenty of things one by one; Some things are compared with each other, especially the overlapping of metaphors is more wonderful. For example, a passage in Happy Travel, "My husband's water is particularly strong", originally used the relationship between water and the boat to illustrate the relationship between the wind and Dapeng's wings, but in order to illustrate the relationship between water and the boat, he used a glass of water and mustard grass to illustrate the relationship between water and the boat. There are many metaphors in Zhuangzi, which are rare. Wonderful use is unparalleled, and together with fables, it constitutes a concrete expression.
Fourth, strong feelings, clear love and hate.
Zhuangzi advocated truth, goodness and beauty all his life, hated falsehood and ugliness, and was serious and sincere. In his book, he lashed out at the ugly phenomena and despicable people he hated and spared no effort. For example, he denounced that era as "between chaos and chaos", and ("Mountain Wood") pointed out that "those who steal hooks will be punished, those who steal countries will be princes, and the doors of princes will be benevolent." (All) thoroughly exposed and mercilessly criticized the chaos of rulers, the harm they caused to society, the hypocrisy of benevolence and righteousness advocated by Confucianism, the sad reality that social morality was used as a tool at that time, and the absurd social phenomenon that the more bad things were done, the more they could be recognized by society. For another example, Cao Shang told Qin to lick hemorrhoids with a broken carbuncle, and after the cure, he got several more cars (listed in the imperial mouth), which made a bitter mockery of a small philistine like Cao Shang, who was proud of selling his personality for wealth and was not ashamed. The story of ritual burial (foreign objects) in the poem vividly depicts the hypocritical faces of "benevolent gentlemen" who sing high-profile benevolence and morality while doing shameless grave-robbing activities. The story of "stealing feet" reveals the instrumentality and limitations of morality and ethics.
He embraced and praised the beautiful things he loved. "People who live in deep mountains are reserved, their skin is like ice and snow, their bodies are like virgins, and they are graceful; Not grains, sucking wind and drinking dew; Ride the clouds, descend the dragons and travel around the world. Its spirit is condensed, so things are flawless, and those who are still in Tao Zhu are willing to treat things as things. " ("Have a nice trip") Admiration is beyond words. "Old country, old country, look smoothly. Even if there are vegetation all over the mountains, there will be 19 people going in, and it's going well! Look at what you have seen and heard, and those who have a thousand towers hanging among the people. " ("Zhuangzi. Zeyang ") The wanderer's love for the motherland, flowing copiously, can't help it, and it is still touching after a thousand years. After Fu's death, Zhuangzi went to the funeral. At the grave of an old friend, he lamented, "I have nothing to think about since my master died!" " ! I have nothing to say! "Two heavy exclamations truly reveal the loneliness and helplessness of the author's friend's eternal death, high-profile widowhood and hard-to-meet confidant.
Fifth, the rhetoric is gorgeous and natural, and the writing is mighty and unrestrained.
Zhuangzi is a genius. He learns from nature, which makes him different. He loves freedom and is not bound; Wang Yang's composition is also arbitrary and self-adaptive, thus showing a mighty and arbitrary style. "Zhuangzi" is written like a day, seemingly disorganized. Language is like running water, full of twists and turns, and seems to have no definite quality. It rises for no reason, suddenly changes, objects and images appear one after another, the scene is still changing, the theme is vague and difficult to understand, and the composition is changeable, which fully shows its unrestrained style in Wang Yang.
His ability to master the language is also perfect and handy. Everything is vivid and lifelike; The writing style is spiritual, versatile, wonderful and true. The combination of sentence patterns is changeable, and the words used are novel and magnificent, just like poetry, which has always been praised. For example, in the above quotation, Kun Peng is described as "hanging to the sky" and "90 thousand", while he is described as "leaping" and "counting" Everything written has its own form, and the music is wonderful.
In addition, the text structure and language style of Zhuangzi have distinctive features. His article adopts a spoke structure, that is, it is composed of seemingly independent materials around a central argument. The structure of Zhuangzi's thirty-three articles is basically the same. These thirty-three articles form a book around a central phase.
Zhuangzi is the peak of the literary works of the pre-Qin philosophers, and it is also a bright pearl in the prose crown in China's cultural treasure house, which has had an immeasurable influence on the thought, literature and culture of later generations. Li Bai praised him: "The old immortals in South China made great discoveries in the lacquer garden, and they talked a lot, with witty remarks" (Fu Dapeng). Guo Moruo called the writing style of Zhuangzi "unique in ancient and modern times" and said: "Not only the works of late Zhou philosophers, but also the history of China literature since Qin and Han Dynasties has developed under his influence." ("Zhuangzi and Lu Xun")