Chapter 4 The first part is selected from the cultural relics. Section 4. The study of literature and history must be combined with cultural relics (1)

On July 18, "Literary Heritage" published an article by Mr. Song Yuke commenting on "Selected Annotations of Han Wei Yuefu" edited by Mr. Yu Guanying, and raised many questions about the advantages and disadvantages of annotations.Mr. Yu's original note has not been read yet, so I have no opinion.However, from Mr. Song's articles, it can be seen that using the "collection and interpretation method" to annotate books, or research problems, there will be difficulties in both simple and complex commentary extensions, and personal understanding.Because everything is constantly developing and changing, it is not easy to study literature, history or art according to the method of book annotations in the past without connecting with real objects.It is inevitable that it will be like talking on paper, and there is a distance from the reality of historical development.What is involved here is a question of "method".Ancient Confucians such as Zheng Xuan and modern erudites such as Zhang Taiyan would encounter the same difficulties if they were born in modern times and their methods of study did not change; History does not match what it is.Because social systems and things are constantly developing and changing, and different things are often related to each other, it is seldom noticed that using the old method to solve problems.

For example, a small copper mirror has been used since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to the middle of the Qing Dynasty. There have been many changes in the past two thousand years.The boxes and covers for the mirrors, as well as the tables and shelves for the mirrors are also constantly changing.The meaning of people using the mirror is changing accordingly.At the same time, the characters and patterns on it were closely related to the poetry and religious beliefs at that time.For example, there is a kind of "West Queen Mother" mirror, unearthed only in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and southeastern Shandong, and it was mostly in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. Therefore, in addition to knowing that it is related to Yue Wu or Tianshi, we can also use it to verify that several legends are Han people. The age of the novel.There is a seven-character inscription of the year on the mirror of the Western Han Dynasty, and it is the only bridge between the Cifu of the Western Han Dynasty and the seven-character poems of Cao Pi. Some rhymes are from the Western Han Dynasty and some are from the Three Kingdoms, so we cannot discuss them thoroughly).This enlightens our research, we must proceed from reality, and pay attention to its comprehensiveness and integrity.Understand that the tools of production are changing, the relations of production are changing, the methods of production are also changing, the quality and style of all production are changing, and the society that goes along with these formations is also changing.That's how it's developed.Another example is decorative patterns, each era has its own style; this pattern is reflected on lacquerware, and it is similar to pottery, bronze, and silk.Although more or less limited by materials and technology, there are small differences, but basically they are similar to each other.This is how things are related to each other.Sometimes you can't see the problem from the literature alone, but once you analyze and explain it with real objects combined with the literature, the situation becomes clear.

This kind of method of learning and asking questions used to be just like a matter of archaeology, which has nothing to do with other studies of literature and history.Once archeology itself is isolated and the related literature is not comprehensive, it often loses focus on one thing and loses another, and its development is extremely slow.As for a professor of literature, or even a professor of history, according to the habit of the past fifty years, he does not feel the need to pay attention to what is dug out of the ground, or painted, engraved, or printed on paper, silk, or walls. , and things that are still being used in the hands of others, although it is precisely those things that are discussed and studied.The most common ones are those who are engaged in ancient literature, who are not used to going deep into the scope of historiography and antiquities, and those who study medieval historiography, and are not used to using snacks for important materials in poetry and fine arts.A lecturer on art history, and someone named Chen Yongyuan became very interested in "the same origin of calligraphy and painting", and paid little attention to the brush and ink in painting except for the rest.Talking about sketching flower-and-bird painting is limited to Bian Luan and Huang Quan, and I don't understand the general reflection of the craftsmanship in the Tang Dynasty.Talking about landscape painting is limited to Wang, Li, Jing, Guan, Dong, and Ju. I don’t understand that the Han Dynasty began on gold and silver objects, lacquerware, silk, bricks and ceramics, and on the walls of various places. A lot of things directly affect the later development.Talking about the vigor and vitality in the six methods, it is impossible to explain without citing these materials.When talking about ink painting, I don't even understand that it is closely related to the technology of paper-making and ink-making materials since the Five Dynasties, and the smudge technique is indirectly related to the printing and dyeing fabrics of the Tang Dynasty.What is even more negligent is that apart from calligraphy and painting, other great achievements in arts and crafts that are truly collectively created by thousands of working people are not known how to mention them, or they are simply mentioned in passing.Just looking for a few illustrations as if it were a last resort.Confining oneself in a narrow and isolated scope to conduct research in this way, lacking the enthusiasm of all eyes and the concept of a comprehensive whole, the basis of the conclusion is not stable.Trying to discover the truth in this way is naturally tantamount to fishing for fish from the sea with a net the size of your palm.

Mr. Wang Jing'an's exploration of ancient history issues has made great achievements, which has set a new work target for us.It proves that the affirmation or negation of the historical narrative of ancient documents must be broadened, corroborated with knowledge of cultural relics and documents, and have a deeper understanding of new historiography and various departments of culture before new discoveries can be made.We live in an era where working conditions are a hundred times more convenient than those of Mr. Jing'an, and there are thousands of rich materials. However, the methods of learning for ordinary friends seem to be still conservative and stagnant on the old basis.The society is changing by leaps and bounds, and the research inevitably lags behind the actual requirements.Some concluding papers, although adding new theories to the chapters, lack real new content.The reason is that the questions that should be clearly raised are precisely the ones that have not been seriously investigated, studied, analyzed and understood.With such research, many problems will naturally not be truly resolved.This is a question of "cognition" and a question of "ideology". It is worthy of the experts and scholars of literature and history all over the country to face up to this matter.If the Ministry of Higher Education, which leads university education, and the head of the Department of Literature and History, which directly leads university business, have a new understanding, it is a new trend to recognize that the application of historical materialism to scholarship and teaching practice is a new trend in the research work of various departments of the cultural history of New China. And requirements, then, in order to obtain in-depth and comprehensive results, in addition to the literature, one cannot fail to pay attention to the thousands of new materials that lie before you.In order to promote research or teaching work, it is even more necessary to regard these objects as equally important as books. If we can do this, the situation will be much different.Because as long as we pay a little attention to the materials unearthed in the past fifty years and consider it in combination with the literature, there are many problems that were difficult to understand in the past, and we can hope to gradually clarify them.If you lack awareness of the importance of these materials, and are not good at making full use of them, no matter what you write or note, you will often find it difficult to justify yourself, and give people a sense of scratching the surface.In particular, on the one hand, it is said that the development of society affects all aspects, and it involves the basic necessities of life, food, housing, transportation, and utensils, patterns, forms, and systems. Without extensive contact with real objects, it is impossible to talk about development and evidence in depth and concretely.If it continues like this, it is still a trivial matter for personal research to take detours.If this comrade's academic research work is nationwide, and he has a high status and great influence, then the result of detours will naturally not be good.In recent years, I often hear people talk about the issue of national forms in art, but it always seems to be going around in circles, and I can't touch the reality.The reason is that those who talk about it are not willing to honestly and concretely put in some effort to get a good understanding of various art departments.That's why the black faces and flying apsaras of the Tang Dynasty were found everywhere in the society, as if there were no other ethnic patterns available.I don't know that Fei Tian is not a black face in the first place.There are also some isolated dragon patterns on Shang and Zhou bronzes transferred to young girls' dresses and stage curtains.Naturally, this new design of national form art will not be as successful as it should be.The most prominent and unsightly thing is that a new movie theater in Jiaodaokou, Beijing, forcibly moved several carriages carved in Han stone to the upper part of the roof of the building as the main decoration.These phenomena are no wonder for young friends who are designers, but they reflect another reality, that is, what are the gentlemen who teach this field used to educate students when it comes to national forms of decorative design!To get to the bottom of it, it is the result that the teachers of human beings have never learned from the legacy with a down-to-earth humility and put forward the teaching materials in detail. The evil results of "random moving" are not the fault of enthusiastic young comrades, but those who hastily published books and sloppy teaching should bear more responsibility.Without clarifying this point, there is no way to correct and remedy.Just like talking about the performance of classical operas, some people wrote an article in the newspaper a while ago, saying that when the performance of "Qu Yuan" was performed, the art design sought to be faithful to history, and the three-legged Jue model was exactly the same as the real one.In fact, in Qu Yuan's era, most people did not drink wine at all.In Chu tombs and other tombs of the Warring States period, no Warring States three-legged jue was unearthed, all of which were wine glasses.In the play, Qu Yuan used the three-legged jue to drink, which violated the truth of history and gave the audience a wrong impression, which should not be praised!Looking back, the human face cup-shaped wine glasses were mostly unearthed in the Warring States and Han Dynasties, but we can use them to correct the explanation that the Jin Dynasty Shuxi said that the wine glass was created by Zhou Gong's successful management of Luoyi.

From the above, we can see that our research work or teaching work must be combined with a new learning attitude, so that we can expect real new developments in our work.If you still stop at the stage of annotating books with books, you will of course encounter a lot of things in annotations and "Chu Ci", and it is impossible to explain clearly and specifically.That is to say, when annotating, you will also encounter many daily food and playthings. If you do not start from the knowledge of cultural relics and re-learn, you will find it difficult or make mistakes to make annotations.In the current printed book, many places that should be annotated are not annotated. It is not that the readers have already understood it. In fact, the annotators do not understand it thoroughly, so they are avoided.Those who note do not note, readers have to pass by carelessly.This is not very good for real research and study.The remedy is to learn, always learn with an open mind.You must be a good student before you can be a good teacher.

We say that learning the way of thinking is not simply extracting sentences from the classics and citing theories.Mainly proceed from reality and pay attention to the comprehensiveness and continuous development of materials.If you give up the real thing, it is easy to fail.The Soviet scientist Ilyin said that we have many books written in words, which are placed in the library, and there is also a large book written in stone and other things, which is buried underground, waiting for us to read.The big book of China is exceptionally rich in content.Last year, under the leadership of the Ministry of Culture, there was an exhibition of cultural relics from Chu, and recently, under the leadership of the Ministry of Culture, the national unearthed cultural relics exhibition on the Wumen Tower, the excavation exhibition in Huixian County, Henan Province arranged by the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences, the newly arranged exhibition of murals from the Han Dynasty Tomb in Wangdu, Hebei Province, and another cabinet of Cao Zhi’s tomb The exhibition of unearthed cultural relics has provided many extremely important materials for our new China academic research.The discovery of the "Ziyang people" in Sichuan has enriched the regional knowledge of the distribution of the Chinese nation in the late Paleolithic age.The unearthed stone scythes from Neolithic tools all over the country can not only explain the extensiveness of prehistoric Chinese farming, correct the previous opinion that the Shang Dynasty society still used hunting as the main production, but also explain the economic basis of the feudal serf society in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Establish the reasons why men farm and women weave.As small as Yi Hongyan's handing over the shelf reflected on the Sichuan brick carvings, and the unearthed iron Gou shield of the Han Dynasty, they can both solve the problem and prove the document.There are also iron models illustrating the development of productivity in the Yan State, wooden boats illustrating the traffic in the South China Sea in the Han Dynasty, Sichuan chariot and horse figurines with a balanced yoke image in the Han Dynasty, illustrating the celadon from the tomb of Zhou Chu with the standard color glaze of Jin celadon celadon, and illustrating the most primitive celadon pottery. The vivid Yin Shang glazed pottery pots unearthed in Zhengzhou, which cannot be explained by a thousand words in general literature and history, give people a clear impression once they come into contact with the real thing.This is only the enlightenment given to us by a very small part of the 150,000 unearthed cultural relics in the first year of the founding of New China.