That was in the unprecedented 1973. I have been robbed three times and have no books to read. I borrowed A Dream of Red Mansions (Volume II, 3 1-60) from my relatives and friends in my loneliness, and read it carefully, which is no longer like passing clouds in my school days. Only then did I find that there were ten riddles hidden on the back of these ten poems. At that time, the book was slightly annotated and did not reveal the answer, so it was subjective speculation. As the saying goes, "A fool will get what he worries about". I have guessed the answers to seven poems, namely, Love Across the Toes, Love in the Qing Tomb, Love in Plum Blossoms, Love in Red Cliff, Love in Peach Leaves, Love in Huaiyin and Love in Pudong Temple, and I am very excited. But I think I am still ignorant, and my personal guess may have been completely illuminated by the wisdom of many redologists.
1979, I went back to the city middle school from the mountain village to teach, and the next year I went to the library to check the relevant information, only to find that the guesses of famous experts were both consistent and even more inconsistent; Only three songs are the same, namely "Crossing Toes", "Qingling" and "Watching Plum Blossoms", while other songs are quite different. After repeatedly considering the original poem, I am more convinced that my opinion is a little beyond my predecessors, which is encouraging. At the same time, it also inspired me to continue to solve the mystery of the other three poems. By 1982, I solved the mystery of nostalgia in Guangling and nostalgia in Mawei. In order to sort out these materials, I read the proofreading of A Dream of Red Mansions published by Beijing Normal University 1992. From the notes, I know that Wang Xilian made an accurate guess on "Ma Wei Nostalgia", which is consistent with my result. This speculation made him a head taller than Zhou Chun and Xu Fengyi. It's a pity that I haven't found a convincing answer to the poem "The Past of Zhongshan". For this poem, Zhou Chun's guess is "meat", which seems absurd; Wang Xilian's guess is "playing with monkeys", which seems quite far-fetched; Xu Fengyi's guess is "puppet". Two sentences in the original poem make sense, but the other two sentences are difficult to explain. The correct answer is always in harmony with the whole poem. By the way, "puppet" is more divided into "puppet show" and "shadow play", and the latter is more likely.
As people in the Qing Dynasty have reached a conclusion on four poems, namely, Intersection of Toes, Qingling, Mawei and Plum Blossom, and the mystery of Zhongshan remains to be further explored, I will briefly explain the results of my exploration of the other five poems:
Chibi nostalgia
The red cliff is heavy, the water does not flow, and the name is empty;
It is very cold, and infinite souls wander in it.
The first of ten songs, beautifully made. From the perspective of praising history, we cherish Battle of Red Cliffs's history: in the 13th year of Jian 'an, Cao Cao led an army to the south, annexed Wan Li, and Sun Quan and Liu Bei jointly fought against it, attacking Cao Cao's ships with fire in Chibi, and breaking them.
Zhou Chun's guess in the Qing Dynasty was "Water Symbol of a Warship Carrying a Lantern", which means "Lantern", but it was definitely what he said-the scene of "Water Symbol of a Warship" should be painted on the lamp, otherwise the lamp would have nothing to do with the poem puzzle. Xu Fengyi guessed that it was a "French ship", which was used in the old customs to sacrifice ghosts and gods. It is made of paper paste, with monks chanting scriptures tied to it. The bow of the boat was covered with ghosts, which were put on the river-named the flame mouth, and eventually burned to ashes. The whole poem has nothing to do with such words as "Buried in Chibi" and "Only one person's first name and surname", so it is unconvincing. Some people speculate that it is "mosquito killer" or irrelevant. Some scholars are cautious and don't speculate, but they feel that the whole poem is shrouded in a gloomy and cold atmosphere, which is considered as an ominous ending of the Grand View Garden. This understanding is not unreasonable.
I think the most reasonable answer is that "The Coffin" is checked one by one with four lines of the original text, without any obstacles.
1, Zhu Chi is painted on all sides of the coffin, which is in response to the poem "Red Cliff", saying that it alludes to the fate of the second house of Rong Ning. Although it is hot, it will inevitably collapse and perish. The "coffin" is simply an image and accurate symbol that this family is doomed to decline, and it also implies that the feudal society to which it belongs will inevitably collapse and perish.
2. The first sentence is about the burial of coffins; The second sentence refers to the shape of the empty ship coffin, and the name of the deceased must be marked on the front of the coffin; The third sentence is the scene of relatives crying and cremation in the sound of drum music during burial; The fourth sentence is the final outcome-no one in history can escape the fate of being in a coffin. -This is a funeral genre painting!
If you concentrate on reciting history, you can translate it like this:
After Battle of Red Cliffs, the deceased indulged in blocking the river.
The deceased left a surname in vain, and the river was burning boats;
The fire in the bleak wind made Cao Bing cry and scream.
Countless souls have since entered the underworld.
If translated in the form of poetry, it can be expressed as follows:
It was surrounded by Zhu Chi and eventually buried underground.
It is shaped like an empty ship, loaded with people who died in vain;
At the time of burial, relatives were wailing and everything was burned.
How many heroes in history failed to escape from this home!
Huaiyin nostalgia
A strong man must guard against bullying by bad dogs. When the coffin covers three directions:
Don't send a message lightly, you will know after a meal.
From the perspective of chanting history, four poems concisely summarize Han Xin's life experience: 1, Han Xin was humiliated in his crotch when he was a teenager. 2. Later, he was named the king of the Three Qi Dynasties, which laid the groundwork for killing people. When you are poor, you are abandoned by this world. I ate my mother's meal and rewarded me with 1000 yuan after making a fortune.
There were many speculations about this poem in Qing dynasty, but none of them hit the point. Zhou Chun's guess is "rabbit", which is incredible: Xu Fengyi's guess is "toilet". Generally speaking, he was completely confused by the words "three decisions", "contempt" and "the grace of a meal", and he could not walk out of the corner, and even combined "death" and "shit" into one! Wang Xilian guessed that it was "dog stick" (also known as a ghost stick). He explained it this way: "If you do all kinds of evil deeds, you will be afraid of death. This is a common custom in the north. When you die, you have to eat a bowl of rice, put three sticks, simmer the noodles and give them as mallets, so that the dead can replace the evil dog village in dog stick. " -I know I can't bear to add it. But the dead are not all "strong men", which has nothing to do with the first sentence.
Mystery is actually a "crutch". Four poems describe its relationship with young adults, the elderly, especially beggars, and are wonderful poems about objects. This poem can be translated as follows:
Young and middle-aged people can hold hands to prevent evil dogs from bullying each other.
The old man is dying with it (two legs);
It's just a crutch, and people in the world should not despise it.
Beggars live on crutches, which is always called when begging along the street. Please give me a bite to eat, I will never forget your great kindness!
Isn't this a good way to paint a picture of tragic social life? Anyone who is familiar with the scenes of life in that tragic era will bring back sad memories. All this needs no textual research, and all excuses that are divorced from real life will appear far-fetched, pale and powerless, and cannot be convinced.
If translated from the perspective of reciting history, the text should be readjusted;
Han Xin, when you are young and strong, you should watch out for being bullied by dogs.
He became the King of Qi, hiding the danger of being killed.
When you are humble and poor, people all over the world despise you.
Unexpectedly, you later repaid the friendship of the drifting mother with your daughter!
In the process of guessing this riddle, the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus gave me a lot of inspiration. In his plays, there is a Sphinx monster, standing on the hanging rock at the intersection, telling riddles to passers-by, so that many people are eaten by it because they can't guess. Later, Oedipus passed by, and the monster told him a riddle: What animal in the world was born with four feet, and then it had two feet, and then it waddled after using three? Oedipus replied that it was human. Because: when a person is young, he crawls on all fours, when he grows up, he straightens himself, walks on two legs, and when he is old, he lifts a crutch and becomes the third foot! The riddle was guessed, and the monster jumped off the cliff in shame and died. Some translators simply translated the riddle into nine words: "four feet in the morning, two feet in the afternoon, and three feet at dusk", and this "three feet at dusk" is almost exactly the same as "when the coffin is closed in three positions". It's amazing!
Nostalgia of Pudong Temple
The little red bone is light and stolen.
Although hanged by his wife, he seduced his peers.
Pudong Temple is a fictional name of Wang Shifu Temple in the West Chamber. This poem is about a maid matchmaker who is eager to help Yingying get married, and was tortured by Yingying's mother, Mrs. Zheng.
Because of the word "bone" in the poem, Zhou Chun's guess is "dice" (gambling tools). The first sentence is unwilling to consider, and it makes no sense to go forward; Wang Xilian stared at the word "red" and insisted that it was a "red sky lantern"; Others are probably blinded by "hanging up", guessing "bamboo curtain", "firecrackers" and "shoehorn". I think the correct answer is "bone needle". Needle, ancient zhē n @ ①, is even more ancient as a proverb. Writing is a powerful proof of history, and the evolution of writing is a reflection of historical development. In ancient times, human beings made needles from fish bones or animal bones, and the word "needle" also marked that most of them were made of bamboo, and the appearance of bronze and iron made them gradually die out. However, in China, when bone needles completely disappeared and were completely replaced by steel needles, no historians have ever drawn a clear line.
According to the data, there is a needle museum in Reddy, England, which tells us that in Britain with developed capitalist production, 1898 it takes 22 processes to make a steel needle, in which drilling and polishing require sophisticated labor equipment. It was almost a hundred years ago. It is conceivable that before this 130 years, it was difficult for us to make a steel needle in a folk manual workshop! Therefore, it is not excluded that the bone needle did not disappear at that time, and even for a long time, it may exist in parallel with the steel needle. Generally speaking, with the invasion of western powers, bone needles gradually withdrew from the historical stage.
To this end, the original poem notes: 1, bone needle, since it is difficult to make and naturally expensive, will be cherished by women. It is beautiful to dye it red, and it is easy to identify and find once it is lost, so it is called "Little Red". The second sentence describes the process of women sewing clothes with needle and thread. 3, 3, and 4 sentences After finishing sewing, the woman should put away the needle and keep the tail line intact, so she had the sentence "seduce each other" and inserted it into the "needle pile"; Needle pile is a ball made of velvet, which is often hung on the wall within reach, so it is called "hanging". If you pay attention to this story, you can translate it like this:
Little matchmaker, you humble servant girl,
You talk in secret and bring a pair of lovers together;
Although she was hanged and tortured by the old lady,
But after all, they became affectionate lovers.
If you concentrate on what you recite, you can translate it like this:
Look at you, dressed in red, light and delicate.
Unexpectedly, the fabrics of their respective things are connected into one;
I was often hung up by my wife afterwards.
But then he seduced the amorous tail line.
Riddle, its origin is probably as long as literature and art. In ancient Greece, there was a legend about the Sphinx. In Indian literature, there was Twenty Nights, in which twenty moving riddle stories were woven with the queen's proposal as a clue, which can be described as moxibustion population. There are also wonderful examples in the pre-Qin classic "Xunzi Fu Pian", five of which are riddles. Its characteristic is "avoiding words with hidden meanings and metaphors referring to things", that is, using various clever metaphors instead of direct words to imply the characteristics of things and let readers try to figure out. Such as Zhen Fu:
Here is something, born in Fu Shan, in the hall; Ignorance and no skills, good governance and clothing; Don't steal, don't steal, wear clothes; Leave day and night to become an article; In order to be able to combine vertically and horizontally, we must have a good balance; The man covered below, the emperor decorated above; Great achievements are not good; Use it, then save it; If you don't use it, you will die. I am ignorant, how dare I invite you!
Wang Yue: This husband was a great man at first, but his success was small. He was evil. A long tail is evil. Head ā n @ (2) as high as the end of Zhao dazzling? Along the way, I finally thought it was a thing, without feathers and wings, and it was extremely repeated; The ending comes from the beginning, and the ending zhā n @ 3 comes from the beginning. Think of it as a father and a mother; Sew the surface inside: the husband is the truth. The image and function of "needle" are vividly written in the tone of questions and answers between the monarch and the minister, and the words are vivid and fascinating. It came out two thousand years earlier than A Dream of Red Mansions, and its artistic styles are different: one is elaborate, the other is concise and delicate, including The West Chamber. They are separated by two thousand years and reflect each other in the time and space of China literature.
Looking back on the past of Guangling
Cicadas perched in the blink of an eye, and the scenery of Sui Dyke was close.
Just because of romantic numbers, a lot of words have been provoked.
From a nostalgic point of view, this poem tells the historical fact that Emperor Yang Guang of Yang Di dug a canal to visit Yangzhou. In this regard, the words in the poem should be slightly explained:
Guangling: the name of an ancient county, now Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province. When Yang Di went down to the south of the Yangtze River for the third time, he was killed by Yu Wenhuaji, and the Sui Dynasty perished.
Sui Dyke: In the early years of the great cause of Sui Dynasty, Qionggou opened into the river, built a royal road next to it, and planted willows on the trees, which was called Sui Dyke.
Because he noticed the words "Guangling" and "Tongkou", Zhou Chun guessed "Dong Xiao"; Xu Fengyi guessed that the word "mouth and tongue" widely planted from Sui Dyke was "willow toothpick". Wang Xilian thought of willow because of the scenery of Sui Dyke, and guessed catkin because of the romantic relationship. Their similarities are only a little less than the others, so they are untenable.
In fact, the answer is "paper kite"-that is, kite, which is slightly modified because of the word "wind" in the poem. According to the perspective of reciting things, the words in the poem are reinterpreted:
Title: Guangling-a vast and boundless sky; Ling, harmonic ling, volley; The word "kite" has been crossed out. The first sentence, cicada singing and crow roosting, refers to the cicada singing and crow roosting of a tall tree. This sentence can be written in the blink of an eye, that is, the kite has jumped over the top of the tall tree. The second sentence, Sui dike, dike harmonic lift, is to lift the fly at will, how is this scene similar to what? In the third sentence, write a kite floating in the air with the help of the wind. The fourth sentence, write a kite flying in the air, and people on the ground are commenting on it as soon as they look up. Therefore, such a translation is logical:
The big tree where cicadas inhabit is surpassed by you in the blink of an eye.
What's it like to fly with you at high altitude?
You enjoy the infinite scenery with the wind,
But can't help but provoke people's discussion.
This is simply the most vivid portrayal of flying kites. Look at the paragraph describing flying kites in the seventieth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, which is even more exciting.
It is well known that Cao Xueqin wrote A Dream of Red Mansions, but few people know that he also wrote A Tale of Kites Tried in North and South, which specifically introduced the experience of "tying, pasting, painting and flying" kites, as well as the recipe for making kites, and drew many colorful kites himself. It is reported that a set of four special stamps "Kite" published by 1980 is selected from this book. The author's rich life experience is also the reason why his works are enduring!
By the way, some people think that "Ten Poems of Nostalgia" has its own innuendo, and conclude that this poem is an innuendo to Qingwen; However, if we associate it with the poem "Good wind helps me go to heaven", more accurately, it is an allusion to Xue Baochai-no matter how high the wind makes her float, she still can't help falling from the sky after a long-term emotional breakdown!
Peach leaves cross over
Declining grass and idle flowers reflect shallow pools, and peach blossoms are always separated;
During the Six Dynasties, there were many Liang Dong, and small photos were hung on the walls.
Therefore, Taoyedu is located at the Qinhuai River Ferry in Nanjing today. Wang Xianzhi, a native of A Jin, once sent concubines to cultivate the capital here, hence the name. No one guessed the mystery of this poem. Zhou Chun guessed the "round fan" and Zhao Zengwang guessed the "keeper paper", and the two were irrelevant. This poem only refers to ancient history, and vividly describes the characteristics of "mirror" and its existence in the official family. Therefore, only the following explanations are given:
The ancient mirrors were cast in bronze. Until the late Qing Dynasty, there were still many bronze mirrors, and artisans who polished mirrors often solicited business along the street. /kloc-in the 0/8th century, Europeans gradually spread to the east, and bureaucratic families gradually got glass mirrors, which were naturally expensive when they first arrived, beyond the reach of ordinary rich people. Therefore, like Jia Baoyu's "Hongyiyuan", a room full of mirrors puzzled Granny Liu, which was an anecdote for Shan Ye villagers, and even bronze mirrors were rare in poor families. Usually, they have to borrow a basin of water to take pictures, so there is a saying that there are so many Liang Dong in the Six Dynasties, which refers to the dignitaries in Jinling City.
1. Mirrors (bronze mirrors, especially glass mirrors) are as clear as water, so they are called "shallow pools" in old age, "decaying grass" and "idle flowers" in youth, all of which are used for taking pictures with mirrors. 2, the mirror shines on people, and the shadow is solid and virtual, and it cannot be integrated. 3. The Six Dynasties refers to Jinling (now Nanjing), where six dynasties, including Wu, Song, Qi, Liang and Chen, all established their capitals, collectively known as the Six Dynasties; Liang Dong, referring to architecture, belongs to metonymy in rhetoric, that is, Li Hong, the official's home. 4. Small photos, that is, mirrors, are mostly hung on the wall. Accordingly, the original poem can be translated as follows:
No matter "rotten grass" or "idle flowers", they can all be reflected in this pool water.
But the beautiful image cannot be integrated with the ontology;
There are many official families in Jinling.
Hanging on the wall, looking after a man and a woman.
Let's go back and talk about the writing characteristics of these ten nostalgic poems.
1, ten poems all appear with nostalgia, and the Chinese language in the poems really follows the track of history or legend. For example, five capitals, including Chibi, Jiaotoe, Huaiyin, Guangling and Zhu Qing, have summarized historical events or people's lives. The other five songs are also adapted according to the plot of literary works. But cleverly, the back of the poem is a mystery, which is very cleverly hidden. These poems are both about history and things, punning and making no mistakes, showing the author's superb artistic genius.
2. The title of these poems is a mystery in itself, or an important part of the poem riddle. Such as coffins-all visible faces are painted red, which is really called "red cliff"; Cross your toes-trumpet, isn't it a gesture of hands folded and fingers crossed when playing trumpet? How concise and vivid the title is! Guangling-paper kite, isn't it a portrayal of it floating in the boundless sky? Peach leaf crossing-a pool of clear water reflects the beauty of peach blossom! The proposition is so subtle that it is rare in other works or riddles.
3. The answers are the most commonly used and common things in daily life, especially the part of the life world of childlike teenagers. Such as speakers, walking sticks, paper kites, mirrors, Mo Dou, pancreatic soap, bone needles (even steel needles) and fans, are all far from life, and even "coffins" are of course familiar to them. Where people live, there will be funerals, and they will never be unfamiliar with the drums and music at funerals. But in the hands of scholars who confine themselves in their study, the more they guess, the more mysterious they are, and the more confused they are. If "Red Cliff" is guessed as "the water operator of a warship with a revolving lantern" and "Ma Wei" is guessed as "Yang Fei's Crown Prince and Bai Mudan", it will be tricky and weird, and the reader will have to be dragged into a dead end. Zhou Chun guessed ten, and only one was right. Knowing that he was not sure, he sighed and said, "I'm afraid what I guessed may not be true, so I can afford the beauty of the world?" It's a pity that I can't revive the beauty in the book to tell him the answer.
These ten poems are the words shining like gems in A Dream of Red Mansions, the artistic treasures of riddles in literary classics and the artistic treasures left by Cao Xueqin.