Just like in other parts of the world, the literature of ancient China was a practical activity, not an aesthetic phenomenon. Initially, these were fortune-telling tablets, later bamboo strips and silk began to be used for writing. Written people were respected, and homemade books of that time were considered almost sacred, because they contained the wisdom of the past years. But first things first.
From the depths of antiquity
The history of ancient Chinese literature dates back to the time when divinatory inscriptions carved on tortoise shell or mutton bones came into use. People who wanted to know what would happen in the future put their questions on the shell. Then they put it on fire, and the fortuneteller interpreted the future from the cracks that appeared from the heat.
Later bronze became the material for writing. On behalf of the king, gift and other inscriptions were applied to large ritual vessels.
In the I millennium BC. e. Bamboo slats were used for writing. Each such board contained about 40 words (hieroglyphs). The planks were fastened with a rope, formingkind of links. These first books were quite bulky and uncomfortable. Compared with current concepts, one "book" occupied several carts.
After 700 years, silk was used for writing. However, this material was very expensive and already at the beginning of our era, the Chinese invented paper. As a result, the written word was able to spread widely.
Attitude towards the written word and educational minimum
The way the Chinese treated writing is recorded in the term "wen", which denoted the concept of "literacy". Even in the literature of ancient China, this symbol denoted a person with a tattoo. In the time of Confucius, the character "wen" denoted the written word, the heritage of ancient wisdom, recorded in books. Historians claim that among the Confucians, "wen" was the best word, which "informed people with the idea of absolute truth." This integration of Confucian teachings and ancient verbal art lasted until the 3rd century AD.
Chinese historian and bibliographer Ban Gu, describing the history of the Han Dynasty, a special place in response to art and literature. In his work, he listed 596 works existing at that time, which he divided into six sections:
- Canonical books.
- Philosophical works.
- Poems - gai and poems.
- Treatises on military music.
- Medical treatises.
- Works on astrology.
Each of these groups had its own subsections and minor notes by the authors. Ban Gu's work makes it possible to understand which literature was more popular in ancient China. AtIn the bibliographer, Confucianism had already been proclaimed the official ideology of China, so it is quite natural that Confucian canons, divinatory natural-philosophical texts, songs of ancient kingdoms, and recordings of Confucius's sayings were in the first place in the list of ancient literature. These writings were the mandatory minimum of human education.
Book of Songs
The "Book of Songs" greatly influenced the development of further fiction. This poetic collection consisted of four sections: "Small Odes", "Hymns", "Great Odes" and "Rights of the Kingdoms". The "Book of Songs" is the very first piece of Chinese fiction, in short, it is the first piece of lyric poetry and hymns.
Even today, the spirit of primitive life is felt in these songs. From the lines that have passed through the centuries, you can learn about the secret and open meetings of girls with their lovers (“Zhong! To our village”, “Zhen and Wei waters”). They still retained memories of ancient orgic holidays, marriage ceremonies and the cruel burial of the living together with the dead (“Fly the Yellow Birds”). The songs represent the everyday life of farmers, anxiety during the approach of the sovereign, the fearlessness of hunters and the sadness of a lonely woman who sent her husband on a campaign.
The works collected in this collection were written during the Zhou era. At that time, China consisted of small fragmented kingdoms that were nominally subordinate to the Zhou ruler. Relations between rulers and subjects were patriarchal in nature, so in the songs you can seeand the dissatisfaction of the farmers with their rulers.
Songs, also related to the literature of ancient China, are four-syllable poems with a constant rhyme.
Book of History
Along with the "Book of Songs", a notable exponent of the literature and archeology of ancient China was the "Book of History" and subsequent historical treatises, among which were the works of Ban Gu, Zuoqiu Ming and Sima Qian.
Sim Qian's work is even today considered an official historical monument, which for centuries amazed its readers with its unique style and richness of poetic language. This was atypical for the ancient writer, who delved into not only the laws of mankind, but also into the individual destinies of people. Under his close attention were people who left a tangible mark on the history of the country.
In short, the literature of ancient China, in particular historical prose, was the first example of an objectively calm description of events. In Confucian treatises, a different type of narration was used: the dialogic form of presentation. Examples-parables, in which Confucius talks with his students, were a special form of argumentation of a philosophical position. Often such parables have their roots deep in folklore.
Ban Gu in his works strictly distinguished between canonical and non-canonical works. For the conversations of the followers of Confucius, he took a special place in his book and developed the doctrine on the issue of humane government, as the main condition for maintaining peace in the state. In second place inBan Gu's work included the writings of the Taoists and their discussions about the problems of being. After them, the works of natural philosophers who developed the doctrine of the forces of yin and yang were considered. Behind them, they told about the legalists, who interpreted the need to build state power on a system of rewards and punishments.
Listing philosophical schools, Ban Gu did not forget to mention the nominalist logicians, the thinker Mo Tzu, who preached the principle of "universal love" and equality. The historian's work also included the authors of agrarian treatises and the xiaoshojia school - the writers of xiaosho. Xiaoshuo, literally translated, means "trifle sayings", later it began to denote plot narrative prose.
Poems and songs
After listing philosophical trends, the historiographer proceeded to describe poetic literature. Here he attributed the works of the two leading genres at that time: poems (fu) and songs (geshi). Everything is clear with the songs - they were sung and written in verse. Fu poems were special in their own way: although they were written in prose, it was rhyming. Fu poems have taken an intermediate position between prose and poetry. They were written in three-part form and consisted of stop (introduction), fu (description) and xun (completion). Often, the dialogue of the poet with some ruler was used as an introduction. In this dialogue, the main idea of the work was expressed, which was developed already in the second part. In conclusion, the author drew conclusions or expressed his opinion on the problem described.
To our time, few original works have survived, but it can be assumed that these were songs of individualregions and ritual chants. Songs in ancient China were collected in order to find out the mood of the people. Emperor Xiao-wu-di even established a special Music Chamber. Thanks to her, it became possible to learn the customs and customs of certain areas that were mentioned in folk music.
Applied writings
Further, Ban Gu describes works of an applied nature. These include books on martial arts, astronomy, medicine, and divination. In conclusion, the Chinese literature listed by Ban Gu was an integral part of the written language. Literature is considered in close connection with its functional purpose and strict place in the hierarchy of ancient society.
Ban Gu writes that Confucians came from officials who were in charge of government affairs and cared about the education and improvement of the ruler and his subjects. The Taoists rendered a great service to the archeology of ancient China. The literature, the records that they kept about the ups and downs of the state, enable today's scientists to determine the reasons that provoked this or that event. Even songs and poems, which in the minds of the ancient Chinese were not associated with business functions, played a role in associating society with rituals. Going to neighboring kingdoms on an embassy mission, songs were used to express their intentions.
Speaking briefly about the most important thing, literature in ancient China did not yet exist as an aesthetic artistic category. Artistic textswere not separately identified and not opposed to other types of literary literature, but pursued applied goals. But in light of this, one should not forget that all the texts of antiquity were written in an expressive language honed to the last hieroglyph, subject to rhythmization and stylistic finishing, which made each work a step further from exclusively applied application.
Plotless prose
Gradually, genres began to develop in the country, which became the basis of Chinese literature in the Middle Ages. At this time, elegant plotless prose was popular. During the life and work of Ban Gu, this direction was just beginning to develop. Such genres at the time of their appearance were not yet recognized as independent trends. They were components of large treatises, but even then something foreign, atypical and new was felt in them.
These atypical novelties were decrees and appeals to the ruler, included in the "Book of Historical Givings". Sim Qian in his work "Historical Notes" singled out such a genre as zhuan - a biography, which soon began to be perceived as an independent phenomenon.
But there were in ancient times those genres that became separate in the literature of China in the 19th century. Parables, which were composed before the Confucian movement appeared, could not become a separate genre until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
In the Middle Ages, genres became a style-forming category, but in ancient China they were classified according to the utilitarian-thematic principle. In the Middle Ages reportsto the sovereign were reports to the sovereign, they did not adjoin other works, sharing with them any one genre. In antiquity there was no such distinction. Reports to the ruler were included in the Book of Historical Traditions, the Book of Rituals, were part of the annalistic works, and even became noticed in Confucius's Conversations and Judgments. In short, the literature of China in the Middle Ages adopted a lot from the works of antiquity, but the division into genres was fundamentally new.
Nineteen Ancient Poems
The development of literature in China was influenced by poetic cycles and narrative prose. For a long time about the collection "Nineteen Ancient Poems" there were rather contradictory judgments. Modern scholars say that these poems were selected by Prince Xiao Tong in the 6th century. Today the names of their authors are irretrievably lost. These poems described the themes traditional for the poetry of that time: the longing of abandoned wives, the separation of friends, the sadness of travelers, reflections on life and death.
L. Eidlin once noted that all these works are subject to "the only thought of the transience of human life." The poems from this collection seem to stand at the junction between the author's and folk poetry. They were written under the influence of folk songs collected by officials of the Music Chamber. Often you can find whole stanzas from folk texts in them, but here you can already feel the presence of the author's beginning.
The influence of literary poets affects the poetic form. While folk songs had lines of differentlength, nineteen ancient poems became the ancestors of five-syllable poems. For many centuries, these were the leading meters not only in Chinese, but in all Far Eastern poetry.
Studies of the literature and philosophy of Ancient China have shown that the transition period from folklore to the author's text was characterized by a movement towards written creativity and a reverse transition - from writing to the oral element. The author's and folk poetry of that time had a common figurative system, there was no language or stylistic barrier yet.
Narrative prose
The first narrative works are characterized by the anonymity of creativity. As in other countries of the world, prose in China began to take shape only at the end of the ancient period. In the second century AD, fictionalized stories and biographies began to appear, which were conditionally called ancient stories. Both the first and second genres of works are associated with historiographical prose.
For example, the story "Yang Heir Tribute" tells about the story of the attempt of the brave Jing Ke on the Qin prince, a tyrant who created the first Chinese empire. In fact, this story is close to the events that actually took place in the history of the country. In many ways, the story is close to the biography, so philologists, reading the literature and archeology of ancient China, expressed the opinion that it was she who became the source for Sima Qian. Although there were objections from the other side, other researchers believed that it was just the opposite. These disputes were resolved by the bibliographer Hu Yinglin, who lived in the 16th century. He said that "Yang Heir Tribute" became the progenitor of ancient and modern narrative works.
The main difference between this story and the official biographies lies in the great narrative and the introduction of a number of episodes of a legendary nature. The “Private Biography of Zhao the Flying Swallow” differs in the same way from the original biography of the famous concubine and wife of Emperor Chengdi.
It is worth paying attention to the small work "Biography of a Maiden from Wu, Nicknamed Purple Jade". This is one of the first works of Chinese prose, which describes the meeting of a young man with the spirit of his beloved. Later, in the Middle Ages, this plot will be used more than once by the novelists of the Far East. In the "Biography of a Maiden" the plot is described in an archaic form - a student dies and marries a girl nicknamed Purple Jade. This narrative is simple both in plot and in concept, it has not yet had time to acquire complex plot moves, as in the case of later novelists. The author is not so much interested in the fate of the heroes, but in the event, which is amazing in itself.
Ideology
In ancient China, the ideological foundation was laid, on which art and literature later developed in the Middle Ages. The development of literature in ancient China gave impetus to the formation of writing in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and other regions of the Far East. At the same time, many themes of Chinese poetry were composed, as well as a rich arsenal of images and symbols,without knowing which it is impossible to understand the classical literature of the peoples of the Far East.
Chinese literature is special in its own way. And there is a simple explanation for this. It appeared at a time when humanity was not yet surrounded by large information flows, and if you wanted to sing or write something, then there were no examples anywhere. Therefore, man had to look for everything within himself. Use your own experience, knowledge, conclusions and conjectures, creating the best works of historical, philosophical and religious literature of Ancient China.
