Seven Step Poem is a poem written by Cao Zhi, a poet of the State of Wei in the Three Kingdoms Period. This poem uses the same root of Ji and Dou to refer to brothers who share the same father and mother, and the fried beans of Ji to refer to Cao Pi's brother who killed his brother. It expresses strong dissatisfaction with Cao Pi, and vividly reflects the cruel struggle within the feudal ruling group and the difficult situation of the poet himself.
Cao Zhi's Seven Step Poems
Boiled beans burn Osmunda, beans cry in the kettle.
This is born from the same root, why is it too urgent to fry each other?
The beans are boiling in the pot, the bean straw is burning under the pot, and the beans are crying in the pot.
Beans and bean stalks grow from the same root. How can bean stalks torture beans so urgently?
This poem is written purely by means of metaphor. The language is simple and the meaning is clear. There is no need to explain more. Only a few words and sentences need to be dredged. Its meaning is clear. The first four sentences describe the daily life phenomenon of burning osmanthus and boiling beans. Cao Zhi uses "beans" as a metaphor, and a word "sob" fully expresses the grief and pain of the victim. The second sentence uses "fermented soybeans" It refers to filtering fermented beans after cooking to make flavoring juice.
"Osmunda" refers to the bean stalks, which are dried and used as firewood for burning. Osmunda burns and cooks the beans from the same root. It is a metaphor for brothers who are persecuting each other too hard and killing each other, which is against the natural law and is not allowed by the normal circumstances. The poet's ingenuity in taking examples and using skillful words, and blurting them out in an instant, is really amazing.
The last two sentences express Cao Zhi's grief and indignation, which is obviously questioning Cao Pi: You and I were brothers. Why should we force each other so hard? "It was born from the same root, so we should not be too anxious to fight each other" has become a common language for thousands of years to advise people to avoid fraternity and fratricism, which shows that this poem has been widely circulated among the people.
Cao Zhi's Main Achievements
1. Ideological aspects
The Three Caos attached great importance to capturing folk hermits and tried to gather all the hermit talents scattered among the people. On the one hand, the Three Caos criticized the absurdity that shook the hermits' belief, and let them withdraw from the mountains and enter the world to govern the country. On the other hand, he eulogized his sentiments and regarded the hermit as a fellow person, aiming to recruit hermits and seek talents, and let people enter the world to govern the country and assist the monarch to help the world.
Cao Pi's "Artemisia on the Wall" begins by asking, "What do I vaguely want to do today?" Then the material enjoyment of joining the WTO induced the hermits to go out of the mountain and make contributions for them. This poem was influenced by Cao Zhi's Seven Enlightenments to persuade hermits to leave the mountain and make contributions. On the one hand, it shows that the three Caos want to do something, on the other hand, it also shows that there are a large number of hermits not used by the imperial court.
2. Literary and artistic achievements
Cao Zhi's works are included in the Collection of Cao Zijian. The Collection of Cao Zijian has 10 volumes, including Cao Zhi's poetry and prose. Among them, there are more than 80 complete poems, more than half of which are Yuefu poems. His representative works include Seven Sorrow Poems, White Horse Chapter, To White Horse Wang Biao, and Ten Thousand Miles away from the Gate. Among them, "Ode to Luoshen" describes the beauty of Luochuan Goddess, which is a wonderful flower in Wenyuan.
Cao Zhi's creation is divided into two periods with 220 years (the 25th year of Jian'an) as the boundary. His early poems mainly sang about his ideals and ambitions, filled with optimism and romantic sentiment, and full of confidence in the future; Later poems mainly express the grief and indignation aroused by the contradiction between ideal and reality. His poems not only reflect the solemn and elegant "sad but not sad" of the Book of Songs, but also contain the graceful and profound strange twists and turns of the Songs of Chu; It not only inherits the writing ability of the Han Yuefu to reflect the reality, but also retains the warm, beautiful and sad tone of Nineteen Ancient Poems. Cao Zhi's poems also have their own distinctive style, completing the transformation of Yuefu folk songs to literati poems.
Anecdotes and Allusions of Cao Zhi
1. Seven Steps into a Poem
Cao Zhi's "seven steps into a poem" is widely spread: "When beans are boiled, they burn Osmunds, and beans cry in the kettle. They were born from the same root. Why is it too urgent to fry each other?" (see the Romance of the Three Kingdoms). However, this poem is not found in Chen Shou's "Annals of the Three Kingdoms", but first seen in Liu Yiqing's "Shi Shuo Xin Yu · Wen Xue" in the Southern Dynasty. "Shi Shuo Xin Yu" records that Cao Pi, the Emperor of Wei Wen, envied Cao Zhi's talent, Cao Zhi was ordered to write a poem within seven steps, or he would be executed. Moreover, there were strict requirements for the poem: the theme of the poem must be brotherly love, but the whole poem cannot contain the word "brother". Cao Zhi recited in less than seven steps: "Boil beans to make soup, and pour beans to make juice. Osmunds burn under the kettle, and beans cry in the kettle. They are born from the same root, so why is it too urgent to fry each other?" But whether this poem was written by Cao Zhi is still controversial.
2. Elegy of Luoshen
As for the fallacious notes in Wenxuan, Zhu Qian, a native of the Qing Dynasty, castigated in Yuefu Zhengyi that this article was originally Cao Zhi's Gan Ju Fu, which expressed his lack of talent in his mind through the legend of "Mi sacrificing his daughter and drowning in Luoshui as a god". - is actually a fief.
By making use of "-" and "Zhen", the doers attached the "Luoshen Fu" to conceal the love between Cao Zhi and Zhen Shi, the wife of Cao Pi, Emperor Wen of Wei, not only to pollute the travel of predecessors, but also to pollute the mouth of future generations. Recently, some scholars have verified that the main purpose of the Ode to God Luo is that Cao Zhi mourns and misses his dead wife, Cui's daughter. The image of God Luo is the embodiment of Cui's daughter.
However, there are some inadequacies in both statements, so the metaphor of the great righteousness of the monarch and his subjects is more popular. Zhu Dongrun's Selected Literary Works of the Past Dynasties said: "This article may express the yearning for the monarch under the guise of Luo Shen, reflecting the anguish of the incompatibility between the two."
