Victor's Pursuit of Serenity Chapter 23

Wu Chucai and Wu Diaohou were so happy teaching that they edited their homework and turned it into a bestseller that rivaled the Selected Works of Literature and the Three Hundred Tang Poems. They named it Guanzhi, but judging from what they said in their preface, they did not have any arrogant ideas. In fact, one of the main reasons for the popularity of Guwen Guanzhi was that it was easy-going, even selecting a few parallel prose pieces, unlike some previous anthologies that were so strict.

"Guwen" has many meanings. Guwen as a literary style was first called in the Tang Dynasty. In fact, it is prose. Before, prose was just a practical style. The self-consciousness of literature emerged around the Six Dynasties. The first batch of writers who wrote for the sake of writing wrote parallel prose. Although parallel prose is good, it requires hard practice to write. How can poor scholars who have little time to make a living have such leisure? The Guwen movement in the Tang Dynasty elevated prose writing to a specialized skill. Since then, there have been many literati. And it is more than just a skill. According to Han Yu and others, writing Guwen can also benefit the world and people's hearts.

Since classical prose is prose, a kind of thing that Mr. Jourdain has been talking about for more than 40 years and everyone can write a little, why did the classical prose movement in the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty have the restoration of the Seven Masters, each of which made a big fuss, as if prose would die if it didn't? There are many reasons, one of which is the struggle for leadership in the forum. So the first thing the classical prose movement did was to find an opponent. The previous opponent was parallel prose, and the later opponent was contemporary prose. However, ironically, contemporary prose, or the later eight-part essay, is a derivative of the classical prose of the Tang and Song Dynasties. To develop a little bit of meaning into a long piece, the skills in the middle, in summary, are eight-part essays. Julian once said: "When three people walk together, there must be one who can be my teacher." The famous "On Teachers" is almost an eight-part essay written with this title.

Famous writings and sayings are the kind of things we cannot watch from the sidelines. Let’s compare them in a different context. Confucius’ words, as translated by James Legge:

When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers.