Ma Zhiyuan's "Tian Jing Sha Qiu Si" is a famous Sanqu Xiaoling. Previous reviews have mostly focused on explaining how the work expresses the desolation of autumn and people's abjection, but few have explained the coherent psychological mechanism between the images in the work. This article intends to interpret it from the perspective of cognitive psychology, which may help to deepen the understanding of this small order.
In a good literary work, the author often arranges the language units reasonably according to the needs of expression and expression. In "Tian Jing Sha Qiu Si", the first three sentences use nine nouns referring to different things in parallel: withered vines, old trees, faint crows, small bridges, flowing water, people's houses, ancient roads, west wind, and thin horses. The author cleverly Putting them together, a picture of a dusk trip in the autumn wilderness is presented to the reader. However, the stacking of these nine seemingly disorganized things not only does not appear loose, but also is very magical in conveying emotions, expressing the feelings of sadness and homesickness of the travelers in the autumn field in a profound and touching way. How can this group of cognitively discrete images be superimposed to play a harmonious song of mournful autumn homesickness? The mystery can be found in human cognitive and psychological mechanisms.
Everything exists in the constant motion of time and space, and there are often relationships between things in time, front and back, left and right, up and down in space. Although this group of images in the work does not have any connecting links in form, from the perspective of human cognitive experience, they have strong correlation and sequence in space, that is, several images that often appear together in real life. Things can often appear together in language in a certain order without any connection, such as vines wrapped around trees and crows perched on trees. Small bridges, flowing water, and houses are also connected in human cognitive experience. If there are bridges, there must be people, and if there are people, there must be water. The same is true for the ancient road, the west wind, and the thin horse. When the horse walks on the road, the west wind blows its lap. The coexistence of these things with strong spatial correlation and sequence is common in people's real life and knowledge background, and over time they form human cognitive experience and national cognitive psychology.
General psychology believes that perception is the reflection in the human brain of the entirety of objective things that directly act on the sensory organs. Perception is divided into time perception, space perception, visual perception, hearing perception, touch perception, etc. Perception of objective objects in spatial order is called spatial perception. Human beings constantly interact with the outside world through a series of perceptual activities. However, such perceptual cognitive activities often need to follow the spatial order of cognitive objects. This little order well complies with and embodies the orderly rules of spatial perception.
The nine kinds of things in Xiaoling can be divided into two groups: withered vines, old trees, and dusky crows visually extending vertically from bottom to top; small bridges, flowing water, people's houses, ancient roads, west wind, and thin horses. Visually, it extends in the horizontal direction with the ground as a reference, thus forming a two-dimensional spatial plane. Shown in a diagram, it is:
The network formed by this binary dimension is actually the spatial order relationship implied by the combination of the images in the work, that is, multiple non-coherent images. Units are based on the perceived sequence of things. This spatial sequence relationship formed by visual perception habits gradually forms human cognitive experience, and finally solidifies into a certain cognitive psychology. This spatial sequence relationship is the cognitive psychological basis for the connection and coherence of images in the work, and is the link between the organic unity of each image. It perceives the perceptual objects with different attributes and different components as a unified whole, thereby integrating them. For an orderly graphic background. The nine images from "Withered Vine" to "Skinny Horse" in Xiaoling are connected and integrated according to this spatial sequence relationship: The poet was walking with his head down and found a withered vine creeping on the roadside (or the withered vine tripped his feet) , looking along the dead vines, I found that the dead vines were wrapped around the trunk. There were few branches on the old tree and all the leaves had fallen. There was a rough old crow's nest on the branch, which was particularly conspicuous. A returning crow stopped on the nest. Wail intermittently. The poet took a quick look (the narrative sequence changed to a horizontal direction), and there was a small bridge not far away. The stream was flowing slowly under the bridge. There were several thatched houses next to the stream, and there might be wisps of smoke from cooking. The ancient road is still there, the setting sun is shining down, the cold wind is blowing, and the thin horse is pitiful.
It can be seen that the connection of the above images makes use of the spatial sequence relationship from bottom to top and then extending in the horizontal direction based on people's spatial perception habits, making the entire narrative process like a skilled landscape photographer shooting late autumn. For landscape short films, first use a close-up lens to shoot a close-up shot. The lens keeps moving upwards while constantly stretching into the distance, and then pans to both sides. In short, the poet uses the above-mentioned spatial sequence relationship of first vertical and then horizontal to closely connect the seemingly chaotic things together, forming a desolate and desolate picture of a trip in the autumn field at dusk, which also implies the poet's thinking about his own situation. : The future is long and bumpy (ancient road), the world is cold (west wind), isolated and helpless (skinny horse) and there is not much time left for oneself (sunset), and finally a helpless lament is issued: the heartbroken man is at the end of the world. What a tearjerker!
Everything stretches in space and continues in time. We might as well examine how the images in the work are organically unified into a whole from the perspective of time.
People live in the long history of time all the time, and the concept of time that needs to be recorded and expressed is extremely complex, so people have created a variety of timekeeping methods and countless timekeeping words. Throughout the day, from morning to evening, the sky changes constantly, and the sky is one of the important indicators of time. In ancient Chinese poetry, there are many time words that express the color of the sky, such as the "setting sun" in "A setting sun spreads over the water, half of the river is rustling and half of the river is red", "The bright moon shines among the pines, and the clear spring rocks flow up", "Mingyue" in " "Where is the sunset at home? "The sunset on the Yanbo River makes people sad", etc. There are also some time words describing the sky in this little order, such as "hundred (crow)" and "sunset (sun)", indicating that it was dusk.
People often use these time-measuring media to record time and express their feelings, but sometimes the time-keeping method also has its own limitations, making it difficult to meet the needs for expression of complex emotions. Therefore, sometimes people use the regular and cyclical natural phenomena that they observe at any time to record time, such as the ebb and flow of the tide, the waxing and waning of the moon, the alternation of day and night, etc.; or they use some physiological states within certain biological organisms to record time. time, such as dead grass, yellow leaves, singing cicadas, angry plums, etc.; or use objects with strong temporality to mark time, such as ice, frost, snow, dew, etc. In this poem, the author uses the time words of the internal physiological state of the biological organism to express the sadness and desolation of late autumn, such as "withered (vine)" and "old (tree)".
However, a smaller time domain is always included in a larger time domain. For example, "dusk" can be the dusk of a certain day in autumn. Although some of the timing words in Xiaoling point to "dusk" and some point to "late autumn", they are all unified in the larger time domain of "dusk-autumn", which ensures that the work is coherent and compact in form. , coherent and unified. As shown below:
The occurrence of cognitive activities always depends on people's past knowledge and experience. In the context of a certain knowledge structure, if the brain is stimulated by relevant information, it can transfer emotions, experiences, etc., and effectively perform association and cognitive reasoning. These seasonal mark information are stored in readers' respective knowledge modules for a long time. Once they encounter the stimulation of these seasonal mark information, the reader's cognitive unit is activated, and the relevant scripts are retrieved through memory, and a mental model is established to bring the relevant information together. In this psychological model, human beings' cognitive experience about time is used for information processing, and the same or similar information is further extracted, so that the relevant information can be coherent and unified, so that the readers' appreciation activities can proceed smoothly. By laying out and arranging some typical and periodic natural phenomena, the author Xiaoling makes things that do not have seasonal characteristics (such as small bridges, flowing water, people's houses, ancient roads, thin horses) and even the entire sketch become richly colored. of seasonal colors. It is precisely because of the effective connection of this time mechanism that this group of images does not appear loose and natural.
"Autumn has been a sad and lonely time since ancient times." In the context of Chinese local culture, ancient literati could not help but think of desolation, loneliness, abjection, homesickness and other complexes in autumn, and finally completed the transformation from form to content. Cohesion and unity. In ancient Chinese poetry, why does the image of "autumn" form an indissoluble bond with wanderers and travelers in foreign lands, as well as scholars with poor official career? This unconscious cognitive process must have its underlying cognitive psychological mechanism. The spatial mapping theory in cognitive linguistics uses the mapping principle in mathematics to analyze the process of association and cognitive reasoning.
Spatial mapping theory believes that this process is to create a mapping relationship between concepts in one mental space and concepts in another or multiple mental spaces, thereby forming a new mental space, that is, forming a new concept. The emergence of this mapping relationship is determined by a certain similarity between the two cognitive domains of "autumn" and "sadness". In autumn, all things wither and decline. The psychological representation formed by this universal natural phenomenon has certain similarities with the homesickness of wanderers and travelers in foreign lands, and the complex of scholars with poor official career. It is precisely because the concepts in domain A of mental space have this mapping relationship cognitively with the concepts in domain B of mental space, so when the concepts in domain B of mental space are looming, the concepts in domain A of mental space may also be Triggered activation can even refer to concepts in domain B of mental space. The dusk autumn picture formed by the combination of various images in Xiaoling forms an image diagram in the human brain. After the accumulation of life and emotional experiences of generations, through repeated association mapping and experientialization, it finally forms a psychological setting. potential, thereby constructing a new psychological space C domain such as "Sad Autumn".
Precisely because this little poem hides the order of space and the unity of time, and coincides with people's cognitive psychological mechanism, the simple arrangement of the nine images side by side not only does not appear loose and chaotic, but also The connection is coherent and natural. Therefore, it has been praised by people for hundreds of years, touching the heartstrings of generations of wanderers, arousing strong excitement. "Tian Jing Sha? Qiu Si" truly deserves to be called the "ancestor of Qiu Si"!
References:
[1] Cao Richang. General Psychology. People's Education Press. 2001.
[2] Xiong Xueliang. Brief Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics Review. "Foreign Language Research". 2001.3.
[3] Zhao Yanfang. Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. 2001.
[4] Liang Ningjian. Contemporary Cognition Psychology. Shanghai Education Press. 2003.
[5] Zhu Yongsheng, Jiang Yong. Spatial mapping theory and the derivation of conventional meaning. "Foreign Language Teaching and Research". 2003.1.
Shu Yongjun, male, is a 2004 master’s student in the School of Liberal Arts of Central China Normal University.