He claimed to be a closed disciple of Guo Moruo, and after writing a book, he said that he admired Guo Moruo the most in his life. Why?

"Guo Moruo is the person I don't admire most in my life" is Mr. Yao Xueyin's attitude towards Guo Moruo, which was put forward by Yao Xueyin in his conversation. In Mr. Yao Xueyin's view, he almost completely denied Mr. Guo Moruo's value in the history of literature. At the same time, he claimed that he was more knowledgeable in literature than Guo Moruo, so it is really hard to understand that he belittled others and boasted himself. Then why did Mr. Yao Xueyin have "Guo Moruo is the person I don't admire most in my life"?

Yao Xueyin's achievements

Mr. Yao Xueyin's fame began with Li Zicheng, through which he was promoted by Mao Dun and gradually became a famous writer. Because of the success of "Li Zicheng", Yao Xueyin's transparency from childhood suddenly became the focus of attention, and he became more and more complacent.

in Yao Xueyin's own view, in his historical novel Li Zicheng, he re-displayed the picture of the times around the uprising in the late Ming Dynasty, which not only involved the living conditions of various social classes, but also showed the living conditions of people living in different classes. This novel, which showed the feudal time characteristics through the macro pattern, became a sensational literary work at that time.

Yao Xueyin's success made him even ignore A Dream of Red Mansions and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He said that Luo Guanzhong was an out-and-out subjectivist who didn't understand the essence of materialism, history and art, and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was hard to be Four Great Classical Novels in his eyes. In his eyes, A Dream of Red Mansions is the life history of an aristocratic family. Cao Xueqin did not describe the official events at that time, nor did he involve court life. Everything was written around Jia Fu.

Li Zicheng, written by himself, is a groundbreaking novel, and A Dream of Red Mansions and Li Zicheng can hardly be compared. In addition, Yao Xueyin even said, "Those who wrote novels after me learned from me". It stands to reason that although Yao Xueyin has made some achievements in literature, why does he have to compete with Mr. Guo Moruo, a literary giant?

Reasons for Contradictions

Surprisingly, in 193, one of Yao Xueyin's favorite books was Guo Moruo's Research on Ancient China Society, and he even claimed to be a closed disciple of Guo Moruo. In 1979, Yao Xueyin visited Guo Moruo's former residence and wrote a poem, in which words such as "respect", "brilliance" and "a flood of talents" were used.

Yao Xueyin respected Guo Moruo very much in his youth, and Yao Xueyin was prejudiced against Guo Moruo in his later years. The fundamental reason was that they had different views on the demise of Li Zicheng and the Ming Dynasty. There is no denying that Yao Xueyin has a deep study of history. In order to complete the book Li Zicheng, he read a lot of historical materials to complete this masterpiece. Therefore, Yao Xueyin often considered himself as a historian, and later he often said that he played an important role in history. He considered himself to have achieved a lot in history.

Guo Moruo once published an article entitled "The Three Centennial Festival of Jiashen", and then Yao Xueyin wrote a comment on his article, that is, his comment on "The Three Centennial Festival of Jiashen" published in Wenhui Monthly. In his comments, he almost completely denied Guo Moruo's article, saying that it was extremely imprecise, even a "waste article" with no value.

Later, this article by Guo Moruo was really considered as an influential article at that time, and it was treated as a "rectification document". This article is a good one, but it does have some problems. For example, he regards some folk legends as real people in history, and even writes them as key figures that determine the historical outcome, which is obviously not in line with history.

The root cause of Li Zicheng's failure is conceit and corruption, and Chongzhen is a racial sinner. This was Guo Moruo's conclusion at that time. Obviously, his assertion was somewhat arbitrary. Based on this, Yao Xueyin will criticize Guo Moruo and say that he ignored historical facts when writing, and expressed his personal views only by subjective assumptions, which runs counter to serious historical scientific methods. And Yao Xueyin thinks that this is not true, and he clearly opposes Guo Moruo.

As a matter of fact, Yan Li has been controversial until now, and there is even a book "Yan Li Query" which specifically argues that Yan Li does not exist. However, Guo Moruo believed that Yan Li really existed, and put a lot of pen and ink into him in his "Three Hundred Years Festival of Jiashen", and also sent him strong feelings. He believes that Yan Li's tragedy is caused by two racial sinners, Chongzhen and Niu Jinxing. In Yao Xueyin's view, those works that satirize modern society through ancient history can only be called propaganda materials, but what can truly be immortalized is historical science masterpieces that reflect historical facts.

Yao Xueyin, who is too rigid and easy to fold

Yao Xueyin's criticism is not groundless, but it contains too much individualism, and he is a little extreme. Guo Moruo's attention to Yan Li is only to show that social development needs people of insight. There are not only historical stories in his articles, but also some profound meanings. But Yao Xueyin's novels show peasant heroes, and even exaggerate them to the point of "gods", even divorced from history itself.

Yao Xueyin is only a novelist in essence, and there is still a big gap with historians. However, he was headstrong and thought he had entered the field of history, so Guo Moruo's achievements made Yao Xueyin want to compete with him. Therefore, he criticized Guo Moruo for not being a historian, or even a writer.

through the articles written by Yao Xueyin, besides Li Zicheng, there are also academic works such as The Royal Guards in the Early Ming Dynasty and The Biography of Emperor Chongzhen. This really shows that he has his own unique views on historical research, and he has indeed studied the history of the Ming Dynasty, but compared with real historians, he is really unqualified.

But Guo Moruo is different. He ranks first in historical research. Guo Moruo is a leading figure in the study of the ancient history of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and China. Gu Jie, a famous historian, said that Guo Moruo is the only one who can inherit Wang Guowei and make pioneering contributions. Even the book "Research on Ancient China Society", which Yao Xueyin loved very much, is also the pioneering work of Marx's new historiography school to study the slave society in China.

Guo Moruo's achievements are well known, otherwise he wouldn't have been elected as an academician of our country in 1948. Novels are not equal to history. Yao Xueyin is too self-satisfied, thinking that he can surpass Guo Moruo by demoting him to nothing, but in fact it makes people laugh.

Yao Xueyin's view of Guo Moruo is indeed a little childish. Perhaps his idol in his youth can't agree with his point of view, so he wants to prove himself especially. However, it ignores Mr. Guo Moruo's unique views on historical features and his outstanding achievements in literature and history research. Perhaps it is not perfect in this process, but its achievements cannot be denied, and Yao Xueyin's total veto is really biased. As a literary work rather than a historical monograph, it has more political significance than historical significance.