This book, Wu Zetian, had an incest with the prince when Emperor Taizong was alive, and took the opportunity to come out; Kill your daughter to be a queen; When the emperor killed people without blinking an eye, he raised Toy Boy ... In short, he portrayed a generation of queens as tyrannical, bossy and dissolute people.
Why does the author want to create such an image of Wu Zetian? I think there may be two factors-on the one hand, it is related to the narrator's perspective; On the one hand, it is related to Lin Yutang's own values.
Li Shouli, King of the Tang Dynasty, whose real name is Li, is the grandson of his second son, Li Zhi, and Wu Zetian is his grandmother.
As we know, Wu Zetian in history killed the rebels of the Li family in order to stabilize her rule.
The book "The True Story of Wu Zetian" is accompanied by a list of three murders after Zhang Wu, involving Wu's imperial clan, imperial clan, civil and military ministers and so on. Among them, 93 people died directly under Wu Zetian.
Among them, the above table is the imperial clan table of Li Tang murdered by Wu Zetian attached to the Biography of Wu Zetian. As can be seen from the table, many Li clans have been destroyed, which is far from being counted by dozens of people. This is basically history.
From this point of view, as a member of Li's imperial clan, it is not easy for Li Shouli, the king of Tang Dynasty, to objectively describe the deeds of Wu Zetian. Moreover, in the first chapter of the book, he confessed that although he was born in the court during the reign of Wu Zetian, he was bullied by the Wu clan.
He said that when he was confined to confinement when he was young, he was always whipped by the Wu brothers three or four times a year. Later, the scar healed, but he left the root of the disease. When the weather changes, I ache all over. It will clear up before I feel relaxed. In this way, he can predict the weather changes through his future physical changes.
Therefore, when the remnants of the Wu regime are eradicated and succeeded to the throne, he will review Wu Zetian's life with his own memory and judge the usurper from the perspective of the Li family.
So from the narrator's point of view, it is not surprising to portray such an image of Wu Zetian.
Lin Yutang, who is widely circulated on the Internet, said: There are four things in life that are happy: first, sleeping in your own bed; The second is to eat meals cooked by parents; The third is to listen to the sweet words of your lover; The fourth is to play games with children.
For example, in the biography of Su Dongpo, he portrayed the image of Wang Anshi very badly, describing his sloppy life and extreme thinking, and even blamed Wang Anshi for the demise of the Song Dynasty.
Lin Yutang praised Su Shi's father Su Xun's criticism of Wang Anshi. It is biased to hardly mention the achievements of Wang Anshi's political reform.
Lin Yutang's novel Clouds in Beijing also shows that Taoism has a great influence on him.
On the basis of this idea, the author himself may not have much affection for Wu Zetian, a female emperor who dares to defy the world and insists on changing the status quo, so the characters in his works represent his value judgment.
In addition, this book was written by Mr. Lin Yutang in English at 1944. The version I read was published by Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House on 20 16 and translated by Zhang Zhenyu.
I guess privately that what the author writes in English is mostly for foreigners. Things about men and women may arouse people's interest in reading more than how she manages the country, but they are actually written to cater to foreign readers.
Although Lin Yutang himself didn't like Wu Zetian and tried to hack her, and the narrator selectively hacked her from his own subjective point of view, Lin Yutang said when arranging the narrative of Emperor Taizong:
"If fate refuses to create a great woman, a great woman will create her own destiny."
Obviously, no matter how badly Wu Zetian writes, it is difficult to bypass her intelligence and publicize her personality.
Hao Feng has read many historical materials about Wu Zetian. This time, he thought Lin Yutang was narrow-minded.
Interested friends can read this book, put aside their prejudices and learn about the history of the Tang Dynasty.