曹操論

Abstract

Ts'ao Ts'ao (155-220 A. D.) was not only the outstanding political and military leader during the age of disorder that marked the Wei dynasty, he was also a leading poet in the Chien-an literary group. This study examines Ts'ao Ts'ao's life and his dominant mental attitudes in an attempt to understand their relation to his writings. During the reign of Emperor Hsien of the Later Han dynasty, Ts'ao acted as his protector and came to occupy a position of precedence among generals in the empire. With the defeat of his main rival, Yüan Shao, he became the leading man of power. He viewed his own age as one of transition and worked at strengthening the central government on a legalist basis which aimed at reconstructing the ravaged society of the time. His life was marked throughout by certain dominant attitudes. He refused to recognize the idea of a fate or of a mystery transcending man. Instead, he put emphasis on real talent and experience and on man's practical abilities. These attitudes appear in Ts'ao's yüeh-fu 樂府 pieces. There he rejects the fatalism of old yüeh-fu, wherein poets despair of the limited duration of man's life and his powerlessness. Basic to his view of man and the world is the idea that man is master of his own fate. We see this in such pieces as Tuan-ko hsing 短歌行, Kuei-sui-shou 龜雖壽, Hao-li hsing 蒿里行, Hsieh-lu 薤露 This marks a departure from Han popular yüeh-fu and represents something new in the poet Ts'ao Ts'ao.