Narration And Writtings Of Sima Qian

As the first great biographical book on the comprehensive history,Shih Chi is highly considered as “non-rhyme of the Li Sao,A historian of the peak of poetic perfection”by Lu Hsun,which gives a high-level overview of its achievements on historiography and literary.With Sima Qian revising the Shih Chi,he spares no efforts to entist consult and arrange all kinds of books including original documents,Confucian classics and the doctrines of Pre-Qin philosophies so much so that he browses through the precious collections of the loyal library.Furthermore,for obtaining the primary accounts,Sima Qian goes through the on-the-spot investigation at all costs.“My so-called stories-elaboration is aiming at arranging the initial historic documents not at creating history”,Sima Qian says in <The preface of Taih Shih Gong at Shih Chi>,he idolizes the Confucius for his whole lifetime,taking him as an example to creat the Shih Chi for imitation of the Spring and Autumn Annals.In fact,Sima Qian has created some new contents in his book under the obscurity of his modest words to a certain extent.according to the brief intro stated above,My paper is divided into three chapters.The first chapter discusses the guiding ideology of "Shu Er Bu Zuo", this is mainly embodied in the great tradition of adhering to the official historian and inheritance of the Confucius. Writing straight down the truths and respecting facts is actually the fine tradition of the official historian, which reveals him the relentless pursuit on it.Sima Qian follows the example of the Spring and Autumn Annals for writing Shih Chi,in which the so-called "chunqiubifa" has a significant and far-reaching influence on him.The second chapter continues to discuss the “elaboration", that is, the problems on the data sources of spring and autumn period. Those data sources in Shih Chi are mainly from the classics of Zuozhuan, and kuo Yu which have a historical record in the spring and autumn history.The third Chapter discusses the "creation".that is,creating history.he givespriority to the "elaboration", but containing the "creation" which shares the essence of rewriting the history of the primary.This kind of rewriting is going through in two ways: simplify the contents including annotations of ancient prose, clipping the abstracts, fusing in cast on a huge scale and criticize the concept of the sibyl strange dreams.Sima qian is actually in the criticism of sibyl strange dreams which adds a magical and magnificent element on the narrative side and enhances the artistic charm, but as a rigorous book on history, Sima qian must abandon the dreams to restore the real history. He doesn't believe in ghosts, also is skeptical to sorcery, divination. he also write genie, but he is good at the eccentric, quirky surface of the genie of the mysterious veil which reveal the true colors of history.