When I was flipping through the Republic of China periodical "Literary and Art Front", I found an article entitled "Guang realism", and the author was Li Nantai.
I was not impressed by this author, but mao Dun, the editor-in-chief at the time, actually published his article in a prominent position in the inaugural issue, and it was obvious that this person must not be an idle person. I originally thought he was the vest of some "big coffee", after all, in that era, many masters had several or even a dozen pen names. But when I checked this person's information, I was shocked, I did not expect that there was really such a person, it was called this name, the reason why it was rarely heard of in the literary circles of the Republic of China, was because he died young...
I don't know why, the mortality rate of the figures in the Republic of China is very high, and the more excellent the characters, the easier it is to die.
In 1949, the writer Mo Luo wrote a book, "Falling Stars: Cultural Workers Who Died in China in the Past Twelve Years", which included 137 literati of the Republic of China who died from 1937 to 1948, including writers, critics, translators, artists, musicians, filmmakers, journalists, philosophers, natural scientists, educators, and historians. In other words, the Chinese cultural community, which is already withering talents, has to lose an excellent person every month. And this is still an incomplete record. The fog of sadness enveloped the entire stage of the Republic of China.
In the twenty-sixth year of the Republic of China, as soon as the Shanghai War broke out, Mao Dun sent two children to Changsha to study. When Mao Dun arrived in Changsha, a young literary man came to the door, and according to contradictory recollections, he originally thought that he would come to him to ask questions about writing, or take out his personal study to let him correct it. Who would have not expected that the questions raised by people and contradictions in literature and art, from foreign countries to China, from classical to modern, were very insightful, especially his very incisive opinions on the current wartime literature and art. This person is Li Nan table.
Mao Dun asked him for a manuscript at that time. Two months later, Mao Dun ran "Literary and Art Front" in Hong Kong, and an article on Li Nantai's desk was published in the inaugural issue, which Mao Dun believed "surpassed some well-known literary and art theorists." Since then, Mao Dun has published 7 articles of Li in one breath, and his excitement can be seen.
Unexpectedly, in October 1938, Li Nantai, who came to Hong Kong, died of illness in Kowloon, and the direct reason was that the doctor was reluctant to come to the clinic in the middle of the night. In his later years, when Mr. Mao Dun wrote his memoirs, he still did not forget this precocious young man, saying: "His artistic life is so short-lived—only six months, but his shining brilliance is not forgotten." ”
As he lay dying, Li Nantai was still obsessed with his Shakespearean and Gothic studies, as well as his planned novels, and his final cry was: "Am I going to die?" I want to live, I want to live, I still have a lot to do! ”
Mao dun
Because I am reading a paper journal, I can't find an electronic version of the article about Li Nantai on the Internet, but I hope that more individuals will understand and read Li Nantai's thinking and insights on the development of literature and art eighty years ago, so I spent three hours, word by word, typed out this article, and after repeated proofreading, it was published here.
<h1>Realism in a broad sense Li Nan table (April 16, 2007, "Literary and Art Front").</h1>
Every modern writer, whether serious or playful, before he draws up his pen, inevitably thinks consciously or semi-consciously of the following questions: Which banner do I belong to? What is my attitude towards writing? What doctrine is it? How do I think the world was formed and arranged? Which side of my nature, my hobbies, is it? He even thought about how to cater to the psychology of ordinary people. How can we "get promoted and get rich" and maintain private interests?
This process seems very free, but in fact it is very restrictive. Balzac was obsessed with the restoration of the monarchy, but his Comedy of Man was indicating the rise of the new bourgeoisie.
Gogol wrote Dead Souls, wrote the immortal hell phase, and when he reached the second part, his purgatory, he had to write and burn it, because he really couldn't think of a reality that was consistent with his theory. This even caused him to become insane, resulting in a tragic ending.
These two examples can prove that the writer is inseparable from reality—whatever he thinks—but critics are mostly willing to divide the writer into several schools and choose one as the guiding theory.
In fact, it is because it was once recognized that Shakespeare was the representative writer of the Renaissance and the vanguard of Romanticism. But lately it has been said that he is realistic. This statement is naturally a step closer, but it is quite laborious to deal with things like "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and some people think that the more advanced the theory, the easier the criticism work will be, which is really delusional; it is the educational theory that has been reached now, and the responsibility of a primary school teacher is already the responsibility of a contemporary genius.
Goethe was divided into two stages, adolescence and old age, namely the Romantic Era and the Classical Era. Two spirits are evident in his lifelong work, Faust, and they are married in the second part and have a son, Euphorion, the incarnation of Byron. (By the way, Byron in Goth's mind was not simply a romantic poet, as the average person imagines.) In addition, the spirit of realism in the narrow sense of Faust is also revealed from time to time, such as in front of the city gate and the two scenes of the liquor store, which is a good example. The color of the symbol is more romantic, and Faust and the devil symbolize the two sides of "human nature", the positive and the negative.
Flaubert was an unmoving artist, a deliberate pure realist; yet in reality he was very romantic and sentimental. He writes and tries to hide himself, but still reveals it from time to time. For example, some of the characters in "A Simple Heart", he is nostalgic on this side and deals with it on the other. The writer is a person, and a person has a person's perspective, which is inseparable from his art.
Pushkin was called An imitator of Byron, but he pioneered Tolstoy's War and Peace. Gorky, the great realist, had both romantic tendencies, and he was conscious.
No writer in the world simply belongs to any other faction. This division is a kind of mingxue kung fu. Only in the history of literature can it be found that it is not available in the real world.
Woltsworth sees the strange in the ordinary, and Gulluch sees the ordinary in the strange. The contrast between these two "poets on the lake" shows that each writer has his own new discovery of reality, and his own unique new contribution to the accumulation of the history of art forms. We can say that every writer has his own "ism".
And all "isms" can be said to be a thing, and Confucius once said of its old "holy" state: "Do not exceed the rules from the heart." We can say that the ideal of Romanticism is "to do as the heart pleases", while the ultimate of classicism is "not excessive". The two may seem contradictory – but we'll know it if we expand on it. If you really want to achieve the most "from the heart", you must "not exceed the rules", and if you want to achieve the most "not exceeding the rules", you must not achieve the most "from the heart". But the two are opposites. The most classical is the most romantic, the most realistic. Finally there is a whole thing - corresponding to reality is a whole.
Reality is everything. The figuration of art is not confined to the direct superficial phenomena of the world, but is often like the generation of dreams, indirect, accompanied by many subconscious activities. Any person's indirect induction of nature is also part of reality. There was once the term "surrealism", but "super" is also reality, which is like Sun Monkey turning his head and turning his head, no matter what, he still can't jump out of the palm of Buddha's hand. This is not to say, of course, that there is no need to criticize, that there is no need to point in the right direction – and that it is precisely the need to be expressed. But what is needed is criticism based on creation and reality, not just noun play.
The progress of all learning is due to the accumulation of new facts, and as human understanding advances, the number of "exceptions" increases proportionally, and as a result, a revolution takes place at a considerable period, overthrowing the old theories and creating a new system. The same is true of literary criticism, we should only try to include all writers in a system, but we should not set a size ourselves, long or short - this is laziness in disguise.
Critics should point out which parts of a work are correct, which are utopian, and which lack imagery. In a word: "to find the core of reason in the cloak of irrationality," is the conscience of the critic.
Furthermore, those "irrational cloaks" are also bound to be put on by it; this can find its roots in the writer's history and environment, find the results, plus the work itself is a higher level of achievement, a deeper level of realism.
The two slogans put forward in recent years, "social realism" and "revolutionary romanticism," are an expansion that broadens the horizons of literature and art a lot, but it is still not enough, because real writers cannot jump out of reality, and the threshold of "isms" is unnecessary.
As for our present anti-war literature and art, all that is left is photographic "ism" and formula "ism"—the inevitable result of sliding on the surface of reality. A piece of music is not high or low, a speech, word by word to read the manuscript, this is difficult to call it art, it is not reportage, even half of the product is not enough.
Westerners often say that we love skills: to get rich from the top of the government, to walk with our feet tied up, and to have no direction but skills. It's really a lot of awards. What we like is the eight strands, palindrome, the old eight diseases, the new eight diseases, the Kumon program encyclopedia... In a word: formula! Although the "Literary and Artistic Practices of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" has not yet been published, I believe that there must be a lot of editors, because we have already found a new set of "starting and turning". We are smarter than Westerners, more like many people conceited,—— know that the road is a "shortcut", how to save energy, not to "hurt" the "brain".
This talent can also be seen in textbooks. For example, in an example of "3 + 2 = 5", under this line of words is often drawn a picture as follows: "Three people; to the right, a plus sign; further to the right, two people; then an equal sign; the far right is a row of five people who are exactly the same standing." "This does not make elementary school students feel bored, so it is often seen that the teenagers in the graphics have grown beards quickly, because in reality it is impossible to find ten characters who are so neat and good-looking, especially the plus signs and equal signs in the middle."
Situations like the above are very common in literature and art, which is really a lame translation of shallow theories. The poor embodiment of the poor idea, which proceeds from the idea rather than from reality, is idealistic rather than materialistic. Theory can help us grasp the truth, but it cannot be used as a direct translation of the original. The opposition between theory and reality is precisely the opposition between abstraction and concreteness.
There is an axiom in old geometry: "The shortest distance between two points is a straight line." "The new geometry overturns it, because in reality the shortest distance between two points is a curve. Everyone has his own shortest distance from reality to art, and this process, like all processes, is a contradictory advance, but not a simple straight line.
We can have a common direction because there is in reality; but there will be no common "practice" because there is no such thing as in reality.
Now there is another silent opinion that is quite tacitly accepted by ordinary and simple optimists, and which also encourages the poor situation in the literary and art circles, that is, it is thought that once the "War of Resistance" will "all things go well", so everyone is facing the positive side and keeping everything about the negative number "secret". It seems that as soon as it is said, it will "disturb the rear" Yes, this is "hiding diseases and avoiding medical treatment", and since ancient times, there have been Mingxun to overthrow it.
In fact, the exposure of errors is sometimes more powerful and important than positive advice. "Defeatism," for example, is a tendency that is extremely pernicious, but it does exist among us; although it is latent, it is often cyclical. Therefore, even a defeatist writer should now welcome his pessimistic realism into art. Because it invisibly wrote down the illness of him and his companions, and brought out the "table" of the disease hidden in his heart (borrowing the chinese medical language). In terms of function, this is the first step in bringing him down and destroying him. With "A Q True Biography", we can shoot Ah Q in our hearts, otherwise it is only a spiritual victory.
Dusdewski's Crime and Punishment is a scene of soul torture, and although the author does not point out the final root cause and the way to solve it, he has yet profoundly exposed a problem, and as for the rest of the work, it is a non-formulaic correct criticism that can be done for him.
Our literary and artistic circles like people to rush to a corner. So much so that one of our journals is still incomplete. This responsibility should be borne by both the writer and the critic. Find out the shortest line between yourself and the current central reality, the "War of Resistance"! This is only done in practice. Leaving aside the "formalism"; "all roads lead to Rome", we will naturally unite into a whole, because we have only one common reunion - "final victory"; even if it is a traitor (if there is a future), it is inseparable from this ending.
We do not need to hold a kind of ism; as long as a writer, in a broad sense, he must be a realizationist, no matter how unwilling he is, how unwilling others are, if we have to be an "ism", then we must be "realism" in the broadest sense!