Friends, before reading this article, please click "Follow" so that you can continue to receive more wonderful articles. The spark can ignite, and your support will be my greatest motivation.
As the old saying goes: "Every time you slaughter a dog, you are mostly a reader." ”
Whether it is a historical story or an opera miscellaneous drama, the greedy and negative people portrayed in it are mostly people who read books. For example, Chen Shimei, who is ungrateful and abandons his wife and son in "Qin Xianglian", and then, yuan shu, who just wrote "once the sea was shipwrecked as water", turned his head and married a new huan, and in order to plagiarize the ancient famous sentence "The flowers are similar every year, and the years are different", Song Zhiqing, who did not hesitate to kill his own nephew... The list goes on and on.
However, in contrast, the low-level characters created in literary works are not lacking in people of high moral character. Not to mention Hou Wei and Zhu Hai, who are known as "the two heroes of the Thousand Autumns, the Great Liang City of Xuanhe", not to mention Fan Duo, who is wise and courageous and the haojie of the world, just to win the most disgraceful prostitutes in the nine streams, there are many people who are serious about love and righteousness.
Whether it is Du Shiniang, who uses the fierce love and anger of the treasure chest, or Liang Hongyu, who is the drum and fights the golden soldiers, and Liu Ruyi, who ranks first in Qin Huai's eight yans and has deep feelings of family and country and political ambitions, they are all heroes among prostitutes.
In fact, there are many similar works in French masterpieces, in the book "World Masterpiece Master Class • French Volume", Professor Che Lin from the French Department of beijing University of Foreign Chinese tells us that Maupassant, who is known as the "king of short stories", once portrayed a sentient prostitute and a group of despicable and ugly hypocrites in the novel "Lamb Fat Ball".
Professor Che Lin believes that the novel "Lamb Fat Ball" is not only Maupassant's famous work, but also a representative work that reflects his writing art. It tells the story of a prostitute named "Mutton Fat Ball" and several other Frenchmen who were on their way to flee during the war, and a story of "forcing good people into prostitution" on their way to human nature.
Why is our heroine called a "ball of mutton fat"?
The novel describes the girl as follows: "She was short and fat, her body was round and rolling, she was so fat that she was full of fat, and even her fingers were bulging... Her face was like a red apple, and like a budding peony flower, and on the upper part of her face, two beautiful and dark eyes shone brightly, surrounded by a circle of long and thick eyelashes, and the eyelashes were reflected in the eye waves. ”
Such a plump and delicate girl, with a little delicacy, is simply appropriate to describe it as a "mutton fat ball", and Maupassant's deep pen strength is perfectly reflected in these seemingly inconspicuous small details.
"Lamb Fat Balls", created in the historical background of the Franco-Prussian War, can be regarded as a novel with a war theme. In the 19th century, the two strongest countries on the European continent were the Kingdom of Prussia, which is today's Germany, and the French Empire, both of which wanted to become the hegemons of Europe and had sharp conflicts of interest, so the relations between the two countries were long tense.
In July 1870, a major war broke out between Prussia and France, which was the famous Franco-Prussian War. However, soon after the franco-Prussian War began, France was gradually defeated, and the French troops who were overwhelmed and forced to flee were everywhere, which is the scene described at the beginning of the novel "Lamb Fat Ball".
In an fleeing carriage sat ten ordinary Frenchmen, a couple of wine wholesalers who loved to take advantage, a couple of provincial councillors, an earl's couple, two nuns, a revolutionary, and the protagonist of the story, the lamb fat ball.
At the beginning of the trip, everyone else was self-conscious, looked down on the inferior lamb fat ball, and was even more reluctant to talk to her. However, among all the people, only the mutton fat balls carried enough food to eat for three days, and as a result, when these "superior people" could not bear the torment of hunger, they could not be reserved, and the wind swept away the food of the lamb fat balls.
As the saying goes, take people softly, eat people with short mouths. Since these "superior people" had eaten the food of the mutton fat ball, they also had to put down their bodies and reluctantly say a few words to the lamb fat ball, just like a gift to her.
But the carriage did not take long before it was stopped by a group of Prussians to check the documents, after which the Prussian officer who led the group sent someone to call the ball of mutton fat and talk to her alone. And the lamb fat ball came back very angry. It turned out that the Prussian officer had taken a fancy to her and demanded that the ball of mutton fat serve him, or else the carriage would not be allowed to go any further.
When the other people in the carriage heard about this, they also rebuked the Prussians for their unreasonable behavior, and encouraged the ball of mutton fat to love the motherland and resolutely not to do anything that humiliated the country.
However, three days after the carriage was seized, people began to have strange thoughts, not only turning the boredom caused by waiting into apathy and resentment towards the mutton fat ball, but also plotting behind the back of the lamb fat ball, trying to persuade her to commit herself to the Prussian officer for everyone.
In Maupassant's words, "They spent half a day negotiating a solution, like dealing with a besieged fortress." Everyone has set their own tasks, reasons why they should say them, and the means they should play. It can be seen that this group of Frenchmen has completely shifted the goal of the struggle to their female compatriots.
But the irony of this novel is far more than that, professor Che Lin in the book "World Masterpiece Master Class • French Volume", the "Lamb Fat Ball" and the middle school textbook "The Last Lesson" text, to further deepen our understanding of this novel.
She pointed out that the characteristics of these two works are small and large, if "The Last Lesson" is a work conceived with events as the core, expressing the strong patriotic feelings of the French in the situation of losing the war, then "Lamb Fat Ball" is character-centered, revealing the good and evil of human nature in the war environment.
According to the stereotype of most people, the ball of mutton fat as a lowly prostitute is despised. However, the strong self-esteem and patriotic feelings reflected in her are also worthy of respect.
At first, the mutton fat ball did not want to succumb to the obscenity of the Prussian officers, she not only resolutely resisted the demands of the Prussians, but also felt that she had been humiliated and cried all day, and she was eager to become a man and fight with the Prussians to the death.
However, under the mulch of collective sexual violence, the lamb fat ball eventually became a lonely and innocent lamb.
As Professor Cherin said, not only did she not receive strong support from her compatriots, who instead pushed the poor balls of mutton fat into the arms of the Prussians in exchange for her freedom of movement. What is even more infuriating is that the sacrifice of the mutton fat ball not only did not get the understanding and comfort of everyone, but instead suffered a cold reception, and everyone hated her and avoided her.
When we see the sobs that the lamb fat ball can't help but whimper and the tears that gush up on our cheeks, our hearts are filled with infinite pity for her, not contempt. In Maupassant's pen, this most humble woman, with the noblest sentiments, was unfortunately trampled on by those hypocritical "superiors".
This is exactly the true meaning of life that Maupassant wants to tell us through the novel "Ball of Mutton Fat": whether the human soul is noble or not has nothing to do with the dignity and inferiority of status!
Speaking of which, I believe you have found that whether it is "Ball of Mutton Fat" or other famous works that have been handed down to this day, they have a soft power to make people see the heavens and the earth, sentient beings and themselves.
However, the thickness of the content, the agility of the words, and the profundity of our thoughts make us discouraged from the famous works! Mark Twain's famous quote hits our pain point even more accurately: a famous book is the kind of book that everyone says is good, but not much to read!
Yes, the famous book is like a big stick bone, although it is rich in nutrition, but it is really not easy to nibble, let alone eat the fragrant bone marrow inside, what can be done?
Published by Tianxi Culture, the "World Masterpiece Master Class • French Volume" specially invites professors from Peking University, Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Foreign Chinese, Beijing Normal University, Chinese University, Fudan University and other top famous universities to tell us in a vivid and interesting and fascinating way to tell us what is so good about the famous book and how we should read a famous book.
In this "World Masterpiece Master Class: French Volume", under the guidance of top masters, we will start from "Montaigne Essay Collection", "Selected Comedies of Molière", "The Red and the Black", "Eugenie Grande", "Notre Dame de Paris", "Les Misérables", "Remembrance of Watery Years" and other French classic masterpieces, and deeply explore the realistic themes of youth growth, dream struggle, human wealth, love and hate life and death.
We will read from "The Count of Monte Cristo" about the choices of good and evil and the test of human nature in the time of happiness and vengeance; from "Madame Bovary" to read about the tragedy of life caused by romantic passion and uneasy character; from "The Little Prince" to read about how to find a planet full of love and warmth in the vast stars; from "Plague" to read about how to fight against the disaster and absurdity of the world with justice...
"World Masterpiece Master Class" (French volume) with an original price of 88 yuan
The Jingdong special price is only 66.3 yuan
Click on the link below to purchase▼
World Masterpiece Master Class: French Volume ¥66.3 Purchase
Each masterpiece opens a unique window for us,
You can put it into the windy day, you can see the moonlight,
You can also overlook the mountains and listen to the echoes of the world...