"Grass Pillow" uses an impersonal journey to expound Natsume Shushi's artistic outlook and part of his outlook on life, which is what Natsume Shushi calls "a novel that has never existed since the beginning of the world".
Regarding art, Natsume Soseki said that the distance between art and actual life is a pure objective reflection of actual life by withdrawing profits and losses, getting rid of the shackles of the world, not mixing personal selfish desires, and standing on the side of a third-party bystander. The same is true of the artist.
Art originates from life and is higher than life, and the higher part must be the distance between actual life and art.
Art includes poetry, painting, music, sculpture and other categories. Specific to painting, Natsume Soseki said that one is to transfer the person or thing in front of you to the canvas as it is; one is to immerse the object view in the depicted object, containing the artist's interest or feeling; the other is the depiction of pure feelings, as long as it can convey a few points of feeling through painting, show the mood of the painter one or two, and bring the viewer a few similar feelings, it is already considered successful.
Of these three kinds of paintings, the first two need to have stimuli from the outside world, that is, objects, and the last one is not from the outside world, and it is necessary to show this feeling that is born out of thin air with the help of specific objects, but such objects are easy to find.
Regarding life, Natsume Soseki said that joy and sorrow coexist at the same time, joy and bitterness are the same as in the table, if you categorically give up and only one of them is retained, then the individual cannot survive, and the world is difficult to establish, much like the Taoist principle of "misfortune and happiness depend on, and happiness and misfortune lie".
Even so, it is difficult for people to live in peace. Remembering that no matter where you move, you can't get rid of the troubles of difficulty in settling down, so you have produced poetry and painting, that is, art that is, one or two steps away from the world.
One of the great functions of art is to make people's lives better.
However, art is not high above, it must tiptoe up and look up, it is an objective existence that exists universally in the world. It is just that many people are blinded by materialism, running around in the world, not caring about stopping the footsteps of miscellaneous, and have no time to appreciate the beauty and art that are close at hand.
In the face of a difficult world, in addition to turning to art, it is also an effective way to find liberation and freedom inward.
1.
Many of the sentences in the Augmented Sages speak of the dark side of human nature, which coincide with Xunzi's "theory of sexual evil", which is both sad and true, such as the sentence "Who has no one to say behind his back, and which person does not speak before him?" ”
Looking around, from all kinds of news and entertainment gossip, to parents in the streets and alleys, enmity and hatred, discussion, and tongue-in-cheek abound. Don't look at you chewing happily at this time, as if the beauty and ugliness of the discussant are all in your hands, and when you turn around and evacuate from the crowd, it is likely that you will suddenly become the object of others chewing their tongues.
From this point of view, the world is fair. You base your own happiness on the pain of others, and others will base their happiness on your pain. No more, no less, just right.
The painter in "Grass Pillow" compares people's right and wrong discussions to counting how many farts people have put behind others, not only counting, but also analyzing farts and taking them to people for discussion.
He just couldn't stand being talked about behind him, and this made him unable to fully become a painter, so he left home, walked out of the dark room of the earthly alley, went to the deep mountains and wild mountains, "only hoped to be able to relax for a moment in the inhuman world", forget the world's troubles, have no distractions, and become a real painter.
The painter's approach is not without the suspicion of deliberately escaping, unable to accept reality, unable to look at it head-on, and having to escape into the void, visit strange places, and let the soul rest temporarily. But not for the long term.
As a member of human beings, Rao is no matter how much he yearns for the inhuman world, he will eventually return to the human world and live a normal life. Although Tao Yuanming likes to pick chrysanthemums on the eastern fence and leisurely overlooks the South Mountain, he inevitably leaves early and returns late, and the lotus hoe goes down to the ground to maintain the needs of life.
Therefore, the painter runs away from home and cannot fundamentally solve the problem he wants to solve. Happily, Miss Nami of Nagui solved this problem and demonstrated with practical actions.
2.
The painter's inhuman journey takes place at the hot spring inn in Nagujing, where he meets Miss Nami, who is full of people in the village.
Nami has been to many places, and when she was studying in Kyoto, she met the person she liked, and if she got married, she wanted to marry this one in Kyoto.
The ideal is illusory, and under the arrangement of her parents, Nami marries the leading rich man in the local city.
She did not love him, he was interested in her beauty before deciding to marry her, there is no love between the two, let alone happiness.
As a result, the war caused the bank where Nami's husband worked to collapse, and her husband was reduced from a rich man to a poor ghost, so Nami obeyed her heart and divorced and returned to her mother's house. Therefore, he beckoned the neighbors to "talk about the head of the matter", saying that the beauty was not humane, the feelings were weak, and because the husband was bankrupt, he could no longer eat and drink spicy and abandon his husband, and morally said that he would not go.
The next thing that caused Nami to be dubbed "crazy".
The Tai'an monk of Guanhai Temple wrote a love letter to Nami, and the meaning of admiration filled the lines. When Nami received the love letter, she rushed to the main hall of Guanhai Temple, told the Tai'an monk who was chanting the sutra, "Since I am so cute, let's sleep together in front of the bodhisattva", and then bite Taian's neck.
Tai An has since disappeared, and Nami has since become the laughing stock of the village, saying that her brain is not normal.
In fact, Naomi, who has always been introverted and gentle, is not mindful of divorce, so she went to Guan Hai Temple to ask the Monk Dache about the Dharma, in an attempt to obtain spiritual salvation through religion.
When the painter came to nagujing, Namei already had a lot of experience in cultivation, and when she said to the painter, "Life is good or bad only in one thought", "everywhere is at ease", "now she does not feel ashamed", indicating that she has done what the monk hoped she would do.
Don't care about the outside world's evaluation, go your own way, let others say go. Even if it is difficult for people to live in peace, life is ultimately their own, why should they look forward and look back because of the painless gossip, calm and self-assured, in order to have a clear conscience. This is also a kind of madness, because it is rare, so it is particularly valuable.
As for the "madness" of Namei, in the words of the monk Dache, the beauty of the sharp edge of the machine made the Monk of Tai'an glimpse from the accidental small things that must be investigated. The Tai'an monk, unlike the barbershop owner, committed suicide in shame, went to another monastery to devote himself to cultivation, and soon became a high-ranking monk.
The so-called "madness" of the world is a sharp edge in the eyes of the monks, and I have to quote Tang Yin's poem to interpret this contradiction, "The world laughs at me for being too crazy, and I laugh at others who can't see through it." There seems to be no other way. This is also a practice.
3.
Although that beauty has been cultivated to the transcendent realm of non-sorrow and joy, there is still tenderness beneath the appearance of indifference.
During the trip, the painter once told the old woman of the tea house that she wanted to see Nami wearing a wide-sleeved kimono with flowers at the hem. The old woman said that this was not a problem, and the painter did not think so, not believing that Namei would easily grant the request of a stranger.
But Nami did that. In the twilight haze, she wore a wide-sleeved kimono with flowers at the hem, shuttling back and forth over the cornice, surprising and amazing the painter inexplicably. It turns out that strangers can also treat each other sincerely.
At the end of the novel, Nami inadvertently glimpses her ex-husband in the third-class carriage at the train station, and her face can't help but have pity, which is "the love of mortals closest to God".
Although it is difficult for people to live in peace, Naomi adheres to the "bamboo shadow and dust" and still holds a warm feeling for life, which is also the concept of life that Natsume Soseki wants to expound.
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