Text/Zhao Jiabi
The poet Xu Zhimo, who lived only 36 years old, died in a plane crash on November 19, 1931, and it has been half a century. At the Modern Literature Research Conference held in Baotou last year, most people believed that Xu Zhimo's works should be evaluated realistically. This concerns a large number of writers, and the writing of the entire history of modern literature. This year, the Sichuan People's Publishing House published the Collected Poems of Xu Zhimo; Monographs on Xu Zhimo's works have been published in literary journals around the world; The university Chinese department, and there are special graduate students collecting materials and preparing papers. All this shows that history will always make a correct evaluation of a poet and writer who has had an impact.
I listened to his classes when I was in college and had a relationship with him. When I was a literary and art editor at Liangyou Book Company, I not only published three of his posthumous works with the support of his wife Lu Xiaoman, but also co-edited the Complete Works of Shima with Lu Xiaoman in 1935. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the poet's death, can you remember the past?
Ichimo at Gwanghwa University
In the early winter of 1927, Xu Zhimo taught English literature at the newly founded Guanghua University; I was still studying at the attached middle school, editing the school journal "Morning Dawn", and often writing some reading notes about foreign literature, which attracted the attention of this university professor. One day, unexpectedly, he called me to talk. When I met this young professor, I was immediately fascinated by him. I kept asking him questions, trying to get some tips from him so that I wouldn't have to grope for it myself. He saw my intentions and said to me seriously: "Literature is no better than mathematics, it needs to be gradual." The garden of literature is equal to a spider's web, and if you have the quality of loving literature, you pull a silk one day, and as long as you patiently pump it upwards, you will one day pull the whole spider web into a line. I went to school myself, and there were never a certain steps. Find a good book and it will tell you many other good books. This method of reading is also mentioned in his article "Keats's Nightingale Song", he said: "My literary knowledge is taught by no teacher."
The next year I entered the university, Xu Zhimo opened the class I could choose to read. He had no professorial sting, was full of exuberant vitality, lively thoughts, profound knowledge, and a wide range of interests. He speaks, laughs, has expressions, has movements, sometimes uses Kip shek Mandarin, and more in fluent and beautiful English. His pedagogy is unusual, there is no specified textbook, not in a step-by-step manner, but to choose his own most admired and representative works, whether poetry, prose or novels. While lecturing on the text, while giving full play to his own ideas on the sea and the sky, up and down the ancient and modern, it is as if we young people followed him to invite the heavens and the earth, thus inspiring us to break into the vast garden of literature and art. He recited Keats' "Lark Song" to us; Personally led us to visit Wang Yachen's art exhibition copied in France; We are encouraged to attend a classical music recital by the Works Bureau Symphony Orchestra. He once said to me, "To really appreciate Western literature, you have to have a considerable spiritual training in Western painting and classical music, which are two branches of the same road." When you study literature, you must never abandon these two sisters of literature, painting and music, the former is the art of space, the latter is the art of time, and it is also a touching spirit. "This is followed by the introduction to my reading of J.A. Simmons' collection of essays. Listening to Mr. Shima's lessons, there were always a large number of reference books in each class, some of which let us go to the library to borrow them, and some of which told us to go to the bookstore to buy them.
In the spring of 1930, we simply moved the classroom to a place in front of an ancient tomb on campus to listen to the lecture. Mr. Shima was leaning against the ancient locust tree, and we sat on the stone strips in the shade of the trees on both sides, the sky full of green leaves above our heads, the birds chirping and singing, and he read to us W.H. Hurdson's "Green Mansion" and "Birds and People". He talked about how Tagore loved The work of Hedson, and finally said to us with great emotion: "If you can go to the international university founded by Tagore for a week, you will feel the loveliness of everything in the universe." We're going back to nature, the world is so dirty, everywhere is ugly!" The poet's dissatisfaction with the status quo is often revealed during lectures. This idea of returning to nature and escaping reality has a certain impact on our youth.
At that time, I was working and reading half-time, compiling a student publication at "Good Friends", and Mr. Shima always criticized me for participating in social work prematurely; He encouraged me to read more books and go to Oxford or Cambridge for further studies. I had my own ideas at the time. By the winter of 1930, a large-scale student boom had broken out in Guanghua. He was clear about right and wrong, and his righteousness was awe-inspiring, and he was elected as one of the seven members of the school executive committee. Later, he resigned and went to Peking University.
Shima left Guanghua and went to Peking University in 1931 to teach, borrowing Hu Shi's home. Before leaving Shanghai, he gave me the lecture "Autumn" that he had given at Jinan University in the previous two years and included it in the "One Corner Series" that I had compiled. The book, a week after his death, plus a memorial article I wrote, was printed and published as a souvenir. The speech ended, as it did at the end of Falling Leaves five years ago, with the cry of Everlasting Yea! to the young audience. I once asked Mr. Shima why he ended with this English word, and he said to me: "This is the words of the English philosopher Thomas Carlisle, which I borrow to encourage Chinese youth to adopt a positive, affirmative and upward attitude, I want to look forward to a great revolution, but has it not appeared?" No! Although I am at the end of "Autumn", my hope for young people has not changed, and my hope for the future has not changed!" Although he had a patriotic and sincere heart to save the country, he still echoed the British and American Democrussian spirit.
Ii The last year of the poet
Xu Zhimo left Shanghai alone for Beiping that year, ostensibly because of the Guanghua student tide, but in fact, there was also his unavoidable bitterness in his private life.
The love process of Xu Zhimo and Lu Xiaoman can be called a romantic history full of "love, freedom and beauty", but when the ideal becomes a reality, the poet's illusion is quickly shattered, and finally becomes a tragedy. In the last few years, Lu Xiaoman was sick for a long time due to his frailty, contracted the Aphrodite fetish, coupled with a lazy life, ignoring domestic affairs, and often making it difficult to make ends meet. The poet lives in such a family, and the pain is extreme. In order to free himself from the rope that entangled his body and mind, he took the opportunity of the Guanghua school tide and decided to leave Shanghai. He wants to pull himself out of this quagmire and save Little Man at the same time. Reading Shima's three unpublished letters from Peiping to Xiao Man in March 1931 shows how much determination the poet had made at that time.
"As for my departure this time, I didn't say it earlier and said it, it was a helpless thing. I was really afraid that I was really in all kinds of pain, and it would not be too unreasonable, so I resolutely came north. (3 March 1931)
"Even if it has been the past two years, it has also been greedy and lazy, and has no vitality." This trip to the north, re-doing things seriously, quite difficult. But it is not too late to twist back the habit and be a person in this March. Those who wish to endure this separation from each other should at least have considerable achievements, and they can almost comfort each other. The days that followed were bright and happy. (10 March 1931)
"But I really can't bear the environment in Shanghai anymore, and if I continue to nest, I will definitely destroy it; I am ruined, it is not good for others, and for you, there is no glory, so I endure the pain and leave, the mother is sick and the wife is weak, I have no heart, I hope you can understand, can help me save myself, and at the same time you are also exalted from now on. (19 March 1931)
At that time, he was living in a room upstairs in Hu Shi's apartment. Get a salary from two universities every month, leave 30 yuan, and all of them will be remitted to Shanghai for Xiao Man's family. Hu Shi and Xu Zhimo have a deep friendship. The marriage of Shima and Xiaoman was fulfilled, and Hu Shi made a great effort from it. Later, Lu Xiaoman talked to me in detail about these experiences. But two years ago, I learned from a friend that while Shima was living in the Hu family, Mr. and Mrs. Hu Shi had persuaded Shima and Xiaoman to divorce him. Xu Zhimo's love for Xiao Man was extremely deep, and although he was at this critical moment, he was not moved. Xu Zhimo said to this friend: "You know that she was originally divorced because of me, and if I did this, wouldn't she be ruined?" So no matter what everyone thinks, I can't lose her because I only care about myself.... "This matter, Lu Xiaoman did not know before he died. Xiao Man talked to me several times about the relationship between Shima and Hu Shi, and Shima was quite dissatisfied with Hu Shi's enthusiasm for his career. I recently saw two letters that corroborate Man Jr.
Recently, the Collected Letters of Hu Shi was published, and one of the letters from Shima to Hu Shi was written in 1927. The letter said: "But although you and I are good friends with our brothers, the differences in the status of temperament are great. ...... I have decided to decline the world of career, and my only hope is to get a state of life that allows me to concentrate my limited strength on words. ...... I am absolutely obsessed with fame and fortune, and all I want is 'the grass is far away, first-class cold stream'. Another unpublished letter to Guo Zixiong was sent out in Hu Yu 18 days before he was killed! The letter said: "It is appropriate to be enthusiastic about major state affairs, but the teachers have not been able to fund for three months, and the people's hearts are discouraged, and the future is bleak." This letter was sent on November 1, 1931.
Shima did not accept the proposal to divorce Xiao Man, nor could he bear to let Xiao Man stay in Hubin for a long time. The teachers in the north were in arrears in pay, and the little Man in the south was sleeping in the clouds day and night, and the sorrow in the poet's heart can be seen from an unpublished family letter before leaving Pingping for the last time and returning to Shanghai:
"Today is September 19th, the day you were born 28 years ago. I can't drink a glass of honey wine with you when I'm not at home and celebrate your well-being. These days, the autumn wind is cold and the autumn moon is bright, which makes the wanderer miss his family even more. ...... Although time is fleeting, is there a need for our loving couple to separate? Eyebrows, when will you be willing to listen to my opinion? I am here alone, I feel inappropriate everywhere, you refuse to come, and I am bound by responsibility, which is really difficult to die. (29 October 1931)
When Shima returned to Shanghai on November 13, he begged Xiao Man to go with him to Beiping and start a new life, but Xiao Man could neither get rid of his evil habits nor leave Shanghai (the concession was not smoking). On the 18th, he left Shanghai, stayed in Nanjing for a night, took a free ticket on the 19th and sat on a small plane carrying mail, and suddenly encountered a heavy fog in the Dangjiazhuang near Jinan, and the machine touched the top of the mountain and caught fire. Hu Shi once said, "Only such an unexpected, violent, poetic death is worthy of our Shima."
Xu Zhimo's death was a major loss to the Chinese literary scene. Mao Dun said at the end of "On Xu Zhimo": "What deserves our attention is that Xu Zhimo confessed his 'chance of resurrection' in the preface to the Tiger Collection, but he unfortunately died. We don't see how he went after the 'resurrection', this is a mystery, we can't guess. ”
3 The Complete Works of Shima and Hu Shi
After Shima's death, I began to contact her for publishing Autumn and begged Koma to give me a portrait of the poet. She suggested that she still had Shima's manuscripts, letters, and diaries in her possession, and asked me if I could help her sort it out and publish it, and if it was possible to publish the complete works for Shima. I promise to consider. At the same time, I remembered that in a pair of "Weeping Shima" written by Xiao Man, which hung in front of Shima's spirit, the lower link said such a wish: "Don't hate who to say to, you are sad and sick, you are away from the soul, and it will not be long before the world should be compiled, and the posthumous editor will answer the king's heart."
At the end of May 1935, the editing of the New Chinese Literature Department was completed, ten volumes began to be printed one after another, and I went to Beiping for the first time to travel to organize the manuscript. When I met with Zheng Zhenduo, Shen Congwen, Bing Xin, Chen Mengjia, Zhou Zuoren, etc., when I talked about the plan to edit and publish Xu Zhimo's complete works, I all agreed, especially Zheng Zhenduo supported it the most. Seeing that I was hesitant, Zhenduo asked me to consult Mao Dun. Mao Dun believes that Xu Zhimo has his outstanding representative in the history of modern Chinese literature. He estimated that many people would study Xu Zhimo in the future, and it would be meaningful if Liangyou Company could publish his complete works. In particular, he said that the writer's diaries and letters are the most precious, which can provide the researcher of the work with valuable information that cannot be obtained from the work - the daily life of the author and some inner world; Therefore, he encouraged me to try to collect manuscripts in this regard, and to compile the first complete works of modern writers.
Soon, Man and I compiled Shima's published and unpublished works into a volume of poetry, four volumes of essays, a volume of novels, and a volume of drama. It is planned to compile two additional volumes of epistolary collections, one volume of diaries, and ten volumes of synthesis. Xiao Man and I sent letters to our old friends of Shima who were familiar with Each other asking for the handwriting of Shima's letters, but unfortunately the reaction was not strong, and the income was limited. Yu Dafu replied to me in a letter: "Before Shima was alive, he had many letters with me, but he was shocked several times in Shanghai, and all the letters of his relatives and friends were burned." Xiao Man collected the nineteen links from Shima to Liu Haisu, the nine links to Jiang Weitang (Fu Cong), the nine links to Guo Youshou, and the eight links to Guo Zixiong. In October, when the publication of the Complete Works of Shima was planned, it was suddenly unexpected.
It happened to Hu Shi. Hu Shi compiled the "Collection of Construction Theories" for the "New Chinese Literature Department". He went to Shanghai in mid-October to stay at the newly built Xinya Hotel in Sichuan Road, Qiaoqiao, where I hosted a banquet at Weiya Restaurant and invited Lu Xiaoman and others to accompany him. During the banquet, Xiao Man told Hu Shi about the "Good Friend" coming out of the "Complete Works of Shima" and asked him to write a preface to the whole collection. Hu Shi did not seem to be interested in this. On the fourth day after the meal, Xiao Man called me to discuss important matters, and it turned out that Hu Shi's complete collection of opposition to the crescent poet Xu Zhimo was entrusted to me, a young editor, to be responsible for doing so, and such a complete collection was handed over to the Liangyou company that specialized in the works of Lu Xun, Mao Dun, and other left-wing writers for publication, and Hu Shi did not think so. Hu Shi had already negotiated with Wang Yunwu and asked Lu Xiaoman to send all the manuscripts to the Commercial Press, and Wang Yunwu had promised to immediately advance the royalties of one thousand yuan. Not willing to admit defeat, I went to the hotel the next day to find Hu Shi and judge him, and Hu Shi smiled and said to me: "Now that the matter has become a thing, you don't have to be angry about it, I will give one of my own manuscripts to "good friends" as compensation for you!" I considered that Lu Xiaoman had agreed, and I knew from Hu Shi's mouth that Xiao Man had already received a thousand oceans the day before, and the dispute was useless. In August of the following year, "Liangyou" published Hu Shi's collection of essays, "Miscellaneous Memories of the Southern Journey", and at that time, Hu Shi's works were all submitted to the Crescent Bookstore, which was an exception.
Lu Xiaoman also took the diary collection out of the full-collection plan in order to comfort me, and gave "Ai Mei Xiaozha" to "Good Friend" to publish a photocopy first, and then together with her own diary and 11 letters from Shima to her, with the same title, included in the "Good Friend Literature Series" compiled by me, and published in March 1936. Xiao Man told me at that time that there were several copies of Shima's and her own diaries left at Ling Shuhua and Lin Huiyin in Beiping, and that they should try to get them so that they could be compiled into the complete works. Recently, from the "Selected Letters of Hu Shi", I saw Ling Shuhua's letter to Hu Shi on December 10, 1931, saying that Shima "once handed over his Eight Treasure Chest (Text Karma Box) to my care..." and other things, which proved that there were two diaries written by Xiao Man, which remained in Ling's place. And 18 days later, Hu Shi wrote another letter to Ling Shuhua, asking Ling to immediately hand over the two volumes of Shima's English diary that remained in her hands; According to Chen Congzhou, it was later kept by Lin Huiyin. From this second letter, it can also be seen that a month after Shima's death, Hu Shi and others already had plans to compile and print a collection of diaries and letters, and some friends planned to write biographies, write novels, and so on. Unfortunately, none of this was realized.
Until 1969, Liang Shiqiu and Jiang Fucong, who lived in Taiwan, co-edited a six-volume "The Complete Works of Xu Zhimo", published by the Taipei Biography and Literature Society, four of which were photocopied from the Shanghai edition of the 1930s, including the "Liangyou" version of "Qiu", "Aimei Xiaozha" and the "Morning Light" version of "Shima Diary", there is no separate diary collection and letter collection, nor new diaries and many letters from Shima's old friends. Liang Shiqiu's article "The Editorial Experience" said that in 1959, "When Mr. Hu Shizhi returned to Taiwan, I went to Nangang to see him and talked to him about some of Xu Zhimo's works being reprinted in Taiwan,...... Known as the 'Complete Works'... The situation is really unsatisfactory", so Liang suggested to Hu Shi that Hu Shilai preside over the compilation and printing of Xu Zhimo's complete works. Liang relayed Hu Shi's words, "Mr. Hu said: My friends had this intention at the beginning, only because Shima's manuscripts, including the letter, were not all in the hands of one person, and because of personnel relations, it was not an easy task to mobilize, and it was even more difficult to search for them so far. The Taiwan edition of the complete collection does not have a diary and letter part, and Liang Wen has explained it very clearly. This is indeed a great pity for those who study the life and works of poets.
Iv. Lu Xiaoman's later years
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, I returned to Shanghai from Chongqing, and since 1946 I have been in charge of the editorial staff of Chenguang Publishing Company. Once when I went to see Lu Xiaoman, she tearfully said to me: "If the Complete Works of Shima had not undergone that change in those years, it might have been published long before the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and I would have regretted it too late." After I comforted her, I asked her if she still had Shima's diary at home, and if she had any manuscripts or the like? She rummaged through the boxes and searched around for the results, and found two small Shima diaries: "The Tale of the West Lake" and "Meixuan Trivia". I also suggested that she put a commemorative book inscribed with a friend's inscription poem and a personal inscription entitled "A Book Without Color", including Tagore, Wen Yiduo, Yang Xingfo, Hu Shi, Chen Xiying, Lin Fengmian, Yu Pingbo, Zhang Shizhao, and other 25 precious handwritings as illustrations and plates, plus "Ai Mei Xiaozha", which was included in the "Morning Light Literature Series" in 1947.
What happened after the manuscript of the complete collection was handed over to the Commercial Press, Xiao Man wrote an article in 1957 that had not been published in the past. The article recounts that after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the "business" retreated in a hurry, first to Hong Kong and then to Chongqing, and of course did not print Shima's books. After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the "business" moved back to Shanghai, and Shima's old friend Zhu Jingnong became the general manager, and Xiao Man himself went to beg him to try to retrieve the Shima manuscript and quickly publish the book. Because the general manager came out and finally transferred the manuscript back from Hong Kong, Xiao Man said in his last words: "At this moment, I finally got a little comfort."
After the founding of New China, the anti-drug movement was vigorous, and the hobby that wasted the first half of Xiao Man's life was finally completely eliminated; Under the influence of the new society, Lu Xiaoman really gained a new life.
She was originally a very intelligent woman, kind and loyal, and her temperament was extraordinary. After Shima's childhood, he studied oil painting, and after Shima's death, he took He Tianjian as his teacher, often composed Chinese paintings, and was famous in the art world for his good landscape paintings: Through English and French literature, he could translate English novels: Qingxiu, and wrote a handwritten essay: In 1947, he also wrote a novella for "Morning Light" Zhao Qingge's novel collection "Untitled Collection" compiled by Zhao Qingge. After liberation, her mental outlook changed greatly, and she worked hard to translate Tagore's Novels, often painting and participating in art exhibitions. In a Chinese painting exhibition hall exhibited in Shanghai, Chen Yi, who was the mayor of Shanghai at the time, squinted his eyes while looking at the painting, with a little surprised look, and said to himself: "This painting is very good!" Is her husband Xu Zhimo? Xu Zhimo is my old friend!" Due to Chen Yi's care and care, In the mid-1950s, Lu Xiaoman joined the Chinese Academy of Painting and the Artists Association; From 1956, he was a librarian at the Shanghai Museum of Culture and History, and from 1959 he was a counselor in the Counselor's Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, until his death in Huadong Hospital on April 3, 1965, at the age of 63, and enjoyed a happy old age.
In 1957, Zhang Xinhai's wife, Han Xiangmei, returned to Shanghai from the United States to visit relatives, and she was entrusted by her old friends abroad to visit Lu Xiaoman. At first sight, Han Xiangmei couldn't recognize her when he saw her. Xiao Man is not only healthy, but also fat, full of spirits, and the past is like two people. Han Xiangmei was so unexpectedly happy that he frankly told her: "Overseas friends have said that you are still sick, poor and miserable, and still living a life of swallowing clouds and vomiting fog, so I came to see you this time, and secondly, I am ready to help you." After saying this, both of them burst out laughing.
There was another thing that pleased Little Man in 1957, starting in 1954. In that year, the Commercial Press was first a public-private partnership, and later changed to a state-run. In the process of sorting out and processing the manuscripts, they found that the "Complete Works of Shima" had been arranged and proofread on the eve of liberation, and they had typed paper, totaling eight volumes. Due to the temporary inability to publish, all the clear sample paper types were unconditionally returned to Lu Xiaoman, the contract was cancelled, and the royalties were not counted in advance. Lu Xiaoman was really ecstatic when he received the notice. She said in the above article: "As long as the manuscript is still there, there will be a chance to publish it slowly!"
At the beginning of 1965, she had been lying ill in Huadong Hospital for nearly half a year, and knowing that she could not afford it, she instructed her niece Lu Zonglin to hand over the eight volumes of the Complete Works of Shima to Chen Congzhou for safekeeping. Chen is Shima's cousin-in-law. In 1949, he compiled and printed the "Xu Zhimo Annals" at his own expense, and is currently a professor of ancient Chinese architecture at Tongji University, and he was responsible for designing the "Ming Xuan" exhibited in New York, USA. After Chen Congzhou accepted the precious relics, he donated them to the Beijing Library in March 1966.
When Xiao Man was critically ill, I visited her in the hospital. She said many words of gratitude to the new society with tears in her eyes. She was still obsessed with the publication of the Complete Works of Shima. I comforted her that Shima's book would definitely be published in the future, and not only would it be published in separate volumes and printed in large quantities, but there would also be more than one complete collection. Isn't my empty prophecy at the time now being fulfilled on both sides of the Taiwan Strait? Unfortunately, Xiao Man, who had been struggling for the entire second half of his life to publish Shima's book to comfort her underground husband, could not see it with his own eyes.