Lao She has some origins with classical Chinese novels. In the article "Tribute to Mr. Luo Changpei", Lao She wrote: When he was in his early years, he often went to the small tea house with his classmate Luo Changpei to listen to the commentaries "Xiao Wuyi" or "Shi Gong Case". Later, when he entered the normal school, Lao She, while studying the tongcheng school prose and the poetry of Lu Fangweng and Wu Meicun, should have also "read Tang novels and "Ru Lin Wai Shi" or something." On this point, when we read the "Self-Introduction to the Lao She Anthology" and "How I Wrote the Philosophy of Lao Zhang", it is not difficult to find relevant news.
From 1924 to 1929, Lao She taught Chinese at oriental colleges in the University of London. During this time, he gave a special lecture to students on Tang romance novels, which were later published in the journal of Yenching University. He also helped Aychton, an Englishman who shared a floor and "exchanged knowledge with each other," translate The Plum in a Golden Plum. Although Lao She himself rarely mentioned this matter, when the English translation of "Jin Ping Mei" was published, the title page was specially marked with the words "dedicated to my friend Shu Qingchun". As for Lao She's novel works and articles about novels, they always show the writer's strong interest and extensive involvement in classical Chinese novels. For example, the novel "Drum Book Artist" tells the turbulent life of Chongqing artists during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the scene of Baoqing singing books naturally reflects how much the writer likes and is familiar with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The article "On Humor" aims to introduce the concept of "humor" in the Western context, but the writer has easily picked up "Journey to the West" and "Mirror Flower Edge" for comparison and analysis, which shows that the essence of these two books has long entered the writer's belly. The creation of a "Speech and Style" is to analyze the short sentence effect of Wu Song's "Blood Splashed Mandarin Duck Building", thus conveying the writer's meticulous taste and unique grasp of the artistic achievements of "Water Margin". Shu Ji can say that in Lao She, classical Chinese novels are not only a writing resource, but also a cultural bloodline.
Of course, among the various classical Chinese novels, Lao She is the most important and praised is Cao Xueqin's "Dream of the Red Chamber". He believes that the ideological and artistic achievements of "Dream of the Red Chamber" are huge and extraordinary, and rare in the history of Chinese and foreign literature. His article "The Cultivation of Young Writers" wrote: "There are many works in the world that are as long or longer as "Dream of the Red Chamber", but how many of them have the same value as "Dream of the Red Chamber"? seldom! He regarded Dream of the Red Chamber as a very high standard, a goal that was difficult to achieve artistically. He warned literary youth not to be ambitious and talented, thinking that they could easily reach the level of "Dream of the Red Chamber". It is based on this understanding that Lao She has made a lot of careful reading and study and speculation around a "Dream of the Red Chamber", and on this basis, put forward a number of unique and insightful insights. These insights not only touch on the infinite hills and valleys contained in the works, but also reflect the unique academic cultivation of the commentators, and still have the reference and enlightenment significance of the study of "red studies" and even the reading and interpretation of all literary classics, so it is worth sorting out, summarizing and evaluating.
Although Lao She has long had the title of professor, in terms of his qualifications, temperament, interest and thinking, he undoubtedly belongs to the writer. Such subjective conditions determine that in his eyes, no matter how profound the historical content and rich social content of a "Dream of the Red Chamber" is, it is still a great novel in the end or first. Therefore, Lao She has always adhered to the principle of "text" when reading "Dream of the Red Chamber", following the essence of aesthetics, and paying attention to the laws of creation. Specifically, he advocates interpreting and appreciating "Dream of the Red Chamber" from the perspective of "Dream of the Red Chamber" itself, that is, from the perspective of ideology and art, and does not approve of using the method of examination to explain or interpret "Dream of the Red Chamber" outside of "Dream of the Red Chamber".
Fourteen years later, in 1954, Lao She published a monograph entitled "The Red Chamber Is Not a Dream" in the December issue of The People's Literature magazine. In this article, the writer further declares in combination with his own creative experience: "I oppose the method of 'making something out of nothing'"; "I oppose the view that "Dream of the Red Chamber" is the author's autobiography". He believes that the cumbersome examination of the past "shifts the importance of studying the Dream of the Red Chamber itself to the trivialities of Cao Xueqin's personal side." After coming and going, every detail of Cao Xueqin's personal life has become a priceless treasure, only "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a mystery, and Cao Xueqin's personal trivia is a mystery. But, at the same time, he acknowledges that "it is good to study the history of writers ... We understand the history of the writer, and naturally we know more about his work. He believes: "The responsibility of an examiner who respects classical works is to study, analyze and examine the works themselves in a materialistic dialectical way, so as to introduce the true value and social significance of the works, so that the people can better understand and cherish the national heritage and increase their ability to appreciate." No one can follow their own tastes and 'prove' that the work is something else, that everything in the work is false, and that only what the examiner has examined is true. ”
Needless to say, this article is related to the political movement that criticized Yu Pingbo's study of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in that year, and its language also reflects the distinctive characteristics of the writer after accepting the revolutionary literary and art theory. However, if we look at its basic viewpoint and corresponding expression of the "red study" examination, it seems that it is not contaminated with the abuses of simple and crude and unlimited superiority, but on the contrary, it consciously or unconsciously abandons and corrects some of the absolute and biases of the writer on this issue in the past, that is, it no longer generally and unconditionally demeans and negates the examination, but affirms the meaning and necessity of its existence, and points out the correct direction and goal for it -- the examination should serve to discover the value of the work, understand the writer's thoughts, and facilitate the appreciation of art. It should be admitted that in the context of the blazing pragmatism more than half a century ago, Lao She can view the relationship between the interpretation of the text of "Dream of the Red Chamber" and the author's examination in this way, which can be called valuable.
Starting from the basic point of basing on text, aesthetics and creation, Lao She emphasized three points in the interpretation and evaluation of the specific "Dream of the Red Chamber":
First, "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a rich and inexhaustible literary and even cultural heritage.
Lao She pointed out: "'Dream of the Red Chamber' is very long. This one has been written for many years, so it is long and refined. It's like opening a big mine and slowly refining lots of gold. Therefore, both literary workers and ordinary readers should often read and peruse "Dream of the Red Chamber" to draw literary and cultural nourishment from it.
Second, "Dream of the Red Chamber" adds a series of immortal characters to the historical corridor of literature.
In Lao She's view: "Everything in the world is fleeting in the blink of an eye, novel for a while, and soon it will be obsolete; only the characters are immortal on their feet," and "adding several immortal figures to the world out of thin air, such as Wu Song and Daiyu, is called creation." ("The Description of Characters") He wrote: "Look at 'Dream of the Red Chamber'! It has so many characters, and what a living, flesh-and-blood character! It cannot be a great work." "For so many characters, the author's love and hatred are clear. He cares about life, he knows life, so he can't be nothing. He arranged appropriate things for both loved and hated men, women and children to bring them into action. Through their actions, he reflected the social realities of the time. "I've written some novels, and I do know a little bit about how difficult it is to create characters." ("The Red Chamber Is Not a Dream")
Third, the language of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is fascinating and has reached a high aesthetic level.
Lao She believes: "From the language, we can see the different personalities of writers, and we can see who wrote it at a glance. Shakespeare is Shakespeare and Dante is Dante. Literary works cannot be machine-made, each one is the same, the same size. Open the "Dream of the Red Chamber" to see, it is definitely "Dream of the Red Chamber", absolutely can not be exchanged with "Ru Lin Wai Shi". He tells his readers: "Look at Dream of the Red Chamber... Linguistically speaking, it is already a remarkable work. "Its characters have their own languages. It not only teaches us to hear some words, but also teaches us to understand the thoughts and feelings of the characters; to hear the tone and tone of each person's voice; to see the expression of the characters speaking. The dialogue in the book causes the characters to come out of the paper and stand in front of us. ("The Red Chamber is not a dream") Frankly speaking, if only in terms of theoretical and academic values, what Lao She talked about above seems to be not a word, and it is unique, but because its words and lines naturally penetrate into a writer's unique experience and perception from creative practice, it still has a kind of affinity and persuasiveness.
For a "Dream of the Red Chamber", Lao She has a heart of awe, and even a sense of admiration. Just reverence or admiration, in the end, has not led to the writer in the face of "Dream of the Red Chamber", losing a sober aesthetic vision and objective artistic scale. On the contrary, even if Meiyu still has slight flaws, even the classics are insufficient, which was once a unique dialectical mentality when Lao She read "Red", which directly led to his bluntness about the shortcomings of "Dream of the Red Chamber" on some occasions. For example, his article "Speech and Style" once wrote:
Metaphors are important in poetry, but when used too much in prose, they lose the power and nature of the narrative. Look at the description of Daiyu in "Dream of the Red Chamber": "Two bends are like a cage of smoke eyebrows, and a pair of eyes that seem to be happy and not happy." The state of two sorrows, the illness of the body. Tears lit up, and the panting was slight. Idle like a delicate flower shining on the water, acting like a weak willow supporting the wind. The heart is more than dry, and the disease is like Xizi winning three points. This description makes two mistakes: the first is that the ability to describe is destroyed by poetry; it is indeed poetic to read, but is there a positive description in the end?
In the poem, sentences like "tears dotted" and "idle like flowers shining on the water" are effective, because the impression that can be taken out of the poem for a while is a long description: sometimes when he is a little tearful, he can use it to express the state of her life. In the novel, this approach seems inappropriate, because if we want to be truly expressed, we must express it from all aspects and various situations of a person. Didn't she not burst into tears? Didn't she get angry and not idle? Second, this passage is all rhetoric, and it is impossible to find a word that can describe Daiyu from the ready-made words. A word has only one adjective, and we should add it again: if you can't find this adjective, you don't need it. If inappropriate adjectives should be omitted, not to mention metaphors.
If we can abandon those preconceived things, and do not blindly follow the opinions of so-called experts, but insist that everything starts from our own reading experience and feelings, then we must admit that Lao She's above analysis and evaluation really shows the inability of "Dream of the Red Chamber" to write Lin Daiyu's appearance. For another example, in the creation of "How I Write "Erma"", Lao She combined his efforts to colloquialize and defamiliarize the language of the novel, and wrote very casually and keenly: "The language of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is so beautiful, but as soon as the scenery is mentioned, it immediately changes its tone and there is poetry as evidence." This is obviously to say that the landscape description of "Dream of the Red Chamber" has fallen into the cliché, and based on the actual situation of the work, it can be seen that Lao She's words are true. On this point, the Hong Kong writer Dong Qiao, who has always been very insightful, not only agreed with it, but also supplemented it. He believes that the reason why the writing scene of "Dream of the Red Chamber" likes to "have poetry as evidence", "this just shows that Cao Xueqin is honest: his educational background is like this, he will only write like this, so he writes like this." ("From Lao Zhang's Philosophy" to Lao She's Text))
Theoretically, all works of literature cannot be perfect; even great works of inheritance inevitably have weaknesses and weaknesses. Because of this, literary criticism based on good intentions has always been no forbidden area, and it is natural to point out the shortcomings of literary masterpieces from the perspective of real feelings. However, unfortunately, such a law seems to have not been implemented and embodied in "Dream of the Red Chamber". Although this novel work, which came out during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, was repeatedly banned and destroyed by feudal rulers, it has always maintained a very high reputation among the folk reading circles and enlightened and progressive intellectuals, and even appeared the social atmosphere of "talking about the dream of the Red Chamber, reading all the poems and books is in vain" (Qing Jiaqing's twenty-second edition of "Kyoto Bamboo Branches").
Especially after the 1950s, due to Chairman Mao Zedong's special attention and strong recommendation, and because of the unusual social atmosphere at that time, the status and value of "Dream of the Red Chamber" were pushed to an unprecedented height, so that the academic community could only say good about it, not bad; it could only be explained, not criticized. In the words of Mr. Yu Pingbo, written in the article "Moonlight in the Old Times" after his comeback: "For decades, "Dream of the Red Chamber" and Cao Xueqin have been praised and depreciated, highly respected, Chinese and foreign, and the valuation has become higher and higher... From this background, we can look at Lao She's negative opinions on some of the depictions of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and we can realize that although it appeared in the 1930s, when the "red" environment was relatively free, although it did not point out the failure of "Dream of the Red Chamber" as a whole, the healthy sense of literary criticism and superb artistic aesthetic vision contained therein were still valuable and exciting.
Needless to say, when talking about "Dream of the Red Chamber", Lao She also has a place where he does not think carefully and makes a rough argument: for example, in that "On Creation", the writer has such a statement: "Our "Dream of the Red Chamber" section is translated into English... What influence did it have on foreign literature? No impact! Look at the works of the Russian masters, and as soon as they are translated, they shake the whole world!" In this passage, Lao She regards the temporary impact of the translation of the work into foreign languages as the only criterion for measuring the artistic quality of the work, and thus concludes that "Dream of the Red Chamber" is inferior to the works of the Russian masters. We cannot say that what the writer says is completely unreasonable, because it clearly coincides with the so-called law that "the more national, the more the world", but it at least ignores the other side of the same problem: the more works with national characteristics, the less difficult it is to achieve cross-ethnic communication, and the more it is not conducive to the universal effect.
At that time, the reason why Lin Yutang gave up the English translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" and rewrote a "Jinghua Smoke Cloud" that imitated "Dream of the Red Chamber" was because he was worried that modern Westerners could not read "Dream of the Red Chamber" at all. Although his "Jinghua Smoke and Clouds" is well-known in the Western world and even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, it is difficult to hope that "Dream of the Red Chamber" will be backed by artistic standards. This seems to remind us that to assess the value of a good work deeply rooted in Chinese culture, it requires multiple perspectives and multiple latitudes, rather than what can be determined by the extraterritorial influence of one time and one place. Obviously, at this point, Lao She's conclusion is somewhat simplistic.
Compared with the scholar's reading of "Red", Lao She's reading of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is also a great difference, that is, he not only turned "Dream of the Red Chamber" into his own beneficial spiritual background and artistic nutrition, but also let this background and nutrition consciously and naturally integrate into the creation of the pen, into a highly personalized complex scene and flesh and blood image. In this regard, anyone who has read Lao She's novel "Four Worlds Together" or "Under the Red Flag" will have a clear discovery and heartfelt recognition, and there is no need for the author to rap too much.
Or some people ask, among the many classical Chinese novels, why does Lao She have a special love for "Dream of the Red Chamber"? It is believed that in addition to literary appreciation and borrowing in the general sense of "taking the law", there are at least two important reasons: one is that the Manchu cultural tradition embodied in Cao Xueqin and "Dream of the Red Chamber" corresponds to Lao She's own cultural bloodline as a Manchu writer; the other is that the Kyoto weather possessed by "Dream of the Red Chamber" and Cao Xueqin's Beijing background coincide with Lao She's life experience in Beijing and the Beijing-style pursuit of his novel creation. By clarifying this, we can further understand how important a particular cultural field is for writers.
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