Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren
Lu Xun, people put on him mostly labels as "national soul" or "warrior".
Then paste this photo of the horizontal eyebrows cold to the thousand fingers, and talk about him as the last conscience of the Republic of China.
And most of these people only read Lu Xun from the words of the middle school textbook, and they secretly thought that this writer from decades ago should be what they had portrayed in their hearts:
His brows were furrowed, he was holding a cigarette, his eyes were deep, and he was thinking about the fate of the country and the nation.
But in the eyes of Zhou Zuoren, the second brother, who was four years younger than Lu Xun,
Lu Xun has always been "steady with a little skin".
In fact, if we know Zhou Zuoren, we will find that Zhou Zuoren is more like those honest and good children in our lives.
Study well, go to college, work, get married, have children.
He went through his life step by step, without any waves.
But he had an older brother.
His brother was called Zhou Shuren, a tree man of "ten years of trees, a hundred years of tree people".
Zhou Shuren is also Lu Xun.
When he was studying in the Sanwei Bookstore, Lu Xun had his own opinions.
The teacher placed him near the door, a position that his classmates had dreamed of sneaking off the throne, but Lu Xun did not do it, on the grounds that there was wind there.
Moreover, Lu Xun also likes to hang around, and even likes to fight in groups.
At that time, many private schools were opened by the readers themselves, Mr. could arbitrarily physically punish students, and there was a mr. of a private school who not only confiscated the dried fruit snacks of the students to enjoy themselves, but also had a "pee stick" system, and as a result, Lu Xun knew, and led the team to attack this gentleman, although it was already out of school at that time.
There are also groups of "Wu Xiucai" because he intimidates elementary school students.
Although I didn't run into anyone twice.
These are all small things, but it can also be seen that Lu Xun is a little chivalrous when he is young.
In fact, when we were young, we would also have some inexplicable sense of justice, thinking that we were a good man of Liang Shanbo, with two eyes and one stare, in front of us were all the charm rays that came from nowhere, and I was don Quixote of the windmill, waving my hand, taking Sancho, rushing to the righteousness in my heart.
However, such happy days are not too many, although it has left good memories, but in the face of the next bloody reality, it will always be torn to pieces.
In 1893, his grandfather Zhou Fuqing was involved in a major scientific expedition fraud case at the end of the Qing Dynasty and was imprisoned.
According to the law, all those involved in the case are to be beheaded.
But fortunately, the Zhou family poured out their family wealth to open the joints, only to be sentenced to imprisonment in Hangzhou.
At that time, the two brothers were sent to their grandmother's house for refuge.
8-year-old Zhou Zuoren is very happy with that memory.
He did not know that such a major change had occurred in the family, but he thought that he was going to his grandmother's house for a while, and he was held by his grandmother and called "careful liver" for a while.
There are also a lot of friends of the same age who can play together.
The important thing is that there is also the brother, who can draw pictures.
But at that time, Lu Xun was already twelve years old.
Twelve-year-olds have long learned what it means to send people under the fence.
The feeling of coming to "ask for food" lingered, and the twelve-year-old was sensitive to the feeling that everyone nearby was talking to him.
The two of them seem to have become the talk of other people, and the tone is full of sympathy, and this sympathy is inevitably mixed with a lot of "look, I know it is like this" self-righteousness.
But this did not affect Lu Xun's sale of his own depiction of "Dang Kou Zhi" to his classmates in the study.
In the winter of the following year, my father began to edema, hemoptysis, and eventually died under the treatment of a quack doctor.
As the eldest son, Lu Xun felt that the sky was about to fall, he was lost and confused, he hated the unscrupulous quack doctor who had taken away his father, but in the face of the zhou family, which was in debt, he knew that all the grievances were in vain.
When Lu Xun grew up, he recalled this past, and he wrote: "Who fell from a well-off family into a difficult situation?
I thought that in this way,
You can probably see the true face of the world. ”
This "true face" was too bloody in the eyes of the young Lu Xun.
However, Zhou Zuoren did not have such troubles.
At the age of twelve, he went to Hangzhou to accompany his grandfather.
He took a fancy to the three ladies of the neighbor's house.
I don't know how Miss Three looks, because at that time the degree of his eyes was already very high, but Miss Three always came with a cat, and there would be a kind of misty joy of not asking for anything.
Later, Miss Three died, and although he felt a hint of loss, he was mostly happy.
Later, Lu Xun, who was completely cold-eyed, went to Nanjing.
At the age of 17, Lu Xun began to travel outside.
The outside world is very large, so that Lu Xun, who is stuck in the Zhou family, feels a special taste.
This taste is called freedom.
He wrote to Zhou Zuoren, telling him that the outside world was so vast except for his home.
At that time, Zhou Zuoren felt that his brother was like a free Kunpeng, and even the air he breathed was full of free breath.
He admired his big brother so much.
So much so that Lu Xun's pen name was called "Jia Jian Sheng",
He was called "Yao Jian Sheng".
In 1901, Zhou Zuoren entered the "Jiangnan Water Master School" to learn what a boiler was, but these were not Zhou Zuoren's interests, and he liked new books outside the subset of jingshi, "Heavenly Nights" from Japan, Edgar Allan Poe's "Golden Worm", and Dante's "Divine Comedy", which were too interesting.
He was obsessed with translation, and "The Orphans" and "The End of the Death Row" were both works of that time.
It was so interesting, it turned out that the outside world was so interesting, and it turned out that what was written in my brother's letter was true.
In 1902, Lu Xun went to Japan to study at public expense, and he saw the wider world.
He told his second brother what he had seen and heard.
Two years later Lu Xun went to Sendai to study medicine.
There he met his lifelong mentor, Mr. Fujino, and it was there that he felt the contempt of his classmates for Chinese, and Lu Xun faced a major turning point in his life.
He thinks about his life's purpose in pain. The blow of his father's departure when he was young made him determined to study medicine, but the old China and Japan, which was like the rising sun, made him understand that no one could save him from studying medicine.
How to save? Save whom?
At that time, Lu Xun did not know it.
After another two years, Lu Xun returned to China to receive a gift from his mother, Zhu An.
Lu Xun had no feelings for Zhu's safety, and even felt disgusted, but if he drove her out of the Zhou family, her end would only be a dead end, but he could not accept this kind of arranged marriage, and in desperation, he could only leave and return to Tokyo with his younger brother Zhou Zuoren.
Some say that's so unfair to Juan.
But you have to forgive Lu Xun at that time, after all, he was still too young at that time, and for this sin of his youth, he took charge of the second half of Juan's life.
Zhou Zuoren was 21 years old when he came to Japan.
When I arrived in Japan, the air in japan was suddenly dissolved.
He was deeply attracted by the tranquility and literary atmosphere of Japan.
At that time, Japan was much stronger and more advanced than China, and he learned a lot of knowledge here, especially the language
Japanese, Greek, Old English, as well as Russian and Sanskrit.
Unlike Lu Xun's bitterness, Zhou Zuoren was very happy here.
However, as we said earlier, Zhou Zuo, like most of us, is an ordinary honest person, and there are many problems with honest people, such as procrastination.
In 1908, something happened.
At that time, Zhang Taiyan asked Zhou Zuoren to translate Wu Bo Ni Sha Tuo (Sanskrit), and Zhou Zuoren accepted this commission, but he was lazy when it came to specific work.
In the summer, with my brother Lu Xun, there are no popsicles, no iced watermelons, my heart is calm and naturally cool, and I don't want to work.
Lu Xun was an old mother at this time, he couldn't see him like this, he urged him every day, he was just silent.
Then Lu Xun couldn't do anything.
Not to die in silence, to erupt in silence, not to mention that there is no reason for him to be silent when writing a stinky brother, so he threw an old fist at his brother.
Of course, Zhou Zuoren did not hate his brother at all, and he commented on Lu Xun in his diary that he worked diligently and was beyond the reach of others.
In 1917, Zhou Zuoren came to Beijing.
At that time, the New Culture Movement was in the ascendant, and Zhou Zuoren went to Peking University as a professor.
Lu Xun wrote essays and novels, Zhou Zuoren wrote theoretical articles, and for a while, the Zhou brothers shook the world.
Some people say that Zhou Zuoren was helped by Lu Xun, Lu Xun guided him to write, recommended him to magazines, and even those who carefully studied Lu Xun would not know that at that time, Lu Xun's "Hot Wind" was mixed with his brother's "miscellaneous feelings".
But they were completely different.
He said there are two kinds of writing.
One is bland and natural, unpretentious, and the other is deep and spicy.
He is the former, Lu Xun is the latter.
But the depth of their brotherhood is well known.
In 1919, Lu Xun sold his old mansion, borrowed some money, and ten years of savings, and bought a mansion in Badaowan.
At the end of the year, the three brothers dragged their families to live in the second ring road of Beijing.
Badaowan is not far from Fucheng Gate in Beijing, at that time my family lived in the back door of Lu Xun's former residence, lived for several years, and then one day, my father pointed to the map and said to me lu Xun's former residence, I took a closer look, isn't it the little black door?
The large courtyard in Fuchengmen left a lot of impressions on me as a child. For example, if there is no toilet in the yard, you have to go to the public toilet outside the courtyard, put a spittoon at home at night, and go to the public toilet the next day.
There was an old man walking birds in the yard all day, with an eye, always squinting at me.
The courtyard door was never closed, and there was a small black door on the side that was never opened.
There was a painter living opposite my house, or something else, the curtains were always pulled, and when I woke up in the middle of the night, I could always hear the sound of their husband and wife arguing, and the crying of the little child who was older than me.
Zhou Jianren, the third brother of the Zhou family who does not have a name
Later, when we got older, we moved away, but this memory of my childhood always appeared in my dreams.
I've never been to Lu Xun's old mansion, but I think Beijing at that time was probably the same as when I was a child.
After a hundred years, Beijing is still the same Beijing.
Lu Xun and his two younger brothers still got along very well.
Zhou Zuoren's children liked Lu Xun very much.
He and Juan had never shared the same room, so although Juan lived in the Zhou family, they had no children.
Zhou Zuoren's children always pestered Lu Xun and asked him,
"Big Daddy, Big Daddy, why don't you always shave your head?"
"Big Daddy has to grow long hair and comb the same pigtails as you!"
But happy days are not always there.
Zhou Zuoren had his own troubles at that time.
At that time, Zhou Zuo was teaching at Peking University.
The Zhou brothers are southerners, so his accent becomes a hard wound.
As soon as he opened his mouth, the audience laughed.
At that time, Bing Xin was his student, and later recalled that when he went to class, he did not have the elegance of his writing, and was kind of careful, with a little "wooden".
Isn't that like us?
When meeting, I was eager for the leader to see himself, and he was afraid to name himself and let himself speak.
But Lu Xun was all different.
He is completely an idol in class, and all kinds of classics come with their mouths open, and they are full of witty remarks.
Every time Lu Xun went to class, whether it was his students or not, he sat in a whole classroom full of pits and valleys, and even the window was full of people.
Zhou Zuoren was very depressed about this, saying that he was a "superfluous person" of Peking University.
But he wasn't without other interests.
Zhou Zuoren is a delicious person.
The "Memoirs of Zhitang", which he wrote around the age of eighty, is full of saliva about all kinds of food.
On the road of panic, remember the road dish: "The most important thing is the so-called 'soup material', which is (made of) delicious things, such as shiitake mushrooms, shrimp rice, Yutang dish (Beijing winter dish), and there is a kind of called 'sparrow foot', which is the dried shoots of the young branches on the light bamboo shoots, dried like bird's claws." ”
In the examination room, remember to eat: "The food for this day should have been prepared by myself, and some of them were satisfied with only some dry food, such as pine nut cake, date cake, red Aya cake, etc., there are also semi-wet poria cakes, salty tea chicken, and some rice cake flakes." ”
In school, remember to eat: "In the morning, I ate two bowls of porridge, and at ten o'clock after class, I often grunted with hunger in my stomach, and asked the messenger to go to the entrance of the school to buy two copper round Shandong roast cakes, a copper round sesame oil spicy sauce and vinegar, and took the roast cake to dip and eat, eating fragrant and spicy, sour and hungry, really fresher than the taste of mountains and treasures." ”
But for Beijing, Beijing is really a food desert, which makes him despair, "I have been wandering in Beijing for ten years, and I have never eaten a good snack." ”
He always felt that he was secretly satirizing Lu Xun in this sentence, because Lu Xun was in love with Daoxiang Village in Beijing, and he liked any sweet and sad snack.
About the two brothers' renunciation.
In fact, the reason for this incident has always been a mystery in the history of modern Chinese literature, and the starting point of all this comes from a letter of renunciation.
This is the fourth year of moving to BadaoWan.
The time was the morning of July 19, 1923.
On this day, Lu Xun received a letter from his younger brother Zhou Zuoren.
Zhou Zuoren wrote: "Mr. Lu Xun: I only learned about it yesterday — but there is no need to say anything about the past. I'm not a Christian, but I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford it, and I don't want to blame anyone—everyone is a poor person. My previous rose dream was originally illusory, and what I see now may be the real life. I want to revise my thinking and re-enter a new life. Please don't come back to the back yard in the future, there is nothing else. May you be at ease and self-respecting. July 18, as a man. ”
Rose's dream turned out to be illusory. Everyone is a poor human being.
Lu Xun was confused, what happened to his brother, did he faint?
But Zhou Zuoren refused to talk.
So two weeks later, Lu Xun moved away with his mother and wife.
The literary Gemini has since broken.
Since then, Zhou Zuoren has tried his best to avoid everything about Lu Xun.
The following year, Lu Xun returned to his old residence to collect books.
Scolded by Zhou Zuoren and his wife.
The two sides quarreled, Zhou Zuoren even picked up the copper incense burner and smashed it at his brother, and Lu Xun did not show weakness, picking up a ceramic tile pillow and throwing it back.
There were many people present in this quarrel, and according to the recollections of those present, the source of all this pointed to Zhou Zuoren's wife, Yu Tai Xinzi.
Regarding the feud between Yu Tai Nobuko and the Zhou family brothers, I will not dwell on it here.
Later, according to Zhou Zuoren's recollection, the two fell out because Lu Xun had a bad intention of Yu Taixinzi and spied on her bath.
This is really nonsense.
But later research suggests that her profligacy and chewing on the root of her tongue may be the source of all disagreements.
But anyway, the former Gemini stars have since parted ways.
A few months after the separation, Zhou Zuoren published a book called "His Own Garden".
It was a garden of reason, freedom, and knowledge, completely devoid of Lu Xun's sword and light sword shadow, as well as sharp.
After all, he still lived himself as an ordinary person, not a warrior like Lu Xun at all.
In May 1936, Edgar Snow interviewed Lu Xun and asked Lu Xun who was the best essayist since the New Chinese Literary Movement.
Lu Xun said: Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, Zhou Shuren, Chen Duxiu, Liang Qichao.
Zhou Zuoren didn't know if he had heard this evaluation, but even if he had heard it, it would be useless, because a few months later, Lu Xun died.
Regarding Lu Xun's death, Zhou Zuoren wrote about his and Lu Xun's common mother, Mrs. Lu: "I still remember that when Lu Xun died, a telegram from Shanghai informed me, and when I went to tell her that I knew, I felt that there was no way, so I went to the Beiping Library to find Song Zipei, told him first, and asked him to go with him." After going to feel bad, I said it, so after a lot of work, I said what I wanted to say, and it seemed that there was nothing in the situation, and the two people relaxed their minds. But she said, 'I kind of expected that the two of you coming together was not an ordinary thing, and it was so delayed, even if I said something inconsequential, that I guessed that I had come for the boss's business.' ”
It is very plain, but the more sad it is, the extreme restraint, but behind it is the waves.
And this emotion, I don't know when, the cold butting will come out.
The grief of the time of loss seems to have dried up with tears, and you see it gone, but in fact, despair has been carved into your bones.
Zhou Zuoren himself firmly believes: "Lu Xun's "Wounded Death" is not an ordinary love novel, but a mourning for the severance of brotherly affection under the pretext of the death of men and women. ”
Lu Xun (third from right) and Zhou Zuoren (third from left) were photographed for the last time
Is grace broken?
Probably never broke it.
A struggle, sinking in pain, but with softness inside, a hidden tolerance, restraint, but a dark tide surging in the interior.
Whoever betrays whom is, after all, is just an ascetic in the journey of life.
You and I are both.