In August 2009, Liu Xuyuan published "Flipping Books and Evens" (Sanjin Publishing House). The book begins with an evaluation of Zhang Ailing's posthumous publication of "Classmates and Teenagers Are Not Cheap", "one with surprise, one with a sigh", arguing that the novel's "sharp and accurate analysis of the human heart is really more than her creative heyday." ”
Liu Xuyuan was the editor of Wen Wei Po in the 1990s and was familiar with Yang Dai, who often published articles in Wen Wei Po.
After the publication of "The Book Of The Flippers", a copy was specially given to Yang Chen. Zhong Shuhe wrote the preface to the book and was also a friend of Yang Dai.
In a January 2010 letter to Zhong Shuhe, Yang Dai said that "you all look too highly at Zhang Ailing" and frankly said that "I am prejudiced against her."
This is not the first time Yang Dai has commented on Zhang Ailing.
According to Wang Rongzu's recollection, when he visited Yang Dai and his wife, Yang Dai took the initiative to mention Zhang Ailing twice.
The first was on July 8, 1986. "Yang Dai is quite concerned about Zhang Ailing's recent situation, I said that it is said that she is ill and lives in simplicity, the Xia brothers praise her a lot, Mr. Yang said that Xia Zhiqing is Zhang Zhizhi's 'admirer', Mr. Qian laughed and said, "All ladies Zhiqing are admirale."
Xia Zhiqing once pursued Yang Bi, the younger sister of Yang Dai, and once admired Zhang Ailing's classmate Liu Jinchuan. He admired Zhang Ailing's academic behavior, which was ridiculed by Yang Dai as emotional admiration, and the hostility in jokes could not be hidden.
The other time was on October 16, 2003, when Qian Zhongshu had passed away and Wang Rongzu visited, "Mr. Yang said, Xia held Qian Zhongshu but also praised Zhang Ailing, who had participated in the East Asian co-prosperity activities in the occupied area of Shanghai. ”
These two brief conversations were Yang Dai's initiative to mention Zhang, and the hostility was also obvious.
In the letter to Zhong Shuhe, Yang Dai systematically explained her dislike for Zhang Ailing.
Yang's niece is an alumnus of Zhang Ailing at St. Mary's Girls' School. Zhang Ailing in adolescence did not attract classmates to like, "dead to the limelight, deliberately dressed strangely, want to attract people, but she looks very ugly, a face of 'peanut rice' (youth beans also)". Yang Dai's first impression of Zhang Ailing came from her niece's paraphrasing. This impression is not necessarily objective, but it is vivid and vivid. The background of "Classmates and Teenagers Are Not Cheap" is St. Mary's Girls' School.
Yang Dai's paraphrasing makes the youth campus memory in Zhang Ailing's novel be tragically hit by the memories of her classmates, and she can't help but be careful.
Yang Dai's prejudice against Zhang can be traced back to the experience of Yang Dai's family during the War of Resistance.
When the Japanese army attacked Suzhou, Yang Dai's parents and eldest sister and sister were all at home in Suzhou, and the next day they fled to Xiangshan with their two aunts.
After the fall of Suzhou, Xiangshan became the front line of the War of Resistance, the trenches were dug in front of the house they had borrowed, Yang Dai's mother had falciparum malaria, a high fever did not recede, she was dying and could not move, the artillery fire was blind, and Yang Dai's two aunts had to flee for their lives.
Yang Dai's father and his two daughters risked their lives to guard. On the eve of the fall of Xiangshan, Yang Dai's mother died and was hastily buried. Yang Dai's father, worried that Lian Tianbing had buried the graveyard, wrote his name on the coffin, on the tiles, on the bricks, on the surrounding trees, and on the bricks and stones underground.
For many people, the feud between the family and the country is only a vague and general concept, and for Yang Chen, it is the pain of the skin and the blood and tears.
Her mother died under the sound of Japanese aggression, and the third aunt Yang Yinyu, who flew separately in the face of great trouble, eventually died at the hands of the Japanese. Yang Chen's father did not lie to the traitor throughout his life, and the former acquaintance became a traitor, and he did not greet him when he saw it.
Although Zhang Ailing is not a traitor, she is also a former family member of a traitor, and Yang Dai can understand Zhang Ailing's anger at Zhang Ailing, who made a big splash during the fall period.
However, in the same letter, Yang Dai was quite tolerant of Su Qing, who had also entangled with the traitors. "Her friend Su Qing came to me. Su Qing was very honest, and she asked me to compile her "Ten Years of Marriage" into a script. ”
It can be seen that the great national righteousness is not the real reason for Yang Chen's disgust for Zhang Ailing.
In fact, publicly acknowledged prejudice is not necessarily prejudice, but rather calm and sincere words are the source of prejudice.
"Let me be fair, she's writing good. But the mood is humble. The women she writes about are all sexually hungry."
The proximity of the sequence of literary history, the creative concept and the divergence of the aesthetic concepts behind it all constitute the source of Yang Chen's prejudice against Zhang Ailing.
The creative paths of Yang Dai and Zhang Ailing are actually quite similar, they both began their literary creation in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s, and they both avoided the grand narrative of enlightenment, revolution, and salvation, which made them ignore the mainstream literary history for a long time, and later rediscovered.
Both in person and in writing, Yang Dai is generally rated as wise. Wisdom is the rational restraint of emotions and desires. In 1935, Yang Dai published her debut novel "Road Road", and then she turned to comedy. The comedic effect she pursues is not a wild laugh, but a gentle, restrained smile, similar to Jane Austen's "knowing smile."
At the end of the 1970s, Yang Dai began to resume novel writing, and his representative works include the novel "Bath". Yang Dai's works rarely depict desire, and they are more restrained about feelings. In "Bathing", Yao Mi and Xu Yancheng are affectionate and stop at etiquette. "The Two of Us" relives the warmth of the past, records the bits and pieces of the past, and never vents sadness head-on.
Yang's wisdom benefits from the Confucian tradition, but also the influence of the British humorous literary tradition she appreciates, and the deeper level should be traced back to her family.
Yang Dai's father, Yang Yinhang, studied in Japan in his early years, was a radical revolutionary, was expelled from the clan for opposing the worship of ancestors, had to study in the United States, and later became a moderate constitutionalist, serving as an official in the judicial system of the Beiyang government. After leaving the official field, Yang Yinhang worked as a lawyer. He supported his mother, raised the children left by his brothers, supported his sisters to study, and maintained an orderly family of fatherhood and filial piety for his children. He attached importance to the education of his children, and taught them not to accumulate too much money, lest they become slaves to their desires.
This kind of education gave birth to Yang Dai's wisdom, which is the background of Yang Dai's life and her aesthetic pursuit. The balanced and harmonious beauty of her pursuit of restrained desires is a partially classical aesthetic taste, which contains trust in the order constructed by reason.
This is due to character, but also to the nourishment of sufficient love.
Contrary to Yang Dai, Zhang Ailing is a person and a writer who does not approve of the restraint of emotions, which can be described as crazy.
The love tragedy of Zhang Ailing and Hu Lancheng needless to say, her novels also intentionally take desire, especially lust, as an entry point.
In Zhang Ailing's debut work "Agarwood Crumbs , The First Burning Incense", Ge Weilong's fall is caused by the material temptation of her aunt's drunken gold fan, and also because of the lust provoked by Qiao Qiqiao. "The Golden Lock" Cao Qiqiao is trapped by both golden shackles and lust. The late novel "Little Reunion" also allows lust to open its mouth. She attaches great importance to works such as "Golden Plum Bottle", "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Sea Flower", and strives to sort out the obliterated emotional writing tradition.
"Chinese culture is ancient and continuous, uninterrupted, so it penetrates so far that even the least widely seen Chinese are not naïve." The salary of the unique novel was interrupted more than once. So we are not human in this regard. Chinese not only talk about love 'with a pulse', but even family and friendship have constraints. ”
Zhang Ailing's obsession stems from her familiar tradition of love novels since the late Ming Dynasty, as well as the influence of Western modernist literary thought, and the deeper level is traced back to her family.
Zhang Ailing was born in a declining and broken aristocratic family. Her grandmother was the daughter of Li Hongzhang, her father Zhang Zhiyi was familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics but was at a loss, smoking, gambling, and raising prostitutes; her mother, Huang Suqiong, was a runaway Nala, a pair of small feet to the world, and there was not much time to spend with her children. Such a broken but chinese-Western family gave birth to Zhang Ailing's obsession.
Zhang Ailing attaches great importance to the writing of lust, pursues jagged contrast, is a more modern aesthetic taste, and consciously tears apart the orderly world constructed by reason.
Behind this is the sense of scarcity that lurks deep within her.
Yang Dai accused Zhang Ailing of being inferior in the artistic conception of her works and lacking sympathy for Zhang Ailing's characters, reflecting her vigilance against breaking through the irrationality of reason.
As a scholar-type literati, Yang Daishi is insightful and humane, and her wisdom allows her to transcend and examine many hardships in her life.
Her prejudice against Zhang Ailing is not that women are more jealous, nor is it completely literati, just as Goethe accused the Romantics of being pathological, this is actually the pursuit of personality in life, which is the contempt of rationality for irrationality, and the questioning of modernity by classics.
When the time comes to leave, they each go their own way, whose fate is better? - Only God knows.
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Author: Liu Yangfeng, love life, love writing, searching, confused.