Wang Dingjun: Seven masters of modern prose

From left to right, from top to bottom: Xu Dishan, Lin Yutang, Zhou Zuoren, Xu Zhimo and Xia Junzun. (Infographic/Figure)

Professor Yang Mu classifies modern Chinese prose into seven categories, each of which has a founding type of person, and these seven former sages are: Zhou Zuoren, Sketch, Xia Junzun, Jishu, Xu Dishan, Fables, Xu Zhimo, Lyricism, Lin Yutang, Discussion, Hu Shi, Reasoning, Lu Xun, and Essays. For this purpose, he compiled a "Selected Essays of Modern China".

Xia Junzun

I was very impressed by Mr. Xia Junzun, when I saw his name, I thought of the influence of "Wenxin" and "The Education of Love" on me. He came from a poor family, dropped out of school three times, never had a diploma in his life, and worked to earn money at the age of twenty-one, and the ups and downs of my adolescence were similar to his. Professor Yang Mu said that the "narrative" in modern Chinese prose was inherited by Xia Shi, and various anthologies have included his "Winter of White Horse Lake".

Speaking of accounts, Mr. Xia wrote about several of his contemporaries, writing Feng Zikai and writing Master Hongyi, that is the transmission of literature to people and people to literature. Looking at his "Lu Xun Weng Miscellaneous Memories", he had been a colleague in a school with Xun Weng, and at that time Xun Weng had not yet used "Lu Xun" as a pen name, he said that the school they served hired some Japanese people as teachers, and someone needed to translate the Japanese textbook into Chinese. When he wrote Xun Weng's translation textbook, he used "also" to represent female yin, "up" to represent male yang, and "system" to represent sperm. He wrote xun weng and told him that when he was studying medicine, he once dissected the corpses of young women and children, and his heart could not bear it. At this time, Mr. Zhou Shuren did not have a "horizontal eyebrow cold to a thousand fingers", which made people happy to be close, which was a precious historical material. Mr. Xia also wrote that Xun Weng only had a cheap long shirt, which was worn from the Dragon Boat Festival to Chongyang, and wrote that he must smoke and eat cakes before going to bed, which meant that the pen was followed, showing the reason why the prose was "scattered".

Zhou Zuoren

Mr. Xia Junzun's fame is not very great, and I did not expect to list him as one of the seven masters of modern Chinese prose, and when it comes to Mr. Zhou Zuoren, that is what everyone expects. Mr. Zhou's learning is remarkable, and for some reason, he has never been a famous philosopher like Mr. Feng Youlan in the emperor's great works, or a famous historian like Mr. Gu Jiegang, who stayed in the prose line and was worshipped by my generation as a "sketch". Learned people always write from the sidelines, and Mr. Zhou often quotes books that we have not seen to find out the fun we need.

Mr. Zhou put forward two major propositions on prose, one is American literature, and the other is human literature. He does not seem to like eloquent treatises, so he has never made it clear, but fortunately some people have responded to the addition, and some people have introduced similar statements in different terms, and today we can confirm that "American literature" refers to form and "human literature" refers to content. The beauty of beautiful literature is not beauty, it is aesthetics, and human literature is not human desire, it is human nature. The ancients said that those who read the "Table of Renunciation" and did not shed tears were not loyal subjects; those who read the "Table of Feelings" and did not shed tears were not filial pieties. Why do we shed tears, because it comes from human nature and touches human nature. There are many articles on the world's teachings of loyalty and filial piety, so why should we talk about these two tables, because the two aesthetic requirements expressed are works of art. Long story short, prose for appreciation, content see temperament, form has a sense of beauty.

Put down the theory to read the work, Mr. Zhou wrote "things in the water", there is an article about drowning ghosts, the ghost of the drowned person has been left in the place where he drowned, can not leave, if you want to reincarnate, you have to first "ask for a replacement", pull a person into the water to drown, let the ghost of that person replace him. The common method used by drowning ghosts is to float on the surface of the water in the form of an object, luring people to bend down to fish for it, and he takes advantage of the situation in the water. He often becomes a kind of children's toy, so that children are deceived by short lives, so the drowning ghosts in the water town legend are often a group of children, in groups of three or five, who jump into the water as soon as they are alarmed, like a group of frogs.

In addition to writing about rural legends, the erudite Mr. Zhou Zuoren also wrote about the Japanese kappa, whose words are clean and bright, the writing is free, and the style is solemn and leisurely, all of which belong to the "beauty of form". As for the content, Mencius said that "the heart of compassion is shared by everyone", and Mr. Zhou constantly drowned in the same place by the river, and there was no temperature at the end of the pen, so why was it so popular? I have an explanation: the drowning ghost looking for a stand-in is nonsense, no wonder he wrote neither horrible nor tragic, "originally nothing"! Mr. Zhou talked about drowning ghosts, which has the effect of breaking superstition and should be exalted as the superior literature of atheism. Atheists should not forbid talking about ghosts and gods, but should let writers like Zhou Zuoren talk about ghosts and gods, so that people feel that there are no ghosts and gods.

Lin Yutang

It is said that Mr. Zhou Zuoren likes to quote many famous quotes and celebrity anecdotes in the essay, in fact, Mr. Lin Yutang is also, the two former sages read a lot, the memory is strong, once the pen is written, a group of souls emerge from the sky and the earth to automatically help, "reading ten thousand volumes, the next pen is like a god", perhaps it can be explained like this. Wang Bo made "Tengwang Pavilion Preface", sentences are classics, the public waved, readers feel that it is not into the Tengwang Pavilion, as if entering the library, this is also a scenery.

When it comes to prose appreciation, we don't need to emphasize Lin's profound knowledge, we should recommend his humor. He is known to be the initiator of Chinese humor. On humor, he had a theory: "Humorists are immersed in suddenly triggered common sense or intelligence that show at lightning speed the contradiction between our ideas and reality." This makes many problems simple. ”

How did he "indulge in the common sense or intelligence that suddenly triggered it"? He said: "The ideal life of the world is to live in the English countryside, with American water, electricity and gas and other pipes installed in the house, a Chinese cook, a Japanese wife, and a French mistress." "Send five or six of the world's best humorists to international conferences and give them the power of plenipotentiary," and there would be no war in the world. He drew up a long list of humorous delegations, too long for some readers to find humorous. Most people think that humor needs to have aphorisms. Mr. Lin lived in Taipei in his later years, and a school invited him to speak at the graduation ceremony, and on that day, a number of celebrities from the political, academic and business circles attended, and one by one they delivered a long speech, Mr. Lin came to the stage and said: "The speech should be like a woman's skirt, the shorter the better." "It's aphorism, the whole audience is happy. Newspapers reported on the ceremony and used this sentence as headlines. Once upon a time, the high theories of the dignitaries and nobles of that day were not passed on, and Mr. Lin's "shorter the better" survived alone.

Mr. Lin said that Zhuangzi was also humorous, and Confucius was also humorous. Zhuangzi dreamed of butterflies, and he did not know whether it was Zhuang Zhouhua butterfly or Butterfly Zhuang Zhou; Mark Twain said that his mother was pregnant with twins, and when she was giving birth, one of the fetuses drowned, and he did not know whether it was he or his brother who drowned. Is this humorous in Mark Twain, and therefore humorous in Zhuangzi? Confucius said, "Nothing is necessary," and two monks in the great temple quarreled, and monk Jia complained to the abbot, who said you were right. Monk B also went to the abbot's seat to complain, and the abbot also said that you were right. Monk C knew the reason and questioned the abbot, monk A and monk B each insisted on their own words, master should distinguish between right and wrong, how can we think that they are all right? The abbot said, "You're right." The world says that the abbot is humorous, and Confucius is humorous because of it? Mr. Lin's broad theory of humor, many people can not keep up.

Readers hope that the humor master opens his mouth and closes his mouth are aphorisms, don't forget that Lin's humor is extracted from the edification of English literature, humor is a kind of cultivation, formed in the plain, this humor is often a unique taste, not necessarily a great pleasure. We often say sense of humor now, this "sense" word is exquisite, you and I have the ability to find humor, enjoy humor, "sense" is "I" sharp response. "Two mountains row min to send green", how can I not see, "in the silent place to hear the thunder", how I can not hear, the answer is the subjective conditions are insufficient, so is humor.

Mr. Lin believes that Zhuangzi is humorous, Confucius is humorous, and even Han Fei is humorous. So, Lao Tzu is also humorous, he rode a green bull out of the Hangu Pass, the officials who guarded the pass must make sure that he left his writings and then left, he used a lot of vague sentences to combine at will, let you enter the labyrinth, let future generations regard it as a secret code. Mr. Lin believes that Tao Yuanming is also humorous, Tao Gong composed poems to count down his five children, the eldest son is lazy, the second son refuses to read, the third and fourth are twins, and they can't read at the age of thirteen, and finally this young son is nine years old, and he only knows to find pears to find chestnuts to eat all day. So Tao Gong said, since God has arranged this, I still drink the bar! So, Xun Weng is also humorous, he has a poem about lost love, "I" touched the nails one after another at his girlfriend, puzzled, and finally, "Somehow, let her go!" ”

Xu Zhimo

Then read on and meet Mr. Xu Zhimo. Xu's talent contrasts with the knowledge of the Zhou Lin clan, he does not care what the ancients saw, what is important is what he sees, no matter what the ancients feel, what is important is what he feels. He wrote Emerald, what is Emerald? Florence, also translated as "Florence", the birthplace of the European Renaissance, produced many masters in art, architecture, painting, music, religion and other aspects, leaving many monuments, and there is an endless stream of discussions in later generations, Xu's "Emerald Mountain Residence Gossip", 1600 words, even quoted only one sentence from the predecessors. He wrote About Kangqiao, where is Kangqiao? Cambridge, also translated as Cambridge, the oldest university town in the United Kingdom, how many world celebrities have a relationship with here, Newton, Darwin, Byron, Russell, Xu Zhimo himself also studied here. He wrote Kangqiao, 5800 words, with almost no use of quotation marks! What he emphasized was, Ah, my sweet loneliness! He traveled to Tianmu Mountain, saw monks, visited Chekhov's cemetery, wanted to live and die, the so-called cemetery was only a stone stele, he also wrote 2800 words, did not copy the book, completely out of his chest.

The brilliance of Xu's prose is dazzling in describing the scenery. Such a description of the scenery cannot be found in the collections of zhou zuoren, Xia Junzun, and Lin Yutang masters, nor does Mr. Xu Dishan have such a writing. In modern times, literary critics have repeatedly pointed out that there are fewer and fewer depictions of landscapes in prose and novels!

Xu di shan

Mr. Hsu Di Shan is a Taiwanese, and before the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he was famous all over the country, I was ten years old, he was about forty years old, and he chose his articles in the language textbook. At that time, Taiwan and northeast China were occupied by the Japanese army, and if there were writers in the mainland provinces who had ancestral homes in Taiwan and those who lived in the northeast, they were all paid special attention to by the literary circles, and our young readers also admired them in particular. Mr. Xu often uses "Luo Huasheng" as a pen name, "Hua" is the ancient writing of "flower", falling peanut is what children love to eat, "Luo Huasheng" is rich in meaning, in addition to being a plant, or a person who has taken root in our Greater China, Mr. Xu is so named, it can be seen that he is sensitive to Chinese and Chinese literature, and people who appreciate literary works should also have this sensitivity.

Unlike Mr. Xu, whose prose is mostly "monotonous in thought and direct in language", he often tells stories in prose, and sometimes even writes stories in prose. Such a work you take as a novel, slightly insufficient, say that it is prose, and feel more than enough. No one particularly praised this way of writing at the time, but later, I mean in the sixties and seventies of the last century, I and some prose writers absorbed the techniques of the novel, gave the work a new look, and revised the definition of prose. This is the development of prose, and literary critics routinely have to find the source of new things, and find Xu Dishan, so Mr. Xu's ranking is one of the seven sects before Zhu Ziqing and Yu Dafu.

See Xu's "Reading Zhilan and Jasmine" and Thinking of My Grandmother.

At the beginning of the article, "I" was studying the reasons for the decline of Buddhism in the Western Regions in the Tang Dynasty, and was tired of trivial research. Then I found "Zhilan and Jasmine" from the mailbox, and the first sentence of the opening was "Grandmother really loves me"! "I" thus remembered my grandmother. He said that Western literature is mainly based on "me" and "my woman or man", which belong to horizontal and couples; Chinese people mostly take "I" and "my parents or children", which belong to the vertical and parent-child. The narrative of Chinese writers is straight, there is a beginning and an end, the original text, and it is natural to say it. This "long story" property—as sweet and sticky as a yam—can be found in all works.

After the discussion, I continued to write "My Grandmother". It was a very long story, the old extended family broke up the marriage of young people with the provisions of "seven outs", the victimized woman returned to her mother's house without remarrying, quit smoking, ate a long fast, the original husband did not remarry, and the two could sometimes meet secretly, and the dowry maid passed on the news in the middle. Later, the woman became seriously ill, and before she died, she asked her original husband to marry the maid of honor, and the maid of the companion room was "my grandmother". The full text is about 8,000 words, the grandmother's story accounts for 6,000, Xu old ancestors can know and do, and sure enough, the original, spontaneously said down, and pulled silk yam as sweet and hot and sticky. His way of writing can be said to be dragging a story with prose, which was a different kind of prose at that time.

Lu Xun and Hu Shi

It is time to talk about Lu Xun and Hu Shi, these two masters are too famous to be introduced. The degree of readers is different, the background is different, the temperament is different, each person has his own Hu Shi in his heart, his own Lu Xun, "a thousand rivers have water and a thousand rivers and a thousand moons", each moon is different, and people do not know how to introduce.

When it comes to Xun Weng, it is inevitable that the first thing that comes to mind is the essay. Miscellaneous texts are a branch of prose, multiplying and expanding, independent portals. The prose is also "a small circle in the big circle, and a yellow circle in the small circle". Xun Weng's essays that fill the shelves are prose in a large circle, and the thin volume of "Weeds" sandwiched in the collection of essays is the prose in the yellow circle. To appreciate Xun Weng's prose, we must first exalt "Wild Grass" and discuss "Wild Grass".

Taking the shortest article in "Weeds", "Tomb Text", as an example, Xun Weng transformed the deep depression in his heart into a dream, dragging the reader's mind into his dream. The dream is dark, it is not enough, there is a grave, a dark night, a wilderness, a lonely grave is desolate, it is not enough, the grave is cracked, a corpse appears. The corpse is terrible, it is not enough, the body is cracked, the heart appears, the body is not enough, the corpse actually eats its own heart. Xun Weng uses short sentences, jumping and connecting sentences from sentence to sentence, shaking the reader's soul. Xun Weng used literary language to spread an atmosphere of corruption and despair with what they called "dead language". This kind of "illusion" is artistic, among the seven schools of prose, only Xun Weng can do it, and it is only a few in the thin book of "Wild Grass", and its appreciation value exceeds that of essays. Dante's Divine Comedy writes about hell, and the Jizo King Bodhisattva Hongan Sutra also writes about hell, perhaps because it is translated and artistically inferior. Why Xun Weng has this endowment, fortunately, why can't he use this endowment to the fullest, it's a pity.

As for the essay, that's another matter. Essays are daggers, they are cavalry, essays are written for battle, and victory is the only purpose of war. Xun Weng is known as an "essay expert", and his pen is like using soldiers, suddenly strange and correct, odd more than positive, and indeed victorious in hundreds of battles. War has sequelae, and anti-war activists have listed them one by one, but I will not copy them. There is no world in this matter, it is difficult to say a word, it is difficult to say a thousand words, and some people advocate the separation of prose appreciation and essays, and I also agree.

Mr. Hu Shi's style can be shown by his "Reading the Bible and Discussing Peace". Reading the Bible advocates that primary and secondary school students read the Four Books and Five Classics, and political leaders are eager to seek healing, believing that children in the prosperous han and Tang dynasties all read the bible, so it seems reasonable to teach children to read the bible. Mr. Hu wrote "Reading the Bible and Discussing Peace" to tell them that this was not the case. First, looking at the title, he does not have to refute, does not correct, does not say that he is a correct argument, he uses flat discussion, peace of mind, and discusses things on the matter. Second, he first quoted Mr. Fu Si Nian's opinion against the reading of the Bible, not to covet the merits of others, not to plunder the beauty of people, others have said it, and it is said very well, he let the man speak first. Third, he raised his own objections, which others had not yet thought of, and perhaps only he had thought of, and he said better. Finally, fourth, at the end of the article, he exhorts in a gentle tone to those who "advocate letting children read the Bible" to read a few verses themselves, not to shoot back at the horse, but to pat their shoulders when they get up and leave their seats, and then go home to each other, ignoring each other. He is full of openness and openness, and this style can be appreciated in his other articles, such as "Immortality, My View of Religion".

These two old gentlemen have faith, have opinions, have perseverance, and have literary style, the two elders have not gossiped, people are three sentences do not leave the line, these two former sages are sentence by sentence. People write novels, screenwriters, they write prose, straightforward, twilight drums and morning bells, even no lyricism, no landscape description, can be regarded as the wonder of modern literature. The content and style of the two works are very different, Lu Xun is like sinking a well, Hu Shi is like opening a river, Hu Shi is like teaching, and Lu Xun is like using soldiers. Read Lu Xun as if he is near the crater, and read Hu Shi as if he is out of the Three Gorges. At that time, the thinking of Chinese readers did not belong to Hu, that is, to Lu, and at the end of the day, the two sides acted against each other. "He Shengyu, He Shengliang!" Thesis science appreciation, both to give birth to Lu Xun and also to hu shi, such as the weather is sunny and rainy, the four seasons have summer and winter, the road has a boat and a car, and the hands have left and right.

Every literary history says that modern Chinese prose was greatly influenced by the late Ming sketches, which were "lyrical and eclectic", making the literary revolutionaries of the time return to their hometowns. Taking pleasure as a text, the end of the excitement, the works tend to be small, Zhang Chao said in a word: "The article is the landscape of the desk, and the landscape is the article of the earth." "Although bonsai is also art, but what about the towering wood; the Xuande incense burner is also art, but what about Mao Gongding; the seal is also art, but what about the Taishan stone carving; the flow of qushui is also art, but what about the great river going east? The late Ming dynasty sketches liberated modern Chinese prose and also limited modern Chinese prose.

Among the Seven Sects of Prose, Xun Weng and Dr. Hu are two people who are beyond the limitations of the late Ming sketches.

Wang Dingjun