Resurrection: The Search for Broken Moral Puzzles

Author: Sun Quanxi

Source: Procuratorial Daily

"Resurrection" cover of the 2018 Zhejiang Literary and Art Edition

When the cheerful and bright spring stubbornly came to this small town that was "devastated beyond recognition" and "the coal and oil were burning with smoke", the provincial prison office was doing "sacred and important" things that were to try the prisoner Maslova for "seeking wealth and killing people". This is the beginning of Leo Tolstoy's tome Resurrection.

Nekhlyudov, the initiator of the seduction and abandonment of Maslova ten years ago, led to her depravity, participated in the jury as a representative of the nobility. At this moment, he was thinking about whether to marry Maria, the young lady of Kolchageng, because he was having an affair with a noble wife...

Illustration in the 1963 edition of Resurrection

1

Since then, he has witnessed all kinds of corruption and darkness in the trial process, experienced the decay and indifference of the Tsarist Russian bureaucracy, witnessed Maslova's unjust cases and grievances, and experienced the absurdity and distortion of "chaos and cajoling, you sing and I appear", and his mind and soul were greatly shaken.

The presiding judge was afraid of delaying his appointment with the red-haired Swiss girl; one judge was worried about going home and not giving him food because he had just quarreled with his wife; another judge liked to solve his illness by means of occupation, and quickly took a step forward from the distance of 26 steps to his seat, into 27 steps that could be divided by 3. When the jurors were drowsy and drowsy in discussion, they actually overlooked Maslova's "no intention of murdering her life." The prosecutor's introverted and generous statements, hollowing out their minds to show off knowledge, pretending to be sensational, and predetermining the assumption of guilt. The Court of Appeal is nothing, sitting on the structure of the system, but they are dull, unwilling to touch on the deep-seated issues of contradictions, not to "examine the merits of the case" and "only to examine whether it is appropriate in the quotation and interpretation of the law", looking for loopholes in judgments in the official documents and legal provisions that come and go, but turning a deaf ear to the facts and turning a blind eye. "These officials, the beautiful, clean, solemn, and self-righteous adults and gentlemen who sit at the desks of the ministries and congresses, although they clearly see that this situation makes innocent people suffer, do not mind at all, and are only concerned with suppressing and eliminating all dangerous elements." All this ugliness led to Maslova, who had neither made money nor killed, and was finally sentenced to 4 years in siberia for hard labor.

"They're really scary. More terrifying than robbers. "They are the real criminals. And all this fault was caused by him, but fate made him sit on the jury and let him judge her crime. After that, Nekhlyudov resolutely abandoned his superior living environment, gave up most of the land to the peasants, and obtained soul redemption and spiritual resurrection while following Maslova in prison.

In fact, the meaning of "resurrection" is very broad. The change of dynasties in the history of human social development, the falling dust and germination of seeds, and the replacement cycle of nature and its four seasons reflect the development and progress, abandoning the old and trying to be new. The "resurrection" of Jesus in the Bible refers not only to the resurrection of the material body, but also to the "victory of death" of the soul; the Mahabharata Heart Sutra, which governs all The Dharma, emphasizes that the five aggregates are empty, the mind is unencumbered, transcending life and death, and reaching nirvana on the other shore. As an atheist, we only need to realize that the religious pursuits in the long river of human history actually contain the newness of all living things.

"All things disappear and all things return; all things die and all things are revived; all things are broken, all things are composite." The wheel of existence cycles forever. Nietzsche mysteriously called it "the eternal reincarnation of the one"; Engels focused on the immortality of the form of movement of matter and the properties of matter, and at the same time was subject to the laws of material motion and called it "the eternal repetition of the same in the great cycle". Engels argued in the introduction to the Dialectics of Nature that "the whole of nature is proved to be moving in an eternal flow and cycle" and that "in an infinite time, the universe is eternally repeated and continuously replaced." Engels firmly believed that "the most beautiful flower on earth"—mankind—though bound to perish, must be reborn in an eternal cycle.

2

As a kind of spiritual and spiritual resurrection and rebirth, redemption and rebirth, it is not a material reincarnation, nor is it a transcendence of death, but an emphasis is on subverting the old self, self-innovation, and spiritual transcendence, which reflects the continuous progress and improvement of people's spiritual world, the spiritual rebirth of phoenix nirvana and rebirth from the fire. Traditional Chinese culture attaches great importance to self-examination and self-cultivation, advocating seeing the wise and thinking together, hearing it is happy, seeing the unwise introspection, and then ruling the country and the world together. The "I Ching" Yi Gua points out that the wind and thunder stir, see the good and move, change if there is a mistake, wash the heart and change the face, and re-incarnate the spirit of being a human being. "Etiquette and University" emphasizes that "every day is new, every day is new, and every day is new.". Marx devoted his life to the study of the comprehensive emancipation of man, and he proposed in Capital that the all-round free development of man would be the ultimate goal and the highest ideal of socialism, and the process of all-round development of man was the process of constantly getting rid of material slavery and constantly promoting self-progress and self-transcendence. "What the proletarians lose in this revolution is only chains, and what they gain will be the whole world." Loss after loss, gain after gain, shows the philosophy of dialectics. The big waves and sand, the water drops and stones, are actually the spiritual inheritance of generation after generation.

Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky explored the question of the spirit or soul. Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, from "The Confession of a Criminal," sends out a soul torture question about whether a man can sin, and concludes that "man can torture sin from whiteness, and he can also torture whiteness from sin." In Crime and Punishment, Sonia, though a prostitute, instructs Raskolnikov to "confess your sins and God will give you a new life." Encourage him to "atone for your sins by suffering." So Raskolnikov stood up and said, "I do not bow down to you, but to all the sufferings of mankind." He suddenly remembered Sonia's words: "Go to the cross street, kneel down to the people, kiss the land, because you have sinned against it, and tell everyone loudly: I am the murderer!" Thinking of these words, he unconsciously shuddered, and in a strong helpless bitterness and panic, he seized the opportunity that had sprung up with the pure and fullness of feelings that had never existed before. This feeling, like the onset of illness, suddenly emerged in his heart: it burned like a spark, burned all over his body like a fire. He was suddenly paralyzed, tears welling up, and he immediately fell to the ground. ”

Tolstoy's writing is detached and calm. Dostoevsky's words are shocking and tense, profoundly dignified, and even have a violent and hysterical temperament, which is all related to Dostoevsky's fatal experience of being pulled back from the execution ground and almost shot. The burden of life and death that always weighed on his soul gave him a constant tremor experience. Because of epilepsy and its sometimes ecstatic and sometimes tragic spiritual experience, Dostoevsky's pen has a sense of inner anxiety like a war between heaven and man.

The prostitute Maslova in "Resurrection", the prostitute Sonia in "Crime and Punishment", the most humble person, quite symbolically represents the supreme holiness and redemption, and they flash an unspeakable light of humanity, just like Dante's eternal god, the lover Beatrizzi, who guides Dante through the 9th heaven in the Divine Comedy and realizes Dante's self-redemption. They are like a mirror, reflecting the meanness of human nature. The "Yanzhou Woman" recorded in the Tang Dynasty Li Fuyan's "Record of continued Xuan Monsters" later evolved into various scripts to the Republic of China miscellaneous drama "Ma Lang Woman Sits on the Golden Beach", and also performed the image of the sludge lotus flower that was super bitter sea, sacrificing life and righteousness, just as Ma Lang Woman sang: "I often prepare meat sausages to feed tigers and feed eagles, walk the long street and shout to see and buy souls, and this pair of skin bags is wrapped in bright bones, earning souls, and throwing down mass graves." ”

And Tolstoy thought, "I want to live a human life." "The real person is always doing things according to his conscience, self-reflection at all times, to avoid falling into the abyss of depravity, even if he has had a despicable life, full of sins, as long as he dares to call out to the God in his heart, bravely face all the time before and in the future, let the "spiritual man" always stand above the "animal man", then he can save himself.

3

"Under the nest, there will be no eggs." Under the Tsarist System, the spiritual self-salvation and self-improvement, Resurrection is full of inherent contradictions and entanglements. Tolstoy advocated a moral rebirth through religion, fantasizing about self-liberation through moral self-improvement in an evil environment. Although Tolstoy made a certain exposure of the rationality of the Russian system of rule: "The only purpose of the court is to maintain the social status quo, so he wants to persecute and execute those whose moral character is higher than the ordinary level and who want to improve it, that is, the so-called political prisoners, and at the same time persecute and execute those whose moral character is less than the ordinary level, that is, the so-called criminals." But his reformist ideas held that "the whole edifice should not be destroyed, but only this beautiful, strong, majestic, room in the ancient mansion they loved should be redistributed once." He hoped to move the rulers and transform society through the Gospel doctrines of forgiveness for sinners, help for the enemy, and teach goodness. In this regard, Lenin profoundly pointed out that Tolstoy "made a fierce criticism of all modern state systems, ecclesiastical systems, social systems and economic systems in his late works", reached the "most sober realism" that "tore off all false masks", and was a "genius artist" who "created the first-rate works of world literature". But at the same time, he was a "Tolstoy" who fanatically preached doctrines such as "no need to resist evil without violence", and was "decadent" and "hysterical".

The true spiritual "resurrection" requires three elements: institutional establishment, institutional self-confidence, and institutional implementation are the institutional basis for "resurrection"; getting rid of material slavery and becoming a "person with personality" is the material basis for "resurrection"; and constantly seeking self-purification, self-improvement, self-innovation, and self-progress are the internal basis of "resurrection". The institutional foundation is the key, the material foundation is the guarantee, and the internal foundation is the fundamental. As Montesquieu pointed out: "In a well-organized country, bad deeds always contain an element of a public virtue, and the virtue seen in a corrupt republic often contains certain elements of corruption." ”

Bian Que passed through the country of Yu, smelled the death of his prince, and came back to life with a needle stabbed to death. Bian Que said: "The more people who cannot live or die, the more people who are born, the more people can make them ears." "I can't bring the dead back to life, in fact, the patient is not dead, I just want him to recover his health." The "needle prick" that hits the nail on the head can make a person, a community, or even a country gain the motivation to come back to life and be reborn. And a trial was a "pinprick" of Nekhlyudov's walking dead.-like life.

Shen Qifeng, a Qing Dynasty opera composer, said: "One day after the performance of "Peony Pavilion", Tang (Xianzu) suffered underground for one day. Western festivals have a similar saying, "When shakespeare is commemorated in the world, Shakespeare in hell is suffering." Painstaking works are often the result of the author's immersion in the text and the suffering experienced again and again. As a critical work of literature, reading Resurrection once, Toon suffers once and we redeem ourselves once.

Submissions are reproduced for illustration

This public name is not a non-profit and does not pay remuneration

Submission of the article shall be deemed to be an agreement to the reprinting and publication of the article under this public account