Why is life tangled?
Why do we feel torn?
When we avoid dealing with people, what kind of people do we want to be?
In short videos, hot searches are full of fragmented time
In the WeChat group that replied to "Received"
Do we still have time to meditate and listen to jun's words?
2022 coincides with the 145th anniversary of the birth of Nobel Prize winner Hesse, at the end of July, Sanwu Hoe Education and Reader Culture "Three Circles of Classics Must Read" jointly hosted a high-quality cultural event, inviting two heavyweight guests: The founder of Sanwu Hoe Education, the well-known writer Yue Ran, and Xia Guangwu, associate professor of the Department of Chinese of Xiamen University and an expert in Hesse's literature research, to share a dialogue and share the inspiration of Hesse's work "Steppenwolf" to ordinary people: how to affirm yourself and recognize your own value? How to get out of the predicament of the heart?
More than 100 readers and listeners gathered offline at Xiamen Ten Point Bookstore, and online, tens of thousands of book lovers and audiences watched the live broadcast through the video number of "Children's Book Writer Cangran", and the event also kicked off the prelude to the "Three Circles of Classics Must Read 100 Lectures" in Fujian and Guangdong.
Today we will take you to review this high-level dialogue and sharing.
When did you read Hesse?
What age is he suitable for?
Xia Guangwu:
Hesse is a writer whose life is full of setbacks but constantly rising. I was able to read him by chance, I was probably almost 40 years old at the time, and I wanted to go back to school as a teacher. So I'm going to go to a Ph.D. first, right? The doctor of English and American literature cannot be read in foreign countries for 6 or 7 years, and I may be 50 years old after I finish reading it, and I will retire after 10 years, so what else should I read?
Just when life was very wandering and hesitating, I was on the street, walked into a bookstore, casually flipped through, and very coincidentally picked up a poem by Hesse, and then turned it to a poem. He said that life is like a broken line, the line is broken, the pearl falls on the ground, what to do? Pick it up again, string it up again, in fact, even if some of the beads are missing, even if the order of the beads is different from the original, but when you string it up and put it on, it is still a pearl necklace, a necklace full of new life and new hope.
After reading this poem, I felt as if I had a little courage to face the challenge, so at the age of 41, I read a ph.D. in comparative literature and world literature, and my doctoral dissertation was to write About Hesse.
I've been studying Hesse and I've got a lot of energy from his work. His work is full of different characteristics, in the early days of Germany he called him a young coming-of-age novel, when we are young and helpless, pick up Hesse's book, he can guide us; When we're middle-aged, or a little older like I'm now, re-reading it, I think it all means something different. "Steppenwolf" is the most science fiction work, I read this translation of the reader culture from beginning to end, and found that it is more and more abundant, and teacher Wen's translation is also very in place, so that I have some new gains.
Cangran:
When I was very young, I watched Hesse's Siddhartha and it gave me a real impact. The oriental mysticism contained in Hesse and the surging but unattainable complex in the hearts of young people seemed to have a mysterious connection with me.
Today I am different from then, I am a mother of an 11-year-old child, and today my child is also there.
Why do people of our time read Hesse? Hesse lived to the age of 85, when he was born, there was no electric light in this world, no telephone, let alone No WeChat, Alipay, he experienced two world wars, when he died, the world already had artificial satellites, and when he died 5 years later, humans landed on the moon.
I think Hesse has experienced a whole world, like the pearl necklace that Teacher Xia just said collapsed and reorganized, he experienced such a time. He was constantly speaking, looking for the path of man's heart.
As a mother, I always think that in the future my children will also encounter, or we will soon encounter such an era, a period of rapid turmoil, but then coming to the face, symbolizing that human civilization may regress in an instant, but will move forward sharply. I think it's a great privilege to sit here with someone who knows Hesse very well at this time, to get to know a man who has explored the way in turbulent times, his mental journey. In fact, for each of us, such a day, the future may have great significance, so thank you all for coming here today.
Is Steppenwolf a cold book?
Xia Guangwu:
Hesse's work has a very strange magic, and when I first read it, I felt very painful. Germans are first-class in physical, chemical, and mechanical aspects, so their ability to think critically is also very strong, and many philosophers are from german blood. The first time I saw "Steppenwolf" so thick this length, I always thought that it must be magnificent, there are many undulating plots. From the beginning to the end, it is found that it is actually talking about a person's spiritual experience, written in a different way. Therefore, Hesse's works, to be patient to read, is that I don't hold any intentions, purposes, do not fantasize that after watching "Steppenwolf", I am cured of my mental illness today.
Cangran:
Steppenwolf doesn't win with plot, and when I checked the data on the Internet, I saw a very good passage, like a small metaphor. To the effect that when you read a book like Hesse or Steppenwolf, you must not read it when you are well-off, when everything is going well, when you are confused in your heart, even when you feel lonely in your heart, when you feel out of place with society, or when you feel very common in these years - when you suddenly feel that you have depression, Hesse will become a huge friend and a support for you. Why? For he tore his pain apart to show you, the great bloody miserable predicament within him to show you.
Hesse's "Steppenwolf", the reader culture gave him a very good "step", the so-called "step" is to give a very good reason to buy - to cure a social fear of anxiety.
In fact, contemporary people have been changing between social terror and social cattle, but social terror is very much looking forward to being paid attention to and seen. Behind Hesse's experience of social terror, it actually reflects the dilemma of a zeitgeist.
Xia Guangwu:
The reader culture "Steppenwolf" translation is very good, you can see this picture, the names of some of the characters in the book, a very good arrangement. Around this image in the middle, in fact, the various people and different characters that appear in the "Steppenwolf" notes are mainly from the main personality in the middle.
And wasn't Hesse a little stressed in his early years? He was influenced by the psychoanalytic school, all of which are expressed in his works, and there is a very good place in the three circles of reader culture, that is, there is a most basic explanation of Jungian psychoanalysis.
Why Hesse's work spans a hundred years
Can it resonate so much?
Cangran:
In the adult book club community, hundreds of users across the country have read steppenwolf together, and we have a relay of "day signs" that is similar to a game, that is, to copy down the sentences in your own favorite book. As you know, Hesse was actually a poet, and he had a poetic language. When you read Hesse's book, I think the rarest thing is that the cultural level of our circle of friends will suddenly rise by ten grades.
You know, what is the most copied sentence of such a thick copy of Hesse's "Wild Wolf" by the entire book club users? I can read it out:
"For the current world that is simple and easy to satisfy, you are too demanding, you have too many desires, and the world spits you out because you are different." 」
Swipe left or right to see more day signs
Xia Guangwu:
Hesse's golden sentences are too many. As far as I know, Hesse himself has a habit of taking notes, and every time he thinks of something, this sudden idea, he will record it, which is a good habit for him. When he is creating, he will put some of the essence of his thinking into it and become the most important things in this book.
What we call the golden sentence is that at your various stages, in various occasions, when you have the need, you will feel that this sentence is particularly well written, written into our hearts, and Hesse is such a writer.
I often joked with students in class, saying that if Hesse had been a university teacher, he would have been the king of duanzi now, and he would have been a duan in his classes.
People always want to know themselves
What is steppendra about wolf nature?
Cangran:
I showed the book to a colleague of mine whose position was sales director, and he looked at the cover and said, "Oh, Steppenwolf is a great book, he must be a wolf team!" ”
Because we are now, when we hear the word "wolf", we will always put together the "wolf nature" and "blood", this kind of impulse, but Hesse's "Steppenwolf", obviously not this meaning, so how to interpret these three words?
Xia Guangwu:
This is a basic difference between Eastern and Western cultures, and in China, the appearance of wolves and foxes has basically been given a negative image. But in the West, it is not, in Greek mythology, the ancestor of the giants was actually brought up by wolves, because he was abandoned, he grew up drinking wolf's milk, so he fought particularly bravely.
Myths will affect the development of later cultures, and Hesse's "Steppenwolf", the wolf nature, is a very important focus of the book.
It is often said that human nature is opposed to wolf nature, so it is not true that this book is divided into a work of binary opposition, because we must know the concept of Western wolf nature, it is very complex and diverse, it is both the wolf nature in our tradition, but it also contains the concept of self-assertion, the recognition of self-personality, and do not be bound by the general environment.
But a new question arises, and it's the novel's protagonist, Harry Haller' biggest problem: What do human natures do when they are in conflict with wolf nature? Because the so-called human nature is the etiquette system, order, discipline and punishment, when you do not follow these things, you are an alien, and the alien should be taught a little lesson and become such a situation.
Hesse encouraged that people should still have a little bit of self, and that human nature and wolf nature live in harmony. But Hesse added another sentence, not the intermediate state, to move a step further to human nature, then we are different from the wolf nature, I think this is the focus of his emphasis.
About the women in the book
Cangran:
While Harry Haller was in deep mental trouble, a beautiful female figure, Hermina, appeared. This female figure is very strange, she has a little boy's face, and when the protagonist hallucinates, she will be like a male companion of his childhood called Herman, she is a person who looks like a girl and a boy, a mixture of the two sexes. Such a man is guiding Steppenwolf into his self-exploration.
When I read this book, I think of a lot of things, such as the line in Goethe's Faust, "Eternal women lead us up." In many of Hesse's works, there will be female figures, who are the forerunners who lead human beings or masters to explore human nature. In the role of Hermina, there are obviously more complex and more layered meanings.
Xia Guangwu:
Hesse was influenced by Jung's psychoanalytic teachings, and Jung proposed that there were four archetypes in the body: the personality mask, the Anima and the Animus, the shadow, and the self. Among them, Anima talks about the feminine qualities in the male body, and the Animus is the masculine trait in women. Anima and Animus sometimes pop up suddenly, and today this is a little more, that is a little less, you yourself can't control it, it's all in the hands of the wise old man.
Cangran:
All people are hermaphrodite. Sometimes, we are guided to divide, I am a girl, I am a woman, he is a boy, he is a man, so how should it be. But when you know that you actually have your Anima and Animus in your heart, you will feel that I am not, I can do something across genders, and this recognition is very, very powerful.
Steppenwolf ends with, "I'm going to learn to laugh."
It seems to be a tragic optimism, how should it be understood?
Cangran:
When I was watching Steppenwolf, I thought of a picture book that I really liked, because there were a few children here, and I decided to give them this little story, very similar to the story of Steppenwolf, and thank them for listening carefully to it now.
//
The story goes: a small child walks into the forest and sees a lot of animals gathered together. And he asked the animals, what are you doing here? The animals say we're having a forest convention, we're competing, and we're going to pick the best creature to be the king of nature. Every animal starts performing, parrots talk, monkeys perform tumbling, tigers perform roaring, bears perform slapping themselves, and every animal is great. The elephant, on the other hand, performs a roll-up nose, and it rolls up the little boy next to it and puts it on the ground, and then it says to the little boy, "It's your turn to perform." The little boy said, I don't know anything, or I will perform a flip and fight. However, he flipped and did not turn over, because he was a very ordinary little boy. In order to laugh at him, the elephant tickled the little boy's stomach with its big nose, and the little boy giggled. When he laughed, all the animals stood up and bowed to him. Why? Because no animal can laugh, laughter is a very special instinct of human beings, the highest intelligence of human beings.
So when I saw the last paragraph of Steppenwolf, I thought it was a tragic and optimistic ending, and this ending said that the wisdom of human nature must overcome the pain in your heart.
Xia Guangwu:
In many works of Western literature, the sincere laughter is placed in the highest position, because through the sincere laughter, you can find yourself. For example, Alice Walker, the heroine of her "Purple", finally finds the meaning of her existence through laughter.
It is not easy to really laugh happily, the ancient Chinese Zhang Hui novel "Xue Gang Makes a Flower Lantern", after Xue Gang made a flower lantern, Cheng Yaojin saw that he had rehabilitated the unjust imprisonment of his family, and he was so happy. How Cheng bit Jin died, he laughed and died. This is one of the few works I have seen in Chinese works that affirms the power of laughter.
Readers' Questions:
How should people live, materially or spiritually? What should we follow in our lives?
Cangran:
Hesse is a leader, he himself has experienced all the wrong answers, and he did not tell you the solution to a world in the end, so in fact, from this point of view, you say that the material and the spiritual are more important than the other? Do you say wolf sex and human nature can stand side by side? How do you take that step towards humanity? In fact, at every time, in every game state of man, I believe there will be different choices.
I have never been able to say that for people, spirit is more important than material, especially after I became an entrepreneur from a literary young woman, I think material is also very important. We are all walking a road of non-stop choice and non-stop game, when we encounter major life and death problems, human limit problems, we may feel like Siddhartha, feel that everything is leaving me, and the final answer I can get, after all, can only complete the choice in my own spiritual world.
But even from this point of view, this road will still be filled with countless wolf and human game, full of many material and spiritual coexistence time.
The greatest consolation is not to tell you a correct answer, but to say that each of us will go through such a time, even a saint like Siddhartha, he will become a merchant of the city, he will have to go through a complicated love history, to suffer, until the end is right, he will give himself an answer, and this answer is still that I want to learn to laugh.
Xia Guangwu:
Hesse once wrote an article called Inner Search, which is the search within, when encountering such a big problem as just talking about it, ask your heart.
Your heart will tell you how to choose, and you can't be wrong to listen to your own inner words. And listen to the words of the heart, when the future decisions do not bring you the results you want, you will not regret it, because those are the words of your heart.
The winning users and guests at the event took a group photo
Next, the schedule of the 2022 lecture tour of "Three Circles of Classics Must Read 100 Lectures" of "Three Circles of Classics" is as follows:
August, Xiamen
September, Fuzhou
September-December, Guangdong, Shenzhen and surrounding areas
Local institutions and organizations are welcome to contact us to build high-quality cultural exchange activities.
The strategic partner of 35 Hoe in 2022 [Reader Culture] is a professional cultural institution with leading brand influence, leading marketing model and leading production mode in China's book industry. The mission is to "inspire personal growth", including stimulating the reader's spiritual growth, knowledge structure growth and survival skills growth. Readers continue to create miracles in the book industry, launching a number of super bestsellers in a row, and will be listed in 2021. On August 35th, the Adult Reading Club will read the reader culture "Six Memories of Floating Life" together, welcome to add customer service to understand the reading activities.