My father Wu Mi was born in 1894, in order to celebrate and commemorate his 130th birthday, the Beijing People's Literature Publishing House on the basis of Wu Mi's family's continuous efforts to collect, sort, edit and help proofreader, after three years of careful proofreading and review, finally published the "Wu Mi Anthology". This is great news for readers who care about and like Wu Mi's works. Here, as Wu Mi's daughter and the editor of the "Anthology", on behalf of all my family, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the comrades who have helped the publication of the "Anthology".
The following is an introduction to the Anthology.
My father, Wu Mi, had a special hobby for the beauty of Chinese characters since he was a child. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, when he was studying in his hometown in Shaanxi, he wrote "The Legend of Shaanxi Dream". Soon after he went to Beijing to enter Tsinghua School, United States he translated the book "Pushing to the Front" written by Orison Swett Marden into "Youth Inspirational Edition", which was published in "China New News" in the tenth and eleventh years of the Republic of China (1921) and the eleventh year. He also adapted the long narrative poem "Evangeline" by the famous poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow United States his own intention to add, delete and supplement it into "The Legend of Vicissitudes of Life", which was published in "Puzzle Magazine".
During the third and fourth years of the Republic of China (1914), my father wrote "New Things in Two Cities" (documentary novel), "As I Hear", "Hazel Terrier Miscellaneous", "Essays on the Rest of My Life", etc., and wrote three editorials for "Tsinghua Weekly" and "Tsinghua Weekly Temporary Supplement Citation". During the eighth and ninth years of the Republic of China (1919), at the request of the "People's Heart Weekly", he successively wrote "Miscellaneous Notes on the Modern History of the World" and "European War Strategy". The above articles, except for the poems in "Essays on the Rest of My Life", which have been included in "Wu Mi's Poems", are not included in this collection because they are all juvenile studies and are not mature enough. In his English works, only two essays (the latter one is an outline of speeches) that introduce Bai Bide's new humanism and the current situation of Chinese literature will be translated and published by the compiler, and the rest will not be collected. Some of the articles are not included in this book because they are duplicative of the published works of Wu Mi.
Wu Mi has taught at Southeast University, Northeastern University, Tsinghua University, Southwest Associated University, Yen Ching Restaurant, Wuhan University and Southwest Normal University for nearly half a century, mainly teaching Western literature, world literature history, United Kingdom romantic poets, comparison of Chinese and Western poetry, literature and life, ancient world history, world medieval history, etc., all of which have written lecture notes, which can best reflect his lifelong teaching content and thoughts. Unfortunately, after successive social upheavals, these handouts have been confiscated, stolen, and destroyed, and some of them have been entrusted to others for safekeeping, but they are not entrusted to others, and finally cannot be recovered. Therefore, none of the lecture notes written by my father are left in the family, and there is not much left of the large number of reading notes he made over the years. It is a pity that this is not included in the current anthology. If readers and friends have any clues related to the manuscript, please pray for them to make up for this gap and make the anthology more and more perfect.
The articles collected in this book were mainly translated and written by Wu Mi after returning from studying in the United States in 1921 and teaching in China, and were scattered in the "Xueheng Magazine", "Ta Kung Pao· Literary Supplement, as well as "Ta Kung Pao", "Guowen Weekly", "China New News", "Cosmic Wind" and other newspapers and periodicals edited by him during the Republic of China.
The editors of the Anthology are generally divided into two categories: works and translations. In the category of works, according to the characteristics of the author's years of study and teaching, it is divided into two parts: the upper and lower parts, which emphasize Chinese studies and Western studies. Within the two parts, they are integrated according to the theme: articles on the same topic are generally in the order of publication time, and comprehensive articles are ranked before feature articles. Topics are separated by blank lines.
In this book, "Writings (Part I)", there are two sets of texts dedicated to the author's purpose of running a school and running a journal. In terms of running a school, Wu Mi always emphasized when he founded the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies or formulated the school-running policy and program plan for the Department of Foreign Chinese and Literature of Tsinghua University: "A scholar has an infinite career." In human beings, it ends with human beings; In the case of the people, it ends with a country; In the case of the individual, it begins with the whole body. The advocates vigorously criticized the traditional culture of the mainland, focusing only on absorbing and disseminating the ideas of the late Western family and school, not only advocating the abolition of the literary language, the common vernacular, and the replacement of Chinese characters with the Roman alphabet. All of this made Wu Mi, who has always been extremely fond of the essence of ancient and modern civilizations in China and the West, extremely distressed, especially his advocacy of Latinization of Chinese characters, which made him have a fear of cultural degradation. Therefore, he united his colleagues who studied both China and the West to jointly prosper the quintessence of the country and melt new knowledge to show resistance. It is in the study of Chinese culture, earnestly and intensively, and strives to understand its source and purpose. He studied in the West, introduced Western thoughts, and translated ancient and modern philosophical and literary masterpieces from the West. He also carefully compiled the "Essential Bibliography of Western Literature" several times to guide young students who are enthusiastic about Western studies to read a wide range of books, get a deep understanding of the mysteries, understand and analyze, and make prudent choices, so as not to fall into one bias through hearsay. These ideas permeate all of his translations.
Almost all of the poems and essays collected in this book were written during the Republic of China. After 1949, the author knew that he had not been able to "keep pace with the times", and in order to avoid making mistakes, he never took the initiative to publish his works, except for writing some knowledge materials on the ancient history of the world and medieval history for the students' reference for the sake of teaching. The only three articles: "Transforming the Mind, Stand Firm, and Strive to Be the People's Teacher" are the ideological summaries of his participation in the National Ideological Transformation Movement in Colleges and Universities in 1952; "The Enlightenment of Chairman Mao's Speech to Me" and "Revisiting the Enlightenment of Chairman Mao's Speech to Me" are the statements made by the leaders of the Southwest Normal Institute after studying Chairman Mao's speech at the Supreme State Council in April 1957. These three articles were published by Xishi on behalf of the Western Division, and are now appended at the end of the collection in chronological order.
For a long time, Wu Mi has been regarded by the New Literature School as a stumbling block to the stubborn conservatives and the New Culture Movement. In fact, Wu Mi has been thinking about the cultural progress of the mainland, and he also longs for "the real new cultural movement to take place". He embraced Matthew Arnold's definition of culture: "Culture is the best which has been thought and said in the world." Therefore, it advocates taking the essence of Chinese and Western civilizations and melting and connecting them to create a new culture in China. The reason why Wu Mi is not ashamed of the New Culture Movement is not because of the newness, but because of the principles he advocates and the materials he imports, which are biased, ignorant of the general situation, and his attitude is radical and arbitrary.
For example, the New Culture Movement advocated a literary revolution and forced the implementation of the vernacular and the abolition of literary language. Wu Mi openly objected, saying: "The vernacular can be used, but the literary language cannot be abolished." As soon as he said this, he was immediately criticized as an "absolute opponent" of the vernacular, and he was attacked and could not be justified at all.
In fact, Wu Mi is not absolutely opposed to vernacular writing. As early as the early twenties of the last century, he "repeatedly said that the most urgent thing in today's literary circles in our country is to create a new style of writing, to express the ideas of the West, to use the old form into new materials, and after integration, it is flawless." This is an extremely difficult matter, and everyone is responsible for it. At the time, people competed for the style of language, and wanted to eradicate the literary language, which was inevitably wrong. And there is no essay, vernacular, all must have their own literary rhythm, and all must be condensed and cultivated, so as to be concise and clear. The first thing in the literature is to seek its obviousness, so as to take refuge in astringent food. The vernacular must first be elegant and pure, so as not to be redundant and vulgar. The vernacular of literary language, each with its own use, has different paths, and can coexist. However, there is no paper and vernacular, all of which must be carefully written, condensed and embellished, and only then can it be considerable. Former Dr. Johnson Johnson) praises Addison's article as familiar but not coarse, elegant but not ostentatious. The first half of the sentence can be used as a model for today's vernacular in our country, and the second half of the sentence can be used as a model for today's literary language in our country." [1] Wu Mi used the vernacular to translate the "Family Biography of the Niu Kang Family" in the vernacular, "but to compete for the responsibility of a part, in order to improve the creation of the vernacular." [2]
For many years, the debates between the radicals of the New Culture Movement, the liberal faction's "abandoning the old and making the new", and the scholars who advocated "pushing through the old and bringing forth the new" based on the concept of cultural progress, have frequently appeared in many works on the history of Chinese literature, and their views and conclusions are generally similar. Fortunately, with the progress of the times and the emancipation of the mind, in the past decade or so, quite a number of scholars have reflected on this issue and have had a more objective discussion. It is hoped that the materials provided in this Collected Works will facilitate the in-depth research of related topics.
Errors and omissions in the compilation and sorting of the "Anthology" are inevitable, so please give us your advice.
[1] [2] Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 2007-2008, Appendix: The Translator Stated His Original Intention for Translating the Book.