Kong Yiji and Belikov
Liu Li/Wen
When I reached the first unit of the compulsory five textbooks in class again, the image of Belikov came into view again, and I thought of Kong Yiji for the first time.
Both critical realist writers, Chekhov and Lu Xun portrayed characters in three points.
Kong Yiji was the only one of the poor to wear a long coat, and this distinction seemed different and poignant, and the mantra of "stealing a book is not stealing a book" also made him fall into the innocuous ridicule of the crowd many times. Kong Yiji adhered to Confucius's tenacity, but he was obviously contaminated with too much pedantic atmosphere, and he was deeply poisoned by feudal thought.
Belikov was the only one in the city who completely put himself in a condom, he wore cotton clothes, rain boots, carried an umbrella whenever it rained on a sunny day, and locked himself in a small hut every day, always afraid of "something messy" and making everyone restless. Compared with Chekhov's other figures, such as the chameleon figure of Ochurov and the image of Ivan Dmitry Cherviakov as a petty civil servant, Belikov apparently had more authority, and although he himself was timid every day, he had a natural advantage as a Greek teacher, and he became a loyal defender of the tsarist rule at that time.
The greatest similarity between Kong Andekov is their thinking. They are all loyal believers in the ruling class, and they even wish they had a certain authority. However, the biggest difference between Kong Yiji and Belikov is obviously that Belikov harms others and harms himself, while Kong Yiji never wants to harm others, but in the end he is squeezed by too much indifference, so that he has to die in a silent and desolate world.
Belikov's death made too many people feel happy and rejoice, but after two weeks, everything was the same, which also indicated that this deep-rooted sense of restraint had never had much to do with Belikov personally, and it should be more related to the society of the time. And Kong Yiji obviously did not have such luck, he was a soul who had been ridiculed for a long time, rejected and played by people, and no one had ever faced him squarely.
Belikov is the defender of the rules of order, he can directly think of the student's head walking from The bicycle of Valenka and Kovalenko, which can be described as a brain hole, and the cartoon that promotes the narrow ghost makes him very angry, but he never and does not need to introspect himself; Kong Yiji obviously does not get the slightest pleasure from people's attitudes, his world has always been only associated with personal encounters, he has been humble to the extreme, although he occasionally pretends to be generous, but the "gentleman's solid poverty" in the bottom has already stripped him of his skin.
So, in this sense, Belikov is more hateful than Kong Yiji, he directly changed from a poor person to a hateful monster; and Kong Yiji, at best, is a doll for people's joy, he has never harmed people, but he was eventually put to death by an indifferent crowd, he can never have the courage to fight, because the general environment of the times only gives him the dignity of trapping the decline of culture, but does not give him any authority and high posture, his situation is sad and at the same time pitiful, after all, in his one-way dimension, In fact, it has never been a one-man battle.
Belikov was different, he was never a one-man battle, he had too many authoritarian shadows behind him, he was the most terrible follower, whistleblower, and initiator of that era, so he had no friends, let alone confidants, and people who accepted new ideas never despised him. And Kong Yiji? All the people who did not associate with him were precisely ordinary people who were more subject to the poison of feudal thought, who never took Kong Yiji to heart, because they had their own lives, but they never needed thoughts, and in this way, a group of soulless people met a soulless but statusless literati, and the final outcome was already doomed to be a complete tragedy. Under the curtain, Kong Yiji turned sadly and looked at it, the world was so absurd.
Both Belikov and Kong Yiji are just a ripple of stagnant water, but in the world where the whole person's life is in danger, Belikov uses his heavy sigh and strange shape to make the whole city walk on thin ice, grass and trees are soldiers, while Kong Yiji can only be used as a spice in life, for people to play, for people to ridicule, for people to squander, but they do not know that they themselves are actually more pathetic than Kong Yiji.
So, fundamentally, Kong Yiji and Belikov are "poor people must have something to hate", but relatively speaking, Kong Yiji is still more or less cute, he can teach the guys at the Xianheng Hotel four ways of writing back, and he is ashamed of his own theft, and more importantly, he has never harmed others, in this sense, Belikov is a little too indifferent, he never pays attention to others, he only lives for himself, more selfishness makes him always harm others and harm himself. So what Belikov finally got was boundless disgust.
The two writers write from their own unique perspectives, painting for us different souls under the cultural characteristics of two different nationalities.
——2021.9.25
Original works, it is forbidden to reprint at will.