Text | Grass mud cat
Highlights:
In a modern, healthy culture, joy and anger and sorrow and pleasure should be equal as between men; none of them is wrong, unlucky, or bad.
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A graduate of the Chinese Department did not begin to read Xiao Hong until he was in his thirties, which can be said to be a shame.
I'm sorry, I'm that shame.
(This photo was taken in Qingdao on May 3, 2021)
I was fascinated by Xiao Hong this spring, when I went to Qingdao to play, and inadvertently pulled a book from the bookshelf of the homestay, which was "Shangshi Street".
Read one, not very interesting, but some special taste. So I read another one, I read another one, and I kept reading several articles. I just thought it was good, it was miserable, and then, it was so hungry. So I ate countless mackerel dumplings in one go.
It is recommended that friends with anorexia, malnutrition or serious weight anxiety come to read Xiao Hong. Believe me, it will improve.
Then the trip ended, and I read "The Field of Life and Death" and "The Legend of Hulan River".
At this time, a friend came out to speak, and the words were loud and clear:
"Read Less Xiao Hong, easy to be depressed."
Xiao Hong's works and life are indeed a bit depressing. For a while, I buckled up half of the book I had read, thinking about the passages I had just read, tasting, tasting, the more painful it was, and the pain was still addictive.
How did the lyrics of "Tang Taizong Li Shimin" sing that year? I love the pain you give. That's exactly how it feels.
If I were to choose the top 3 of Xiao Hong's works to be depressed, the result would be like this-
In the third place, the "little fish with the same fate" in "Shangshi Street" from the aftermath of the disaster to jumping out of the basin and dying;
In the second place, in "The Field of Life and Death", the queen mother drives the old horse to the slaughterhouse to get off the soup pot;
The first place, the little reunion daughter-in-law of the old Hu family in "The Legend of Hulan River" was tortured and died and turned into a big rabbit.
Ah, it's so hard to write.
So, Xiao Hong, really knows.
(Stills from "The Golden Age")
She is very good at, super will present tragic things and evoke strong empathy from the reader. And this skill has maintained almost her entire career - from living in Harbin to exile in Qingdao, from living in Shanghai to sleeping in Hong Kong, in the past ten years of creative career, Xiao Hong has always been very good at it.
Therefore, this talent is formed at an early age, if not innate. It is likely that at an age when she did not understand literature and did not know the world, she already had a super sense of sad emotions and tragic things.
The little girl who played in the garden, went to the utility room to find treasure, and arranged flowers on her grandfather's head, had sown the seeds of sadness in her heart.
Who knows whether it is early hui yiyi or deep love, anyway, Xiao Hong's life has indeed become unfortunate. What that era could encounter, imprisonment, hunger, violence, betrayal, wandering, loss of children, war, disease... She went through it over and over again over a decade. Compared to her real life, these words of mine are ridiculously childish.
That's why some people shake their wits and say that this is the "life of the rejected Xiao Hong" - she is unreliable, loves the brain, and has a sad victim physique. Not only today, even some of Xiao Hong's contemporaries, who said it but did not say it, had this impression in their hearts.
Dramatically, however, many people who have intersected with Xiao Hong, especially the northeastern writers who were exiled at the same time, are very able to live.
Look at the life expectancy of those people, Xiao Jun is eighty-one, Duanmu Hongliang is eighty-four, Luo Binji is seventy-seven, and Luo Feng Bailang and his wife are eighty-two.
If you don't die, you will be blessed, and it is true.
Only Xiao Hong died, not from war, but from illness — her health problems were protracted.
Therefore, Xiao Hong was unfortunate, but she did not bring misfortune to the people around her in the slightest; she was not only not a broom star, but also a little angel.
Let's talk about Xiao Hong's works. As mentioned earlier, she is very good at showing misery and misfortune.
But this is not the same as weakness.
When many people read Xiao Hong, they will ignore her rigidity and sharpness. Because in addition to the misery of performance, Xiao Hong also
Wrote a lot of other things —
She satirizes the bureaucrats who make political shows;
She criticizes people who get by every day and don't think about making progress;
She complained about stereotypes and the persecution of women by dog men;
Even when she was in danger of hunger and cold, she still sympathized with people and animals who were weaker than herself.
And at such times, her sympathy also has bones—
"This is a world of ferocity, a world that has lost its humanity, destroy it with violence!" Destroy these things that have lost their humanity! ”
This is the most painful curse on the old times.
Such a Xiao Hong is worthy of Lu Xun's appreciation.
Ten thousand steps back, even if you only look at Xiao Hong's misery, she is not weak.
Because the statement itself is an accusation. It can cause people to suffer, to think, to be angry, to rebel and change—isn't this the revolution for the literati?
Sometimes, depression is also a healing.
Our culture is always taboo and miserable. Advocating mourning without hurt, paying attention to Zhongzheng peace, and obsessing with festive, peaceful and positive energy. Even those works that criticize realism are revered, much of it is because of their political and moral correctness, not because of the misery itself.
However, people are born with joys and sorrows. In a modern, healthy culture, joy and anger and sorrow and pleasure should be equal as between men; none of them is wrong, unlucky, or bad.
It is a distant ideal country. However, Xiao Hong captured its light and shadow in the stormy 1930s.
Where should she be "abandoned", she is the rarest and most cherished treasure.
However, long live the name of the thousand autumns, lonely things behind the scenes.
Attached to Dai Wangshu's "Xiao Hong's Tomb Pankou Zhan"
Walking a lonely long distance for six hours,
Put a bouquet of red camellia on your head,
I waited, the long night long,
But you lie down and listen to the gossip of the sea waves.
November 20, 1944