The famous Russian media personality Suvonin said: "There are two emperors in our country: one is Nicholas II, and the other is Leo Tolstoy. Which of them is stronger? Nicholas II could not and could not shake His throne with Tolstoy, but Tolstoy was able to shake Nicholas II's throne and his dynasty without a doubt... Whoever dares to touch Tolstoy, the whole world will scream! ”
"A hundred years ago, a great Russian man lit the purest torch for our generation and illuminated our youth", he was Lev Tolstoy. As a literary giant of Nineteenth-century Russia, Tolstoy exerted great influence on the world literary scene, and also influenced modern writers such as Lu Xun, Qu Qiubai, Mao Dun, Yu Dafu, Ba Jin, Bing Xin, Xia Yan, Tian Han and so on.
Who is China's Tolstoy?
Some people think that Lu Xun is The Chinese Tolstoy, and after the 1980s, some people think that the repentant Ba Jin is the Chinese Tolstoy. In fact, this is a misreading of Tolstoy, as well as a misreading of Lu Xun and Ba Jin.
Sun Fuyuan said: "Once upon a time, Mr. Liu Bannong gave Mr. Lu Xun a pair of words, which was 'Tony Doctrine, Wei Jin Article'. Friends at that time thought that this couplet was very appropriate, and Mr. Lu Xun himself did not object. "Lu Xun was influenced by Tolstoy and Nietzsche in his early days, but Lu Xun only talked about Tolstoy in his entire collection, far less than Nietzsche.
Lu Xun praised Tolstoy's spirit of daring to fight against the powerful reactionary rulers and the spirit of daring to break with the old system completely, calling him a big figure and track destroyer of idol sabotage. But Lu Xun did not fully agree with Tolstoy's humanitarianism, "... Tolstoy, precisely because he was born into the nobility and his old nature was inexhaustible, he only sympathized with the peasants and did not advocate class struggle."
In Lu Xun's view, Tolstoy is utopian. Lu Xun pointed out in "On Breaking the Sound of Evil" that Tolstoy called on the people not to fight for the Tsar, not to pay taxes, not to engage in politics, so that violence can be dismantled without violence, "for the ideal of sincerity and goodness, but to see the reality, is the buddha's initial ambition."
Lu Xun himself had made it clear that Tolstoy had little influence on him. Lu Xun commissioned Feng Xuefeng to write an article entitled "On Lu Xun's Position in Literature", and when talking about the influence of Russian literature on Lu Xun, he mentioned writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Gorky. When Lu Xun glanced over, he scribbled the names of these two writers and said, "Their influence on me is very small, but Andreev has some influence."
Lu Xun and Tolstoy are not the same kind of people at all, Lu Xun is a spiritual warrior, a dagger and javelin thrown at the old system, "Sweeping away these cannibals, throwing away this feast, destroying this kitchen, is the mission of the youth now!" ”
Lenin, in Leo Tolstoy as a Mirror of the Russian Revolution, on the one hand praised Tolstoy as a genius artist, and on the other hand criticized Tolstoy as a decadent, hysterical wretch. Lenin looked at Tolstoy with an eye on the reality of Russia, at to achieve revolutionary goals, and criticized the psychological contradictions of intellectuals.
Because of Lenin's criticism, Tolstoy became the object of criticism in the left-wing domestic literary and artistic circles, and Feng Naichao angrily denounced Tolstoy as a "despicable preacher." In 1958, Tan Wei published an article in the Xinmin Evening News entitled "Tolstoy Is Useless", saying that Tolstoy "will not reflect our times", that his "slow and rational writing method" "cannot meet the requirements of our times", and that Tolstoy, as an aristocratic lord, "took advantage of social stagnation".
For more than a hundred years, Tolstoyism, which advocates "do not fight evil with violence", "moral self-improvement", and advocates fraternity, equality, repentance, and saving souls, has actually exerted great influence in the world, and the most famous followers are Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian nation, and Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the American civil rights movement.
At the 1984 World PEN Conference in Tokyo, Japan, Barkin quoted Tolstoy in his speech: "Everything that unites mankind is beautiful and good, and everything that divides mankind is ugly and evil." ”
Ba Jin believed in the anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin, and took the word "Ba" of Bakunin and the word "gold" of Kropotkin to have "Barkin".
"I am not a believer in Tolstoy, nor do I approve of his non-resistance doctrine, nor do I intend to live according to the teachings of the Christian Gospels. He was the pinnacle of nineteenth-century world literature. He was the conscience of the whole world in the nineteenth century. He and I are separated by a great distance, but I am also pursuing the goal that he pursued with all his strength for the rest of his life: to tell the truth and to match words with deeds. ”
Barkin lamented, "'Re-acquaintance' to Tolstoy, how easy it is to talk about!" How many people in the world worship Tolstoy, how many people curse Tolstoy, how many people study Tolstoy, but who can say that they 'know' Tolstoy? (Caprice· Re-acquaintance with Tolstoy")
Barkin most admired Tolstoy's "sense of repentance", "A few years ago I read Tolstoy's novel Resurrection in tears. ("General Sequence of Torrents")
Barkin lamented, "The pain of Tolstoy's later years is now understood", trying to live a little deeper and dissect himself.
In his later years, Barkin confessed that he had only promised to "be a slave for ten years", and Barkin's confession was self-reflection and reflection on history.
Ba Jin is not the Chinese Tolstoy, and Ba Jin's confession is not the same as Tolstoy's confession. Tolstoy's lifelong concern was "What is the meaning of life?" "What do we live for?" Tolstoy wanted to save his soul and felt guilty in the face of the poor. Tolstoy insisted on giving up privileges, property, remuneration and copyright, everything about the nobility, and at the age of 82 he insisted on running away from home.
After the liberation of Ba Jin, he lived on his own contribution fees, and it was disclosed that the "Ba Jin Anthology" in the 1960s was paid nearly 230,000 yuan, which was equivalent to the income of a first-class professor for more than 50 years, or the income of ordinary workers in the town for 480 years. Ba Jin is also the chairman of the Writers' Association and the vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and his political treatment is very comparable to that of others. It's not easy to be Tolstoy.
It is difficult for Chinese literati to reach The realm of Tolstoy, and intellectuals like Lu Xun's Kong Yiji, who have never met each other, also look down on the common people, and have a sense of superiority in their bones. What "migrant workers", what "low-end population" and what "low-quality population", who invented the vocabulary?
Deng Xiaomang said, "Most Chinese writers are only concerned about two things, one is how they are in the eyes of the authorities, how they rank in the official media, and the other is how they are in the eyes of the people and how well their books are sold." So most of their works are either flattering or kitsch. ”
After Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize, his first thought was to buy a big house in Beijing. Yi Zhongtian also complained, "Whoever stipulates that intellectuals should be poor, and whoever stipulates that those who read books should be poor!" And the first to get rich should be to dig coal to dig oil? What a truth! What Tolstoy thought was, "I painfully realized that I was living a life of sin, and that the working people around me and their families were hungry, cold, and precarious." ...... I'm sad, I'm very embarrassed..." (Tolstoy by Es Simmons)
The key is also that Tolstoy put forward the ultimate goal of the "eternal theme" of human society, thus having Tolstoyism that affected the world. Tolstoy asked himself, "There are millions of beings in the world suffering, why are you all here to take care of one Lev Tolstoy?" ”
The Russian thinker Berdyaev said: "Tolstoy's cry is the cry of a suffering man who is in a happy environment, who has everything, but who cannot bear his privileged position." ”
Tolstoy was a great martyr who dared to despise the Church and the Tsar with the words "Repent!" ”。 How many Chinese writers have Tolstoy's guts and boldness? Lu Xun is still the most sober, "his influence in China, in fact, is still equal to zero." (Afterword to the Editing of the < Rushing stream >))
Lu Xun said that Tolstoy's influence on China is equal to zero, and it does not seem to be outdated today. Tolstoy's literature influenced many people, but Tolstoy's ideas were a bit out of place.
Where is China's Tolstoy?