If a person lives sincerely, he must be living in a distant place. The most beautiful qualities of our nature, like the frost on the fruit, can only be preserved with light hands and feet. - Walden
It has been 24 years since his death, and now the name "Xu Chi" is somewhat unfamiliar to the eyes of the world. But if one mentions the translator of Walden, the author of the reportage Goldbach Conjecture, one cannot help but realize that, after all, the phrase "the queen of natural science is mathematics, and the crown of mathematics is number theory." Goldbach conjecture, the crown jewel "is still a memory of a generation."
Xu Chi is next to Walden Lake
As the founder of Chinese reportage, a famous translator and poet, Xu Chi's life trajectory has always been with celebrities: he was the "best man" of the poet Dai Wangshu when he married, and he was one of the only close friends of the mathematician Chen Jingrun. He once asked Mao Zedong how to compose poetry, and Mao Zedong, who was in his prime at the time, wrote three powerful characters for him: "Poetry and Speech".
Xu Chi, the young master of the once-thousand-year-old nanxun shuxiang mendi, devoted his life to recording the vicissitudes of the times and society in the past hundred years, and interpreted the gentlemanly temperament and spiritual inheritance of Nanxun's "town of poetry and books" between the lines.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" > Nanxun Ancient Town nourishes a romantic character background, and only marries women with the surname of "Chen" in his life</h1>
In his later years, Xu Chi used 66 "crystal crystals" to describe his hometown of Nanxun in his autobiographical novel "Jiangnan Town". The spirit and transparency of Jiangnan Water Town have cultivated Xu Chi's delicate and romantic character background, although his ancestors had walked in the military aircraft and his father studied in Japan in his early years, unfortunately, the family's "wealth" did not allow Xu Chi to get the preferential treatment of fate.
But in my generation, I was born, and directly because of my birth, my family underwent a devastating catastrophe, so much so that the family was ruined and there was nothing from then on. - "Gangnam Town"
Nowadays, outsiders have no way of knowing what kind of great changes have made Xu Chi's original family suddenly impoverished from the three generations of scholars, but through Xu Chi's handsome appearance, we can still glimpse the inheritance of culture accumulated in him: delicate and sensitive capture, Xindaya's translation, neat lyrical wording, learning from Both China and the West, and expressing with ease...
Xu Chi was romantic and gentle by nature, and he had feelings for his college classmates at the age of 17, but the first few relationships almost all ended because of Xu Chi's poor family situation, until 1936, when Xu Chi met Chen Song at the age of 22. During the period of love, Xu Chi specially bought a new diary to record the happy times he spent with Chen Song:
I suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her against the wall, and kissed her violently. I had never been so excited, so I experienced such an ecstasy that I had never experienced before and never experienced again. People can only kiss once in a lifetime.
In the face of family questions, Chen Song bravely said that "my marriage, I can decide by myself", while Xu Chi promised that the two would "live like brothers and sisters for a year or two", just to support his wife to complete her studies. After marriage, Xu Chi and Chen Song have been together for nearly half a century, and have four children, from their student days to two white sideburns.
In 1984, Xu Chi learned that his wife was suffering from cancer on the way to visit abroad, and it was already in her advanced stage, and Xu Chi, who was impatient, immediately returned to China and carefully cared for his wife until the last moment of her life. Xu Chi wrote affectionately in his long poem "Bang Chen Song" in memory of his wife: What is so terrible about the other shore? The most affectionate of you are waiting for me at the ferry! He solemnly told himself that in the future, after his death, he would mix his ashes with his wife's ashes, scatter them at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and flow back to the sea.
Xu Chi, who was too old, spent 8 years of widowhood in grief until he met another woman surnamed "Chen". Xu Chi's second marriage lasted less than 4 years before it ended in dismal light, when Xu Chi deeply felt that his "wife" would never return.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" > introduce the jewel in the crown of mathematics to the world, and the ultimate "detail" portrayal is admired by Song Qingling</h1>
In the category of "reportage", Xu Chi is both a writer and a journalist, and he became the founder of Chinese reportage with the Goldbach Conjecture, and also made Chen Jingrun a well-known scientist in China. Chen Jingrun has a more withdrawn personality, is a well-known "nerd", and has almost no friends in life, which brings great difficulties to Xu Chi's writing, as he said: it is difficult to understand a person, and it is even more difficult to understand a mathematician.
Chen Jingrun's 1966 manuscript of a thesis analyzing the "Goldbach conjecture"
At the first meeting, Chen Jingrun kept repeating "I am very happy", but did not allow Xu Chi to enter the place where he worked:
He does not seem to live among us, he lives in the kingdom of mathematics; as if he were not a man of our world of perceptual activity, he was flying in the mental space of the world of reason; at this moment he was only forced to land among us to accept my visit to him.
In order to narrow the psychological distance between himself and Chen Jingrun, Xu Chi nibbled marx's "Mathematical Manuscripts", Hua Luogeng's "Introduction to Mathematics", Euclid's "Elements", "History of Ancient Chinese Mathematics" and many other mathematical tomes, so when the reportage "Goldbach Conjecture" was presented to the world, people did not feel difficult and difficult to read, because Xu had already integrated the esoteric mathematical theory and wrote it in the work.
"Goldbach Conjecture" made Chen Jingrun's name known to women and children at once, unfortunately, Chen Jingrun died only 18 years later. After learning the news of his friend's death, Xu Chi was so sad that he felt a little remorseful, and he even felt that perhaps it was the article that had been recited for a while that disrupted and interfered with Chen Jingrun's arduous but quiet mountaineering path, making him only one step away from reaching the final peak.
Group photo of Chen Jingrun (front row, second from left) and Xu Chi (third from left in front row).
Xu Chi's reportage is full of details of humanistic feelings, focusing on Chen Jingrun, who "hit the tree", Li Siguang, who has traveled all over the motherland, "many details are not written in detail enough", Xu Chi has never given up the strict requirements for details in literary creation. When he taught reporters how to write a character report, he said that when Premier Zhou Enlai invited Song Qingling to Beiping, even the chrysanthemums placed in the house were personally trimmed by Premier Zhou.
Later, after Song Qingling learned of this detail, she copied the relevant paragraphs of Xu Chi's narration into a full 7 pages, and she said emotionally: I was deeply moved by the arrangements made by the premier to ensure my unforgettable trip. From Xu Chi's report, I also learned the importance of "details" in writing. If I had a healthy body and was young enough, I would have wanted to take classes like this to improve my writing.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" > 82 years old in the cold winter, leaving a mystery for the changing fate</h1>
Xu Chi's translation of Tolstoy's biography is one of the earliest versions in China, and Xu Chi's original intention as a writer was to establish a "life attitude of distinguishing right from wrong and loving and hating with extra enthusiasm" for people. Xu Chi himself is also like this in his life.
In the late winter of 1996, the 82-year-old Xu Chi was suddenly unwell and admitted to a hospital in Wuhan. Late at night on the 18th day of admission, the 82-year-old jumped from the 6th floor ward, and he did not alarm anyone, but he ran away from the world with a resolute attitude and ended his life.
Late life
After Xu Chi left, people were surprised to find that his clothes and books and newspapers in the ward were arranged in an orderly manner, and even the diary was completely recorded to the last day of his life. Before he died, he was still concerned about the heater at home, and he was planning to spend a long winter in the south after being discharged from the hospital.
After learning of Xu Chi's death, Jin Kemu, a scholar of the same age as Xu Chi, said bitterly: The poet Xu Chi hurried away, like a firecracker, jumped into space, and disappeared without a trace, leaving only the sound.
"Crystal Crystal" is Xu Chi's evaluation to his hometown, and it is almost a summary of his personality, light, transparent and free. Most people firmly believe that Xu Chi, who began to write his autobiography on a computer at the age of 75, must have a crush on life, and his leap left a fate puzzle that can never be solved in the world, so that people who know him are all sorry and in awe.
Xu Chi and Ba Jin
@ Wen Shizhe Study Room I think that the writer Xu Chi and the painter Mu Xin have many similarities: the family prince from the thousand-year-old town, struggling to drift in the torrent of the times, sensitive to the heart of the romantics, but they have gone to a completely different fate in their later years: If Mu Xin accepts aging and fate in reluctance, then Xu Chi's quiet "fall" is the last attempt to fate.
Socializing tends to be cheap. The time of being together is too short to allow each other to gain anything new and valuable... We live too crowded, interfering with each other, holding each other back, so I think we have lost respect for each other. - Walden