Lu Xun and the "Poet Who Touched His Ass" and "A Bouquet of Love Letters"

"A Bundle of Love Letters" is a legendary book in the Republic of China, which was a sensation at the time, and even caused a great controversy, so it was reprinted in one edition. Lu Xun had close contacts with his author, Zhang Yiping, and paid close attention to the book.

This Zhang Yiping, who was once named "the poet who touched his ass" at that time, was because beixin Bookstore had previously published his book "Essays on the Pillow", which included "Lazy Spring!" I didn't even bother to touch a woman's ass" was triggered by the famous sentence.

When Zhang Yiping advanced a large amount of manuscript fees from the Beixin Bookstore, declaring that "if you have more money, you can skip eating pork and drink chicken soup", Lu Xun once ridiculed him, writing in his "Four Songs of Professor Miscellaneous Songs": "The world has literature, and young girls have many buttocks." Chicken soup instead of pork, North New Sui covered the door. The last sentence refers to the incident in which beixin bookstore was ordered to stop business by the authorities for publishing prohibited books.

Zhang Yiping (1902-1947), formerly known as Hongxi, a native of Jixi, Anhui, came to Beijing after graduating from high school to audit at Peking University, and began to engage in prose writing and translation work. Lu Xun's contacts with him are recorded in his diaries from September 28, 1924 to January 31, 1930, amounting to one hundred and forty places, which shows that they had close contacts.

Zhang Yiping's first visit to Lu Xun accompanied by Sun Fuyuan was to thank Lu Xun for echoing him in the article and getting his support.

It all started in April 1924, when a psychology professor named Zhang Yaoxiang published an article entitled "The Mood of the New Poet" in the journal of the Chinese Psychological Association, Psychology, Vol. 3, No. 2, in which he mocked the use of exclamation points in vernacular poetry: "Looking up like a spring rain, looking down like several acres of grass fields; zooming out looks like many bacteria, zooming in looks like a few rows of projectiles." Obviously, he believes that the use of exclamation points is a manifestation of negativity, pessimism, and world-weariness, and that vernacular poems with exclamation points are "the sound of subjugation".

In response to Zhang Yaoxiang's attack on new literature, Zhang Yiping vigorously refuted it, and published an article entitled "Exclamation Symbols and New Poems" in the Morning Post Supplement on September 15 of the same year, jokingly saying: "Whoever makes a vernacular poet slaps ten boards of ass"; "Whoever uses an exclamation point will be fined one yuan"; "Whoever publishes a collection of vernacular poems or uses a hundred exclamation points shall be sentenced to three years' imprisonment or three years' imprisonment; and whoever publishes three or four vernacular poetry collections or uses more than a thousand exclamation points shall be shot or killed." ”

Zhang Yiping used irony to fight back against the conservative faction, Lu Xun undoubtedly agreed, immediately issued a support, but also satirized and criticized Zhang Yaoxiang, Zhang Yiping felt very pleased.

Since then, Zhang Yiping and Lu Xun have had frequent contacts, and the two have basically maintained a friendly relationship, but because of a poem by Gao Changhong, the "wild poet", there have been some estrangements between them. On November 21, 1926, Gao Changhong published his group of poems "Give-" in the seventh issue of the weekly magazine "Crazy Biao", in which he wrote:

I walk at the end of the world, the sun is my friend,

I handed over the moon to him and took her home to the night.

The night was cold and dark, and he was jealous of the sun,

The sun left him and he never saw him again.

After the poem was published, rumors in the Beijing literary circles sprang up, saying that the "sun" in the poem was Gao Changhong's self-comparison, Lu Xun was "night", and "moon" was Xu Guangping, and this poem was a portrayal of the "love triangle" between them.

Lu Xun wrote to Xu Guangping on January 11, 1927, saying that in addition to Wang Pinqing, Sun Fuyuan, Li Xiaofeng, and Yu Taixinzi, who spread this rumor, there was also Zhang Yiping. When the letter was included in the "Book of Two Places" and published publicly, Lu Xun changed the word "Yiping" to "Haiqian", so the relationship between Zhang Yiping and Lu Xun was tested.

Zhang Yiping's "A Bouquet of Love Letters" was first published by the Beixin Bookstore in June 1925, originally titled "Peach-colored Clothes", and by March 1930 it had been printed to 10 editions, with a circulation of nearly 20,000 copies, and it was also translated into Russian.

In fact, this book is not a collection of love letters, but a collection of eight novels, some of which use epistolary and diary styles, which not only describe the love of young men and women, but also write about homosexuality. Although everyone thinks that the book is very rough and trivial, Zhang Yiping herself believes that "if high school students can't read "A Bunch of Love Letters", then secondary education can be regarded as a complete failure; if college students can't read "Love Letters", then the hypocritical university should also close its doors early. ”

A lady asked Zhang Yiping: "Why is "A Bundle of Love Letters" written so obscenely, and why are you not shy?" Zhang Yiping said: "I don't think there is anything to be shy about, because I am a literati." This is borrowed from the Irish writer George W. Bush. Moore (1852-1933): "As a writer, I don't think there is anything to be shy about. My profession means being shy about nothing, but only shy for shyness. ”

After the publication of "A Bundle of Love Letters", Zhang Yiping was very good at hype, at one time saying that Peking University Russian Professor Bai Weilie translated Russian for him, and at the other time saying that there was an English, French and Japanese translation, and even published in the tabloids the news that "A Bundle of Love Letters" became a banned book, so it became a bestseller.

Zhang Yiping's article loves to scold the world the most, and the complaints are the most. He was a cynical man, eating, drinking and gambling, and he had a hand. Even the bedside affairs between men and women are not hidden, and they are vividly described.

In addition to Zhang Yiping's famous saying of touching her ass, there are also many bold love sentences in her "Love Letter Bundle": "I took off her peach-colored coat, loosened her lake-colored pants, kissed her under her lower abdomen" and so on. Of course, Lu Xun disagreed with Zhang Yiping's above views and attitudes.

After Zhang Yiping's "New Preface to old books" written for the fifth edition of "A Bundle of Love Letters", Lu Xun was quite disgusted with his self-satisfied mentality. On May 4, 1928, Lu Xun wrote in a letter to Zhang Tingqian: "Yi Ping's self-prologue is admittedly a bit ... Today's weather, hahaha..." In 1932, Lu Xun returned to Beiping and said to his young friend in a joking tone: "I came to produce a "Bundle of Love Letters", how do you see? Will there be readers? Lu Xun's "Bundle of Love Letters" refers to the collection of letters of Lu Xun and Xu Guangping published by the Shanghai Qingguang Bookstore in April 1933, "Books of Two Places".

When Zhang Yiping invited Lu Xun to give an important lecture on "The Wrong Path of Literature, Art and Politics," Zhang Yiping was present to listen and wear a leather robe.

In order to expound the view that different people's thoughts and feelings may be very different, Lu Xun took a nearby example and said: "For example, today Mr. Yiping wears a leather robe, and I still wear only a cotton robe; Mr. Yiping's feeling of cold is more spiritual than mine. In January, I may also feel that I have to wear a leather robe. The difference in weather feelings is as much as a month, and the difference in thinking is as much as thirty or forty years. ”

Obviously, Lu Xun is a metaphor, including the above-mentioned lu xun's ridicule of the preface to "A Bundle of Love Letters", and it has not affected their interaction.

However, Zhang Yiping still paid more attention to absorbing some of Lu Xun's opinions, especially Lu Xun's criticism of "Lazy Spring!" I didn't even bother to touch a woman's ass", Zhang Yiping later deleted it when she combined "Essay on the Pillow", "Essay under the Window", and "Essay in the Wind" into "Essay Three Kinds".

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Zhang Yiping went to Chengdu, Sichuan Province, to open a bookstore. He died in March 1947 at the age of 45.

Zhang Yiping has published more than twenty kinds of works in her lifetime, but the only thing that is still known to the world today is probably this legendary "Love Letter Bundle".