Behind the scenes bullflies

Text/Ma Jiajun

The Spring Festival sweeps away, the book of the sun will beetle, there is a Luo slammed on the ground, in front of the face of the spread of the notes about the "Oxfly", suddenly excited, picked up a few, for the drama audience to rest in the intermission, adjust the apprehension.

After World War II, Soviet journalists found a small and poor old lady in the United States, an unknown person who turned out to be Voynich, the author of the famous novel "The Bullfly".

Voynich was a British writer, and in her home country, "The Bullfly" was out of print and people were thrown into the trash. This is a vivid example of capitalism opposing true artistic talents.

Why did the English writer Voynich have a Slavic surname? It turned out that her name was Ajel, her maiden name was Pur, and her husband was the Polish revolutionary Voynich. The Voynichs knew the Russian populist revolutionary and writer Kravchensky. Kravchensky wrote a novel, Andrei Korukhov. The novel is written about serious and courageous revolutionary youth, including secret priests who use confession to inform. Obviously, "The Bullfly" was influenced by Russian literature. This novel, written in 1897, shines with a strange brilliance at a time when English literature is in decline.

The word "虻" in "Cattle Fly" is pronounced as "檬", and the phonetic pronunciation is méng, not "busy". Luo Yuan's "Erya Yi Shi Worm" says: The big fly "smacks the cow horse or the Zhi Dun servant", and the small fly "eats the cow and horse is also fierce". Arthur's nickname is consistent with his militancy.

The Bullfly is about the Italian National Liberation Movement of 1832-1833 and 1846, and about the uprising of the Charcoal Burners. After Napoleon's invasion of Italy in 1796, Napoleon collapsed and Italy came back under Austrian rule. As early as 1807, the southern Italian city of Calaburi produced a secret society of charcoal burners with patriotic petty bourgeoisie as the backbone, opposing Napoleon. After the restoration of feudal rule, a charcoal-burning uprising broke out in 1820, which was suppressed by Austrian bayonets. In 1830-1831 another uprising broke out in Romani and was suppressed again. The first part of "Bullfly" is set in the Tasgarni incident. After the failure of the uprising, the leader of the Charcoal Burners, Mazzini, was expelled from Italy. Mazzini organized the Youth Italy Party in Paris. (Herzen's artistic image is vividly described in the book "The Drama of the Family" in "Past Events and Caprice".) Thirteen years later, the Mazzinis engaged in the struggle to secretly organize an armed uprising. This is the revolution of 1846, written in the second and third parts of The Bullfly. The revolutionaries of this period were more mature than before. Thus we see that the protagonist, Arthur Bolton, confessed to the priest as a teenager, but thirteen years later he was an experienced and strong-willed revolutionary.

The bullfly is a revolutionary, he hates the enemy deep into the marrow, he can vigorously overcome his personal feelings, and he has the courage to sacrifice himself in the struggle, which is good. However, he is a bourgeois revolutionary after all, he also has ascetic ideas, affirms personal terror, and expresses a bourgeois concept of love for his lover Lenny. These are not legal.

Ni Ostrovsky, author of How Steel is Made, writes: "But in terms of the nature of the 'bullfly', in terms of his fortitude, of his infinite power to endure tests, and of the typical example of a man who suffers without complaining. I agree with the example of a revolutionary who thinks that the cause of the individual cannot be compared in the least with the cause of the whole. Perhaps this is exactly the case, as recorded in The Story of Zoya and Shula: When Zoya was 15 years old, she was moved to tears when she read "The Bullfly.".

"Bullfly" was made into a movie several times in the Soviet Union, and it has never left the stage. Several adaptations are better than the translations and staged versions we see today. In China, novels have been popular for a while and have had a good impact on readers. Now, the drama "Bullfly" is staged on the stage, which is the first time in Xi'an!

(Published in Xi'an Evening News on January 31, 1963)

(Note: The author of this article has authorized this headline)

(Ma Jiajun, a native of Qingyuan, Hebei, born on October 5, 1929, is currently a professor at the College of Literature of Shaanxi Normal University, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Dramatists Association, a member of the Chinese Filmmakers Association, an honorary president (former president) of the Shaanxi Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Russian Literature Research Society, a former president of the Shaanxi Provincial Higher Education Drama Research Society, a former consultant of the Shaanxi Poetry Society, and a former executive director of the Shaanxi Provincial Federation of Social Science Societies. Shaanxi Province to build socialist spiritual civilization advanced individuals, Shaanxi Province to teach and educate advanced teachers, etc., enjoy special allowances from the State Council.

He is the author of 12 kinds of "Nineteenth Century Russian Literature", "The New Stage of Aesthetic History", "Poetry Exploration", "Exploration of World Literature", etc.; 4 kinds of "The Essence of World Literature" and "History of Western Drama" co-authored with his daughter Ma Xiaoyi; 9 kinds of "History of World Literature" (3 volumes) and "Research on Gorky's Creation"; edited 4 kinds of "30 Lectures on European and American Modernist Literature"; co-edited and co-authored "100 Topics of Marxism-Leninism", "Cultural Research Methods", "50 Lectures on Oriental Literature", "Western Literature in the Twentieth Century", etc. and more than 40 kinds.

It has been listed in more than 40 kinds, such as the Dictionary of Chinese Writers, the Dictionary of Chinese Poets, the Dictionary of Chinese Social Science Scholars, the Cambridge Dictionary of International Biographies (27th Edition in English), the Directory of Experts in Russian Studies Abroad (Russian Edition) of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Classics of Shaanxi Century of Literature and Art. ）