If you mention "foreign literature", from some great writers to primary school students who have just begun to read famous works, everyone cannot avoid a "scholar", he is the Russian critical realist writer, thinker, and philosopher of the mid-19th century - Leo Tolstoy. In the past hundred years, the Chinese literary scene has never snubbed The man Leo Tolstoy.
It is recorded that Leo Tolstoy was born into an aristocratic family, lost his mother at the age of 1 and a half, and lost his father at the age of 10, and he was raised by relatives in the family. In 1844, he was admitted to the Department of Oriental Languages of Kazan University, studying Turkish and Arabic, failing the midterm exams, and transferring to the faculty of law the following year. At the same time, he did not concentrate on his studies and was obsessed with social life, but at the same time, he developed a strong interest in philosophy, especially moral philosophy, loved Rousseau's teachings and his personality, and read literature extensively.
For Lev Tolstoy, for the most part, everyone respects him as a generation of "great thinkers", "humanitarians", and even more an "immortal literati with a noble conscience" in Russia. However, in everyone's high praise, it did not give Leo Tolstoy the title of a great "novelist".
Previously, in the exhibition "Lev Tolstoy and His Time" held at the National Museum of Our Country, this banned book writer not only once again attracted the attention of the domestic cultural circles, but also caused a reading boom. If you are a cultural lover who likes to read classical masterpieces, you must have read the three most representative works of Leo Tolstoy: "Resurrection", "Anna Karenina", and "Victory and Peace". As everyone knows, although you have read these works, have you really finished these works?
Everyone is familiar with it, and even, you can recite the classic quotations in these works backwards, such as: "All happy families are the same, unhappy families have their own misfortunes" and so on, such a cautionary maxim, as everyone knows, the taste of this, most people do not fully understand. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Leo Tolstoy's "history of acceptance" in China is, in fact, a "misunderstood history", and this "cognitive revolution" is completely a "successful utilitarian development".
Therefore, we seem to be very close to Leo Tolstoy, but quietly and successfully rubbed shoulders with the beauty of these exquisite novels!
As early as 1900, the Shanghai Guangdong Society published the book "Examination of Russian Politics and Customs", and for the first time recommended Leo Tolstoy, at that time, it was also called "Liu Dus Duyi". In the recommendation, it is more important to mention that Leo Tolstoy was as early as the age of 23, and he threw himself into the pen and served in the Crimean military camp. In 1856, after the war had ceased, Leo Tolstoy chose to write as a "pleasure" of everyday life.
Later, in this "fun" was born "War and Chronicle", that is, the current book "War and Peace". The book chronicles Napoleon's campaign against Russia during 1812. After its publication, for a time, it set off a Russian reading boom for the book. When the time came to 1906, the works of Leo Tolstoy surfaced for the first time in the domestic literary world. His recommended book this time is "Torres Religious Novel", which is composed of 6 groups of short stories of low literary value.
At that time, the reason why the domestic publishing house published the book was that the content of the Chinese novel was too absurd and destroyed the hearts and minds of the Chinese people, and the content and meaning of Leo Tolstoy's novel were particularly good, and the national wisdom could be developed. Under such a momentum, Western literature continues to pour into China, and because of its fresh way of thinking and literary forms, it is eagerly sought after by domestic literati.
While pursuing the boom of Western literature, the Chinese people do not know how to rationally remove its dross and take its essence, only see the name of Western literature, and do not care too much about the content, so the works of Lev Tolstoy have been "entrained" in this way.
In such an atmosphere, many literati do not pay attention to the ideological connotations of Leo Tolstoy's works, but only talk about his "thoughts" in the general level, and from this, countless works have been born. Among them, representative works include Li Dazhao's "Introduction to the Philosopher Tolstoy", Jiang Menglin's "Tolstoy's Outlook on Life" and other books. And Leo Tolstoy, the real boom in China was around the time of the "May Fourth Movement".
At that time, his long works were not translated into Chinese, and apart from a slight understanding of his "thoughts", people could not say anything about The literary achievements of Leo Tolstoy. At this time, it was also in the boom of the "May Fourth Movement", and the literati liked to use the invisible literary dagger to express their resentment of the current situation, so short stories and essays could better please others and win popularity, and even achieve some practical benefits. Therefore, no one wants to invest a lot of energy in a long-form masterpiece.
However, the shortness of the article means that the space for expression is narrow.
In order to express ideas simply and brightly, the problem can only be simplified, and even, simply become the opposite "black and white or good and evil", so that the author can write more indignantly, the reader can read more passionately, and the aesthetic pleasure will arise spontaneously.
As a result, Leo Tolstoy's writings have coincidentally pleased the extreme passions of the domestic literati, so that Chen Duxiu praised Tolstoy for "respecting humanity and evil power", Guo Moruo praised Tolstoy as "a real bandit who dared to challenge the old order", and even Mr. Lu Xun called him "a triumphant march and swept away the old order". For a time, the domestic literary circles thus draped the robes of the "revolutionaries of the twentieth century" and "practitioners of socialism" on Leo Tolstoy.
Chinese people still only look at Western literature on the surface, often only read a few words, and pin a certain resentful idea in their hearts on it. It seems that we are learning advanced ideas, but in fact it is a ridiculous act of pampering, which is nothing more than finding a so-called authoritative commentary for our ideals that have been suppressed by reality. Therefore, Mr. Qian Zhongshu once said: "All the good things abroad, once introduced to China, there is no one who does not deviate, even Lev Tolstoy, can not escape such a fate." ”
However, this situation did not get any better, and on the occasion of the centenary of The birth of Leo Tolstoy in 1928, the literati was once again hyped up by the Chinese people. At the same time, Leo Tolstoy's novel, his real masterpiece, began to be truly translated into Chinese and entered the eyes of the Chinese literati.
At this time, those revolutionary literati in China were surprised to find after reading that this Russian writer was not as "combative" as they imagined, and his pen style was gentle, the description was delicate, and the memories were endless. However, such a style has been innocently met with strong irony in China. Lenin had previously explicitly described Leo Tolstoy: "A total wretch. Since then, Leo Tolstoy has begun to walk down the altar in the hearts of the people.
Unfortunately, many Chinese literati began to make absurd comments about Leo Tolstoy, calling him a "despicable preacher." Among them, there are also some literary figures, such as Zhou Libo, Lu Xun and others, who began to "objectively" view the works and personalities of Leo Tolstoy, acknowledging his talent on the one hand, and criticizing his "non-resistanceism" on the other hand. In this way, Leo Tolstoy was torn into two unbearable sides among the Chinese literati.
However, the "writing talent" valued by the literati also includes a huge literary misunderstanding. Domestic literati naively think that novels can be disassembled into two parts, "thought" and "technology", and the two can not interfere with each other. In particular, the "technical" level can be infinitely disassembled into descriptions, phrases, etc., which is the so-called "basic skills of literary creation". However, the most frightening thing is the result of such infinite dismantling, which is actually a process of killing the novel.
Seemingly professional "technology", in fact, is just a set of "exquisite flattery" means.
In this regard, many writers skillfully use this technique, and they noblely do the work of "story workers" under the banner of "observing life and reflecting life". In fact, such writers, their creativity is "painless, legitimate" "castrated" in such feelings. Later, as domestic readers gradually awakened, when more of us could rationally realize that Leo Tolstoy was not a "thinker." For his most pertinent positioning, he is a beautiful "novelist".
At this time, many people have also raised questions: Why does a person who has a sword in his mind have so much influence in the West and why is he immortal?
As a result, the Chinese literati shifted from blindly chasing Tolstoy to the so-called study of Tolstoy's literary style, in a vain attempt to find the reason for the immortality of this literary sage. Through the analysis of Tolstoy's texts, Chinese scholars have come up with a set of theories that are obscure to ordinary people, such as: "Realism collapses", "the natural logic of the novel betrays the subjective will of the writer" and so on.
In fact, Tolstoy's reason for going to the altar of world literature is very simple: in the world literary world, there is a perfect template for the perfect novel, and whoever writes closer to this template can be closer to immortality.
In terms of actual writing skills, such "immortal" skills are nothing more than: the language is more understandable, there are more plot characters, more storylines, more delicate details, constantly changing scene descriptions, the perfect combination of themes and times, and so on. When many writers understand this "immortal" truth, their creative space will be compressed to the extreme.
Chinese novelists imitated Tolstoy, and indeed wrote a lot of "pseudo-Tolstoy", but no one was immortalized, and even Yang Mo could not hold on to himself because he was given the title of "China's Tolstoy". It is no wonder that on the back door of Tolstoy's immortal legend, the literati all hit their heads and broke the blood.
In the 1960s, most of Leo Tolstoy's works were banned from publication, and only some of his later works on the theme of "anti-imperialism" were disseminated. In that atmosphere of Chinese history, Tolstoy was once again pushed to the altar of "thinker" and "conscience"!
It was not until the end of the "Cultural Revolution" that Chinese readers returned to reason and slowly discovered that in the works of Leo Tolstoy, in fact, they were full of thick inquiries about the ultimate value of life, as well as pain and deep introspection from the depths of his heart.
When we are really stripped from the group, really use our own wisdom to observe the world, and explore freedom from our own thoughts, Tolstoy's writing has become an indelible beacon that illuminates everyone who is unwilling to succumb to fate and has no choice but to trek on the road.
So it was Tolstoy who taught us that we should be worthy of all the suffering we have endured!
For the interpretation of life, Leo Tolstoy chose to surrender, in the book "Anna Karenina", he wrote about his cowardice for life, he was questioning himself and the world: since you desire happiness, it is better to simply pursue happiness, why bother with eternity. This seemingly cowardly answer made him feel relieved, because Tolstoy already knew that life is inherently painful, and so-called happiness is just an anesthetic.
In fact, many people will wonder why Leo Tolstoy will be so much unprovoked exclusion and criticism in the long history of human fiction, and will also be so much popular and followed. Perhaps, only by placing him in such a long river of history will The value of Leo Tolstoy be highlighted in a real sense.
It has been said: "The attainment of literary thought that Leo Tolstoy could attain was attainable by Dostoevsky." The height of Leo Tolstoy's literary thought cannot be reached, but Dostoevsky can also achieve it. In reality, Tolstoy was constantly being hyped up, while Dostoevsky was constantly ignored and almost drowned by the long river of world literature.
Feeling this, many literati have been relieved, why is this?
In fact, in the long history of literature, we finally understand that the fate of novelists is not entirely determined by themselves, and even by their own strength. As long as literary scholars are exporting ideas and disseminating insights, they will be misread by readers when they are published in the world.
If a literary writer like Tolstoy is misread and at the same time pokes at the pain point of this era, then such a thing has no less impact than a serious chemical nuclear reaction. It's just that all this is in people's hearts, and it seems so quiet.
Those who are not willing to sink their hearts into thinking about eternity will always have excessive expectations of eternity, and writers noblely pursue immortality, but try to cut corners. Therefore, Chinese writers began a long period of "introspective" creation, using exaggerated and grand structures to try to wrap up their dry lives. The technical foundation is not enough to think together, but on the road of pursuing immortality, it will forever live in the cage of "two ghosts pushing and grinding", thus creating a protracted project such as "pseudo-Tolstoy".
It seems that if this continues, sooner or later the Chinese literati will "play bad" Leo Tolstoy!
War and Peace (Upper Middle Lower) Leo Tolstoy Junior high school teen books ¥100.8 Purchase
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[Leo Tolstoy, Russian Politics and Customs, Modern Chinese History]