5000-word prose: agarwood tablets
In September of the lunar calendar, the sky suddenly became violent, with dead branches broken and yellow leaves swept away, and there was a bleak scene everywhere.
I don't know why I think of a sentence from Yi 'an layman for no reason:
It's the hardest to stop breathing when it's warm and cold. Three glasses of light wine, how can you beat him? If you come late, you will be anxious! Guo Yan is very sad, but this is an old acquaintance.
Looking through the newspaper ten years ago, I found the news of the death of Zhang Ailing, a Chinese living in the United States, in the corner, and suddenly I felt a sense of loss. This woman, who swept the Shanghai literary world during the occupation, has finally finished a bumpy life and can continue to look for her beautiful love in heaven. Is this sudden north wind conveying this sad news?
( 1)
Writing about Zhang Ailing today is somewhat sensational. There are too many articles about strange girls in Shanghai in recent years, just like the overflow of a surging heart after its breach. I first wrote about her ten years ago. At that time, romance novels in Hong Kong and Taiwan became popular in mainland China, just as her novels became popular in Shanghai in the 1940s.
After the fall of Shanghai, scholars who gathered at sea earlier chose to go north. They either went to the mountain city of Chongqing to shout anti-Japanese and write slogans, or turned to the ocean to escape the tragedy of national subjugation. There are two kinds of literati left behind, one is Wang Pseudo-speculators, and the other is literati of non-mainstream culture. In the past, the noisy literary world in Shanghai fell into extreme depression and silence. Despised by many maritime scholars? Mandarin duck and butterfly pie? Novelists reluctantly supported the creation of pure literary novels, and Violet magazine became the backbone of marine culture.
Zhang Ailing's first novel was published in Violet. A person who has a good eye for treasures, a child with a pipe in your family, may have the same aristocratic demeanor. Zhou Shoujuan was attracted by Zhang Ailing's writing style and impressed by her perspective on human weakness.
The master of romance novels who traveled from Suzhou to Shanghai stopped writing stories and made his bonsai art. The traditional Soviet-style bonsai in China reached a peak in his hands, winning not only the highest prize in China, but also the highest prize in the World Expo. During the occupation of Shanghai, he competed with Japanese chiefs for expensive flowerpots at the cost of his life to avoid living in a foreign land. After the new China, he changed the old style of articles, wrote many excellent essays on flowers and plants, and actively participated in the renovation of Suzhou gardens, making suggestions for the restoration of Suzhou classical gardens together with Fan Yanqiao and Jiang Yinqiu. At that time, the bonsai in Zilan Xiaolou became a landscape for big people to visit Su Bi.
The title of Zhang Ailing's first novel is very attractive. The second stove is fragrant and the artistic conception is wonderful. This has a very deep relationship with her family. After all, she is the great-granddaughter of Li Hongzhang in Hefei, and ordinary people can invent whatever they think of. Without such a rich family, people can't think of such a thing. It is common for such a beautiful storyteller to become popular at sea overnight. It is rare for Shanghai to have such a quiet environment since it opened its port. How can such an opportunity be easily given up, not to mention the romantic story she told?
After becoming popular, Zhang Ailing quickly launched her love hidden in her heart, which is a sad and helpless side that is unknown to the world. There are too many helpless voices in Love in the City, which are not as romantic and beautiful as I imagined. There is no consciousness, no awakening, and no anti-Japanese passion. Only declining young women and playboys, as ordinary men and women tend to be stable choices, seem more realistic in life.
But in any case, this novel is a masterpiece of romance novels. How does it compare with her predecessors? Li Pailiu? The romantic article can be said to have changed the world. So in the future, she doesn't agree. She is? Mandarin ducks and butterflies? Many writers in the school are here? Mandarin ducks and butterflies? Literati who started their business in Shanghai all held the same belief after becoming famous.
During the Republic of China? Li Pailiu? Or? Mandarin ducks and butterflies? In school, scholars are dismissive and even ashamed to associate with them. It seems that they are the root cause of national decline and world corruption. They would rather go to Tokyo's library to extract talents and beauties reflecting the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and they would also like to fly to Paris to copy erotic and even pornographic novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and they would not look back at today's popular articles. Because today? Mandarin ducks and butterflies? It is vulgar literature, but the novels of Ming and Qing dynasties are still worthless even if they are full of lewdness and hard to read.
I don't want to beautify? Mandarin ducks and butterflies? The article, even if Zhang Ailing joins, won't it change? Mandarin ducks and butterflies? It is unfair to deny its own defects, but it is also unfair to read the text. After all, the novel itself is a vulgar thing. From Zhang Henshui to Cheng Xiaoqing, their positions in their respective creative fields are still very stable.
(2)
In her creation, Zhang Ailing blended the western writing ideas, inherited the advantages of China's traditional boudoir novels' love stories, and added the elegant implication of her aristocratic pedigree. It is refreshing to hide all this behind the triviality, to see the despair of life and to see the gesture of abandoning history. In fact, in the early years of the Republic of China, Su made such an attempt, but due to the constraints of classical Chinese expression, she failed to develop a new form like her.
After Jinsuo, she released cartoons. She thought it would bring her a new round of sensational effect, but she didn't want to kill Cheng Jinyao halfway and criticized her cartoons badly. And this critic is obviously not an ordinary literary geek who makes a living from it. His articles are profound and sharp, and often hit her on the spot. Zhang ailing suffered such a heavy blow for the first time since her debut, and her habitual counterattack is also reasonable.
Besides, at this time, she knew the first emotional grievance in her life. Zhang Ailing, who has just entered the society, is almost an idiot for her emotional IQ. How does Hu Lancheng, a master in love, resist? Hu Lancheng at this time is also the most prosperous time in his life. He succeeded in speculation and became the propaganda minister of Wang Pseudo. It's really cool for him to be a traitor.
I don't want to talk about Zhang Ailing's infatuation and her fantasy? Your love, your career? Naive thoughts, and I'm not interested in talking about Hu Lancheng. In fact, there is nothing wrong with emotional entanglements. Today, we lament Zhang Ailing's emotional experience, more from the standpoint of loving her, but also with the thinking of today's marriage concept, ignoring the background of the times. It was normal for a successful man to have three wives and four concubines during the Republic of China. If a woman is jealous of this, it is not allowed by etiquette. More importantly, when a woman likes a man, she is irrational.
Because of this, it is not difficult to imagine that Zhang Ailing went to Wenzhou to find Hu Lancheng and was in the same room with Hu's new sweetheart. At that age, Zhang Ailing fell in love with a prestigious and interesting man, which was also a very lucky thing for her. Unfortunately, this man is not only a traitor scholar with a despicable personality, but also a joking attitude from the beginning. Decades later, Hu Lancheng, who escaped the punishment of history, in this life, called for a loving wife at the sweet time of great books and Zhang Ailing's past, which made people really realize what shameless is.
If Zhang Ailing didn't wake up from such a dream, it would be unnecessary to tell such a story, and she wouldn't be a strange girl in the Republic of China. When she returned to Shanghai from Wenzhou, she resolutely broke off the marriage relationship with Hu and returned to what she called love and marriage. When reviewing her early novels, she even used a word worse than the pen name "Fast Rain" in her self-evaluation of comics.
Then who is this quick rain? It was not until four or nine years later that Xun Yu's true colors were revealed. He is the translator, Mr. Fu Lei. It is difficult to connect this rigorous scholar with the author who reviews romantic novels. As far as Mr. Fu Lei is concerned, it seems that he has only written romantic novels commenting on Zhang Ailing. But these are not important to Zhang Ailing. With the change of times and emotional mutiny, her novel creation has reached the edge. Perhaps it is the withering of love in her heart, and she will never tell a sad or romantic story again.
(3)
Xia Yan warmly invited her to attend the Shanghai Literature Conference. In these years. Left League? Zhang Ailing is very uncomfortable in contact with some intellectuals or writers from Yan 'an, Chongqing. She belongs to the category of petty bourgeoisie. She talks about love, family background and deviates from orthodoxy. She can't talk about revolution or socialism. Coupled with the well-known concept of family and European and American plots, it is difficult for her to communicate with these revolutionary intellectuals, not to mention her messy traitor marriage. She has clearly expressed such complicated psychology in her novel Eighteen Springs. Two men are just one person in her reality and dreams.
Going to the rural areas of northern Jiangsu to participate in land reform was the starting point of her sharp rebellion. Perhaps it was the first time that she really came into contact with the countryside and faced the struggle between classes for the first time. The world in her eyes became so terrible that the original environment became more and more unsuitable. She can't stand the bondage of language and habits.
She chose to leave Shanghai and return to Hong Kong. Judging from today, her choice is very wise. I don't know why, after she returned to Hong Kong, she wrote two novels about the mainland, Yangko and Love in the Bare Land. (These two novels are not included in many works of Zhang Ailing in China. ) Immediately after the publication of the novel, it caused two absolutely relative comments, which were even greatly appreciated by the cultural circles in Taiwan Province Province. But Ling Ke's words still make sense. I have never set foot in the countryside in my life, and my pen is not a wand. How can I conjure things out of thin air? , so? Watching the fire on the other side? Her exposure can only be? Shallow distortion? ,? In the eyes of mainland readers, it is funny? .
Let the master who has always been used to romance suddenly write a novel with a strong political atmosphere. In addition to behind closed doors, there is imagination. Of course, she won't admit it herself. Zhang Ailing wrote in the preface of Love in the Naked Land:
I sometimes tell people the outline of a story, but people don't hear the benefits. I always add an excuse:? It's true. ? It seems to be worth ten letters at once. In fact, the truth of a story has nothing to do with its quality. But I do love the truth to the extent of superstition. I believe that anyone's real experience will always be meaningful, always fresh and never become a cliche.
Love in the Naked Land is a true story, but the novel is not reportage after all. Besides hiding my real name and some place names, I also need to stack many short stories together and cut them out. The picture is vast, but it can't show the whole picture of today's mainland, such as? Five evils? , that than? Three evils? What has a deeper impact on the general public has not been touched at all. Of course, it is also limited by the vision of the protagonist in this book. At the same time, my purpose is not to cover everything, but to copy the atmosphere as much as possible. There is no general report here. I only hope that readers can smell a little real life when reading this book.
The reason why I copied her preface is just to say that this kind of writing is very different from the familiar Zhang style writing. The real life mentioned by Zhang Ailing is only two months in northern Jiangsu. For the rural areas in the early days of the People's Republic of China, these two months can not only see the rural areas at this time, but also the rural areas for decades since the Republic of China and even the rural areas in China for hundreds of years. With such a big background, she can't digest an aristocrat who is good at describing personal feelings. After a long time, she still said the original euphemism: "Naked Love" is there? Authorization? It was written under the circumstances, so I am very dissatisfied. Because the outline of the story has been decided, where can the author play?
(4)
Therefore, she was not intoxicated by such a sensational effect of public opinion. She even woke up in a short time. Such a novel should not be written by Zhang Ailing. Judging from her later writing of such novels, she hated her two novels very much.
At this time, all the characters in her dream died, and her own dream came to an end. Leaving China became her only choice. From Hong Kong, she went to America until she died of old age. In a dreamless life, her life is very bleak and embarrassing. Western readers did not continue the enthusiasm of the old Shanghai readers, and the repression between her lines was not what westerners liked.
Helpless and depressed, she watches A Dream of Red Mansions all day and occasionally Biography of Flowers on the Sea. A "Red Chamber", a half-life life, such a secluded life, appeared on her peerless talented woman, which is really a very regrettable thing. Her second marriage, if it can still be called marriage, did not bring her the harbor she hoped to berth. Yala, who is thirty years older than her, only gave her poverty and illness.
Even so, she is lucky, because she can still write, and even make a living from it, so that she won't be jailed for writing.
Su Qing, who stays in Shanghai, has no such freedom. Sima Qian's play, which she wrote for Yin Guifang, a famous Shaoxing opera actor, sent her to Tilanqiao prison. The reason is ridiculous. She asked a letter about Sima Qian written by Professor Jia Zhifang, a famous scholar, and she agreed? Hu Feng Group? Evidence makes her the tenth largest family besides Julian's nine families.
In her later years, Zhang Ailing did not produce her autobiography little reunion, which she mentioned many times. Maybe she didn't write a word. There is no location of Hu Lancheng or Yala in the comparison record, so use photos and simple words to explain. Give up feelings, how should she face life? This is good, too. Some things are better left in my heart and taken to the sky. As a novelist, it is enough for her to have a novel that is still circulating ten years after her death.