one
In Kong Yiji, Lu Xun pays great attention to describing the typical environment of the protagonist's activities. This environment has a strong local color and a strong flavor of the times. At the beginning of the work, the narrator took the reader to the tragic and dark era at the end of the nineteenth century. More than 20 years ago, I was a boy of 12 years old and worked as a waiter in a hotel. Through his narration, the work shows the living environment of the protagonist who is about to appear. Here, the layout of the hotel is a large arc counter facing the street, which is always ready for hot water and warm wine; The next wine is fennel with salted bamboo shoots. These details give the environment depicted in the work a strong local color. The layout of the hotel, the method of warming wine and the side dishes served are unique to the author's hometown Shaoxing.
The rural environment described in the works always exudes a strong flavor of the times. People can clearly see that there are obviously two kinds of customers in the hotel: one is the "short coat gang" who works hard all day, and can only stand outside the cabinet and drink a bowl of wine, while those rich customers who are good at dancing with long sleeves swagger into the house next to the store and ask for wine and drink it slowly. Here, people are dominated by the feudal norms of inferiority and hierarchy. In the hotel, the shopkeeper is mercenary and tries his best to soak water in the wine, which causes serious supervision of the drinkers; The shopkeeper treated the boy with a fierce face, which made him afraid to laugh and be lively, but he was afraid to dismiss him because of his kindness. These descriptions vividly and truly reproduce the dirty and suffocating social atmosphere at that time. In addition, in Lu Xun's artistic description, even the change of wine price-from four coppers to ten coppers per bowl of wine-reveals the trend of social and economic depression at that time in a tortuous way.
In the novel Kong Yiji, the environment described by the author is distinct and unique. No matter the local color or the flavor of the times, it is not generalized in the works, but reflected through the unique scene of "this one" carefully selected and described by the author. In other words, the author vividly describes the specific locations and scenes he chose, such as Luzhen and Xianheng Hotel, and creates a typical environment with both local color and flavor of the times for the protagonist's activities. At the same time, we believe that in addition to the specific scenes, the unique environment is mainly composed of various characters around the protagonist and various relationships with the protagonist. In Kong Yiji, there are greedy shopkeepers, indifferent drinkers, naive children, cruel ding, kind waiters and so on. That constitutes a specific network that is not found in other works, and only exists inside and outside the counter of Xianheng Hotel in Luzhen. These characters are all connected with the protagonist Kong Yiji in one way or another, thus becoming the environment surrounding the protagonist, prompting him to act and influencing his fate. At this specific time and place, the social interaction of specific people also contains strong local color and flavor of the times.
Integrating the flavor of the times and local colors into the unique, individual and concrete description of life scenes and the relationship between characters, thus providing a unique and living stage for the protagonist, which is the basic feature of Lu Xun's description of typical environment in Kong Yiji.
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The artistic image of Kong Yiji, the hero, was created by Mr. Lu Xun in his works. Kong Yi was a lower-class intellectual in the late Qing Dynasty, and the tragic road he took was typical among some intellectuals at that time.
Kong Yiji's tragedy is a tragedy in which an excellent scholar was fooled or even destroyed by the feudal thought he sincerely believed in and the imperial examination system he wholeheartedly supported.
We know that in the long feudal social history of our country, in order to win over intellectuals, the ruling class always tried to instill in them ideas such as "Zhu Zigui knows everything", "All scholars are inferior, only reading is high" and "books have their own golden houses". How many intellectuals are fascinated by these fascinating soups. At the same time, in order to lure intellectuals to serve the feudal ruling class, the imperial examination system has become an important way to take officials since the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Therefore, in feudal society, many scholars took "learning to be an official" as their life goal and regarded the imperial examination as a stepping stone. They have endured decades of hardships with the spirit of hanging beams and stabbing stocks, reflecting snow and catching fireflies, betting their fate on gambling in imperial examinations year after year, and running desperately in the dead end delineated by the feudal ruling class. However, among these literati, although a few climbed up, thus honoring their ancestors and becoming great men, for the vast majority of intellectuals, after many struggles, they sacrificed their years as beautiful as flowers and pure as jade, and the youth of the rising sun got snow-covered, remain uncorrupted, and live in poverty.
Kong Yiji belongs to the latter type of intellectuals. As a scholar in feudal society, he believed in the theory of "reading is the highest" advocated by the rulers, and even showed a religious attitude. This can not help but make his whole soul saturated with the influence of this thought and theory, and always show it in his own speech and action. Because he believes that "reading is high", he is used to quoting ancient books and classics everywhere to show that he has read books, so his words are bookish. "When he talks to people, he is always full of big words, which makes people half understand." When he was too poor to eat, he quoted the phrase "a gentleman is poor" to comfort himself in the face of children who wanted to eat his fennel beans. He even used "how much?" "The language of cliche answer, not too many jokes. At the same time, it is this idea of "only reading high" that makes him unwilling to take off his "dirty and torn gown, as if he had not mended or washed it for more than ten years" anyway. Because in his view, the gown is a sign that a scholar is different from the "short coat gang" workers, and it can also be used to calculate the future "Zhu Zigui", so he stubbornly refuses to take it off. However, the poor life made it impossible for him to become a long-sleeved customer who could wander into the house next to the shop. As a result, Kong Yiji has to be an exception in the customer classification of Xianheng Hotel, that is, "the only one who drinks standing and wears a gown".
Although Kong Yiji can't be a real gown guest, he always shows reserve and pride as a scholar. Kong Yiji, who failed repeatedly in the imperial examination, is so complacent, swaggering and gentle at this time, which is still his capital to show off. What's more, when someone publicly exposed the fact that Kong Yiji was hanged for stealing books from home, Kong Yiji would argue: "Stealing books is not stealing … stealing books! ..... how can you steal the matter of a scholar? " Historically, people once called book thieves "elegant thieves". In Kong Yiji's view, stealing books is also a nobler act than stealing other things, because it is a nobler "scholar's business" than others. From the artistic description of his works, we can see that no matter how poor his life is, how lonely his heart is and how miserable his situation is, Kong Yiji always thinks that the scholar is superior, so he refuses to put down the shelf of the scholar and abandon his sincere belief in the theory that "only reading is high".
At the same time, a scholar like Kong Yiji, who is deeply poisoned by feudal thoughts, must undoubtedly choose the life path of "learning to be excellent and becoming an official". No wonder someone asked him, "Why can't you even get half a scholar?" Problem, "Kong Yiji immediately show signs of depression, a layer of gray on his face", and some of the words he said, all of them are so, it is really incomprehensible. Yes! What else in the world will sting the heart of this tried and tested superstitious scholar?
However, in feudal society, there were very few intellectuals who could really climb the status of the ruling class. Kong Yiji, like more intellectuals, has the same fate. For them, high-ranking officials and rich people are just cakes painted on the wall and illusions in dreams. He has never even been able to squeeze into the ranks of real dress customers. However, the feudal system brought spiritual and physical scars to its heartfelt supporters and devout believers.
Kong Yiji ran all his life on the road of imperial examination. Decades of cold windows and countless competitions ruined all his youth. But he didn't go to school in the end, and even the scholar didn't get in. What he got was a full face of wrinkles and a "messy gray beard". Even so, he is full of dirty words and revels in "learning" such as "there are four ways to answer words"; But in life, his prejudice of "unable to make a living" and "everything is inferior to people" made him develop the same bad temper, that is, "lazy to drink and lazy to do things". Because he despises labor and is not diligent, he has lost the ability to live independently.
At the same time, it should be pointed out that it is this feudal system and feudal ideology that destroyed and destroyed Kong Yiji's body and life. Because this scholar maintains a religious superstition about the theory of "only reading is high", it is impossible to realize that intellectuals belong to different classes and classes in feudal society, so he blindly believes that as long as they are scholars, they are all superior "gentlemen" with knowledge and morality. From this understanding, when there is a livelihood problem, he doesn't go to a retreat to steal a few radishes like Ah Q, but looks for a scholar to steal books. In his view, whether a thief or a stolen person is just an elegant affair between literati, it is the same as general theft. But in fact, this is just an illusion created by Kong Yiji himself. Take Ding, who is also a scholar, for example. He doesn't think so. The landlord who has read many poems treats those who steal from him, whether you are a scholar or not. Without exception, he showed a ferocious face. He asked Kong Yiji to write a reply first, and then he started fighting. "He fought in the middle of the night and then broke his leg." .
Kong Yiji sincerely believed in the feudal ideology advocated by the ruling class and wholeheartedly supported the imperial examination system, but what he got from it was indelible mental and physical scars. What a profound tragedy this is. It should be said that Kong Yiji felt the pain of being fooled and cheated from his tragic life experience. When he came to Xianheng Hotel for the last time, readers could see the ripple of this feeling in the hero's heart. Although he didn't completely break the reader's sense of superiority and had to "break" it to cover up the real reason for his broken leg, Kong Yiji's decadent expression and dim eyes reflected his disillusionment with the belief of "only reading high" and his hidden pain of being fooled and cheated. But from Kong Yiji's sad eyes, people can never find the spark of rebellion and anger. This scholar, who was devastated by feudal society all his life, didn't have the courage to shout out the voice of protest; So, he had to sit, walk slowly with those clay hands and disappear silently from the world.
In his novel Kong Yiji, Lu Xun also exposed the cruel cannibalism in feudal society to some extent through the tragedy that Kong Yiji, a lower-class intellectual, was destroyed by feudal system. All Kong Yiji's experiences and his tragic ending strongly show that this kind scholar was also swallowed up by the feudal system. Lu Xun denied Kong Yiji's humble life path in his works, but also expressed deep sympathy for his unfortunate fate.
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If the writing intention of "Kong Yiji" is only to expose the fool and harm of the feudal imperial examination system to intellectuals through the tragic experience of the protagonist, I am afraid it is not completely in line with Lu Xun's original intention of conceiving this work.
So, what was Lu Xun's real intention in writing Kong Yiji? 19 19 When New Youth published Kong Yiji in April, the author wrote a postscript at the end of the article. He said modestly, "This clumsy novel was written last winter. The meaning at that time was only to describe society or a kind of life, so please read it, and there is no other deep meaning. " However, what kind of life does the author want to describe in society? There is no explanation in this postscript. However, we can still get some news from the memory of Sun Fuyuan, a student of Lu Xun. According to Sun Fuyuan, he once heard Lu Xun talk about his motivation, background and art of writing novels. As for Kong Yiji, "the author's main intention is to describe cool thin who suffered in the general society".
Cool thin, a bad karma native in society, was a problem that made Lu Xun feel sad and indignant for a long time. As early as the beginning of this century, when Lu Xun was studying in Japan, he often discussed with his friend Xu Shoushang, "What do China people lack most?" At that time, they came to the conclusion that "what our nation lacks most is sincerity and love". In Lu Xun's view, this lack of love is often manifested in the numbness of the common people's spirit, thus taking an indifferent and bystander attitude towards the unfortunate.
In the short story Kong Yiji, the tragic fate of the protagonist is in sharp contrast with the bursts of laughter of drinkers and others. How can Kong Yi, full of tears and sadness, always be associated with happy laughter? However, it is through the profound revelation of the contradiction between the protagonist and his activity environment and the vivid description of the laughter that is extremely incompatible with the fate of the characters that Lu Xun has completed the exposure and criticism of the cruel and thin writing intention of the general society.
Kong Yi is already a tragic figure who has been deceived, fooled and even destroyed in spirit and body by his own feudal thoughts and imperial examination system. However, this miserable lower-class scholar can't get the sympathy and pity of people inside and outside the Xianheng Hotel in Luzhen. On the contrary, his rough experience has become a "drama" that people talk about, and his unfortunate fate has become a joke for people after dinner. In his works, Lu Xun reveals the fact that people who enjoy Kong Yiji's misfortune are not individual or few, but very common and universal. You see, "As soon as Kong Yiji arrived at the store, all the drinkers looked at him and smiled". It turns out that the customers of Xianheng Hotel seem to be graded, including rich customers wearing long gowns and poor workers wearing short coats. They don't usually drink together. However, their attitude towards Kong Yiji is basically the same. "All Drinkers" played Kong Yiji as a joke. When Kong Yiji came to Xianheng Hotel, they would tease the scholar wearing a dirty and torn gown with an unscrupulous clamor, just like playing with something that can make people happy. At this time, both short-sleeved and long-sleeved customers will be immersed in a frenzy of drunken laughter, so "the air inside and outside the store is filled with joy" and the drinkers will be temporarily satisfied. Similarly, in Xianheng Hotel, the relationship between the owner and the waiter is not harmonious. The shopkeeper always puts on a lost face for the waiter at ordinary times, which makes people look lively. However, as long as Kong Yiji arrives at the store, this freezing situation will change. Not only will the shopkeeper keep asking questions to amuse Kong Yiji and "make people laugh", but the waiter can also echo the smile at these times. "The shopkeeper will never blame", and they seem to agree on Kong Yiji's teasing for the time being. In addition, the work also describes a group of children near Xianheng Hotel. Although I am not a drinker, I sometimes come to "catch the excitement and surround Kong Yiji". Kong Yiji is also a funny joke in children's minds. His fennel words and deeds made "this group of children separate in laughter." Luzhen, where Kong Yiji lives, is such a society: his family hanged him, Ding broke his leg, and the general public, whether customers in robes or workers in short robes, shopkeepers or waiters, adults or children, never expressed sympathy for his misfortune, but just laughed and laughed. The author points out bitterly that this indifference and cool thin, like the cold in the severe winter, are so common and pervasive in the whole society.
On the other hand, in Kong Yiji, Lu Xun also emphasized the cruelty of society to cool thin. The author mainly describes three times that people in Xianheng Hotel laughed at Kong Yiji. The first time, because Kong Yiji stole some books, he was hanged and got a new scar on his face. After this incident was exposed, Kong Yiji also defended that "stealing books is not stealing", thus "causing everyone to laugh; Inside and outside the store is full of happy air "; The second time, the drinker asked, "Why can't you even get half a scholar?" That stung Kong Yiji's heart, caused Kong Yiji's depression and anxiety, and said something completely incomprehensible, so "everyone laughed: the store was full of happy air inside and outside"; The third time, it has been interrupted by Ding. When he came to Xianheng Hotel again, he wore a shabby jacket and sat cross-legged on a long stick. His face was dark and thin, and he always showed pleading eyes when teasing people. But even at this time, people still make fun of and laugh at him again and again. Finally, he sat with his hands behind his back and walked slowly "in the laughter of others" and left Xianheng Hotel forever. It is obvious from these three "laughter" that people take Kong Yiji's misfortune as the material to make fun of. People made fun of Kong Yiji because he was injured. Amuse; Kong Yiji's desperate inner pain has also become the material for people to make fun of; Even when Kong Yiji's spirit and body were greatly destroyed, he became a cripple, and his life was about to be exhausted, people still did not relax him, and he was still the object of ridicule. Kong Yiji seems to be a skinned sheep in a sheep store, and any pain of his can make the spectators happy and satisfied with their mouths open. However, how cruel cool thin on earth is, taking the unfortunate people as the object of ridicule and turning the pain of others into the material for fun!
It can be seen that in Kong Yiji, Lu Xun not only shows the general society's cool thin to the suffering people, but also reveals its universality and cruelty, which makes the novel more thought-provoking.
Kong Yiji's layout and artistic expression are also subject to the author's creative intention. The works are directly described from the front, and most of them are scenes in which people in Xianheng Hotel laugh at Kong Yiji; As for He Jia's beating Kong Yiji, the plot of Ding's interrupting Kong Yiji's leg is only described indirectly from the side and handled behind the scenes. It can be seen that the author's pen focuses on the mentally numb spectators. Even if Kong Yiji's leg is broken, the author puts it in the atmosphere where the shopkeeper is slowly settling accounts and the drinker is coldly narrating while drinking. As for Kong Yiji's death, in his works, he remembers that "Kong Yiji still owes nineteen dollars!" And hints. In the shopkeeper's opinion, nineteen dollars (less than five bowls of wine) is more important than Kong Yiji's life!
In the same year that Lu Xun wrote Kong Yiji, he wrote at the end of his famous paper My Virtue: "We mourned the people in the past and made a wish: to get rid of the meaningless pain in life. It is necessary to remove coma and rape that create and enjoy the pain of others. " What Lu Xun showed in all his artistic descriptions of Kong Yiji was not entirely the exposure and criticism of the rape of the feudal system that caused others' suffering and the coma of the world that enjoyed others' suffering.
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An important reason why Lu Xun especially likes Kong Yiji is that he thinks novels are "leisurely and comfortable". As we all know, Lu Xun is extremely strict about the art of his works. For example, in a letter dated 19 19 April 16, he said: "The Diary of a Madman is very naive and too pushy. According to art, it should not be "[8]. For another example, in his conversation with Sun Fuyuan, he once said that he was not completely satisfied with the art of medicine and thought it was "short of breath//"(Shaoxing dialect). This is also roughly the meaning of "overexert". However, for Kong Yiji, Lu Xun thinks that there is no artistic compulsion, but "leisurely".
Kong Yiji used less than 3,000 words, but he portrayed the protagonist's activity environment, showed his life course, portrayed the characters' distinctive personality characteristics, and showed the indifference of the people around him to the protagonist. Moreover, such a rich content in the work is clearly arranged, dense and comfortable, and there will be no feeling of crowding and urging when reading. What an amazing feat! Then, what artistic means did Lu Xun use to open up such a vast capacity for a short space? And by what artistic means did you achieve the state of "peace"? These are also worth discussing.
First of all, Lu Xun chose an ideal artistic angle to reflect life in Kong Yiji. Real life is very complicated and infinitely rich, and it is impossible to reproduce it in a limited space. In this way, how to choose an expression angle that can absorb the life picture to the greatest extent has become a problem that the author of the novel must seriously think about. In the novel Kong Yiji, Lu Xun skillfully used Xianheng Hotel and its minions to show what happened in life. Both the local customs of Luzhen and the unfortunate experience of Kong Yiji are reflected in the eyes of the narrator of the story, the waiter of Xianheng Hotel. This is the artistic angle that the author chooses to absorb life. It should be said that this choice is extremely successful. On the one hand, the author mainly arranges the protagonist's activities in Xianheng Hotel, which is not only in line with Kong Yiji's identity of "drinking like a dog, being lazy by nature", but also easy to show the attitude of the whole society towards Kong Yiji, a bitter scholar. In the old society, hotels were gathering places for leisure drinkers. These people come from all directions, with different identities and well-informed information. In their gossip, we can introduce the protagonist who is not directly described in the works naturally and without any trace, and get together again and again to ridicule Kong Yiji, which is more convenient for the author to express cool thin's creative intention of social suffering, because to some extent, hotels are the epitome of society at that time. If you change the scene, I am afraid it is impossible to achieve such a good effect. On the other hand, Kong Yiji's experience was observed and described by the waiter in this hotel. Boys have a low status, and Lian Xiao is not qualified at ordinary times. Only Kong Yiji can laugh when he gets to the store. Even humble teenagers can make fun of him at will, which highlights Kong Yiji's low status. At the same time, this naive and kind little guy realized through his own observation: "Kong Yiji is such a happy person, but without him, others will live like this." Even children as young as 12 can see this. Then, isn't Kong Yiji's treatment as a plaything and the indifference he suffered from the world suffocating? In addition, after Kong Yiji disappeared from Xianheng Hotel forever, people forgot him, and the only one who missed him was this little guy, which strongly reflected the insensitivity of the whole society to the suffering people. It can be seen that the little buddy not only plays a role in telling stories, but also plays a role in setting off the protagonist and his experience. In short, because the author chose an excellent perspective of life, both the hotel scene and the waiter's dictation can achieve the effect of taking one as ten, greatly expanding the capacity of the work.
Secondly, when shaping the artistic image of the protagonist Kong Yiji, Lu Xun is good at carefully extracting the most typical details from the living materials, thus vividly portraying the characters. The author firmly grasps a typical detail "Kong Yiji is the only one who drinks and wears a gown standing", and also grasps the core of the whole character. This detail contains a very rich content: Kong Yiji originally belonged to the long-sleeved class who could sit in the store and drink, but because of his poor economic situation, he had no strength to associate with long-sleeved customers, so he had to stand outside the cabinet and drink with those short-sleeved gangs; However, the deep-rooted feudal thought of "only reading is high" in his mind made him wear a tattered gown when he was down and out to show his status as a scholar, so that he became a special customer of Xianheng Hotel who stood drinking but wore a gown. This typical detail captured by the author can roughly reflect Kong Yiji's bumpy experience and mental outlook, so this detail is of key significance to the portrayal of the whole artistic image, just like the focus of light and the theme of music. At the same time, Lu Xun also outlined Kong Yiji's life track in his works, and through several specific events: Kong Yiji was ridiculed and ridiculed by drinkers in Xianheng Hotel; Kong Yiji asked the hotel waiter four ways to write back words; Kong Yiji's leg was broken for stealing Ding's things, etc. Described the real activities and experiences of the hero in detail. These narratives and descriptions are undoubtedly very important for shaping the image of Kong Yiji. Only in this way can the characters be vividly and stereoscopically presented to the readers. However, thanks to the typical detail of "drinking and wearing a robe" skillfully condensed from all Kong Yiji's life experiences, it can play a more "finishing touch" role in shaping the whole artistic image. Therefore, capturing and depicting the "eyes" of artistic images sensitively and accurately can also achieve the artistic effect of taking one as ten.
Thirdly, in Kong Yiji's creation, Lu Xun had a perfect overall conception of this short story. This complete artistic conception is developed according to the following three lines: first, Kong Yiji cherishes the gown that marks the reader's identity most, and he is unwilling to take it off when it is worn out, but he still looks down on those short clothes, but the poor life finally makes him lose the gown and finally put on the "broken jacket" of short clothes; Second, when Kong Yiji was standing outside the counter of Xianheng Hotel, he envied those drinkers who could "sit and drink slowly", but he could never enter the store and sit down to drink. However, he was later interrupted by Master Juren and went to Xianheng Hotel to buy wine for the last time. This time, he finally sat down to drink, but instead of sitting in the private room next door, he sat on a straw bag hanging on his shoulder and drank a bowl of wine handed to him by the waiter. Third, Kong Yiji usually buys wine in cash at Xianheng Hotel, never defaults or keeps accounts. He must pay it off in January and erase his name from the chalk board. But the feudal society buried everything about him, and he finally had to leave this world with a debt of $ kloc-0/9 that could never be repaid. It can be seen that from wearing a long gown to wearing a short coat, from standing to sitting, never being in debt to being in debt forever, this is the author's whole conception of character description and plot development. This extremely ingenious artistic conception profoundly summarizes the tragic changes that Kong Yiji experienced in his life. At the same time, for the whole work, these clues are like the veins in the body and the ropes on the fishing net. With them, the countless life phenomena described in the work have a clue, and the work has become a perfect artistic whole. Moreover, this method of grasping the pulse and lifting the rope can also achieve an artistic effect.
Paying attention to choosing an ideal artistic angle to reflect life, concentrating on depicting the "eyes" of artistic images, and being good at grasping the perfect clues of artistic conception may be the secret of this short story Kong Yiji, which has profound and broad capacity and can reach the artistic realm of "carefree".