Qian Zhongshu, with his cultural accomplishment, astute and energetic personal temperament, makes his satirical novels have a very distinctive and unique personality, forming a satirical art that is both spicy and humorous.
"The art of comedy is to tear up worthless things for people to see"-Lu Xun. Indeed, "Fortress Besieged" tore the hypocritical faces of those with brilliant academic qualifications. Through caricature exaggeration, the work satirizes the intellectual's spiritual dilemma to Fang Hung-chien and a group of people around him, from the bustling Shili Yangchang to the closed San Lv University, revealing the typical social psychology that life is like a besieged city, people outside the city want to rush in and people in the city want to escape.
First, the universality of irony.
Fortress Besieged takes Fang Hung-chien's activities as a clue to satirize all aspects of social life. Fang Hung-chien showed the people and things he met when he returned from studying abroad by constantly escaping from the besieged castle or rushing in. There are many characters in the works: Fang Hung-chien, ignorant of the world, weak and incompetent; Sue, a well-known woman who has set foot in the academic field, takes it as her duty to display her means in love and strive for victory. Mercenary, hypocritical, cunning and cunning, and claiming to safeguard the dignity of education, is actually a bohemian hypocrite Gao Songnian; Li, who is full of benevolence and morality, is actually full of thieves and prostitutes; There are also girls who call names behind their backs and are good at gaining men's feelings by various means, and so on. There are these characters in Fortress Besieged, which really achieves the author's writing purpose: to write the basic roots of a certain kind of "hairless biped".
In the process of displaying the characters, the author lost no time to ridicule and satirize the corruption of officialdom, the incompetence of government, the hypocrisy of academics and the backwardness of society. His brushwork touched the politics, banking, press and business circles of Shili Foreign Exchange, described the ridiculous and despicable life of residents, and also involved the muddy water along the way from Zhejiang to Hunan, a small county in the south of the Yangtze River, exposing the so-called "free zone"-the national university. The author satirizes these social phenomena from a philosophical point of view, thus showing his ruthless mockery of western-style intellectuals in China and his careful examination of China-oriented western civilization. The irony in Fortress Besieged has gone far beyond that society and that era.
Second, the natural expression of irony
The satire in Fortress Besieged has no artificial trace. Its incisive satire is naturally realized through the development of the plot and the detailed description of the sculpture (1), and irony is realized through the development of the plot.
Fortress Besieged, through the description of the story, outlines the funny faces of the characters, vividly exposes the humble souls of the characters, and makes the work receive good comedy effect. For example, a passage describing Fang Hung-chien's return from studying abroad is very wonderful: Fang Hung-chien returned from studying abroad and "returned to his hometown with all his clothes on", and then he was invited by his alma mater to give an academic report on the influence of western culture in the history of China. It's like this: "For hundreds of years in Haitong, there are only two things left in China society, one is opium and the other is syphilis, both of which were absorbed by western civilization in the Ming Dynasty" and "caused by opium". Syphilis is genetically idiotic, crazy and disabled, but it is said to stimulate genius. "Through the description of this plot, the ridiculous image of ignorance and absurdity comes to the fore.
Judging from the whole novel, the author did not make too much comments on Fang Hung-chien and others, but naturally pointed the finger at the personality weakness of people like Fang Hung-chien through the development of the plot, pointing to the cultural environment and social and political environment at that time.
(2) Through the carving of details, it has received excellent satire effect.
Chu Shen Ming, who claimed to hate women the most in his life, was nearsighted and didn't wear glasses because he was afraid of seeing women's faces, and claimed that his human nature was only natural, not animal. But as soon as he talked to Sue, he was so excited that he "slammed his glasses in his nose and fell straight into the milk cup". The vivid description of this detail vividly depicts Chu's hypocritical hypocrite image.
Another example is waiter Liu, who bears a grudge because he didn't ask him for money when Fang lived with Bao. He was surprised to see Fang Hung-chien abandoned by Miss Bao but close to him. He spat and spat into the spittoon. A word "spit" is enough to show the depth of resentment, and a word "shoot" shows the speed and strength, which shows Liu's complicated and emotional actions accumulated for a long time vividly, with both form and spirit.
Such details can be seen everywhere in Fortress Besieged, and it is through these ironic details that the work reveals the ugly phenomenon of society at that time and achieves good irony effect.
Third, the diversity of irony.
The satirical techniques in Fortress Besieged are flexible and varied, and metaphors, allusions, comparisons, inferences and other techniques abound, achieving a perfect satirical effect.
(1), the use of allusions depicts the psychology of the characters and enhances the irony of the article.
Fortress Besieged uses a large number of Chinese and foreign cultures and cultural allusions. From The Book of Songs in China before Qin Dynasty to Tongguang Poems in Qing Dynasty, from Aesop's Fables and Arabian Nights in Greece to American anecdotes and famous French sentences. In addition to literature, it also involves philosophy, religion, art of war, medicine, biology and other knowledge. For example, writing about the skills of controlling subordinates by superiors, learning from foreigners to drive donkeys, hanging a bunch of radishes in front of donkeys and kissing them on the lips, and luring donkeys to go forward desperately, is a wonderful pen by Lena Fox of France. Another example: Fang Hung-chien used Plato's Republic and Confucius to defend himself when he bought a fake diploma. He believes that buying fake diplomas to deceive parents "is also a dutiful son and a good husband should try to support his ambition". With a few Chinese and western allusions, Fang Hung-chien's self-mockery and self-deception psychology is vividly written, and his criticism is strengthened.
(2) To achieve irony through metaphor.
The metaphors in Fortress Besieged have a wide range of sources, are unconventional and have profound philosophical significance. For example, "a person's shortcomings are like a monkey's tail." When a monkey crouches on the ground, its tail is invisible. It won't be offered to the public until it climbs the tree. However, this long tail with red buttocks already exists and is not a new symbol of rising status. " This metaphor with a motto completely mocked and satirized Gao Songnian's bad nature after he climbed to the position of principal.
Another example is that Fang Hung-chien and his party took a bus to Jinhua, and the author wrote that the broken car was full of fun: "This car has been dusty for a long time, so we should celebrate its ancient life. However, during his stay in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, he unexpectedly retired ... Sometimes he was like a big bureaucrat, and sometimes he was as clumsy as a little girl ... He got angry and the driver had to get off the bus and dredge the front of the car for a long time. He picked up a lump of mud by the roadside and invited it to enjoy it. It drank wine. Here, comparing an old car to a flamboyant bureaucrat and a clumsy girl can be described as absurd, fresh and unique. It not only describes the car crash to the fullest, but also makes fun of the ugliness of bureaucrats and girls, so there is a cynicism in the smile.
(3) Repetition enhances the artistry of satire.
Repetition in Fortress Besieged is very characteristic, which contains a bit of wit and humor. For example, Miss Bao, whose works were written after studying abroad, was topless and pretentious. She repeatedly compared her to cooked meat and smoked ham in a deli, "because only a deli will publicly display a lot of warm meat", and borrowed the motto "Truth is naked" to describe Miss Bao's shallow, sensual and bohemian habits incisively and vividly, which made people laugh.
In addition, the author compares irrelevant things together, and finds out the similarities that others can't find among those seemingly unrelated phenomena, thus achieving the ironic effect. For example, write about the phenomenon of rising prices in the Kuomintang-controlled areas: "Prices are like a kite with a broken line and a fairy flying directly from the ground." As soon as Fang Hung-chien walked on the muddy road, he compared the mud scraped by everyone to "the land of corrupt officials". The comparison between "price" and "kite", "shoe mud" and "land" is actually a tortuous way to express the author's hatred and contempt for the dirty society at that time. Although he didn't hit the current situation directly, his irony was also beyond words.
In a word, Fortress Besieged shows us a rich and unique new world with superb irony, a lot of wonderful metaphors and rich knowledge. Behind the novel's unkind ridicule and sarcasm to the society at that time, it also contains the author's longing for life. The novel analyzes the ugliness of the gloomy society at that time, as well as the wretched soul and gray life revealed from it, and achieves the purpose of awakening people who are wandering and struggling in the besieged city, breaking through the besieged city and taking their own new road. Therefore, the novel's progressive ideological tendency and unique satirical art have established its extremely important position in the history of modern novels in China and a milestone in the history of China literature.