Qian Zhongshu's humor and bitterness

Original: Ta Kung Pao Author: Liu Yang

A Qing poet Zhang Chao said in Shadow of Dreams: "Only people are interesting." If we want to recommend China intellectuals who meet this standard, I think Mr. Qian Zhongshu is the most suitable representative. Unlike many Old Master Q who read a lot of poems, he is really a very interesting, humorous and "funny" person. Most people learn this from the wonderful metaphor of Fortress Besieged. In fact, even his two profound academic works, Guanzui Bian and Qin Yi Lu, are full of humor, which can make people who know each other laugh from time to time.

Qian Zhongshu is good at using serious academic arguments to intersperse some jokes and stories to relax your brain and nerves. In Pipe Cone, he quoted the story of "the Monkey King's lewdness", "There is a toilet in the sky", "Eunuch's praise of chastity and camel" and "Du Futong's Latin". A pair of illegitimate children lied to each other after they were born, cursing that "the old things didn't intend to give birth to me at first, but only wanted happiness". Zhuangzi's drum basin was actually because of "a broad-minded life. I don't like dancing ",that is, the story of being finally liberated from henpecked. The protagonist is willing to be the amazing language of the toilet where his sweetheart sits, and the punch line of" harmony in food, gas can't escape ",the joke that the old woman urinates in the sea and talks to herself" no small supplement ",and a donkey in the garden looks at the cabbage cultivated by her feces and complains" You are so bored! "See, I'm just talking? I am meditating. " These little humors are everywhere, which shows that Qian Zhongshu's study life is not boring at all.

Qian Zhongshu is good at dismantling the common phenomenon of ordinary people with a smile, either asking why or giving a funny reason solemnly. It is said that an ugly girl "lives alone and hates the night, while Mo Mu is afraid of the day". He asked: how can people be afraid day and night? Is there a time in the universe that is neither day nor night? Wei Wendi didn't like the lychee that Yang Guifei was greedy later. Qian Zhongshu guessed that "without the flying hand of the world of mortals, the spitter would have become fragrant for one day, discolored for two days and stale for three days". What is particularly wonderful is that he also pointed out that Cao Zhi's seven-step poem is actually a great fortune in misfortune. Fortunately, there is no limit to the number of sentences, and it is no problem to hand in six sentences. If it is stipulated that sixteen sentences must be completed within seven steps, ten Cao Zhi will not be enough. Interesting is interesting, but when you think about it, it's really such a principle.

Many times Qian Zhongshu is keen on teasing the ancients. In his eyes, they are not sages at all, just like brothers and sisters sitting on their own hot kang in winter and chatting at home. He said that there was a writer in the Tang Dynasty who liked to write long inscriptions and was suspected of coveting the manuscript fee. He also said that a line in Ibsen's play can be used as an artistic reference, which is "Winter Melon and Frog Zen"; He also ridiculed that writing "Gouhun" in The Scholars is like "inviting guests to send a list of knowledge"; He believes that Wang Chong's atheism can be described as "goblin theory" in essence; It is also found that many derogatory terms in Chinese characters are accompanied by women. "If Zhou Lao has a ceremony, it will be a shame"; He decided that Qu Yuan's Tian Wen didn't expect a definite answer, but Liu Zongyuan made Tian Dui, forcing the former to death in the name of "satire", just as Grandpa let Sun Zifu share the rewards; He also laughed at Huang Tingjian's misunderstanding of the lost dog as a stray dog. He is afraid of mosquito bites, but he firmly believes that if Su Shi is a good sleeper, "flying mosquitoes can still shake their stomachs and snore"; He also ridiculed Wang Anshi, saying that when Wang wrote an article, he was full of political reforms and removed the quips of his predecessors, which led to "taking care of him and not coming back for a long vacation"; He laughed at Hao Yuan's grandiloquence that "northerners don't accept the complaints of Jiangxi people" and asked him to secretly learn from Jiangxi School, which happened to be ruthlessly retaliated by another grandiloquence of this person, "Qu Nong's eyes are big". Yuan Mei praised the tolerance of celebrities and newcomers at the bottom of the pen, also known as "Song Jiang in the timely rain". Extremely smart and lively.

Some of his humorous jokes are simply original and naive. For example, after he quoted the story that Tian Dan's fire bull array set fire to the oxtail, he immediately quoted the story in Hannibal, set fire to the horn and rushed out of the Roman army. Then he sat still and muttered, "There must be someone who can talk." I looked at it straight and couldn't help laughing.

Naturally, humor is a sign of cleverness. Just a moment's silence not only shows the acrimony of satirizing the world, but also injects a refreshing agent into the plain life, which is beneficial to people's minds and refreshing. However, cleverness and meanness are often only one step away. When a person is smart, the humor that comes out of his mouth can easily become mean, or to put it bluntly, it hurts others. Just as Lin Daiyu, a girl from Suzhou, teased Granny Liu as a "mother locust", Qian Zhongshu, a gifted scholar from Wuxi, also likes to give people nicknames, even at the expense of making several harmless metaphors.

He sarcastically said that although the poems written by Qing Dynasty poet Qian Zai were masculine, they were spineless, just like "a fat old woman, her skin was raw and wrinkled". If the money family were alive to hear this, it would be strange not to vomit blood. He felt that the monks in the Tang Dynasty picked up the theory of Zen without scrutiny, just like a "wife's tongue", which was really annoying. Han Yu is finally a literate sect, isn't it? Qian Zhongshu didn't buy it, saying that he always went back on his word just after he finished. "A horse is like a donkey." Mei Yao Chen is finally everyone in the Northern Song Dynasty, right? Qian Zhongshu did not try to please him, saying that his poems based on words were "not enough to cook porridge with square meters, but only to cook soup with dry rice". He also simply described the "plate weight" of Han Fu as "making solid steamed bread with fermented flour". He mocked a person who learned badly from Li Bai, but only "ate dead beef", and commented on those scholars who tried to read the Book of Songs through the Analects of Confucius, as if "jumping off the beam". He satirized the textual research methods such as whether Yuhuan was a virgin when she entered the palace, saying that there was no difference between that kind of literature research and the "curtain story", and ridiculed her naive idea that she had no right to comment on her works unless she was an author, which was tantamount to saying that "she could not be a veterinarian if she was not a horse, a cow or a dog". He also made strict arrangements, believing that some Buddhists and Taoists invariably pursued the immortal ways of Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. Wait, wait. We will feel that this kind of humor is different from the humor mentioned above. To be fair, after all, it seems a bit mean, and to some extent it can be called the same strain as the style of Fortress Besieged.

Qian Zhongshu's Humor

Jiang Yang told an interesting story about Qian Zhongshu in Six Chapters of Cadre School: During the Cultural Revolution, several "rebels" jointly posted a poster condemning Qian Zhongshu's "contempt for leadership", based on a sentence Qian Zhongshu said. "People who know a little will say: If money wants to say these words, it must be jokingly said. This tone is not like. " Qian Zhongshu's words are silent.

Qian Zhongshu's articles are famous for their profundity, but they also have two other characteristics: cold wit and intriguing humor; His humor is often expressed by unique one-liners In his novel Fortress Besieged, these examples abound. For example, he wrote that girls' shyness and blushing are "as contagious as yawning or stuttering, and the situation is very sticky, just like walking in the mud in rubber shoes and stepping on it can't pull it out." Another example is that he wrote that Fang Hung-chien (a famous professor) did not call the roll in class. "In the second week, he found that seven or eight of the more than 50 students were absent. These empty seats are like a mouth full of teeth, leaving a hole that makes him very uncomfortable. "

Qian Zhongshu visited the United States the year before last and met with Xia Zhiqing. When Xia asked about the experience of the Cultural Revolution, he said that he had gained something, because for a time, he went to the Marxism-Leninism Institute every day to study Marxism-Leninism, so he "found an original German version of the Letters of Marx and Engels to read, read it with relish, and claimed to have discovered Marx's sexual life." (See Xia Zhiqing's documentary Farewell to Qian Zhongshu). It's a pity that Xia Zhiqing didn't ask him what he found. This is another example of money humor.

Jiang Yang's "interesting story" also includes "The following". She is Qian Zhongshu's wife. When she saw the poster, she was furious and said, "Catch the wind and catch the shadow. You can't plant people like this for no reason. " So the husband and wife drew up a small poster and put it under the big poster to investigate. "But afterwards, I know that those posters are well-founded. Someone reported that money had said such a thing. This report is obviously unconfirmed and entered the file. " Although there was no evidence, Qian Zhongshu was forced to do a "self-examination" and Jiang Yang was "really beaten" for it. This "below" is not very interesting.

talk and laugh cheerfully/merrily

Qian Zhongshu

Since the promotion of humorous literature, selling jokes has become a career of literati. Of course, humor is vented through laughter, but laughter does not necessarily represent humor. Liu Yang Guang's Miscellaneous Notes says, "Donkeys sound like utensils and laugh." Horses are not famous for their humor. Maybe their faces are too long. To tell the truth, most people's laughter is only equivalent to A?vagho?a's rustling, and it can't be full of humor.

It seems that Aristotle was the first to distinguish humor from man and beast. He said in Zoology: "Man is the only animal that can laugh." The modern man W.s.Blunt has a sonnet of Laughter and Death, which briefly states that nature, like birds and animals, is full of emotions and fears, and all sounds are appropriate except humorous laughter. However, if laughter is to express humor, it can only be regarded as waste or luxury, because not all human beings need to laugh. The sound of animals is enough to express the feelings of ordinary people. Anger makes the lion roar, sorrow makes the ape crow, and argument makes the frog noisy. Meet an enemy like a dog barking, meet a lover like a pigeon cooing. How many people really have humor and need to laugh to show it? However, the creator has publicly distributed the ability to laugh to all mankind, so that he can smile on his face and laugh in the noise; It would be a pity not to use this skill. Therefore, ordinary people laugh not because of humor, but to cover up their own humor. The original intention of laughing gradually lost; What was originally humorous has gradually become a cover for poor humor. So you see the dull smile of fools, the funny smile of blind people-and popular humorous literature.

Laughter is the fastest flowing expression, which extends from the eyes to the edge of quarrel. Dong Fangshuo's "The Wonders of Dongye" contains Dong's "Missing in the Pot" and "Laughing in Heaven". Zhang Hua noticed that the smile in the sky was lightning, which was a very clever imagination. According to LadyHolland's memory, Deneys once said, "Lightning is God's wit." Laughter can really be said to be lightning on a person's face, eyes suddenly brighten, and teeth shine between lips and kisses. We can't resist lightning to replace the hanging sun and moon, so we can't turn laughter into a fixed and collective expression. The humor produced by advocacy must be man-made humor. This mechanized smile, like the teeth of a skeleton, is not a smart gesture of the living. Bergson's "On Laughter" says that all absurdity begins with flexible things becoming rigid and vivid behaviors becoming mechanical. Therefore, the monotonous words and actions that came back provoked laughter, like stuttering, like oral idioms, like children deliberately imitating adults. Old men are often more ridiculous than young people, just because old men are not as active as young people, just a series of rigid habits. Humor can't be advocated, that's why. Once advocated, what naturally emerges becomes imitation, and what remains unchanged becomes rigidity. This kind of humor itself is the material of humor, and this kind of smile itself is ridiculous. A person with a real sense of humor has a different understanding. A person laughs happily and coldly, taking a breath for a boring life. Maybe hundreds of years later, thousands of miles away, there will be another person who will never betray his heart and smile at each other across the river bank of time and space. If a large group of people, laughing and relaxing their voices, make an appointment and laugh in droves, it can only be regarded as a series of funny meetings in the amusement park. The promotion of domestic products has even joined the anti-counterfeiting, not to mention humor can not be mass-produced. Therefore, after the promotion of humor, there were no humorous writers, but countless little faces with pen and ink were added. Hanging up the humorous signboard, Xiaohua's worth certainly increased greatly, leaving the theater and mixing in the literary and art circles; On the other hand, after pretending to be a little face, the humorous character is reduced, and more than half of literature and art can only be regarded as "entertainment". Small face also makes us laugh, not bad! But he is completely different from a truly humorous person. A truly humorous person can laugh, so we laugh with him. It's funny to pretend to be humorous, and we smile at him. Small face makes us laugh, not because he has humor, but because we have humor ourselves.

Therefore, humor is a temper at most, and it can never be labeled as an opinion, let alone a profession. Let's not forget that humor in Latin means flowing; In other words, humor is made of water, just like women in Jia Baoyu's mind. Think of humor as a consistent doctrine or a life-long food and clothing rice bowl, that is, liquid condenses into solid, and biology makes specimens. Is a person with a real sense of humor. If he wants to laugh for a living, his works are not very good. For example, Mark Twain, since the end of the 18th century, Germans like humor, but the more they talk about it, the more irrelevant it becomes. Just because Germans are a sausage-making people, they mistakenly think that humor, like minced meat, can be packaged into ready-made spiritual food. Humor reduces the seriousness of life and never takes oneself seriously. True humor can laugh at itself. It is not only a humorous outlook on life, but also a humorous outlook on humor itself. Advocating humor as a slogan and standard is lack of humor; This is not humor, this is serious propaganda humor, and the face is persuaded to laugh. We are reminded of A?vagho?a Sasha Vujacic again! It sounds like a smile, but there is no smile on the horse's face, and it is still long, like a friend who died after the memorial service and an advanced master on the podium.

Generally speaking, there are two motives for pretending something. Or out of respect, such as vulgar things respect art, they collect bones, which is arty. Or out of exploitation, such as the attempt of bad people, they pretend to be gentlemen with religious morality. Humor is borrowed. I can't think of these two reasons. However, fakes can't be true after all. In western idioms, people who laugh loudly are called "silver smiles". False humor is like counterfeit money mixed with lead, which makes a dull sound and can only be regarded as a lead smile. But "silver smile" may be the profit of selling laughter, and there is silver in the smile, just like saying "there is a golden house in the book"; Gubei said that it is for the reference of the lyricist.

On Qian Zhongshu's Humor Kong Dong Qing from a Joke.

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Qian Zhongshu's Humor

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