Diaphragm is to Ye Shengtao what weeds are to Lu Xun. They are all "monologues", crossing the society, crossing the characters, crossing their own obvious style, retreating into the secret heart, asking for no response, no resonance and no recognition. They just want to simply record their tangled thoughts, let them drip from the pen and stay on the paper as memories they once had.
When reading Diaphragm, we can't see how far the situation it describes is from us, except for the words of "recording a film", "your son" and "bowing". On the contrary, it seems that we can easily enter the writer's heart and deeply understand his mood and feelings he wants to express. The same feeling between us and him has not disappeared because of the long creative era. Because of similar empathic distress and confusion, we have also been entangled in each of us. The feeling of the diaphragm is connected with us, which is the deep reason why it can still impress readers after more than 80 years. The article is not long, almost all of it is narrated by the narrator. Only in the generalization of the environment, three scenes are simply outlined to support the framework of the short story. As for the specific plot, there is no wave, no connection, and no subtitle. author
The opening self-report laid the tone and theme of the whole article. So this is a novel that doesn't look like a novel and can be classified as prose. Because if the three scenes in the article are roughly taken out or replaced, and the characters and dialogues involved are taken out, the theme and tone of the article will not be affected at all, and it will still be established, but it will become a veritable prose, which is too far from the novel genre. Such an eccentric novel is rare not only in the 1920s, but also in the whole modern literature.
The three scenes intercepted by the author are "meeting"-relatives' study, "drinking"-friends' dining room, "leisure gathering"-noisy teahouse, and three basic social relationships are extracted from the complex social network system: one is the blood relationship that one cannot control and choose, the other is the familiar relationship that can take care of each other in life, and the third is the stranger relationship that has nothing to do with each other. The three kinds of relationships are given by God's will, and they are optional, so it is hard to call them relationships. They can contain almost all communications in the world. Although they have their own different expressions and shades, they can't be absolutely compared, but they give the narrator an unusually similar feeling, that is, the diaphragm. How did you meet? It's just that you have to answer me as scheduled. Polite greetings are stylized but can't be omitted. Find some irrelevant questions to cover up the embarrassment and fill the silence, but the speaker just said, as if he had done his duty of discharging his responsibility, so he didn't concentrate on listening to the respondent's response, turned a deaf ear, and the respondent was indifferent and tasteless. Communication is blocked in embarrassment, just like a river with a dam built in the middle, and the waves only hover in their own small range. What about the banquet? Raising a glass and chatting with people you don't know, even if you push a cup for a change, is just a kind of insincere entertainment, so each has his own heart and is insincere. In crowded and noisy public places, greeting each other and talking loudly, seemingly close friendship, actually don't care about each other. No one will find out, and no one will be surprised if there are more. Everyone is warm and bored. The three scenes can be summed up as the ubiquitous diaphragm and the ubiquitous loneliness, which is really unbearable.
The Diaphragm describes the absurd situation of human beings and a helpless way of existence in daily life. The diaphragm is also a helpless situation that people can't get rid of. Although we are in the bustling crowd, we don't know each other, don't care about each other, don't care about each other, and don't mean anything to each other. Others, like themselves in others' eyes, just become an insignificant, monotonous and empty action symbol. Man is such a lonely and helpless animal isolated from himself. This sense of alienation that is close at hand but far away is frightening. People have to face troubles and difficulties and avoid contact with groups. Is it not a desperate situation in a desperate situation, a struggle in a struggle?
Diaphragm is a wall between people, and the wall built by people for self-defense has become an insurmountable diaphragm. People become obstacles, encumbrances or dangerous goods to each other in the world. Everyone is on guard against danger, but they have a high degree of tacit understanding in keeping each other's distance, and consciously and voluntarily deepen and lengthen the original gap.
The narrator in Diaphragm is troubled by those boring and meaningless exchanges, those "music-saving" dialogues and exchanges, and the embarrassing situation that he can't get rid of. In the memories with my relatives, "I am like drifting on an uninhabited island. I am like being caught in a lonely and eternal disaster. The feeling of loneliness and hesitation is more than pain, which permeates every cell of my heart and makes me confused and confused. At the home of a visiting friend, "I think they have their own worries. Why do they want to hide it and talk exclusively with music storage films? "This is unsolvable." "I have no other hope, I just hope that time will go quickly and get through these two points." In the crowded teahouse, "I want to explore the reason why they gather here every day, but I can't get it." Do they want to know anyone? No, because I didn't see two people talking heartily there. Do they want to discuss anything? No, because I listen to their conversation, I don't need to distinguish right from wrong, I don't need any answers, and nothing is their result. "This is an insurmountable gap between heart and heart. People, like hedgehogs, want to snuggle up to each other for warmth in winter, but the upside-down thorns make it difficult for them to get close to each other, and they can only be in a state of being at arm's length, and their depressing mood can never be changed.
On the issue of individuals and others, everyone wants to treat others as things and things, and at the same time wants to get rid of the status of being treated as things by others, which makes people feel depressed, so people have to be in a tense and even conflicting relationship. "Others are my hell", and each of us lives under the noses of others and is in a subordinate position. This is the profound meaning that Diaphragm wants to express.
As a realist writer in the1920s and an intellectual whose aim is to involve literature in life, Ye Shengtao's Diaphragm is an unexpected gain. There are no annoying social problems, no sadness of the bottom people, no forceful attack and criticism of blood for ink, but it is a slow and lasting hidden pain. Not to show anything, not to educate anyone, just to record my feelings. This is the writer's true and literary achievement, and it has touched readers with its strong vitality in the original ecology. Through the text, we can understand the author 80 years ago, the breathless emptiness and bone marrow loneliness 80 years ago, and we are not shocked by it. Perhaps, loneliness in the noise and Tao Ran in loneliness is a mystery that human beings can never solve!
Ye Shengtao (1894 ~ 1988) is a modern writer, children's literature writer, educator, editor and publisher; Formerly known as Shao Yun, the word Shengtao was born in Suzhou, Jiangsu. He is one of the most important novelists in the early period of the New Literature Movement after Lu Xun. He is also a famous educator in modern times. 19 14 published more than 0 classical Chinese novels 10. 19/kloc-joined the trendy society in 0/9, and 192 1 participated in the establishment of the literary research society. Ye Shengtao has been teaching in middle schools and universities in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Beijing since 192 1. Started editing and publishing from 1923. He used to be the editor-in-chief of Commercial Press and Ming Kai Bookstore, editor-in-chief of Literature Weekly, Novel Monthly and Middle School Students, and found, trained and recommended writers such as Ba Jin, Ding Ling and Dai Wangshu. He also published many poems, comments and works, and edited dozens of Chinese textbooks for primary and secondary schools. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), he devoted himself to the leadership of culture and education, and served as the president of People's Education Publishing House, the vice minister of education, the curator of the Central Museum of Literature and History, and the vice chairman of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Ye Shengtao's article:
(A) creative experience
1.In the 1920s, he published collections of short stories such as Diaphragm, Fire, Offline, In the City, Never tire of reading, and the novel Ni Huanzhi. His Diaphragm, published in March 1922, is the second collection of short stories in the history of new literature (the first is Yu Dafu's Sinking). His early novels mostly describe the gray life of intellectuals and ordinary citizens, including Mr. Pan in Trouble. Later, he turned to absorb major themes related to the struggle of the times, such as Night and Ni Huanzhi, which profoundly reflected the social reality before and after the first revolutionary civil war. His novels present a simple and calm artistic style. From 1925 to the end of 1920s, Ye Shengtao's creation achieved a comprehensive harvest. Ye Shengtao's creation in this period presents unprecedented new features. The most remarkable thing is that it quickly and directly depicts the heroic picture of the revolutionary struggle and praises the grand scene of the mass movement with full and strong political enthusiasm. This makes his works in this period full of strong sense of the times and fighting spirit. Ni Huanzhi, praised by Mao Dun as "the three pillars", is an excellent representative work of revolutionary realism in the history of new literature.
After the "September 18th Incident", he took an active part in patriotic anti-Japanese activities, published famous short stories such as "Thirty-five Wars", and his skills became more and more sophisticated. After the outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, he moved to Sichuan to work and live, mainly in prose and literary criticism. The main prose collections are Footsteps Collection, Live Not Tired, Give Up Collection, Ten Records, etc. His prose has simple feelings, meaningful meaning and clean language, and most of them have solid social content. Lotus root and shepherd's purse, a shower on May 30, morning glory, Spring Festival couplets and so on are all famous essays with their own characteristics.
2. Ye Shengtao is also a pioneer of China's modern fairy tale creation. The Scarecrow, a collection of fairy tales, shows the sufferings of the working people, but sometimes the atmosphere is low and sad. The Stone Statue of Ancient Heroes is a collection of later fairy tales, which shows the collective strength of people uniting against violence. His fairy tales are novel and unique in conception, exquisite and realistic in description and rich in realistic content. Lu Xun said that Ye Shengtao's Scarecrow opened up a creative road of his own for China's fairy tales.
(B) creative theme and style
1. Talking about his attitude towards novels, Sheng Tao often likes to say: I just write truthfully. This is the author's confession, and we should believe it. However, in his early creation, there are other things besides "truthfully" drawing materials and describing them, which we call ideals. This ideal is quite consistent, but it can't escape the eyes of careful readers. Later, with more experience, stronger ideas and better techniques, I created a truly "truthfully written" work. It seems that some people say that French realism has gone bad in Russia, that is, it has added an ideal color. If this sentence is correct, Shengtao's early style can be said to be close to Russia, and later it can be said to be close to France. Because it is written truthfully, it is objective. His novels are rarely based on himself and his family, he doesn't use his first suit very much, and his writing style is not often emotional. But he has his ideals, which often appear in the dialogues of characters and the author's explanation of characters or events, especially in his early works. The ideals of love and freedom are the two cornerstones of his early novels. This is the ideological trend in the early days of the New Culture Movement. However, if he can express himself in art, he will go deeper than the average person.
One side of freedom is liberation, and the other side is respect for individuality. Shengtao pays special attention to women and children. He wrote about the sorrows of oppressed women, such as peasant women, child brides, singers and prostitutes. The first Life of Diaphragm is about a peasant woman. He also felt pity for the obedience and bitterness of middle-class housewives. Spring outing (in diaphragm) has revealed some news of resistance; In the two letters, it is more clear that women are not "thrushes in cages, orchids in flowerpots" or "superhuman"; She is "just a person equal to all human beings". Later, he also wrote two novels (posthumous son and little sister) in Never Tired Collection, describing the oppression of women by the tradition of preferring sons to daughters. Sheng Tao has been a primary school teacher for many years. He knows children best and cares about them most. He thinks that children are not for us to play and entertain, nor for us to be old. They should have their own status. They have their rights and lives, and we should not abandon them, nor should we regard them as our concreteness. "Cry" (in "Fire") is a fierce protest in the tone of a baby girl; In Shengtao's works, this is a passionate text that only can be seen. He yearns for "artistic life", is free and develops his personality; But now our lives are trapped by certain patterns or ways. Sheng Tao hates these models or ways; In these respects, he "only feels that an illusory self is surrounded by a vast illusion" (see the unhappy sense of music in Diaphragm).
3. The other side of Shengtao's novels is the conflict between ideal and reality. An important feature of Shengtao's later works (probably from the second half of Offline) is the completion of realism. Life and times in Sheng Tao are changing. His eyes turned from villages and towns to cities, from children and women to war and revolution. Sheng Tao writes the fastest, but he is never careless. He said in the autobiography of Ni Huanzhi: "The habit of weighing words is getting deeper and deeper", and we can know his attitude on weekdays. What he is good at is the ending, and his works have almost no elegant ending. He once boasted; Mr. Qian Xingcun also said that his novels "are often in the collection place, which makes people feel carefree."
4. 192 1 At the beginning of the year, the Literature Research Association was established in Beijing. Ye Shengtao was one of the founders, and later became its backbone member and a representative writer with achievements. He emphasized that literature must reflect life, care about people's sufferings and sympathize with those who are oppressed and damaged; His creation embodies the literary aims of "for life" and "blood and tears" of the Literature Research Association. Ye Shengtao has been engaged in primary education for a long time and is very familiar with the education field in old China. Of the nearly 100 short stories he wrote, more than two thirds were related to education. This constitutes a unique field of Ye Shengtao's creation-educational literature in the history of modern literature in China. The democracy of Ye Shengtao's educational literature lies in his sober and thorough understanding of feudal education and his bold denial of decadent old education. The democracy of Ye Shengtao's educational literature is also manifested in the vividness of children's images, which shows the tragic and unfortunate experiences of children in feudal society and their physical and mental oppression and pain. Shouted out the voices and wishes of children bound and imprisoned by feudal education, and asked the whole society to respect, care, sympathize with and understand children, so that they can gain the freedom to develop their nature. This is another important performance of Ye Shengtao's democratic education literature. His works expressed China people's demands for freedom, democracy, liberation and equality, which was consistent with the May 4th anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolutionary movement and played a positive role in promoting the development of the revolutionary cause. Generally speaking, Ye Shengtao's works before and after the May 4th Movement belong to critical realism. (Zhu Ziqing, Ye Shengtao)
(3) Language artistic style:
1. In the history of China's new literature, Ye Shengtao is a writer with a unique style. Close observation, objective realism, harmonious brushwork and concise literary language all constitute the artistic personality of Ye Shengtao's realistic creation. The most prominent feature of Ye Shengtao's artistic style is to look at life objectively and calmly, observe life carefully and accurately, and truly reproduce life according to its true colors. He attaches great importance to the description of details, which plays an important role in his creation. These vivid details are inseparable from the author's repeated and in-depth observation and thinking about real life and natural phenomena. Ye Shengtao's rich life experience provides a broad world for his detailed description. The combination of solemnity, seriousness, lightness and humor can make them blend together harmoniously and cast in their own works, which is another feature of Ye Shengtao's artistic technique.
Ye Shengtao is an excellent language artist. He "always pays attention to language" (self-report of Ye Shengtao's selected works), and is famous for his plain, simple, concise and concise literary language. His language is unpretentious. He seldom uses rich and flashy words. Even in the wave of "total westernization" around the May 4th Movement, it is difficult to find long and awkward Europeanized sentences in his works. He pays special attention to hammering words and refining sentences, claiming to have the habit of "choosing words carefully" In the choice of words and sentences, he has always been short, precise, appropriate, refined and pure, and achieved a very expressive situation in which fewer wins more.
Third, Ye Shengtao's interest:
(1) Reasons for writing fairy tales: He strongly advocated vernacular Chinese, was a pioneer in the reform of Chinese textbooks in China, and presided over the compilation of the first set of universal textbooks in New China-Chinese textbooks for middle schools and normal schools nationwide. Mr. Ye is a predecessor of Chinese education in China and a famous Chinese educator. Ye Shengtao loves students and teaching, and students' childlike innocence, childlike innocence fantasy and childlike innocence always infect him. At this time, he read Lu Xun's "Twenty-four Filial Piety Pictures" and said that one of his childhood friends felt that life was boring, lacked vitality and hope, and even died because he could only read "The Beginning of Life is Good in Nature". As a result, the desire to write for children germinated. He picked up a pen and became the first person to create modern fairy tales in China!
(2) Wine: Ye Shengtao (1894- 1988), a famous educator, loves wine and is addicted to it, leaving a lot of wine words in his life. This article introduces several anecdotes about his drinking.
Wenyou cocktail party
In 1930s, when Ye Shengtao was the editor-in-chief of Middle School Student Magazine in Shanghai Mingkai Bookstore, there were many good drinkers among his colleagues. Ye Shengtao and Feng Zikai and other friends initiated the establishment of a literary friends reception, with Ye Shengtao as the president. It is stipulated that only those who can drink more than 5 kg of yellow wine in one meal can apply for membership, and a membership party is held every weekend. At that time, Qian Juntao was also the editor of Ming Kai Bookstore. He wanted to join the club, but he only had three and a half pounds of alcohol. He was not sure whether he could be approved to join the club. Once he asked Feng Zikai, who was already a member of the cocktail party, if he could join the club. Feng Zikai felt uncertain and said that he would ask the principal Ye Shengtao to make a decision. When Feng Zikai reported this to Ye Shengtao, Ye Shengtao said humorously that Tao Jun should get a 30% discount on drinking, even if he was preparing for party member. Afterwards, Ye Shengtao and Lu Yu Qian Juntao humorously said to him, "You are also a member of the reception. You should exercise your drinking capacity and try to get rid of the word' preparation' in the morning paper! "
Drunk experience
Ye Shengtao has a good capacity for drinking all his life, but he has strong self-control and few drunken records. According to Ip Chi Shing, Ye Shengtao's son, Ye Shengtao has only been drunk twice since he can remember. Once was1946165438+1October 30th, the 60th birthday of Commander-in-Chief Zhu De. Ye Shengtao, who lived in Shanghai at that time, was invited to attend the birthday luncheon of Commander-in-Chief Zhu. He was so excited that he was escorted home by two staff members of the Shanghai office of the Communist Party of China after getting drunk.
Another time when I was in Wuhan University during the Anti-Japanese War, a British professor at Wuhan University, Rena, heard that Ye Shengtao was good at drinking and wanted to have a competition with him. He specially invited Ye Shengtao to his apartment for a drink, and Ye Shengtao gladly went. It was also noon at that time, and it was not clear how they drank it. When the sun went down in the afternoon, Ye Shengtao stumbled home. Ip Chi Shing stepped forward to help him up and said with a smile, "I'm talking (Wu means' it doesn't matter')." I fell asleep in the back bedroom. Afterwards, Ip Chi Shing learned that Professor Reina was drunk first, but he was in his apartment and Ye Shengtao walked a long way.
Hai Tang ya ju
After the founding of New China, Ye Shengtao served as deputy director of the General Administration of Publishing and vice minister of education. He has a begonia tree in the courtyard of his apartment in Beijing. For a long time after the founding of New China, Ye Shengtao always invited Zhu Guangqian, Yu Pingbo, Wang and other close relatives and friends to get together on April 19, when the begonia bloomed every year. At this time, Yu Pingbo always brought a bottle of osmanthus wine, while Zhu Guangqian brought a bottle of brandy. In the prepared appetizer, the host must have the sauce duck made by Ye Shengtao. They enjoy flowers and drink, have heart-to-heart talks, and the fragrance of flowers and wine is refreshing. This scene is the best environment for drinking, surpassing any star-rated hotel and restaurant. During the "ten years of civil strife", Ye Shengtao, Yu Pingbo and others were persecuted, and the "elegant collection of begonia" naturally struggled.
Ye Shengtao died at the age of 94, which is a long life. Besides being open-minded and kind to life, moderate drinking is also one of the reasons for his longevity. Although Ye Shengtao can drink more than 5 kg of yellow wine, most of the time he just drinks one or two more white wines to relieve his addiction, which shows that he has strong self-control. Ye Shengtao was happy in his later years. He likes to drink a glass of Shaoxing yellow wine or wine at dinner every day, and he loves wine until the end of his life.
(3) Ye Shengtao and Zhu Ziqing
Ye Shengtao and Zhu Ziqing met in the autumn of 192 1. Ye Shengtao and Zhu Ziqing are like-minded, both members of the Literature Research Association, and soon became good friends. Ye Shengtao lived in seclusion in Shanghai, and Zhu Ziqing lived in Peiping, one south and one north, but there were plenty of fish and geese. On August 1948, Zhu Ziqing died of illness. On August 30th, Ye Shengtao, Chen Wangdao and others jointly held a memorial service for Zhu Ziqing with the Tsinghua Alumni Association, and delivered speeches at the meeting, lamenting the loss of a literary leader and close friend. bale