From the blind date of literati to the contempt of literati, we have seen a lot at all times and in all countries. This is an interesting and regrettable phenomenon in the history of art. People expect that artists who create classic works of truth, goodness and beauty are themselves models of truth, goodness and beauty, and their social roles and private roles are expected to be integrated. When scholars downplay feathers, people can't help asking, what makes these gentle people look like cockfighting with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and they have to compete with their best words? Why can't these soul engineers who solve life puzzles with their works show their elegance and nobility in real interpersonal communication?
Mr. Lu Xun once said: "Scholars are still people. Since he is still a man, he still has right and wrong, love and hate in his heart; " But because he is a scholar, his right and wrong become clearer, and his love and hate become more intense ... "American scholar Anthony Arthur used the book In Confrontation to sort out the ins and outs of the struggle between friends in the literary world and attributed it to the conflict between strong personalities.
Mark Twain vs Hart Brothers
1864, 29-year-old Sam Clemens gave himself a pen name "Mark Twain" and showed his satirical skills quite openly in the newspaper, which angered a guy. Things got so bad that Clemens fled all the way from Virginia to San Francisco. He had nothing on him except a bag full of novels for sale.
He didn't feel at sixes and sevens when he fled thousands of miles. Even in his imagination, a romantic and free-spirited man should be like this: pioneering, fearless and wandering around. The man who grew up on the Mississippi River, his ideal in life is to be a steamboat pilot, but the place he yearns for is the arid west. In fact, Mark Twain, or Sam Clemens, has many similarities with Alonso Gijano. He loves chivalry and named himself Don Quixote.
Mark Twain appeared in the office building of the American Mint in San Francisco, unkempt, half sailor and half cowboy, with burning pride in his eyes. He visited the Hart brothers, who were already famous in the local literary world, and recommended himself: "I have potential." As for Hart, who is one year younger than Mark Twain, he is a handsome man. Besides formal clothes, he also likes to wear jewelry cufflinks. It is hard to believe that this gentle gentleman worked as a miner in the west. They sat with Mark Twain and dramatically formed two diametrically opposite mirror images. Although he is the assistant to the regional director of the Mint, Hart is more famous as the main writer and part-time editor of the literary magazine Californian. He published hundreds of poems and essays in just two years, which attracted great attention.
The meeting between them was very pleasant. Mark Twain told the Hart brothers a humorous story about frogs, that is, Karaoui, a famous jumping frog in Las County, which made him famous in the future. This short story later made countless people laugh. Hart, as its first audience, affirmed Mark Twain's literary talent without hesitation. Hart hired Twain to write an article for Californian Weekly, praising him as a "gifted humorist". Since then, Hart founded Continental Monthly at 1868 and invited Twain to write for the magazine. Not only that, Hart also taught the novice writer skills in writing style, rhythm and intonation when editing the manuscript. Mark Twain himself once said that Hart "patiently combed, trained and educated me" until he changed me from a poor writer who expressed superficial ideas to a writer who could spread articles in paragraphs and chapters.
Since the publication of 1968' s short story "The Lucky Man in Roaring Camp", the Hart brothers have written a series of novels describing the miners' life in the "gold rush", such as The Wanderer on Poker Beach and The Partner of Tennessee, which are in full swing in American literature and regarded as the benchmark figures of western novels. However, his works are also considered too sentimental by some readers. Hart is a romantic writer at heart, which runs counter to Mark Twain's literary purpose of satirizing sentimentality and exposing hypocrisy. But critics always like to associate Twain's name with Hart and classify their works into the same genre, which makes Mark Twain very unhappy.
Although Hart is the literary leader of Mark Twain, it is impossible for a man who pretends to be a helmsman cowboy to be satisfied with being a small follower. As early as 1866, before the publication of the first collection of novels, Mark Twain said jealously: "Although I am usually listed as a shoddy writer, I think it is more appropriate for the Hart brothers to wear this title." Five years later, two humorous stories were published, and his reputation was still awkward. He claimed that he had surpassed the Hart brothers who were in the limelight. At that time, Hart had just been hired by Atlantic Monthly, and the family went to new york from the west to meet the enthusiasm of the media and readers along the way. Hart didn't care about the explosive smell that Mark Twain occasionally showed in the newspaper. They were still good brothers when they met.
Hart, who worked in the mint, is actually very bad at managing money. He quickly squandered the huge sum of money advanced by the magazine, but he was careless about the social tasks of writing articles and speaking. Because he often borrowed money from his friends, but rarely repaid it, Hart's notoriety of "default" slowly spread. He had to complain to Mark Twain and asked for "economic assistance" many times. Mark Twain became a new rich gentleman because he married the daughter of an entrepreneur, but he was very generous to his embarrassed old friends. But Hart took Mark Twain's money, but he also laughed at each other's extravagant lifestyle.
1876, Mark Twain accepted Hart's proposal, and they jointly wrote a play called Asin. However, in actual writing, both of them are not satisfied with each other's revision, and the script progress is deadlocked. At this time, Hart got into the habit of drinking, always drinking, complaining that the publishing house introduced by Mark Twain had made a mistake, which cost him thousands of dollars. In March of the following year, Mark Twain formally wrote to Hart, refusing to lend him any more money, but willing to hire him to write plays with himself and pay him $25 a week. This self-righteous letter is an unbearable humiliation for Hart: "Mark Twain is making a fuss about my poverty." The two men turned against each other completely. Since then, this Asin, which is almost Mark Twain's personal work, premiered on Broadway, and the response was mediocre. As the curtain falls, the friendship between the two screenwriters behind the script also ends.
Since then, Hart, who was reduced to writing advertisements for soap, almost persuaded the President to send him to China as a diplomat through his friends, but was ruined by Mark Twain's "letter of accusation": "Wherever he went, he would leave a deceived grocer and an honest man who borrowed money and didn't pay it back ..." Finally, Hart was sent to a small German town as a business agent, and Mark Twain was still there on the day when Hart left. Later, Hart never returned to China, but Mark Twain, who has become a giant of American literature, still clung to this old enemy that had been forgotten by readers, and even after his opponent died of laryngeal cancer, he still did not stop attacking him verbally.
However, Hart never hit back at Mark Twain in the same way. Perhaps, in his heart, even if embarrassed, he is still a romantic gentleman, and Mark Twain, from the first day of knowing him, is such a brilliant fool who just provoked others and is ready to provoke the next one.
Hemingway vs stein
Hemingway is known as a "tough guy in the literary world", but he is also a well-known "public enemy in the literary world". He exposed Fitzgerald, a "good buddy", and wrote a failed writer Fitzgerald directly in the first draft of Snow of Kilimanjaro. He secretly satirized Pound who supported himself. He bossed around Fred, a famous editor who helped him make his mark in the Paris cultural circle ... Almost everyone was very kind to Hemingway, but Hemingway always turned against him for no reason.
It is generally recognized that Hemingway's edge comes from his absolute confidence in his talents, and in addition, it is inseparable from his aggressive temper. He is a high-profile boxing enthusiast, constantly picking out his favorite opponents on the real and virtual stage. "I began to write quietly, and slowly, I defeated Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained myself strictly, and I beat Mr. Mo Bosang. I tied with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I still got the upper hand by a narrow margin in the deciding game. But no one can drag me to the boxing ring to compete with Mr. Tolstoy unless I am crazy or my level is constantly improving. " 1949 Hemingway borrowed boxing terms in an interview with the New Yorker and tied himself with the heavy names in the history of world literature, which was quite arrogant.
However, in 1922, when Hemingway, a 22-year-old newspaper reporter, went to Paris to visit gertrude stein, 48, he still appeared meek and respectful. Stan's salon was the core of the storm in the whole western art circle at that time. Painter Matisse, Picasso, philosopher Russell, poet Eliot, Pound and other cultural celebrities all over the world are Stein's guests. She is a modernist writer herself, abandoning plot and focusing only on words. The most popular sentence in her works is "A rose is a rose, and a rose is a rose". Stein, who had a high vision, was very satisfied with the young man who was listening attentively after talking with Hemingway for a long time about "grammatical errors such as division and infinitive".
Since then, Hemingway has frequently asked for advice, and Stein played the role of "life mentor" to a certain extent: telling him to quit his job as a journalist, "otherwise you will never see the real events"; Teach him to develop his own skills, "no one can teach others anything"; He is also the godmother of his first son and takes care of his family wholeheartedly. Stein's suggestion on Hemingway's early novel A River with Two Hearts is a well-known textbook for creative majors. There are a lot of words attacking writers such as Joyce in the manuscript. Stan suggested that he delete them because "comments are not literature." This successful deletion greatly strengthens the integrity and compactness of the novel, but Hemingway likes to ridicule the habits of contemporary writers in his works, but he can't completely delete it.
Although Stein was called Hemingway's "literary mother" in his later biographies, in fact Hemingway's literary achievements soon surpassed his "mother". 1925, in the novel Spring Tide, which took 10 days to write, Hemingway not only dug up an old friend of his, sherwood anderson, but also ridiculed Stan: "Ah, there is a woman! Where will her writing experiment take her? Does this mean anything? All the answers are in Paris, ah, in Paris! How far is it from Paris now? Morning in Paris. Paris at night. Paris at night. Paris in the morning, Paris at noon, maybe. Why not? " It must be said that Hemingway's evaluation is not irrelevant, and he has long seen the shortcomings of Stein's avant-garde literature thoroughly. But for Stein, who thinks highly of "criticism is not literature", it may be easier for Hemingway to point out these problems directly by writing comments than by joking in novels.
With the publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway was promoted to the highest position in the international literary world. His handsome smiling face, comparable to that of a movie star, frequently appeared on the covers of major magazines, but at the same time he made more and more enemies because of his words. The critic's firepower is getting more and more intensive, attacking him for selling his artistic conscience for money and lacking in thinking. He is a "stupid bull". Adeline Virginia Woolf's evaluation is more objective: "A male animal who feels too good about himself". Hemingway always responded to accusations lightly or heavily in a direct and rude way. For example, some people say that he has "fake chest hair on his chest" to cover up his "hypoplasia", and he even pulls his shirt to his face to let the other person see it clearly. Stein, who was inadvertently hurt by him, was silent for eight years until 1933. Only in Alice Tuo Kalasz's new autobiography, he used six pages to repay Hemingway's satire in Spring Tide. In the article, Stan and his partner Alice use a casual tone to evaluate Hemingway's ingratitude and pedantry. This autobiography quickly sold well in America, satisfying curious readers and critical critics, but it was a great blow to Hemingway.
To many people's surprise, Hemingway didn't hit back violently this time, but swore in a small area. When Stein promoted his autobiography in the United States, Hemingway was angered by a busybody and sent an attack article in a magazine, which was also rejected by him. People can't know how this tough guy feels about his "literary mother" suddenly. It was not until 1957 that he finished his last work, a semi-documentary and semi-fictional memoir, The Festival of the Flowing, and once again expressed his true feelings in words: Fitzgerald is a grumpy and extremely incompetent loser who drinks all day; Ford maddox Ford is like a barrel that can walk backwards, self-righteous and unbearable ... Stan, who has died 1 1 year, is the leader throughout the three chapters. She endlessly taught Hemingway some useless things and labeled Hemingway as a "lost generation", but she didn't really understand the hearts of this generation and their attitude towards war. This posthumous work, published only after Hemingway committed suicide, shows his obsession, anger and injustice at the last moment of his life. "A man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated." No one understands Hemingway, an old man who struggled all his life, and finally faced the sea of Wang Yang written by himself alone.
Marquez vs Luesa
Gabriel Garcí a Má rquez and mario vargas llosa, two Nobel Prize in Literature laureates, are one of the best writers in Latin America and famous literary enemies. In 2007, the whole Latin American literary world was celebrating Marquez's 80th birthday. However, Mexico's "Work Daily" published two explosive news photos, in which Qing Wu in the left eye and Marquez with a broken nose were smiling blankly at the camera. The following line was written by photographer Rodrigo Moya: "Gabriel Garcí a Má rquez, 1976, just arrived in mario vargas llosa.
1976 In February, in a small cinema in Mexico City, Lusa gave Marquez a solid fist, which completely shattered their friendship for nearly ten years, but afterwards, neither of them mentioned the reason for the fight. Thirty years later, when Moya published these two photos entitled "The Terrible Story of Nose and Eyes Swelling", he also revealed the details he saw at that time: "On that day, artists and writers from Latin American countries attended a film seminar in the cinema. After that, Marquez greeted Lusa, and as soon as he shouted' Mario', he was hit in the face with a heavy punch. Luisa roared,' What have you done to Patricia, and you have the face to come and say hello to me?' "
Luesa Má rquez Jr. is 9 years old. They have very similar experiences and interests. When they were young, they all starved in the attic of Paris and became famous early. Although Marquez's writing style is magical realism and Lusa's is structural realism, this does not affect their mutual appreciation. 1In the winter of 967, as leaders of the "Big Bang" movement in Latin America, Marquez and Lusa participated in a literary award in Venezuela, and they hit it off immediately and became bosom friends. They kept chatting hand in hand, almost like no one else, and soon decided happily to meet again at their home Lue Sa in Peru. After the trip to Peru, the two became close friends, and Marquez volunteered to be the godfather of Lusa's newborn son. Lusa is very keen on studying Marquez's works. His doctoral thesis in 197 1 is Garcia marquez: the history of the god-killer. Even the two had a plan to write a novel together.
Of course, it all ended with that sudden punch. At that time, Marquez was still ignorant, but Lusa was already angry because of what the other party had done to Patricia. Patricia is Luisa's wife. According to the Times and other media reports, Lusa fell in love with a Swedish girl. Patricia went to complain to the Marquez couple in tears. She was advised to divorce Luisa. Since then, Patricia has often been with the Marquez couple, and sometimes Marquez's wife goes out, and they are not shy. Later, Lue Sa broke up with a Swedish beauty and went home. Patricia had a frank talk with her husband. Then, Luisa killed Marquez angrily. Then, they are strangers for 30 years, with a gloomy face. Of course, no one can find out the inside story so far. Gerald Martin, the author of the biography "The Life of Marquez", thinks that Marquez is very loyal to his wife. At best, he spoke ill of Luesa with Patricia. The root cause of their breakup is political differences. Marquez himself kept his mouth shut. He planned to write a multi-volume memoir, but only published the first volume in 2002, that is, Living to Tell Life. The reason why I haven't written the second volume is because, according to him, "if I write the second volume, I will talk about some very bad personal contacts that I don't want to talk about."
Fortunately, in 2007, 80-year-old Marquez finally extended a hand of reconciliation to 7 1 year-old Luisa and asked him to preface the 40th anniversary special edition "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Lusa also climbed down the ladder, provided his preface, and spoke highly of One Hundred Years of Solitude. More interestingly, this preface was written 30 years ago, but it was never published. 20 10, 28 years later than Marquez, Lusa finally won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Marquez tweeted congratulations: "Now we are even."