Chapter 35 Do not read "The Scholars"

The times are changing fast. The spiritual ancestors of people like Wu Jingzi only worry about their spirits, at most their lives. Ji Ruan and others like him are all nobles in the society. He just doesn't do anything and has some wine to drink. When Wu Jingzi or Du Shaoqing is here, "Nanjing is a place where you can starve to death." Two stipends, earning a piece of land with 30 tans of rice, I still dare not go there, and I have to "do it for three years at most, or two years at least, and then accumulate some stipends, add 20 tans of rice, and raise it every year." My husband and I must not starve to death."

The word loser in contemporary English, translated into Chinese as a loser, is too blunt, so what is it translated into?Useless person?Fool?waste?Waste snacks?Anyway, one is the song of the loser, the good people in it are all bad people, and the good people in it are nothing more than stingy people in the author's writing.As readers, it is difficult for us to agree with Wu Jingzi’s complaints. First, it will make us appear to be losers; second, we are all workers, and the definition of a job is that it can be sold. If you sell it, you can live and buy cotton hats. , buy fried cakes and other good things.This is a matter of course, and we don't want to apostate for a novel.

It is written about scholars, literati, intellectuals at that time.However, this book is not polite to people outside the "intellectual circle". In the book, there are more than 30 villagers, more than 20 businessmen, ten servants, sixteen servants, and three yin and yang. Yes, five doctors, eight monks, and four nuns—except for one or two, they are not very good-looking.The book society built by Wu Jingzi, simply put, is that the cured people get more cars. He blames the misfortune of himself and his friends on the decline of the world.That is also the most classic complaint in China.

There are several types of literati in the book, one is the author's ideal characters, such as Du Shaoqing, Dr. Yu, Chi Hengshan, and Mr. Yu Er. Not hungry.The second category is those who have mixed fame but poor character and knowledge, such as Gao Hanlin and Kuang Chaoren.The third category is the little literati who have nothing at all, say elegance to elegant people, eat vulgarity from laymen, and struggle to get along in the periphery, such as Ji Weixiao and Ji Tianyi. There is also a kind of person who is obsessed with fame and fame but is an excellent person, such as the famous Mr. Ma Er.The prototype of this character is Feng Zuotai, who is a friend of the author.When writing about Ma Er, I wrote it very gently. When I read it against Du Shenqing's belittling, it can be found that in Wu Jingzi's value table, morality is much more important than talent and learning.Therefore, he has the strictest attitude towards the fourth type of literati, that is, those who deceive the world and steal their names.

The next question is, what exactly are Wu Jingzi and the ideal literati in his book sticking to?Is it a tradition in the culture?Or is it a tradition in morality?In the book, Chi Hengshan said: "Those who talk about learning only talk about learning, and don't need to ask about fame;In fact, except for one or two scholars, the positive characters in the book are not particular about learning, and their poetry and prose are not necessarily good. So, what is the true nature of this group of scholars?If it is just a watchman of some kind of moral value, then, is it necessary to recite poems and write prose to be qualified?

This question is tantamount to asking where the core of the classical literati was after peeling off a layer or two of fur in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.Lu Xun once said: "The author's means are inferior to Luo Guanzhong's. However, since the overseas students have been everywhere, this book seems not to be permanent, nor is it great." Lu Xun seems to think that it was written for the old literati. It was the 1830s, and everyone was in high spirits. No wonder he had this comment.If his old man lived to this day, maybe he would go further and say that people in the prosperous age should not read this book, because they can't understand it.

There are frustrated people in every society and every class. Great, it tells the story of a group of frustrated people.It is not convincing enough to prove how great these people are, but the novel tells us how they lived and how to maintain their illusions, and the bleak confidence in it is something that everyone but the reader needs to see Yes, even in others.The last character in the novel is Jing Yuan, who is a tailor and likes to play the piano. At the end of the novel, he plays to an old friend (who is also a man in the market), and after playing, "don't live anymore."— —I am sure no contemporaries would like to be reduced to such a state, but it is somewhat comforting to be able to imagine such people somewhere, and to imagine that they did not starve to death.