Chapter 37 second quarter

On August 26, 1944, the New China Newspaper Office held a "Criticism Tea Party". Someone in the meeting asked Eileen Chang: "What is the difference between the criticism (Xunyu article) published in "Vientiane" and the "Magazine"? Among the published criticisms (Hu Lancheng's article), which one do you think is appropriate?" Eileen Chang replied: "About this, my answer is "My Article", which was published in "New Oriental." Because of this sentence, later generations thought that her "Own Article" was an answer to Xun Yu. However, considering the situation at that time, it can be understood that this was obviously a trick, and I didn't want to explain it directly, because I was afraid that the description would become darker. .

——She can't say clearly: It's nothing to do with Xunyu, I'm talking to Hu Lancheng! But in "I See Su Qing", she used Su Qing's mouth to say what she wanted to say: "In the dialogue meeting two days ago, at the beginning, she expressed a piece of opinion on women's occupation. "Magazine "The person on the side raised a question and said: 'But...' She pondered for a while, her face slowly turned red, and suddenly she became a little angry, and said: 'I am not talking to you—I want you to refute it. what I do?'" "I See Su Qing" was published in the April 1945 issue of "Tiandi" magazine.But I thought that this article should have been written a year ago in response to Hu Lancheng's "Talking about Su Qing" published in August 1944.However, due to a series of pen and ink lawsuits, and she married Hu Lancheng in secret this month, and the tabloid reporters had heard about her affair and couldn't help making insinuations, she had to be careful, so she postponed the publication for a year, lest It was used as an article again.There is also a possibility that this article has already been published in other magazines, and it is only the second draft in "Tiandi", but we have not found an earlier version - Zhang Ailing was making a living on the manuscript fee at that time, and the editor who issued the reprint The phenomenon is frequent.Multiple submissions for one manuscript is not an invention of today's literati.

In this year, there were too many lawsuits about Eileen Chang. Xun Yu's "On Zhang Ailing's Novels" and Hu Lancheng's "Comments on Zhang Ailing" are just the beginning, and they stop at literary creation, which is not much of a gunpowder flavor, and it is not without benefit to her literary creation and reputation.However, the subsequent quarrel with Ping Jinya, the owner of "Vientiane", was much more troublesome about the fog.This starts with the case of "cutting in half" and "one thousand yuan gray tin": Beginning in January 1944, Zhang Ailing serialized novels in the "Vientiane" magazine, which was suddenly "cut in half" after six issues.Whether this reason has anything to do with Fu Lei's criticism is unknown, but Eileen Chang herself later explained that it was because of poor writing, "I haven't written a small scene in the movie theater that impressed me deeply at first, but I have already written it." I couldn’t go on, so I had to cut it in half automatically. At the same time, there was another article in "Genesis" about my grandmother and aunt, and I only remembered that it was worse than... I knew it couldn’t work, so I cut it in half.”

When I first read "Genesis", I only felt that it was fragrant and beautiful, and the sentences were typical Eileen Chang's delicacy, which made people think endlessly.It can be seen that that period was the heyday of Eileen Chang's creation, epigrams and witticisms splashed out like the Milky Way falling into nine heavens, with a kind of jumping and gratifying vitality, such as: "She is thirty-one years old this year, she looks a little old, but because of her old appearance, she has become rougher, which increases the irritation. Some flesh has been added to her body and face, and Liu Shuo's spirit is trying to get rid of the excess meat, so the eyes are extraordinarily alive, and the lips are extraordinarily red."

"She stretched out her two arms and stretched them down without limit. Two flesh-yellow overflowing rivers flowed into the years to come. She is still beautiful. Men are unreliable, and money is also unreliable, but she is still reliable. .The window is wide open, and I can hear the sea steamer deflate. The cold siren sound flows down the arm pen." () "Walking on the road, all of them bowed their backs, and their upper body stretched out far away. Only Yuzhu felt that she was standing tall, with a kind of majestic beauty. She was leaning on the electric pole, and the wind was blowing her. Long curly hair, blown to make it longer, longer, and a pink velvet glow on her face. To love is heat, to be loved is light."

"On the coffee table next to it, there is a pot of plum blossoms in bloom. The fragrance is so cloudy and misty. Because it is in full bloom, it is so red that it turns white from the heart. Daddy sits there like a mountain. On the top of the royal blue imitation satin robe, he wears a sea tiger Leather mandarin jacket, big and bloated, with rounded shoulders." ("Genesis") ——Looking at these sentences, the characters can't wait to jump out, and they can't even count their eyebrows and beards.Flower Chengjie Drum, Moonfall Singing Fan, these sentences seem not to be written, but played out from the piano keys, each note and rhythm are crisp and crisp, and the grains are clear and round.

However, because the writing was too smooth, and because it was serialized, it was rushed too quickly and neglected to scrutinize, so there were many flaws, among which clichés were the biggest drawback.For example, Li Nixi waited for Ya Heya to wash her feet, and asked: "Are you busy today until the lights are on?" ;As they talked and quarreled, Yahya "came out of the basin dripping with water, and kicked Nixi a few times", and became the overlord chasing Xiangling again—their identities were somewhat similar, both The concubine I bought; Nixi was crying, jumping up and down, sneering and saying: "I'll just tell you for you: Thieves and slaves, it's just the season, eat less and don't wear..." But the tone changed again son.

Eileen Chang is obviously very familiar with both He and He, so she picks it up at will and goes downstream, it is almost impossible to avoid it.Hu Lancheng had two short articles discussing his thoughts on reading before and after this, saying, "It was a long time ago, but I read it again recently, and felt that there was something to say"; "I have nothing to do these two days, so I read it again"— —Why do you suddenly want to reread it? It’s probably because I often talked with Zhang Ailing, and most of them couldn’t match Zhang’s proficiency, so I worked hard to "review the old and learn the new".And with his re-reading, Zhang Ailing must have reviewed it. Even if he did not re-read it completely, it was inevitable to find a few brilliant passages to re-read during the discussion.Immersed in it, it will inadvertently flow into the text, creating the "Red Mansion Legacy". ("Genesis" was written only a year later. This trend has been washed away a lot, but it has also been cut in half. I think the reason is probably due to "innuendo", not the fault of the red building.)

Repeating the predecessors is depressing. It is okay to write 20,000 to 30,000 words for fun, but after a long time, you will feel at a loss; however, such a clear language style cannot be used to write short stories. From a great book.It can be said that it is another attempt of "Modern Dream of Red Mansions", which was not fully enjoyed in the past, but it is also like "talking about the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty", which has a beginning and an end. Of course, this will make the buyer, that is, Ping Jinya, the owner of "Vientiane", very dissatisfied. He not only wrote an article in the newspaper to insinuate, but also published an article in the "Poster" "A Thousand Dollars of Gray Tin", saying that Zhang Ailing owed her money. I paid her a thousand yuan for the manuscript.Zhang Ailing then wrote a letter to defend herself, and later wrote an article "What I Have to Say" and sent it to Qian Gongxia of "Yulin", and Qian asked Ping Jinya to write another article "The History of One Thousand Yuan", which was published in the newspaper. The above were issued at the same time, and each of them is quoted as follows——

Zhang Ailing: "At the end of November in the 32nd year (1943), Mr. Qiuweng handed me a check of 2,000 yuan in person, as the manuscript fee for the first month and February of the next year. I said: 'It's settled. One thousand yuan per month, I should take it every month, otherwise I will have to eat every year, which makes me very worried.” So he took back the check and wrote me another check for one thousand yuan. But I don’t know why the account book But it was still 2,000 yuan....I usually find unfounded records about me in the newspapers, and I never defend them, but I think it is necessary to defend this matter because it concerns my professional ethics. I do not want any misunderstanding between myself and my readers, and so I have to repeat this unpleasant story."

Ping Jinya: "At that time, I collected evidence (receipts and receipts) for each withdrawal of Ms. Zhang, and put it in a volume. I sent a special letter to ask her to come to the agency to check whether it was all written by herself and whether the amount was correct. It is consistent. It has been a long time since Ms. Zhang came to inspect it, and I have ignored it so far. The physical evidence is still there, and I hope that Ms. Zhang will come to inspect it. If there is any false accusation against Ms. Zhang, I am willing to be punished by law and publish advertisements in major newspapers. I apologized to Ms. Zhang several times.... Especially the last time - late at night on May 8th, Ms. Zhang knocked on the door and asked the store clerk to advance 1,000 yuan, and the clerk handed over the automatic receipt as proof (existing in this company) .After this advance payment, I have not received a letter from him. So as far as the facts are concerned, we still owe our society 1,000 yuan of national currency.” As far as these two articles are concerned, there is no consensus on what to say, so this matter has been litigated for a long time in vain, and until now there is no conclusion, and it is impossible to have any conclusion.But I think no matter what the truth is. Such yelling and scolding with red eyebrows and green eyes is really getting richer and more stingy, and being rich is not benevolent. Half a century later, Zhang Ailing's friend in the United States, Mr. Liu Shaoming, a university professor, brought up this matter again, saying: "Zhang Ailing is principled in terms of money. If it is hers, she will fight for it; if it is not hers, she will not want it. "He also gave an example to complain for Zhang Ailing: the movie "Sorrow and Joy Middle Age" has always been regarded as another classic business card for the cooperation between Sang Hu and Zhang Ailing.In 1990, when the Supplement of Taipei's "United Daily News" serialized the script of "Sorrowful and Happy Middle Age", it was signed by Zhang Ailing and asked to send her the manuscript fee.However, Eileen Chang wrote back to the editor Su Weizhen: "This film is written and directed by Sang Hu. Although I participated in the writing process, I was only a consultant. I took some script fees and did not give my name. I would like to resign the manuscript fee. If it has been sent, I will return it... " At that time, Eileen Chang was alone in the United States and her life was difficult. However, she still refused to take any money that did not belong to her, which shows her purity.If this article is read by Ping Jinya, I don't know if he will feel a little bit. Of course, there is another possibility—Ping Jinya hated Zhang Ailing so much, or it was because he was not entrusted to him for publication (see Ke Ling’s recollection quoted in Chapter 7 above).However, those of us who have been on the sidelines for sixty years are inconvenient to speculate. But no matter what, if Zhang Ailing really owed Ping Jinya a thousand yuan of gray tin, then sixty years later, she would have more than enough to pay it back, and it will be repaid after her death——Zhang Ailing The copyright of the work was handed over to Ping Xintao, Ping Jinya's nephew.Even after her death, Ping Xintao released a "new work" by Eileen Chang the next year, earning a lot of money. Still the same sentence: the text is like a person.Judging from the text, Ping Jinya is really not a magnanimous person.At that time, a magazine organized writers to write the Solitaire novel "Red Leaf", and he wrote it under the guise of an old gardener: "In a certain homeland, every moonlit night, a demon fox would appear from time to time, burning incense and praying to the moon. The incense was burned once, and then again, and burned one after another, until finally, he succeeded in practicing and turned into a beautiful woman. Beauty, come out charming." Readers naturally know that Zhang Ailing wrote "The First Incense" and "The Second Incense", and the moon appears again and again in the article. It is self-evident who this fox fairy is alluding to.Ping Jinya's magazine has published many of Zhang Ailing's novels, and once they get negative, they immediately call them "fox fairies", which is not moral enough. At this point in the novel, he asked his good friend Zheng Yimei to continue writing, but Zheng Yimei left it alone and did not mention the "Fox Fairy", obviously he did not take Ping Jinya's actions for granted. What is even more unkind is that Ping Jinya also disclosed the content of a letter written by Zhang Ailing to him on June 15, 1944 discussing the issue of novel propaganda: "I have planned the promotion of my book after it is published, and it has always achieved considerable results without spending any money. If it is beneficial to the sales of my book, I can tell the history of my grandfather and grandmother in Zeng Mengpu's book. Readers, let readers and fiction writers in general do the talking for me—my family is aristocratic." Regarding Zhang Ailing's aristocratic blood, it was another pen and ink lawsuit she faced at that time, and it led to another even more humble character-Pan Liudai.