Chapter 31 Thirteen. Artistic life (2)

I firmly believe that art is the true taste of life, the sublimation of life, the driving force of life, the source of happiness, the improvement of spirit, and the home that people rely on to live and work.Life should lead to art, and only the life leading to art is a worthwhile life and the life of newcomers in the new society. In this way, I feel sorry for those who are too lacking in art, and even despise them, or at least alienate them.This obsession with art has since cost me dearly. What's more, I still listen to Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Liu Tianhua and the blind A Bing on the radio.I know how affectionate, how civilized, how rich, how brilliant people can be.And the reality is... I think of a line from a character in Chekhov's play: "What a savage life."

I like Borokin's orchestral music "The Grasslands of Central Asia", and I like the interweaving of long and lingering, boundless and nostalgic.I like Rimsky-Gorsakov's "Sheikh Rassada" suite, that is, it can be called gorgeous and smooth.I also love singing Glinka's "Northern Star" and Dvořák's "Songs My Mother Taught Me".All good artistic achievements go straight to my heart and go deep into my soul.I listened to Guo Lanying's singing records at the home of Liu Libang, Secretary of the Youth League Committee, and I was also intoxicated by her passionate and pure voice.Huang Hong's "Little River Flowing Water" and "Guessing the Tune" also brought me great joy.

I devote more of my free time to reading.I love reading Paris Has Fallen, The Tempest, and The Giant Wave by Ehrenburg.I know that his writing is hasty and rough, but after all, he has a grand layout, a bird's-eye view, romantic colors, colorful memories and infinite emotions.Given Ehrenburg's situation and experience, his sentimentality is really rare!I still remember the guerrilla lyrics he wrote: whistle quickly Comrade, It's time to fight. I don't see any good in that word now, but at the time those three words also brought tears to my eyes. After "The Tempest", he wrote about the peace defense movement after World War II. His new book is called "Nine Waves", which can also be regarded as "synchronized with life".I remember his hero who wrote about the gluttonous idleness in France. Every time he had dinner, he left a seat for the family members who died in the war. It was thrilling.

I like old Tolstoy's, his strokes are delicate and vivid, precise and magical.From it, I began to feel love, life, communication, contact, charm and mystery, and moreover, I felt the ingenuity and power of literature.The meeting between Anna and Vronsky, the ice skating between Levin and Kitty, the birthday of Anna's son Alyosha, every ball, Anna's dream and death, all made me realize the real immortality. I read Turgenev in a more comfortable and closer mood.Lini's translation is extremely elegant. Lisa in "A Noble House" later became a nun. Ekaterina in "Eve Before" inspires Bulgarian revolutionaries. "Eve" gives people a particularly full artistic enjoyment.

And Dostoyevsky shocked me, his prose is like a river rolling in, and the turbid waves emptying out, how you feel he writes, he personally destroys your (reading) all hopes and wishes, he makes you Despair drives you crazy, how painful it must be! I spent the late autumn and early winter nights of 1952 reading Balzac.What I admire and move is the accuracy of the description, everything is like seeing the person, hearing the voice, and being there.There are too many wonderful things in life, and all the wonderful things can only be handed down after they become literary works, which are more brilliant and permanent than life.

I read Lu Xun over and over again, which is a long prose poem.With "On the Restaurant", every word is full of blood and tears.I especially like his, like "A Good Story", and: "The lonely snow is the spirit of rain..." So I also became cold and sad, facing the vast world, the numb and indifferent, For people who have no malice but often do things that hurt others—such as Yang Sao who told Xianglin’s wife in "Blessings" about the punishment for remarried people after death—Lu Xun is best at writing this kind of foolish and foolish women. Feeling a huge loss.

At the same time, I love Chekhov more and more. His melancholy, his deep thinking, his sighs, and the tears in his eyes make me fascinated.I also especially like Rulong's translation, smooth and elegant, subtle and deep, every word and every sentence is deeply rooted in my heart and sprouts and grows. In the mid-1950s, Soviet expert Lesley directed the youth art theater to rehearse "Uncle Vanya". Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, they drive me crazy.Everyday life, scenery, boredom, disappointment and constantly shattering dreams, how Chekhov seems to be able to fiddle with it effortlessly, has become such a moving drama.It is a play full of the taste of life, the breath of people, the shape of nature and the infinite distress of life. The dialogue in those plays is like poetic prose. This is what I love most and what I am looking for.I recited lines from these plays, Vanya's "The rain has passed...", Sonia's "We will have a rest..." The author's explanation of the effect at the end of "The Cherry Orchard" A strange sound came, the ax fell on the cherry tree, and an era, a class, some people were destroyed, but Tania dreamed of a new life, although no one knew what a new life would be like.These readings are like enlightenment, enlightenment, rebirth, internal cleansing, and soul ascension... What I feel is a kind of trembling, a kind of new life, a kind of relief and a kind of fear.