Chapter 40 love

It is often said that love is the eternal theme of literary and artistic creation.There are probably not many people who disagree with this opinion.Love is also an indispensable thing in life.Even if he later became a monk and became a monk, he completely "worshiped" with love; before that, he also waded in love and was baptized by love. You don't need to search for famous examples from ancient times. The modern Su Manshu and Master Hongyi are right in front of you. But why have I written more than 30 articles in "Life Talk" and haven't touched the topic of love?Isn't love important in life?No.Just because it is too important, too common, but too mysterious, too mysterious, so I dare not touch it.

As a Chinese saying goes: "Sooner or later, an ugly daughter-in-law will meet her parents-in-law." Sooner or later, I must also write ramblings about love.Now, I have an opportunity: I am reading the essay "On Friendship" by the great French essayist Montaigne, which talks about love.I simply copied a few paragraphs, extended them, borrowed someone else's cup, filled my own wine, and settled this paragraph.If I have a higher and deeper understanding in the future, I will write again. Montaigne said: We cannot put love in the place of friendship. "I admit that the fire of love is livelier, more intense, hotter...but love is a capricious, capricious emotion, with wild impulses, highs and lows, hot and cold, that tie us to the Friendship is a universal and common passion... Besides, love is nothing but a mad desire, and the more it is avoided, the more it is pursued... Once love enters the stage of friendship, that is, into the stage of congenial stage, it decays and fades away. Love is for bodily pleasure, and once enjoyed, it ceases to exist."

In short, in Montaigne's eyes, love is not as good as friendship, and it is not a good thing.I personally think that although Montaigne's words are too intense, too biased, and too extreme; however, we cannot but admit that it has a reasonable aspect of seeking truth from facts. According to my personal observation and thinking, I think that the world's attitudes towards love can be broadly divided into two schools: one is realism, and the other is idealism.Montaigne obviously belonged to realism, he did not mystify and idealize love.If he was a poet, he would never be like a large group of idealistic poets, who wrote some poems that love each other, mandarin ducks and butterflies, and sometimes even take the sensuality as interesting poems, which will be appreciated by the talented and beautiful people all over the world.He speaks cleanly and bluntly, describing love as "a fickle, fickle feeling."For some high-minded scholars, this is really a bit of a disgrace, as if there is dung on the Buddha's head.

I am not talented, and I am attached to the realist school.I also have a difference with Montaigne: I think that at a certain stage of love there may be innocence.Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain why young Japanese lovers would both jump into the crater when their love reached its climax, making their love immortal. (two) Situations like this are probably very rare in Japan.In other countries, it is unheard of. Of course, there is no shortage of poems, plays, novels, and folklore praising pure love in other countries.Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", China's Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai are well known to the world.Who can doubt the innocence of this love?As far as China is concerned, there are many folk legends similar to Liang Zhu's love.As for the true stories of "swearing to die and not marrying" and "swearing to die and not marrying", there are many.In this way, love seems to be completely contrary to Montaigne's statement, and it is extremely innocent and holy.

Here I want to analyze a famous case of love.This is the love story between Concubine Yang Gui and Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, which is a famous story in ancient and modern times.This is what Bai Juyi, the great poet of the Tang Dynasty, praised.You see, after Tang Xuanzong lost Concubine Yang Gui, how much he missed and how deeply he loved: "The fireflies in the evening palace are flying quietly, and the solitary lamp is exhausted and I can't sleep." Hate lasts forever."How touching and sympathetic the writing is, it seems that the love between the two of them is so pure that it cannot be added.However, common sense tells us that love is exclusive, and true love does not allow a third party.But what about Tang Xuanzong? "Three thousand beauties in the harem", there are really enough concubines.Even if it is "three thousand pets in one body", can this "in one body" be reliable?Bai Juyi, as a courtier in the Tang Dynasty, dared to talk about the affairs of the palace, which was absolutely impossible in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Let's not talk about it first, is Bai Juyi really so simple-minded that he believes that this love is pure before he sings it?Or is there another reason?

These feudal loves are "all gone".How do we treat love today?I know that people do not speak in secret, and I somewhat agree with Montaigne's opinion.The ancient Chinese said: "Food, sex, and sex." Love, especially marriage, is always associated with "sex".The well-known eulogy of Zhang Sheng and Yingying's love, the climax is actually the scene of "rewarding Jane", that is, "promising with one's body".The news is worth our comprehension. How do our young people treat love today?I'm a little unclear about this, and there are no young people who come to talk about such things with my nine-year-old antique.According to what I have seen and heard, that set of feudal things has long been abandoned by today's youth.If anyone wants to ask me, the blind man of love, I can tell them my opinion.If a person does not want to be celibate for life, he must fall in love and even get married.This is the "righteous way in the world".But don't waste too much time. You're in love with me all day long, you're fascinated, you're deliberate, you're a little awkward from time to time, you can't study well, you can't get work done, and in the end you may end up with nothing.What a bother!I don't advocate that two people "love at first sight" and go through the marriage formalities immediately.I think that two people must have a process of getting to know each other.This process does not need to be too long, as short as half a year, as long as a year.The spare time should be used wisely to start a career, for the individual, for the family, for the country, and for the world.

I have already written two short essays on love, but I feel that I still have more to say, so I will write another one now.For such an ordinary and mysterious thing as love, such a social phenomenon or psychological activity, even if the space is expanded by 10 times, 20 times, or 100 times, it will still be impossible to finish.This article is supplemented, but it is just to make up for some omissions in the previous two articles. In the old society, the method of "the order of the parents and the words of the matchmaker" was practiced, and young men and women entered the bridal chamber without having to worry about any brains.We can say that marriage is the beginning of love.However, don't forget that there are also examples of "green leaves and shades and branches" who finally don't know what love is, and the number is not too small.In modern times, free love is practiced, and sometimes it turns out that marriage is the end of love.In the West and in China today, the divorce rate is quite considerable, which is a concrete example.Divorce is said to be prohibited in some Catholic national churches.However, not divorcing does not mean that love can continue.

As mysterious as love is, chances of falling in love and of marrying—chance, to use a philosophical term—are so strange, so sudden, and beyond our individual grasp.In addition to confusion, the philosophers of the East and the West were helpless, but the common people had a solution, and they turned to mythology. When it comes to mythology, according to my personal thinking, there is a distinction between Chinese and foreign.Westerners created a love called Jupiter or Cupid, which is a boy holding a bow and arrow.Whoever his arrow hits will fall in love.After all, the ancient Indian culture had a relationship with ancient Greece and Rome in Europe. They also created a god of love called Kmaolliva, who also held a bow and arrow. Those who were shot fell in love immediately and never dared to violate it.This myth is of course of the same origin, which is not discussed here.

In China, we don't have the belief of "God of Love", we have other ways.We created a one-month-old man, holding a red thread in his hand. Whoever is tied by the red thread, no matter how far apart, the ends of the earth, as if they are neighbors, the two will definitely come together, fall in love and get married.Once upon a time, there was a Yuelao temple in West Lake. There is a couplet that is famous all over the world: "May all lovers in the world become relatives. It is destined to be married in the previous life." How simple and humane!Only for some people, "previous life" and "marriage" seem a little vague and mysterious.However, if every couple recalls the process of falling in love and getting married, can you deny this couplet in Yuelao Temple?

I can't deny this couplet myself, but I can't find any "scientific basis".I would like to advise young people today, please believe it.I don't have the right to make irresponsible remarks about the way young people in the West and China fall in love and get married, but I just find it unacceptable.I know that I am nine years old, and I have already belonged to the figure in the museum. I try my best to avoid the complaints of the nine-pound old lady, but sometimes I have to express it quickly like a bone in my throat.