Chapter 9 【Volume 2】Zhou Zuoren and Louis

I heard from a friend that Kataoka Tetsuhei recently proposed at a meeting that an old Chinese writer with a very high status should be punished for only playing boring sketches and not being in tune with the times.It is said that it refers to Zhou Zuoren.I didn’t see the original text, because I am not a cultural person, and the dynamics of the cultural world always seem to me to be someone else’s business. I don’t care much, but I seem to understand everything, and I don’t want to find out. of the diaphragm.So when that friend said that, I could only say "Oh!" But I thought in my heart: Why is it so strict?Perhaps it is not so severe, and there is no need to be so severe.Then I thought: Maybe he was not referring to Zhou Zuoren.I planned to check it out, so as to know what happened, but I was still lazy.

But that's why I remembered Zhou Zuoren, who I met at a friend's house last year, and took him to Pukou to board the train.Looking at him, I felt only an indescribable melancholy in my heart at that time, just like an old poem he wrote to me, "Spring grass grows in front of Yuji Temple, and the ruins of Shenyuan are not clear. I occasionally look at the bridge with a stick. The flowing water and the setting sun are so affectionate." the kind of affection.Later, I saw an essay by him in Ancient and Modern Magazine, saying that his writing has a touch of melancholy, but people who read his articles seldom pay attention to this section.

A touch of melancholy is exactly the mood of Zhou Zuoren's articles since the Northern Expedition.His blandness is not elegant, his ordinaryness is not free, and his resignation is not the excess of life, but the insufficiency.Only this "slight melancholy" is the best explanation, and it also explained the melancholy I felt when I was with him that time. I prefer his distasteful writing from the May 4th Movement to the eve of the Northern Expedition. His writing in the later period is like autumn.He is not a fallen leaf fighting against the west wind, but it is also a fallen leaf, which fell between the clear windows and turned into a faint melancholy.

However I still respect him because he fought for a while.Although his later works shrink the life, they still say what he knows, do what he believes, and are honest and honest.There is still a touch of melancholy, which is because Zhou Zuoren's articles are always superior to the Analects School, not only in terms of workmanship, but especially in temperament, which is beyond the reach of Yu Ping and Bolin Yutang's generation. I also hope that the era of Zhou Zuoren will pass away, but I don't think this is a matter of setting up a literary court.When it comes to the literary court, Lewis suddenly comes to mind.It was also told to me by chance by a friend—because I am always so unfamiliar with the publishing industry recently, saying that some people are dissatisfied with the decadence, individualism, and pride of Lewis’s poems. There have been many offensive articles published on the Internet, and it seems that there will be a thorough mopping up war.People who want to attack and sweep up are not my business, and when they talk about decadence, individualism, pride, etc., I think Louis is indeed true.But I don't think it is necessary to deal with him like this, nor should I deal with him like this. The reason is very simple: If the people of Israel heard Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem, and cursed, "Woe to you, people of Israel!" They would call him a defeatist, but some people wailed, and finally the huge Jerusalem is not lonely anymore.And if this world is the desert mentioned in Lu Xun's "Wild Grass", then decadent sighs and empty laughter in the relatively invisible surroundings would still be warm.

Lewis' individualism was pathological, but it was the pathology of the times. From his poems and from his person, there is this morbid atmosphere, but it is not depraved, because he is so serious about life, and his morbidity sometimes comes from taking trivial things too seriously of.Some people also said he was a hedonist, which is totally wrong.As for him being decadent, I think he still has reservations.Because sometimes it is not easy to draw the line between decadence and positivity, revolution and counter-revolution.As far as literature is concerned, for example Chateaubriand published "Adara" in 1800, which Brandes said moved the French reading circle with the force of a storm, but the content was not a revolutionary story. It is a novel about the love and death of the daughter of an Indian Christian, which emphasizes religious feelings very much.Yet it can still be a great French work of its time.It is a long story, so I will skip it for the time being, and whether the so-called Louis’s decadence is the opposite or complementary to the modern era, can the same be said for Chateaubriand’s religious feelings? The description is also omitted for the time being.Here I just want to make one point--

Even the morbid individualist is far more real and more respectable than the cheerleading chorus. As for the individual being out of step with the "time"—actually, the prevailing ethos, according to the examples in history, it is not necessarily the fault of the individual, but probably the "time" should reflect on it. Lewis's poems before the war, during the war—I don't know what will happen after the war, they are always the best poems in China, the best poems singing about the untie and brokenness of this era.As he is human.Being with Lewis gave me the impression of uneasiness, even unpleasantness, but everything about him was still respectable, and even the most demanding God of the Hebrews was only a lost lamb to him, and he still held his own. with deep love.

The title of this article is "Zhou Zuoren and Louise". In fact, the writing is not self-connected. The only connection is that I think it is better for the literary world to have no courts.