Chapter 19 The Fourth Series of Black Reading (6)

——Comparison of intellectuals in old Russia and Taiwan in the process of democratization Russia's modernization process is later than European countries, but earlier than Asian countries.From some perspectives, it has achieved brilliant achievements. Its military strength, geographical expansion, and starry stars in the fields of literature, science, art, music, and fine arts are all proud of it.Yet it is undeniable that at the most basic level, that of creating a sound, well-governed, democratic, vibrant nation, fit for the modern world, two centuries of reform have failed utterly.Democracy has been trampled on, and after the great turmoil and revolution, the old Russia has become a new "Gulag Archipelago".The newly introduced Marxism-Leninism still cannot adapt to the Russian environment after 70 years. Seventy years later, Russia is once again suffering the blow of total collapse.

In my opinion, Russian intellectuals are some of the most intelligent people in the world.Literary masters such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gorky, etc., Herzen, Bakunin, Ogarev, Lenin, etc. Nor can a nation provide that.So why couldn't they save their homeland?What role did they play in the process of democratization and modernization in old Russia?Where is their fatal flaw? These questions are answered incisively in the famous book "Change and Crisis under Dictatorship" by Russian historian Raif.In this book, for the first time, he dissects the mistakes made by generations of intellectuals, while before, people only praised those great minds.

As early as the 18th century, the birth of Russian culture was marked by Pushkin.This is an ambiguous culture, influenced by European Enlightenment and sucking the venom of Orthodox Christianity, the spirit of absolute monarchy.In Peter's time, Russian literature was full of atrocities, descriptions of violence, and satirical sketches like wild horses, but the emergence of a new intellectual personality was still elusive. During the period of Catherine II, due to the strengthening of control, intellectuals, as the vanguard of the upper class, keenly felt the contradictions and conflicts in two aspects: on the one hand, the moral mission of the upper class and the sense of responsibility to do good things for the people; Duty to the state, to the embodiment of supreme power, the dictator.

How to choose between the two? Is "no choice" the best choice?Unfortunately, "no choice" is a Russian tradition that dates back to Pushkin's "Onegin" - I can't be guilty of doing nothing, right?I only rescued myself. Is it a kind of progress? Lermontov's "Contemporary Hero" is a striking symbol.The discerning Belinsky called it "the unique pyramid towering over the desert of contemporary literature". Obviously, the intention lies not in the poetic description of the Caucasus landscape in the book, nor in the author's storytelling skills, but in the "Contemporary hero" Bi Qiaolin's own philosophical connotation.The so-called "hero" is actually a "spiritually disabled person". Lermontov is a serious writer, and he does not regard this book as a comedy. "There are two people coexisting in my body: one fully embodies the meaning of the word 'person'. The other is a person who is thinking and judging." The latter "person" constantly exposes the despicableness of the former "person" And shameless, lewd and boring.He accused "my soul of being ruined by high society", and his only resistance was to be expelled from high society.In that era, being able to do this was indeed considered a "hero".

"I love others for myself, to satisfy a strange need in my heart." Bi Qiaolin's "love" brought disaster to those around him, and he became the "fulfiller" of human tragedy.Lermontov deserves to be called a great poet. He has insight into the secret of Russian intellectuals: they are separated from the society as a whole, and they are veritable "superfluous people".And the "superfluous people" is the most glorious series of characters in Russian literature. Why are there such "superfluous people" as Bi Qiaolin?Is it just a character factor?Then how to understand the universality of "superfluous people"?Raif made the same discovery as Lermontov did, using a historian's microscope.When analyzing a generation of young intellectuals in the early 19th century, he believed that they first comprehended ethical and rational principles, and derived their social and spiritual ideals from these principles.Isolation and self-absorption are unfortunate products of the privileged environment in which these young people grow up, with people cut off from the outside world and alienated from others in society.They are opposed to bureaucracy, and they can't understand how Chinese people care about material interests.Some withdraw inwardly, failing to develop their ability to play a positive and constructive role in the social process.In criticizing existing institutions and condemning social inequalities, they demonstrate high moral standards and sometimes serve as role models for society.But few of them can go back to the society they belong to smoothly, but can only live in the closed world created by themselves, and suffer the temptation of dreams and hallucinations-that is to say, replace reality with empty words. Seems to be the only reality.When they arrived at Chekov's place, they were all imprisoned in a mental hospital.

Herzen was the leader of the ideological circles in the 1930s and 1940s. Even Lenin regarded this liberal intellectual as the "think tank" of old Russia.For the first time, Raif took issue with Herzen and his group: a group of elite intellectuals who on the one hand betrayed their aristocratic origins and on the other did not want to cooperate with the government or business society, who defined themselves in terms of "the people" ——Actually, "the people" are strangers to them.As a small group, they lived an isolated spiritual life in the "circle". "Survive as a farmer" can only be said in lip service and.As Raif put it wryly: "Unless they show that they can play a special role in the future of the peasantry, who lag far behind the progress of Russian civilization, this goal will not be achieved."

Intellectuals do not participate in the reform, due to the inferior nature of intellectuals themselves.They are too obsessed with truth and "new revelations" to disdain sporadic reform activities. "Even if Bouyeifen adopts stupid measures such as inspection and punishment, it is impossible for intellectuals to participate in creative activities under the guidance and encouragement of the imperial regime. So they simply stand by and do nothing about various reform efforts." Reforms without the participation of intellectuals, the result Will it be like this?The country has become stronger, but the core of the system is totalitarian. The "tsar" has always been a dark cloud that cannot be removed, and this dark cloud is even getting thicker. The "new tsar" Stalin is a thousand times more terrifying than the old tsar.There is no need to describe the atrocities, but it can be felt from the poet Akhmatova's verse: "Fear and slowness take turns / In the house of the poet who fell out of favor, the dawn does not know when the sap rings."

Tyranny is night, democracy is day.However, intellectuals in Old Russia never paid much attention to the meaning of democracy, which is also related to the traditions of Old Russia.Old Russia believed in the most ultimate ideals, such as absolute goodness, final truth, and so on.This is evident in Yangstoevsky's works.Therefore, "democracy", which is intermediate, transitional, used to check and balance evil, and recognizes human limitations, has become very secondary in the eyes of the old Russian intellectuals.They do not understand that democracy, as a brand-new way of life, is echoed by modern economic production. Although democracy is only a not-so-bad way of life, it also has too many disadvantages, but compared with dictatorship, it is After all, it is a big progress.Which is better to participate in the democratic process than to stand by and do nothing?

Standing by for a while is about to roll up your sleeves and start a fire.Intellectuals who are self-admired, cut off from the outside world, and wholeheartedly waiting for a drastic and complete change through social revolution, gradually feel desperate for "waiting on the sidelines."In order to stick to the ultimate goal, they opposed any compromise and moderate reform, and refused to participate in the civil society that was developing at the time.Ralph's analysis was spot on: "Unable to accept any reform not on their terms, they adopted an attitude of uncompromising opposition. It was the deep nature of the intellectual."

When democracy is suspended, nihilism and radicalism flourish, and the hatred of alienated radical intellectuals is fierce and ruthless.This hatred exceeds that of the French Revolution.No matter how much the society has to pay, unless the dictatorship completely collapses, they will not give up willingly.Jiajia wrote an important play "Justice", the protagonist is a group of old Russian young intellectuals engaged in assassination activities.Can the tragic dedication maintain the justice of the Ten Karmas?This is suspected by the plus class.Raif finds the precipice: "In this respect, it is not the actions of radical intellectuals but their ideas that are tinged with authoritarianism."

On March 1, 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by members of the Popular Will Party.That gunshot had already heralded that the old Russia would become the world of Marxism-Leninism, even though Marxism was only a spark in Russia at that time, and Leninism had not yet taken shape.Just as a dictatorship cannot change because of the role it plays in an autocratic regime, the position of radical intellectuals is doomed to remain static.In this way, the dictatorial tsar on the one hand and the radical intellectuals on the other constitute the opposite poles of Russian society.Neither pole accepts democracy.Thus, tragedy was born. When intellectuals realize that they have put a noose on themselves, it is too late to struggle.The first thing a revolution destroys is the intellectuals.Instead, the survival of intellectuals depends on the guarantees of democracy.The poet Mandeltam described contemporary life in this way: "They declare that their business has nothing to do with people. They need to use people, like using bricks and cement. Use people to build, not for people. The construction of society is based on The size of man is measured. Sometimes, it also turns against man, nourishing his greatness with his humiliation and insignificance.” Stalin eliminated Tolstoy, which was the greatest disaster in Russia. The dilemma of democracy has been delayed until the end of the Zhou century. The disintegration of the Soviet Union is also the disintegration of the "polar opposites" thinking.The attempt at democracy in New Russia is difficult, and it is not something that can be achieved immediately to reverse the tradition of fighting for "truth" to fighting for "democracy".In New Russia, the "rooted" professional intellectuals that Raif admired gradually became popular.In the "Silver Age", such intellectuals were weak and unable to help civil society produce a set of its own, including values.A complete ideology of principles and practical experience to guide its participation in the political life and economic development of the country seems to be possible again today. Professional intellectuals and democracy are mutually causal.The more mature the civil society, the more active the professional intellectuals will be.The professional intellectuals of the "Silver Age" listed by Raif, such as: freelancers, engineers, chemists, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc., also include professional artists, writers, and "thinkers" who appeared around 1900—— They are loyal to their academic research and art, do not play any role in society other than their own profession, and make a living by selling their works.In the end, they failed to play a corresponding role. The reason is that there is no democracy as a goal for them to pursue, and there is no democracy as a system to protect them. They have to let radicals dominate. Democracy can not only preserve the monarch itself, but also preserve intellectuals.Unfortunately, intellectuals and monarchs alike turned a blind eye to it.Democracy is like a magnet that can attract polarities together. Unfortunately, there was no such magnet in Old Russia. If the pyramid is regarded as an autocratic system, then the Gothic architecture can be regarded as a democratic system.Mandelstam's passage is meaningful: "It is not a new social pyramid that fascinates us, but the Gothic architecture of society; the free play of centers of gravity and forces, human society imagined as a complex, A dense architectural forest, where everything is purposeful, everything is individualized, and each part responds to the vast whole." Taiwan is a special geopolitical concept. The beauty of this land is directly proportional to the suffering.During the half century of colonial history, Taiwanese intellectuals like trace elements, while protesting, rebelling, and exposing the cruel rule of foreign races, at the same time sucked needles into the decayed and numb mental illness of their own nation; The fire of democracy and science was stolen from the New Culture Movement, while strengthening the protection of the devastated traditional culture. After 1949, during the period of national division, Taiwanese intellectuals consciously shouldered the unfinished mission of enlightenment under the pressure of ideology. For freedom, they cried out like a cuckoo crying blood; for love, they climbed to the cross like Jesus. Since the middle and late 1980s, Taiwan's democratization process has advanced rapidly.Today, an "open society" has initially taken shape, the Kuomintang's monopoly has been broken, the checks and balances of power are being integrated, the press and publications have been fully liberalized, and the concept of democracy has taken root in the hearts of the people.The emergence of this situation is certainly related to the enlightenedness of the leaders, but more importantly, it is the struggle of several generations of intellectuals who died one after another.They directly or indirectly contend with the current system, and actively and tenaciously resist the totalitarian system from different levels and aspects.As Jiajia said, "In this unrespectable history, we should work hard for human dignity in a respectable way." Democracy blossomed in Taiwan, of course, there are many factors, such as economic take-off, educational progress, information The dissemination and pressure of the United States and so on.But in my opinion, the work of intellectuals is the "top priority."They began to sow the seeds in the early 1950s, cultivated them day by day for decades, and finally a lush and towering tree was born. Reality is also divorced from history, and thus excluded from the fast-paced social process; then Taiwanese intellectuals are "footed on Eastern and Western cultures, handwritten family letters and state affairs are long in the world", keenly feel the pulse of the times, and do their part to prescribe medicine for the isolated island. Thus becoming a powerful promoter of the historical process. For me, it is full of temptation to retrace the physical and spiritual journey of several generations of Taiwanese intellectuals, and look for the footprints and traces of those outstanding representatives.Because it was the best way to untangle the mess in my own mind, and the best way to break out of the dark maze of tunnels.Why not give it a try? In 1949, after Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, he promulgated "martial law" to strictly control the people on the island, creating a situation of "massacre and terror" in Taiwan.Pay special attention to the monitoring of public opinion, and all publications and printed materials must be sent to the Garrison Command for future reference.During the period of more than 30 years of "reconnaissance and chaos", the naked persecution, suppression, and torture suffered by Taiwanese intellectuals surpassed any era in Chinese history. Many top-notch intellectuals have been imprisoned, as follows Listed in the table: This is just the tip of the iceberg.The number of intellectuals imprisoned, punished, and killed cannot be counted.From the killing of elites on the island in the "February 28" incident in 1948 to the Jiangnan murder that shocked the world in the mid-1980s, we can see the brutality of the Chiang regime.In the novel "Lost Garden" written by Taiwanese female writer Li Ang, a touching image of an intellectual "father" is created. recovery.But after experiencing the "February 28" disaster, the totalitarian system that was "killed" turned into "waste", trapped in the garden, killing time with photography. The "father" in "Lost Garden" is a symbol of Taiwan's grief and indignation. The "Free China" magazine incident was the first attempt by Taiwanese intellectuals to hit the stone door head-on. "Free China" was originally founded by Hu Shi, and was later taken over by Lei Zhen and Yin Haiguang. In the mid-1950s, the conflict with the authorities intensified. In 1954, the article "Rescue the Educational Crisis" was published, exposing the fact that the authorities "did the party in the name of education", and called for "not to allow young people to have a completely distorted understanding of the democratic system at the stage of education." Chiang Kai-shek was furious. Furious, he personally ordered Lei Zhen to be expelled from the Kuomintang party. In 1957, "Free China" publicly opposed the "legal rule" of the Kuomintang and opposed Chiang's re-election as the third president. Spring of 1960.Lei Zhen joined forces with liberal intellectuals and petty bourgeois on the island to form a new party.The Kuomintang authorities were terrified and wiped out the nascent "China Democracy Party" on the fabricated charges of "creating a subversive conspiracy" and "not reporting the bandits they knew". In the early 1960s, Li Ao shocked the whole island with the image of "Li Zhuowu of the 20th century".Li Ao's thoughts were deeply influenced by Hu Shi, Yin Haiguang, Yao Congwu and others, and he took the initiative to attack traditional ethics and the Kuomintang's autocratic rule under the guise of traditional ethics.Wei Lianchu in Lu Xun's works accepted the old-fashioned funeral under the shadow of tradition.At his father's funeral, Li Ao used "no kowtow, no burning paper, and no tear" to express his deepest love, and he showed the bravery of "going forward" in front of tradition and the masses alone. The core of Li Ao's thoughts is "Theory of Total Westernization". He is the person who has reflected on traditional culture and intellectuals themselves most deeply since Lu Xun.His "Ji Qiu Commentary" reached or even surpassed Lu Xun's thought.He revealed the five major faults of Chinese intellectuals: clumsy in making a living, eager to use the world, ignorant of loyalty, seeking truth, and neglecting self-examination. Li Ao tried to restore Hu Shi's image as a liberal, comparing Hu Shi to a farsighted and contradictory crow, and praised Hu Shi as the number one person in the country who never stopped pursuing the truth.At the same time, he proposed to go beyond Hu Shi.He believes that Hu Shi's academics are backward academics, "you can't get rid of the tricks of the remnants of Qianjia and Jia, and you can't get rid of the confrontation between the Han and Song Dynasties." well. "Story Star" magazine caused a thousand waves with one stone.The brave Li Ao disregarded the thousands of years of taboos in the Chinese literary world, and criticized the dignitaries in politics, learning, court and opposition by name, such as: Chen Lifu, Tao Xisheng, Hu Qiuyuan, Zheng Xuejia, Liu Zhe, Qian Mu, Tang Junyi, Sam Mengwu , Xie Fuya, etc.This list can go on and on like running water.This is what I admire the most about Li Ao: believe in the truth, not in authority; worship yourself, not afraid of isolation.Although Li Ao was arrested, he awakened a whole generation of Taiwanese youth and handed them the weapon of independent thinking. If Li Ao is a star in the ideological world, then Chen Yingzhen is a star in the literary world.Chen Yingzhen turned from deep introspection of personal moral world to criticism of social and cultural structure, and his character of "heresy Utopia" made his fate have the tragic color of "lonely righteous man".Under the mechanism of repression, "writing" becomes his discussion of life, human nature, life and death.Soul and flesh, individual and society, ideal and reality, slavery and freedom, etc. have been puzzling Chinese intellectuals since the May Fourth Movement. Writing has become a symbol of his expression of suffering, criticism of reality, and pursuit of freedom. Wang Anyi respectfully called Chen Yingzhen a person who "lived on an isolated island and shocked the world" in "He Tuobang Poetry"; while Li Xiangping used Whitman's poem to compare him to "The Lonely Oak".Without exception, Chen Yingzhen's creations have critical power, thinking power, and the immense human nature and human love behind critical thinking.His thoughts and creations have been banned and suppressed.There are professional ideological detectives in the secret service agency who specialize in collecting and analyzing his remarks.After being arrested, he discovered that the materials about him before the interrogator had piled up like a mountain. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, the civil rights movement swept the world.In this darkest of nights the intellectual world has not remained silent. In 1968, the "Wen Li" magazine hosted by Bo Yang published the cartoon "Popeye", which satirized the dictatorship of Jiang and his son, and was arrested.At first, he was sentenced to death and life imprisonment, and later changed to 10 years in prison.Bo Yang wrote the masterpiece "Bo Hua Zi Zhi Tong Jian" in prison. In October 1971, teachers and students of National Taiwan University held a symposium on "freedom of speech" and "democratic life", which kicked off the student movement. On February 17, 1973, Chen Guying and Wang Xiaobo, thought leaders of the student movement, were arrested.The next day, in order to protest against the atrocities of the Kuomintang, National Taiwan University student Bu Yu Duo committed suicide with a knife at the school gate and recommended Xuanyuan with his blood. In the early 1970s, the island of Taiwan was violently impacted by a series of political waves.What became an inexhaustible spiritual resource for that generation was the Diaoyu movement that swept across Taiwan, Hong Kong and the overseas Chinese world.After the ups and downs of the Diaoyu protection movement, a new generation of young intellectuals matured and joined the turbulent democratization process as a new force. In 1979, the "Beautiful Island Consortium" broke out in Kaohsiung.Radical liberal intellectuals, with the "Bangli Island" magazine as the core, held a parade of tens of thousands of people in Kaohsiung, shouting slogans of "down with the rule of secret agents" and "opposing the Kuomintang dictatorship", and clashed violently with the police .Chiang Ching-kuo ordered the suppression and 152 people were arrested.Among them, Shi Mingde was sentenced to life imprisonment, Huang Xinjie was sentenced to 14 years, Yao Jiawen, Zhang Junhong and others were sentenced to 12 years.This was the last large-scale suppression of the democratic movement by the Kuomintang authorities. Under decades of high political pressure, Taiwanese literature has made remarkable achievements.From Lai He, Yang Song, and Wu Zhuoliu in the Japanese occupation era to Zhong Lihe, Chen Laochao, and Li Qiao in the 1950s and 1960s, their literature has rare sincerity and integrity despite their deficiencies in one way or another. texture.In a word, keep the thinking of the elite, pay attention to the survival of the people's livelihood, and work hard between the tension between the two.Take Zhong Lihe's "Lishan Farm" as an example, which can be called an epic of Taiwan's rural society before and after the liberation.Although the tone of the work is mournful and dull, there is a heart of compassion.It is only when it is sad that it does not complain about it, and it is only when it is sympathetic to others that it does not favor others. Self-reflection and concern for the people, a strong sense of tragedy and a real sense of life are all things that mainland literature lacks most.As far as Hou Hsiao-hsien's films and Luo Dayou's campus folk songs are concerned, their spiritual height is beyond the reach of mainland films and music.What I see in these works are ordinary and great "hearts of intellectuals". After entering the 1980s, the Taiwan authorities, under pressure from inside and outside the island, implemented localization and democratization policies. The tight social and political controls were loosened, and the grass that grew from the cracks began to grow into towering trees. In the early 1980s, political novels stood out among many genres, paving the way for democracy.Shi Mingzheng wrote novels such as "The Thirsty Dead" and "Drinking Urine" based on his personal experience, which truly recorded the oppression of human nature in the dark Taiwanese prisons, and the life-and-death struggle between good and evil in human nature.Wang Tuo's "The Story of Hong Kong", Chen Yingzhen's "Candy Road", Lin Shuangbu's "College Girl Zhuang Nan'an".Zhong Yanhao's "Gai Jun's Diary" and other works have inherited the consistent spirit of protest in Taiwanese literature and created a group of intellectuals who are searching up and down.This thread bears a striking resemblance to the spiritual chain of Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, the best in Russian literature. The "democracy" of Taiwanese intellectuals is not the empty ideas, pale dogma, flowery rhetoric, and distant speculations of mainland intellectuals, but a down-to-earth love for people, concern for people, and real people's lives. Searching for and recovering the rich and multifaceted life between people and between people and nature.Farmers in Huang Chunming's works, workers in Yang Qingchu's works, declining aristocrats in Bai Xianyong's works, citizens in Huang Fan's works, overseas students in Zhang Xiguo's works, women in Li Ang's works... This series of lifelike literary images shows the enlightenment of Taiwanese writers. A strong sense of urgency and mission.The relationship between them and the people is open rather than closed; it is a two-way communication rather than aloof;Therefore, although they are trace elements in the whole society, they are "living resources", which can be quickly spread and transformed in various ways in various channels.They are "enzymes" in biology and "catalysts" in chemistry.Today the people of Taiwan can enjoy the fruits of democracy without shame, because they have intellectuals who are worthy of pride. When writing about old Russian intellectuals, I used more theoretical analysis; when writing about Taiwanese intellectuals, I used more descriptions of events.It seems that the style is not uniform, but in fact it is the right medicine, using the brushwork that best explains their respective problems. One-sidedness of views is unavoidable, my purpose is not to discuss the facts, and of course it is not to "talk about others".I just want to sort out my confused thoughts through two "X"-ray scans.Maybe it's still not sorted out. Most of the old Russian intellectuals came from aristocratic backgrounds and later turned to populism.Tolstoy gave up a life of luxury and lived like a peasant, which is a living example.However, they still cannot get the understanding and support of farmers.There is a rather vicious but pertinent joke popular in old Russia: "The master rebelled because he wanted to become a coachman." On the contrary, most intellectuals in Taiwan came from common people, even poor families.For example, Zhong Lihe was an upright and impoverished farmer who was tortured to death by a hard life.They have since turned to an elite position. The former failed, the latter succeeded, and the problem still lies in "democracy".The former is a broad and noble move, with religious feelings, to obtain self-salvation and sublimation; the latter is a pragmatic and stable choice, with secular considerations, to obtain communication and understanding with others.From an aesthetic point of view, I certainly appreciate the former, but from the point of view of system construction, I think the latter is a wise path. "Revolution" and "improvement" are just terms.I think this is not important, what is important is to thoroughly implement democratic consciousness in the process of modernization.Whether it is revolution or reform, as long as there is a democratic consciousness to support it, it will be beneficial to intellectuals and the public.If democracy is obscured, then revolutions will change the lives of intellectuals, and reforms will change all benign parts of society, such as the Russian Revolution in 1917, and the last reforms of Empress Dowager Cixi in the late Qing Dynasty. The basic requirements for a modern intellectual, I think, are the awareness of democracy, freedom, and independence.Apart from these three, even if you are a master of the academic world and a learned scholar, you are still a waste that cannot make any contribution to social progress.Some people say that what the mainland lacks most is knowledge.I don't take this seriously. The mainland has enough knowledge. There are more than a thousand universities and millions of teaching and research personnel. What the mainland lacks most are the above three consciousnesses.In the mainland, there are too many wastes with "knowledge". It is too exaggerated to say that it is impossible to look at the end of the world.Where is the end of the world?The end of the world is ours.heart. ——The Unreadable Kundera The famous Jewish writer Milan Kundera is a name that is both familiar and confusing to college students since the 1980s.He is like a trap, which can be considered either deep or shallow.The writer Yu Hua said contemptuously in a speech at a certain university: "Kundera is only a third-rate writer in Europe and America." Is it true?Since Kundera became famous in one fell swoop in 1960, he has won six international awards successively, causing extraordinary shock in the world.Aragon called it "the greatest novelist of this century"; "Washington Post" called it "one of the most outstanding and interesting novelists in Europe and America".For contemporary Chinese literature, Kundera's influence may only be comparable to that of Marquez.Yu Hua's statement is obviously irresponsible, either it shows his ignorance or his guilty conscience - a good part of his "fire seed" is taken from Kundera. As of 1996, Kundera has created novels,,, "Laughter and Forgetting", "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". ,; collection of short stories "ridiculous love"; collection of essays,.These works are marked with a distinct "Kundera brand", but also have colorful and varied artistic styles. Living elsewhere, living in other places, living on the other shore, this is one of Kundera's basic ideas.After the Soviet army invaded the Czech Republic, Kundera himself was monitored and his works were banned. He had to emigrate to France in 1975. After the publication of "Laughing and Forgetting" in 1979, he was deprived of Czech citizenship by Bo.Therefore, as an exiled writer, he feels the pain of living in "other places". "Other side" is not only "other side" in the practical sense, but also metaphysical "other side".A butterfly cannot be considered beautiful in the world of the chrysalis because it has chosen the wrong place to perform. The main character of the book, the young poet Jaromil, is going to great destruction in the eternal tragic conflict between reality and ideal.Real life should always be elsewhere.When living there, it is a dream, poetry, and art, and when that place becomes here, the sense of sublime immediately becomes the other side of life: cruelty.Jaromil wanted to play the roles of Lermontov, Shelley, and Rimbaud in a world where there were only meetings and order, bureaucracy and documents, but he could only be ruthlessly swallowed. Kundera seldom wrote Prague "this side" in a realistic way, but Kundera's Prague is as clear as the Prague in the photo.Lao She's Beijing, Zhang Ailing's Shanghai.Balzac's Paris, Dickens' London... great writers can name their cities.For Kundera, Prague is a city without curtains, full of microphones, which enforces the essential "identity" of public and private life, so that the individual disappears altogether.The city fell too.All that remains of Prague are gray buildings and a string of trench coats.Kundera sees through the fate of the beautiful and miserable beings in Prague and finds that life is nothing more than this: a person plays his part in a certain drama, and at this time, he does not notice that they have changed the scenery, and they are in a completely different drama. The show is unconscious.At this time, the absurdity arises. Kundera was a protester, but he recognized the limits of protest.The play has to be performed in "other places". The struggle between people and power is the struggle between forgetting and memory. The beginning of "Laughing and Forgetting" describes the historical details of the day when the Czech Communist Party was born: the leader of the Czech Communist Party, Chittwald, gave a speech to hundreds of thousands of people in the snow. The kind and considerate Clementis, his comrade in arms, took off his fur cap and put it on the head of Kochi. Four years later, Kirchner was accused of treason and sent to the execution rack.As a result, all the photos of that year were processed by the propaganda department: there was only a bare palace wall next to the Brothers.In this way, all that Kirschner left is the hat on his head.When I read this passage, I couldn't help but think of China's "Jinggang Mountain Meeting", in which Zhu De was replaced by Lin Biao without even keeping his hat. I was amazed by Kundera's wisdom: even a small detail , is also a revelation of the universal truth. From this perspective, Kundera deals a fatal blow to optimistic historical progressivism.History is but a trickle of unforgotten crops, led to a vast ocean of forgotten wells; yet time goes on, and new ages will be born, which will not be comprehensible to the limited memory of individuals; hundreds of Years, thousands of years will be annihilated.Centuries of painting and music, centuries of inventions, wars, books, and consequences will deprive the miserable man of all insight into himself, and his history will recede into a mass of meaningless pictograms. Kundera's questioning of history surpassed that of Lu Xun.Lu Xun once said that the Twenty-Four Histories are nothing more than the genealogy of emperors, generals, and ministers, but his thinking is still in the mode of binary opposition: even if the Twenty-Four Histories become the history of workers, peasants, soldiers, and businessmen, can they be close to the truth?Kundera jumped out of the circle of truth/untruth and declared: When history takes control, the soul loses its infinity. This conclusion is undoubtedly quite enlightening for China, which has a long tradition of historians. Kundera did not turn from doubt to nothingness. He used novels to reject the horrible and inhuman history, to realize memory, and to promote personal freedom, personal creation and personal choice.I think of a Soviet novel "Live and Remember", which shows that the value of literature and art lies in helping human memory.Kundera concluded: "A history of art, by its own characteristics, is man's revenge against the impersonal history of humanity."