Chapter 40 Ye Shengtao's short stories

Ye Shengtao's short stories When talking about his attitude towards writing novels, Sheng Tao often likes to say: I just write truthfully.This is the author's confession, and we should believe it.However, in his early creations, besides "truthfully" collecting and describing materials, there are some other things, which we call ideals, which are quite consistent and cannot escape the eyes of careful readers.Later, with more experience, more solid thoughts, and more sophisticated techniques, only then can I truly "write truthfully" works.Someone seems to have said that French realism has changed in Russia, because it has added an ideal color.If this sentence is true, Shengtao's style in the early stage can be said to be close to Russia, while in the later period it can be said to be close to France.

Mr. Gu Jiegang explained Shengtao's life experience and his views on literature and art in great detail in the preface to "The Diaphragm".What I have seen of his life is also included in another article.It is only necessary to point out that he grew up in an ancient city—Suzhou—and later lived in a town—Luzhi—for four or five years, working as a primary school teacher; Shanghai, the center of China's industry and commerce, worked as an editor at the Commercial Press until now.The great changes of the times in the past twenty years have naturally influenced him a lot; the Revolution of 1911, he was in Suzhou; the May 4th Movement, he was in Luzhi; of.These few lines of brief history hint at the trajectory of his ideological changes, the trajectory of his ideological changes shown in his novels.

Because it is "written truthfully", it is objective.In his novels, he rarely draws materials from himself and his family, and he doesn't use the first person much, and his writing style is not often emotional.But he has his ideals, which often appear in the dialogue of the characters and the author's interpretation of the characters or events, especially in the early works. "The Unpleasant Feeling" or "The Cry" are two extreme examples.This is a sane performance.Shengtao's silence is unique among our friends; his "love of wisdom" is not accidental.

The ideals of love and freedom are two cornerstones of his early novels.This was exactly the trend of thought at the beginning of the New Culture Movement; but he was able to use art to express it, which was deeper than ordinary people.He wrote from mother's love and sex all the way to the child sending a little clam home, which is really broad and detailed.The power of maternal love is sacrificing oneself; Mr. Gu Jiegang's favorite book "Hidden Love" (see the preface of Mr. Gu's "Fire") is an excellent representative.A lonely, stupid country woman secretly loves a neighbor's child with all her heart and strength.This is through a layer of performance.The ideal of sexual love seems to be one body of husband and wife. The two "Minor Diseases" in "Diaphragm" and "Wei Yan Ji" can be regarded as quite examples.But this ideal is not easy to achieve; sometimes it is unavoidable to have some "art of lying" (see "Clouds" in "Fire"), sometimes maternal love divides the power of sexual love, and it is unavoidable to feel "different"; Sometimes divorce is inevitable.Divorce is a common phenomenon in recent years.But what Shengtao wrote in "Two Shadows" is that the woman and the man divorced and married another person who was like-minded;This is a strange idea, a mockery of the unity of couples.Maybe Shengtao is finally a "skeptic" on this issue?As for loving people and animals extensively, Shengtao thought that only children can do it; adults are only estranged and cruel. "Diaphragm", "Swimming" (in "Under the Line"), and "Morning" wrote about this kind of situation.He also wrote about the anguish of people without love, such as the young man in "Homecoming", the abandoned woman in "Spring Is Not Hers", and the "old gentleman" in it.And the same-sex love between Ms. Litian and Ms. Tong in "The Forgotten" ("Fire") is just another way of writing this kind of depression.

One side of freedom is liberation, and the other side is respect for individuality.Shengtao pays special attention to women and children.He wrote about the sorrows of oppressed women, such as peasant women, child brides-in-law, singers, prostitutes, etc.; the first "Lifetime" of "Diaphragm" is about a peasant woman.He also feels sorry for the obedience and hard work of housewives in middle-level families. "Spring Outing" ("Diaphragm") has revealed some news of resistance; "Two Replies" made it even clearer: women are not "thrushes in cages, cymbidiums in flowerpots", nor "supermen". "; she "is just a 'person' who is equal to all human beings".He later wrote two novels ("The Posthumous Child" and "Little Sister") in "Wei Yan Ji", which wrote about the power of the patriarchal tradition to oppress women.Shengtao has been a primary school teacher for many years. He knows children best and cares most about them.He believes that children are not for our games and entertainment, nor for our old age, they should have their own status.They have their rights and lives, and we should not dislike them, nor should we treat them as our own. "Crying" (in "Fire") is a fierce protest in the voice of a baby girl; in Shengtao's works, this is the only passionate text.But the best ones are "Idiot", "One Lesson", "Yi Er", "Fengchao" and other articles; the first two are about children's love of nature, and the last two are about teachers treating children as adults, so that there are all kinds of misunderstandings. Unlucky.Among them, "Idiot" is well-known for a long time.In addition, he also wrote about the peasants who were being exploited, those who were overwhelmed by the burden of land rent.He yearned for an "artistic life", which is free and develops individuality; but now our lives are all locked into certain models or methods.Shengtao hated these models or ways; under these ways, he "only felt an illusory self surrounded by a vast illusion" (see "Unpleasant Feeling" in "Diaphragm").

The other side of Shengtao's novels is the conflict between ideal and reality.If the examples cited above can generally be said to be simple positive or negative manifestations of ideals, this is a manifestation of complex disputes.For example, "Grandmother's Heart" (in "Fire") describes the conflict between parent-child love and ethics, and as a result, the new couple compromised; this is a very common phenomenon in modern times. In "Ordinary Stories", the ideal is eaten away by reality, almost to the point of nothing; this is the idealist's boring confession. "Future" has a similar tone to this article, but it is written on the other side. "In the City" writes about the suspicion and conspiracy of an idealist in a corrupt society; but he is still preparing to fight. In "Principal" and "Building a Team", the two principals are happily planning their new careers, but they are attacked by the old forces; one compromises, but the other seems to be ready to fight.But "In the City" and "Building a Team" only talk about "preparation", what will happen in the future?Is it success?fail?Or finally compromise?According to the atmosphere in the work, success is impossible; the protagonist in "In the City" will probably fail, and the protagonist in "Building a Team" will probably compromise, right?Here Shengtao only pointed out the existence and natural progress of this conflict, and did not imply a solution or a way out.It seemed that he pursued further when he wrote "On the Bridge" and "Resistance". "On the Bridge" is still a personal "romantic" action, and the author did not tell us the whole story; "Resistance" has the meaning of "group", but it failed in the end, and the leader made a sacrifice in front of the altar.What Shengtao has shown us, ends here.And "In the Folk" is another form of conflict.

An important feature of Sheng Tao's later works (probably starting from the second half of "Under the Line") is the completion of realism.When others discuss these works, they always focus on the subject matter; they praise his "description of the urban petty bourgeoisie".This is not bad.Shengtao's life and times are changing, his eyes have shifted from villages and towns to cities, from children and women to events on the side of war and revolution.He wrote about the unemployed knowledge workers in the city ("The Sick Man" in "The City") and the anguish of teachers; Favorite "Mr. Pan in Distress", and "Foreign Flag").He also wrote about the life of soldiers during the war ("Golden Earring"); he also wrote about "white terror." City Chronicle).He also wrote "The Life of the Working Class" in "Summer Night" ("Untired Collection") (see Mr. Qian Xingcun's "Investigation of Ye Shaojun's Creation", see "Modern Chinese Literary Writers" Volume II).He "described the vast world" in this way; Mr. Mao Dun said that he "described the vast world for the first time" when he wrote it, which seems wrong (see "Reading "Ni Huanzhi", appendix at the back).It is true that he is "good at expressing the urban petty bourgeoisie" (Qian Yu), but he is not only good at expressing this kind of expression, let alone expressing this kind of character exclusively, or focusing on expressing this kind of character, even in his later works inside.Shengtao's consistent attitude during this period seems to be just to "write truthfully"; he only chooses the materials he is familiar with, and like the general realists, he has no obvious "intentional" purpose.Mr. Mao Dun called his novels "intentional novels", and I feel the same way; but he also said in "The Author's Notes": "I will write every character truthfully with a serious attitude". It can be seen what he believed in.Most of the works in this period are sufficiently objective and calm (the same is true of the early works such as "Rice", but not many), the writing has become more and more refined, and the realism technique has not matured until now; Can represent, is my favorite. ——Only "Farewell to the Dark World" is an exception; but just as Mr. Lu Xun could not write "Buzhou Mountain" well, Shengtao is not suitable for that kind of expression.There are three types of realism in Japan's "The Road to Neo-realism" (translated by Lin Boxiu) by Yoshito Kurahara.Shengtao's should belong to the second category, the so-called "little bourgeois realism"; I can admit that he is a petty bourgeois writer on this point.

Most of our short stories are "improvised", and few people pay attention to the structure; Mr. Lu Xun and Sheng Tao are the most important among them.There are many works of them, but most of them have a rigorous and not monotonous layout.The late works of Sheng Tao are better than the early ones.In the early stage, there are some other styles. "Diaphragm" is quite compact, but "Unpleasant Feeling" and "Crying" are not very exciting; Although it took a lot of effort to intersperse, it was a bit broken after all ("Overload of Sorrow" was better).At these times, Shengtao likes to use metaphors of abstract concepts, such as "the abyss of disappointment" and "the abyss of boredom", which seem a bit old-fashioned or superficial now.He also likes to use parallel sentences, which sometimes makes the words lose their natural flavor.And the place where the author comes forward to explain in each article is often too serious and too much.For example (in "Diaphragm") is certainly the narrative of the first person, but the latter formula and its explanation are too unpleasant.Sheng Tao does not seem to be very good at writing dialogues.The dialogues in each chapter are often flat and sometimes too didactic; this is also the case in later works.Sheng Tao wrote the fastest, but he was by no means careless; he said in his "Self-Records": "The habit of considering words and sentences is getting deeper and deeper", we can know his usual attitude.What he is best at is the ending. There are almost no endings in his works that are not beautiful.He himself once boasted of this; Mr. Qian Xingcun also said that his novels, "often at the end, make people feel leisurely and endless."

In July 1930, Peking Tsinghua University.