Chapter 100 The Four Romances of the Essay

The Four Romances of the Essay Feng Tang There are many opinions on what is a short essay.This word may first appear in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, referring to the abbreviated version of Buddhist scriptures.Liu Xiaobiao’s commentary mentions: “Shi Shi’s “Bi Kongjing”, there are detailed ones, and some brief ones. The detailed ones are “Da Pin” and the brief ones are “Small Pins””.I take the name literally and use my own definition.Essays should first be small and small in length, ranging from one to twenty characters, and no more than a few thousand characters.Essays should be classy secondly, have sex and affection, and be wonderful and natural, "you don't have to get what you want, and you can get what you don't ask for."The third key point of essays is essays, which are not poems, words, or melodies, without rhymes, without formulas, full of talent, and lawless.The first time that short essays were brilliant was in the pre-Qin period, Zhuang Zhou, Confucius, Lao Dan, Lu Buwei, and those Su Qin and Zhang Yi who ate with their tongues (their poverty was recorded in detail in "Warring States Policy").Among them, Zhuang Zhou is the one with the most literary talent.When he is meticulous, his logical sophistication cannot surpass those of the German philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.When he is agile, fishes become big birds in an instant, and people become butterflies in an instant.When I was a teenager, I read "Heaven and earth coexist with me, and all things are one with me". I was wondering where I came from and where I was going. Zhuang Zhou immediately became my youth idol.In the years that followed, the more I knew, the more reactionary I became, and the less I understood, I didn’t know what to do with my material, and it was Zhuang Zhou’s sketches that gave me hints.Zhuang Zhou said that he got a gigantic gourd and had nothing to do with it, so he finally decided to put the gigantic gourd into the gigantic sea, and he sat in it and floated around, useless.

The second time that essays were brilliant was in the Ming Dynasty, Li Yu, Zhang Dai, San Yuan, Jin Shengtan, and Wang Jizhong.Among them, Li Yu is the one with the most evil spirit. Others lose their reputation because of eating, drinking and playing, and Li Yu lives and lives by eating, drinking and playing.For a while, I mixed Zhuang Zhou and Borges.The more I looked at it, the more weird the world became. Mountains are not mountains, and water is not water. I asked my mother, "Are you my mother? Was my father an alien or an octopus from Beiming in his previous life?" My mother didn't say a word at that time. I went to school by bike to talk to my teacher.Later, I mixed Li Yu and Henry Miller, and found that life is really like what Xi Murong said: the sky is so blue, the grass is so green, life can be so simple and beautiful.Henry Miller said: If you really can't figure it out, find a girl to do it.In his only novel, Li Yu is succinct and clear, saying that Wei Yangsheng must first become the world's first gifted scholar and marry the world's first beautiful woman before he can convert to Buddha.Climb to the mountain, jump into the water, the mountain is still a mountain, and the water is still water.

The third time that essays were brilliant was in the Republic of China, Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, Zhou Shuren, Liang Yuchun.This group of people, who were taught the Four Books and Five Classics Tang poetry and Song Ci in private schools when they were young, were sent to the East and West to study physics, mathematics, and vegetative human bodies when they grew up.I touched my little feet when I was a child, and I smelled the perfume of foreign women when I grew up.The world is turbulent, and a desk cannot be placed stably. All these people's childhood and adult experiences are swayed on essays, and it is difficult not to shake the world and cry ghosts and gods.Zhou Zuoren's essays are even more refined, with 500 words in vernacular, calmly and clearly explaining a big issue without a trace of anger.As the saying goes, literati look down on each other, the article is good for oneself, and the wife is good for others.But when the reporter asked Zhou Shuren, who is the best essay writer nowadays, Zhou Shuren still ranked them in the following order: Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, Zhou Shuren.

The fourth time that the essays are brilliant is now, Acheng, Huang Jiwei, Feng Tang, Zhang Chi, Li Bihua, Pudding (the list is not in order, see the China Youth Daily Youth Shixun for the specific ranking on January 1, 2100).The times are good, and literati seem to be able to think and express freely again.On the one hand, "rituals have collapsed and music has been destroyed", the old thinking and the old system have been broken in the reform, no one will think for you, and everyone has to use their own brains.On the other hand, with so many newspapers and magazines coming out, you are paid to think about it, to think differently.Finally, it is all post-modern now, people are less troubled, and have no energy to look up at the sky and think about life in the way of the past.Shorter, faster, instant noodles, McDonald's, popular songs, one-night stands, and short essays just meet everyone's requirements.Then you turn on your computer, and it's time to do serious work again.

Essays never enter the room.Essays are not full feasts of Man and Han, not Jin Zhong Da Lu, nor the wife of the main family who does not look sideways.The sketches are about Dongzhimen's spicy crab and spicy crayfish, "Five Changes" and "Eighteen Touches".It is impossible for literati to become first-rank officials or enter the Writers Association by virtue of essays, but they are remembered by future generations by virtue of essays.When their bones have already turned to ashes, their dispositions are attached to their essays, and their ghosts will linger through the ages.