Chapter 53 Feeling of summer heat and sending old friends
...I received two books from you the day before yesterday: Analyzing Marx and Marxism & Modenism, thank you very much.I left the work on my desk and leaned on the soft chair to flip through it for more than an hour, but I still couldn't find the faint feeling of intoxication when I read Marxist books in the London library many years ago.Maybe Hong Kong is really too close to the mainland. I vaguely saw the setting sun and horse neighing. This academic field is indeed hopeful, and I feel a little bit sad about "Shu Li" in my heart. "I picked a bouquet of flowers, cleared the cemetery, and then walked alone in the garden, remembering the past years... Time flies, wars continue, and famine is imminent." This is Tolstoy's wife in the autumn of 1917 Mood in Russia.At that time, Tuo Weng died, his hometown was deserted, and the old capital's Wanjing Shengge and a bottle of Fengyue slowly dissipated; she smelled the smell of baked potatoes: Will the fiery revolutionaries come to raid the house?She dared not read Tolstoy's novels anymore; the whole family was vying to read VA Posse's "History of Communist Thought".Last Sunday night, I accidentally read this sketch in Encounter, and I couldn’t help feeling sad for a while. I also thought that you and other friends from other places repeatedly asked about the current situation in Hong Kong, but I still don’t want to answer.
"Perhaps a person can see loneliness and prosperity as the same, so that he can endure loneliness without enthusiasm, and live in prosperity without decline."A month ago, I asked Fang Yu to copy for me the preface written by Mr. Tai Jingnong. The whole article has a kind of sadness, and these few sentences are especially profound.You and I have similar temperaments, and I would rather let people think that I am an unenthusiastic scholar. In the real world, I often have nowhere to go; what's more, it is even more difficult for people to beg for safety when they are middle-aged and in troubled times!Looking back on the days when we lived spiritually on campus, we had no choice but to smile.The sense of achievement of humanities workers seems to be getting weaker and weaker; the entire social atmosphere is deeply harassed by economic, political and interpersonal strategies, and culture and art are far less realistic than computer data.And Kenneth Mcleish actually said: The tragedian Sophocles of Athens in the fifth century is as immortal as the battle of Pelobanes; Lawrence's trade and art of war were also intoxicated by the aesthetic experience of the art and architecture of the year.Although I believe that the cultural heritage of the Tang Dynasty is no less touching than the political rule of Zhenguan, I also see that modern people are impetuous, and no one has the patience to irrigate the spiritual barren garden of mankind; After writing an article or editing an issue of a magazine, I would feel an inexplicable sense of guilt.Don't tell me, you don't know.
I told you in the last few letters, never spend money to buy books for me in the future.Sitting alone among the piles of books in the study every morning and evening, I began to feel quite ridiculous.I heard that the emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia tore up a few pages of the Bible and ate them every time he got sick, and he recovered from his illness after eating.In December 1913 he had a stroke, which was so severe that he ordered the entire volume of "Kings" to be torn out for him to eat, and he choked to death before finishing half a chapter.How wrong you say!Midnight was past, and the lights and shadows were dim in the distance, and the sound of dogs kept ringing. It suddenly occurred to me that the culture of troubled times is like a lamppost.smile. ...
August 1986