Chapter 52 second quarter

But the other thing that made him "remain famous in history" did not make him feel at ease under the nine springs, and even made him die with regret. This incident is well known to today's students: During the New Culture Movement, Lin Shu "opposes the vernacular", "becomes a clown standing on the opposite side of the trend of the times". In 1915, "Youth Magazine" edited by Chen Duxiu was founded in Shanghai, which marked the beginning of the May Fourth New Culture Movement.In the future, no other magazine can have such glory-a magazine has opened up an era.

Here we must first clarify a concept: the May Fourth Movement.There are actually two May 4th movements, one is the May 4th patriotic political movement that took place on May 4, 1919, and the May 4th movement is usually referred to as this; the other is the "Youth Magazine" (later renamed "New Youth") The May 4th New Culture Movement, which was founded, is called the New Culture Movement for short.In the year of the Republic of China when this epoch-making cultural movement really died down, the academic circle has not yet made it clear. After the founding of the Republic of China, the political system changed from feudalism to a republic, which was a great step forward, but political change did not mean that it could immediately bring about ideological changes. People's ideological conditions did not change strongly with the Revolution of 1911. The brains of the "nationals" of the Republic of China It is basically the ideology of the "common people" in the traditional feudal society. In addition, in order to consolidate the rule, the Beiyang warlord government is not only unwilling to fulfill the government's responsibility to refresh the people's thinking, but instead imprisons and misleads them, and publicly calls for "respecting Confucius and reading scriptures". Advocate retro thinking.

In 1918, Dr. Hu Shi, who was studying at Columbia University in the United States, published his "Miscellaneous Feelings of Returning to China" in the "New Youth" magazine. China has not made no progress in the past 20 years, but the inertia is too great, three steps forward and two steps back, so it is still like this today." At the junction of modern China and modern China, the New Culture Movement undertook the historical mission of sublating old culture and injecting new culture. It violently criticized the traditional Chinese culture that enslaved people's hearts, and promoted new culture, new morality, and new consciousness. In summary, it is Chen Duxiu The famous slogan proposed: "Mr. Democracy" and "Mr. Sai" (science), that is, democracy and science.

The era of cultural turmoil that began in 1915 can be called the "1911 Revolution in ideology and culture." The focus of the New Culture Movement was the literary revolution.On the one hand, literature is the concentrated expression of the people’s thoughts, sentiments and moral spirit, and transforming literature is to grasp the pivot of transforming culture; on the other hand, China is an ancient country of literature, and since ancient times, the movement of literature has been related to the destiny of the country, and literature is not only a kind of art, but also the spirit of the nation Therefore, it has assumed heavy responsibilities beyond art.In the late Qing Dynasty, the country was poor and weak, and countless people with lofty ideals searched for the reason. Liang Qichao blamed it on literature. He wrote a poem to lament: "The poetry world has been prevalent for thousands of years, and the souls of soldiers have been exhausted. The soul of the country is empty." The literary revolution was in the late Qing Dynasty Brewing.

Language is a tool of literature, and language also determines the thinking of a nation. Classical Chinese, which has been passed down for thousands of years, is the carrier of traditional ideology and culture.The core of the literary revolution is the language change, that is, from classical Chinese to vernacular. In January 1917, Hu Shi published "Suggestions on Literary Reform" in "New Youth"; in February, Chen Duxiu published a more radical "On Literary Revolution" in "New Youth", raising the banner of the literary revolution; "New Youth" uses the vernacular entirely.Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong and other pioneers of the New Culture Movement made a lot of speeches, exposing the shocking dangers of classical Chinese with extremely fierce attitudes and words. urgent task.

How did the opposite of the new culture breakers, that is, the old culture figures respond to this?Surprisingly, we imagined that the old school's "broken heart" and "like mourning and concubine" were not stabbed. Half of this may be because the monarchy passed and the Republic of China was established, and advocating innovation, seeking change, and criticizing tradition were the mainstream thoughts in the cultural world. , the opponents of the new culture are guilty and short-tempered, and dare not speak out; half of it may be that they have enough confidence in the vitality of classical Chinese, and they don't bother to confront these young people who have drank foreign ink for a few years and have forgotten who they are.

In the cultural circles of the Republic of China, there was a hardcore conservative celebrity Gu Hongming.This man was born in Malaya, studied in Germany, served in the Beiyang military, and his wife is Japanese, so he had a strange experience of "born in Nanyang, studied in the West, married in the East, and served in Beiyang".He is proficient in nine foreign languages, so although he was so stubborn in his thinking that he advocated that polygamy is better than monogamy, he was invited by Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University, who adopted the policy of "inclusiveness and freedom of thought" to be a professor at Peking University.

He is called a "monster" like Zhang Xun in the military and political circles, and he has also been refusing to argue, swaggering in and out of "the cradle of the New Culture Movement" Peking University.As soon as the "literary revolution theory" centered on the abolition of classical Chinese was thrown out, the new culture camp hoped that he would be furious and rise up to refute, so as to expand the influence of the new school's views in the debate.Unexpectedly, this old monster was not what he imagined at all. He was always too lazy to write an article to express his opinion. He just casually mocked the grammar of the vernacular in class, saying: What "reform of prostitutes"?Want to change Liang?Want to reform into prostitution!

Therefore, although the new school figures spared no effort to "demonize" classical Chinese at that time, it did not arouse much repercussions. Only a few new culture pioneers talked to themselves and punched the air. Opinions have little effect in society. The silence and desolation made the people of the new school very anxious. They came up with a very advanced idea: Qian Xuantong and Liu Bannong performed a double reed, one wrote an article against vernacular, and the other wrote a rebuttal article, and launched a polemic in the newspaper to attract people. Social attention. It can be seen that the "hype" that is prevalent in the media today was thought of and successfully used by the new school figures more than 80 years ago.

One day in early February 1918, Chen Duxiu, Liu Bannong, and Qian Xuantong "conspired" late into the night at the Lindeju restaurant on the north side of the Red House of Peking University.A month later, this "controversy" over whether to use classical Chinese or vernacular was started vigorously in "New Youth". Under the pseudonym of "Wang Jingxuan" and as a defender of the old culture, Qian Xuantong published an article in classical Chinese titled "Repercussions of the Literary Revolution" that focused on opposing viewpoints on vernacular Chinese.The article is more than 3,400 words, the language is so sour, and there is no punctuation.At the same time, an article by Liu Bannong was published, titled "Book of Fu Wang Jingxuan". From the standpoint of new culture, he refuted this article paragraph by paragraph, mocking the cultural conservatives.

This strategy has been carefully planned. In addition to pushing the views to extremes in both articles and forming a fierce confrontation, a more "destructive" tactic was used: Liu Bannong's article specifically cited Lin Shu as an example, saying that the ancient article was actually a The unreasonable text was called "Tongcheng Fallacy", and many faults were picked out from Lin's translated novels to "reveal". The purpose of doing this is very clear: to focus firepower on Lin Shu as a living target, to lure Lin Shu into the battle to refute, and to change the embarrassing situation that after the new school's views are thrown into the ocean, there is no response. The reason why they chose Lin Shu to play this unlucky role was because Lin Shu was very famous.In addition to the popularity of his translated novels among ordinary readers, more importantly, he is an outstanding ancient writer. A large number of poems and academic works such as Weilu Sequel, Chunjuezhai, Zuozhuan Xihua, Thesis Lecture Notes, Grammar Lecture Notes, Wen Wen Liu Farewell, and Literary History.In the cultural circle at that time, Lin Shu was the number one master of ancient prose, whether in creation or research—hitting someone who is the best in classical Chinese as a target can most expand the influence of "abandoning classical Chinese and promoting vernacular". The reason why Lin Shu was selected as the "number one enemy" by the new culture camp was that when other old-school figures pretended to be deaf and dumb to the aggressiveness of the new culture, he had already responded and criticized the "waste of classical Chinese".He is also the person most likely to stand up and represent the old camp. Lin Shu's bad luck came.Sure enough, he couldn't hold back and participated in this controversy that ruined his reputation in the history of culture.