Chapter 53 third quarter

We know that vernacular Chinese did replace the authentic status of classical Chinese in a short period of time, and Lin Shu must have failed embarrassingly at that time.This is exactly the image of Lin Shu that later generations are familiar with: ignorant of current affairs, conservative, and ruthless. "A History of Modern Chinese Literary Trends of Thought" published in 2005 said, "Lin Shu's attack on the New Literature Movement was hoarse and powerless."This description of the conservative representative Lin Shu and his failures has been passed down from generation to generation in university textbooks, and has become a "face" that he cannot get rid of.

Eighty or ninety years have passed since the New Culture Movement. Today, we can get a comprehensive understanding of this character, review the debate between Lin Shu and the New School calmly, and wash away the injustice painted on this venerable old man by the radical May Fourth era. . Lin Qinnan was born in a poor family in Liantang, east of Fuzhou City. When he was five years old, his father, who was chartering a salt boat, encountered a tragic disaster when the salt boat ran aground and sank. The young Lin Shu was enlightened by his grandmother. He was talented and intelligent, and he was reluctant to move as soon as he walked outside the window of the school. However, the family had no money for him to go to school.Lin Shu loved books. If he couldn't afford them, he would borrow them; if he borrowed them, he would copy them;Occasionally, someone gave him one or two old books, and he read the books again and again as if he had found a treasure, and then treasured them carefully.

He once drew a coffin on the wall of his living room, and wrote next to it: "If you read, you will live, if you don't, you will enter the coffin." At the age of sixteen, Lin Shu also went to Taiwan to start a business with his father.His business performance was mediocre, and he did not make any money in Taiwan for three years, and then returned home to marry a wife.His father-in-law hoped that he would honor his ancestors, and funded him to continue his studies.At the age of thirty-one, Lin Shu was elected. Lin Shu and his wife Liu Qiongzi had one daughter and two sons.However, in the years after 1893, the eldest son, wife, second son, and daughter passed away one after another, and fate was extremely cruel to him.

Fortunately for Lin Shu who lost his loved one, he still has a group of friends.A friend comforts and helps him when he is in danger, and he repays his friend with utter loyalty.After becoming a famous person, Lin Shu, in his fifties, learned that his early friend Ding Fengxiang had no livelihood and made ends meet by writing pleadings, so he sent a letter of greetings, and sent it to Twenty Oceans.When the money was sent to Ding's family, Ding Fengxiang was seriously ill and had no money to seek medical treatment. The twenty oceans became life-saving money.Upon hearing the news, Lin Shu immediately sent another ginseng.After that, sixty or one hundred yuan was always sent every year for thirteen years.

When Ding Fengxiang was seventy-three years old, he died in the middle of the river. Lin Shu wrote a memorial service with tears, and then devoted himself to raising his young grandson. Lin Qinnan also has Wang Zhuosan, a friend he met when he was young.When the impoverished Wang Zhuosan died of illness, Lin Shu took care of the funeral affairs for him, donated 400 yuan to his wife, and took his son Wang Yuanlong home to raise him, and gave him careful advice on academics. Lin Shu successively raised seven or eight orphans for relatives and friends. In terms of thought, Lin Shu, who read ancient books and wrote classical Chinese, was quite different from the "conservative" image sketched by later generations.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Lin Shu was a man with a broad vision and an open mind. He advocated reform and constitutional monarchy; he sympathized with the fate of Chinese women and was one of the earliest advocates of women's rights in China;In addition, he translated so many Western novels, which made Chinese people understand foreign culture and life, and strengthened their desire for change. From this point of view, he can also be said to be a pioneer of new culture.

He is also a patriot. In 1884, a French warship moored at Mawei Port in Fuzhou suddenly fired at Chinese warships, sinking more than a dozen Chinese warships and killing or injuring more than 700 Chinese officers and soldiers.When Lin Shu heard the news, he hugged his friends and burst into tears. After three months, he stopped the imperial envoy Zuo Zongtang's horse on the streets of Fuzhou to petition, requesting that the military officials who lied about the military situation and covered up the losses be investigated. . When Germany occupied Jiaozhou Bay in 1897, just when Kang Youwei and others "signed the letter", Lin Shu, Gao Fengqi and others also wrote to Yushitai three times, strongly protesting the German occupation of the land, and stated four proposals on salary raising, military training, diplomacy, and internal governance .

The stingy history does not leave so much space for a literati, and these good deeds and valuable qualities of Lin Shu have disappeared in the misty rain of time.Later generations remember him because he became a translator without knowing a foreign language, and he was "against the vernacular". The radical New Culture Movement needed a target to be attacked, and a few members entangled Lin Shu.In the minds of those who attacked Lin Shu, they might not dare to underestimate him, they just needed to use his fame to "hype" him; but Lin Shu took it seriously, and was furious that this group of newcomers were so extreme and unreasonable, and repeatedly criticized him.

He first published an article "On the Mutual Growth and Decline of the Vernacular of Ancient Chinese", saying that "the vernacular of the ancient writers is the root of the vernacular, there is no ancient Chinese and there is the vernacular", "Water Margin without reading "Historical Records", can show you Xu's expression." ? In March 1919, he published an open letter to Cai Yuanpei of Peking University, enumerating the crimes committed by Peking University, the cradle of the New Culture Movement: one is "overlapping Confucius and Mencius, eradicating ethics", and the other is "abolishing all ancient books and using local language as words ", which means criticizing Confucianism and advocating the vernacular.Its central argument is: "If you have to read through thousands of volumes, you can't write ancient Chinese, nor can you write vernacular."

It is not a shame that a person's thoughts will be fixed when they get old, because if a person's thoughts are always changing with the changing situation, he may not be "open", but he has no thoughts, or is a philistine speculation.It should be understood that he upholds "Guangchang" and cannot be counted as a crime.And his defense of Confucianism and Mencius is also well-founded. He said: "Foreigners don't know Confucius and Mencius, but they respect benevolence, righteousness, faith, wisdom, and propriety. The five constant principles are not contrary to each other... It has been accumulated for nineteen years. There are 123 translations of his writings, all of which are 12 million words, and there is no language that violates the five constants." This rebuttal is not "pale and weak", let alone "hoarse and exhausted".

The powerful weapon of the advocates of vernacular Chinese is the theory of Western thought, especially the theory of evolution.During the confrontation, Lin Shu never used conservative language such as "barbarian heresy"; on the contrary, he also sought evidence to support his position from Western historical facts and culture.He said: "It is known that Latin cannot be abolished, so there are some who cannot be abolished in Maban Hanliu." This means: Italy did not abolish their "ancient" Latin during the Renaissance, why should we abolish Sima Qian, Ban Gu, What about Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan?

On the core issue of "classical Chinese or vernacular", we can see from his remarks that he believes that traditional classical Chinese is the basis of today's vernacular, and that to write vernacular well, one must have considerable literacy in classical Chinese.This point of view is actually common sense in today's literature, that is, to learn nutrition from the classics. However, it was a radical era. What was needed in that era was to replace the authentic status of classical Chinese with vernacular Chinese. To defend the long-established and classic ancient prose, one had to overcorrect—to make classical Chinese worthless, and to exaggerate the vernacular fragrance like a flower. .Therefore, after he seriously expressed these views, no one had an academic discussion with him. Lin Shu was completely enraged, and his actions escalated. At the beginning of 1919, he serialized the novel "Jingsheng" in Shanghai's "Xin Shenbao", in which he wrote three scholars: Tian Qimei from Anhui, alluding to Chen Duxiu; Jin Xinyi from Zhejiang, alluding to Qian Xuantong; Mo, to understand philosophy is to allude to Hu Shi.These three people gathered by the Taoranting Pavilion in Beijing, drank and sang, talked loudly, condemned Confucius and Mencius, destroyed ethics, and attacked ancient prose.Suddenly, there was a loud noise from the next door, and Jing Sheng, a great man whose legs were taller than the wall, reprimanded the three of them, saying: "What do you say?... You dare to use the words of beasts to make me listen!" Then, "Chen Duxiu" , "Qian Xuantong" and "Hu Shi" were teased one by one, and "Great Husband" Jing Sheng cleaned up the shit of these three with a few light strokes. In all fairness, this was an impromptu work that did not reach Lin Shu's actual level at all, and the blatant hatred and curses under the rage only put him at a disadvantage.After the publication of this article, it caught the hearts of the new school figures. Hu Shi said: "This kind of words can very well reveal the psychology of the Mr. Wei Dao at that time." Another novel written by Lin Shu fighting against the new culture camp is "Demon Dream", in which a Shaanxi native named Zheng Sikang (meaning to miss Zheng Xuankang, a Confucian scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty), dreamed that a man with a beard invited him to visit the underworld. , "And tell Yincao that there is something strange", "Anyone who does not succeed is hateful in life, and he will not change after death. He still gathers party members and spreads his stubborn flames."When they came to a city, they saw a vernacular school, and there was a couplet in the big book in front of the door: The vernacular is magical, Dream of Red Mansions, Water Margin, really incredible; Ancient Chinese hate, Ouyang Xiu, Han Yu, what are they. There are three "outstanding ghosts" in the school: Yuan Xu, the principal, obviously alluding to Cai Yuanpei; Tian Heng, the provost, alluding to Chen Duxiu; and Qin Ershi, the vice dean, referring to Hu Shi.When he entered the school, he saw the big book "Pu Kong Tang" on the door, and there was also a couplet: Animals are really free, what's the use of this relationship; Benevolence and righteousness are too bad and must be eradicated fundamentally. This article curses the "Three Heroes of Ghosts" even more rudely than "Jing Sheng", saying that "Tian Huan has two eyes like an owl and a long beak like a dog; Qin Ershi is like Oxi, with deep eyes and a high nose", which is extremely ugly. able to do.Immediately at the end of the article, the "King Luoheluo Ashura" who can eat the moon was invited to go straight to Baixuetang, "grabbing people and eating them, the food is already down, and the excrement is like a hill, and the smell is not close." Lin Shu said at the beginning of the novel: "Everyone knows about Fuji and Moji, but what is more dangerous than scholar-bureaucrats willing to be beasts. This is the reason why "Demon Dream" was written." Today, we can calmly look at this old cultural event that caused a sensation at that time.It could be seen that Lin Shu was indeed mad with anger, and the words he wrote were nothing but venting his anger.What he tries his best to maintain is "ethics". If, as in the beginning, he has translated so many western novels, and he has never seen any foreigner in foreign books who oppose benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith, he will let those who use western culture as their source It is not easy for the new school to refute; vicious cursing as it is now, but it is pale and weak, and only makes a fool of itself. These two novels were published in Shanghai by Lin Shu through Zhang Houzai, a student of Peking University at the time and his former student at Wucheng Middle School.It was the president, provost and professors of Peking University who were attacked and vilified. After the publication, it immediately aroused public outrage at Peking University.Zhang Houzai was only a few months away from graduation, but amidst the public outcry, he was expelled from Peking University in the name of "communicating in Shanghai and damaging the school's reputation". Peking University's move is not grand enough, cultural debates should not have the actual use of power to retaliate; what's more, Lin Shu's dragging into the debate was a deliberate act by Peking University people.Lin Shu launched personal attacks and insults, and a student who submitted a manuscript for publication should not be dealt with so severely.It can be seen that the new camp, which represents the cultural trend of the times, also takes the traditional way of power struggle in reality. Lin Shu felt very guilty for hurting the students, and felt that insulting was not the way of a gentleman. After calming down, he wrote letters to various newspapers, publicly admitting his mistake of cursing, and apologized to Cai Yuanpei and others. The 68-year-old cultural figure publicly apologized in the newspaper, which also reflected Lin Shu's character of right and wrong and respect for justice.