Chapter 3 reprint foreword

It was first published in Shanghai in 1947, reprinted in 1948, and third in 1949. It has not been reprinted in China since then.I came across a new version of it by chance, and it was a "pirated" copy from Hong Kong.I haven't seen the "pirated" version in Taiwan, where it is said to be banned.It was overestimated in the English works of Professor Xia Zhiqing of Columbia University, which led to some Western language translations.Professor Ken Arai of Kyoto University in Japan informed me a long time ago that he wanted to translate, and he has successively published translations in journals in recent years.Now, the People's Literature Publishing House proposes to reprint the book so that the original work can be found more easily in China. I am surprised and pleased.

When I finished writing it, I wasn't very happy with it.After publishing a book of literary criticism that I am now even more dissatisfied with, I found time to write another novel, titled, also derived from the French idiom (Le coeur d'artichaut), the central character is a female character.About 20,000 words have been written.In the summer of 1949, the whole family moved from Shanghai to Beijing. In the rush, I threw a stack of drafts that looked like messy papers somewhere.The interest was swept away, and it never got up again, but it also saved my worries and troubles from now on.Year after year, the urge to write declines year after year, and the ability to create gradually disappears—perhaps the two are fundamentally the same thing. We often mistake our writing urges for our writing talents, thinking that writing means Write.It is said that the goddess of fortune favors young men, and it is expected that the goddess of literature and art will not like old men; needless to say, there are some exceptions, and there are exceptions, and there are exceptions. Because of the common law, I slowly changed from peace of mind to peace of mind, and no longer intend to write novels .After more than thirty years, I can't remember the characters and plots in the draft at that time.Even if the memory is clear, it is still not counted, because the menu is not the same as the banquet, otherwise, anyone can immediately be called a famous chef who is good at cooking and a good host. Scholars who drafted the outline of the "Last Forty Chapters" can make up and be worth one or half a high-ranking osprey.All that remains is a stubborn belief that if it can be written, it can be better than it is.Those who do not get things done always have such ill-founded beliefs; we are likely to imagine unreasonably sweet, not only sour, grapes that are out of reach.

The proofreading of the first edition of this book was very sloppy, leaving a lot of mistakes in words and punctuation, which inadvertently placed obstacles and traps for the translator.I took the opportunity of the reprint to proofread it and edited some words in a controlled manner. A section has been deleted from the Preface, which Mr. Zheng Xidi originally asked me to add.In the English translation by Ms. Jeanne Kelly and Mr. Nathan K. Mao published in the United States last year, that section has been omitted. In the second printing of this book, I corrected a few more typos.I would like to thank Comrade Jiang Bingxiang for his technical and artistic assistance during the two printings.

I took the opportunity of the third printing and revised some texts.There are two corruptions that have been obscured for many years, which were discovered by the German translator of this book, Dr. Monika Motsch. For the French translation by Ms. Sylvie Servan-Schreiber, I corrected several errors and omissions in the original book last year, and also revised several words and sentences.It just so happened that the book was going into its fourth printing, and those corrections could be inserted.Mr. V. Sorokin of the Soviet Union reminded me last year that his Russian translation appeared five months earlier than the first reprint of the original work, and I also take this opportunity to mention it.