The Writing Background of Buffon's Horse

With fluent and beautiful language and exquisite brushwork, the author vividly describes the shape, habits, physiological functions and even uses of horses. The horse is not a painting written by the author, but a role on the stage, a spirit and an emotion, which looks lifelike. It is meticulous and realistic, which can make people who associate with horses fall in love with it and admire it, and let people who have never been close to horses discover many novel knowledge. What is more interesting is the vividness when writing about horse training and the meaning when writing about wild horses: horse training is an image of brave submission, and wild horses are a symbol of freedom. However, Buffon's delicacy is by no means insignificant. No matter what you describe, describe it if it is good for quality, and don't write it if it is not good for quality; Let go of the detailed description that is closely related to quality, but it has little to do with quality. The whole article comes down, thin but not complicated, rich but not miscellaneous, solid but not redundant, beautiful and stretched, like an ornamental plant trimmed according to the main rhyme.

Buffon's horse gives people an unusual sense of intimacy, and readers sometimes even feel much more intimate with horses. This is Buffon's genius. From the beginning, he wrote tacitly: "It shares the hardships of the battlefield and the glory of fighting with others; Like its owner, it has a fearless spirit and is generous in the face of crisis ... "It is" happy "with people. His intention has been made clear: write a horse as an adult.

The horse was forced to jump on the battlefield, but the author said it was the impact of "love" and "pursuit" weapons; The horse is manipulated and restrained, but the author points out that it "knows how to restrain itself"; Horses are tamed, but this taming is described by the author as an "education". In the author's pen, horse training has become a civilized creature.

Similarly, the author is saying that wild horses can be "proud" because they are not bound. They "despise" being taken care of, are unwilling to "fight" and live a "quiet life". In short, the author tries to avoid using the language of zoology where he can use the language of writing people; Even if there is no instinctive action of "consciousness", the author writes it as a conscious behavior with universal human will. Horses are humanized.

Humanization is still not enough to make people feel intimate. Between the lines of the works, there is a more inspiring atmosphere than humanization, that is, personalized description. Horses have fearless spirit, can show awe-inspiring righteousness of "going all out" in the face of crisis, have the style of "sacrificing oneself for others" and can "go forward bravely" in dangerous situations. All these make the horse, which has jumped from a spiritual thing to a "civilized man", sublimate to the realm of "noble man" again.

Cervantes focused on depicting Don Quixote's hapless old horse as a knight errant, Wu Cheng'en described in detail the white dragon of a monk in the Tang Dynasty, rabelais took pains to outline the legendary big mare in Du Ya, КаΥан, Li Heceng wrote 23 poems about horses in one breath, and many nomadic poets also left countless beautiful praises for horses. They either describe, imagine, portray, shape or praise the image of horses, and store the image of horses in the treasure house of literature. Those horses are closely related to people and arouse people's love, but they are often limited to a certain emotion, an atmosphere, a certain personality or a certain character spirit. Buffon's horse is very different from theirs in this respect, that is, his horse is linked with the whole human race. Of course, Buffon is luckier than others before him. He is in the era when modern science begins and takes off. Science makes people know themselves more comprehensively and deeply, and also makes people pay attention to the overall destiny of mankind. This background of the times also marked the horse: Buffon's praise for the horse lies not only in its natural beauty and spiritual beauty, but also in its "personality" beauty; Buffon endowed horses with human virtues, but never added human vices and evil thoughts to them. Buffon sympathizes with the character of training horses, but he respects the spirit of wild horses more. ...

"Horse" contains not so much human praise for the horse as its influence on human beings.