"Divorce" is Lao She's personally satisfying work.
People know that Lao She always pays attention to ideological value through works such as "Four Generations Under One Roof" and "Teahouse", but they have neglected "Divorce", which has higher literary value.
The story is simple and exquisite, and revolves around several staff members of the Beijing Finance Office and their families. It describes the daily life of petty bureaucrats and citizens during the Republic of China, and gently satirizes their perfunctory attitude towards life. The vulgarity of the common people, the stubbornness of traditional concepts, the superficiality of modern youth, and the resistance of noble people to the evil of mediocrity are all vividly depicted by Lao She in a few strokes. But Lao She is not mean. His humor is honest, gentle and calm. He sympathizes and understands everyone. But what is even more rare is that this kind of sympathy and understanding is transparent and clear. It does not confuse good and evil, is not cynical and nihilistic, and does not play with the world.
This is the real Chinese literature, the real spiritual aristocracy.
Lao She has stated many times on different occasions that "Divorce" is a work that he is satisfied with. He himself said: "Since this novel, I have established my own writing style...The language I used in "Divorce" is the first and probably the best example of concise and fresh writing." "I set out to I wanted it to be humorous, but I caught the humor this time." In the early 1940s, Lao She asked the students at the History Institute of Peking University in Longquan Town, Yunnan, to vote for his best work. Everyone unanimously voted for "Camel Xiangzi", but Lao She said: "No, I like "Divorce"." "
"Divorce" may seem trivial, but it contains various themes that can arouse the excitement of modern people. In addition to the eternal "seeking to be understood and the desire to escape from the vulgar life", we can also watch Go to: office struggles, social terror, interference with privacy, scumbags, nibbling on the elderly, mistresses, marital conflicts, children's education, gender equality, regional discrimination... We will be surprised that these problems are not just contemporary problems, all kinds of contradictions have long existed in China It started as soon as it entered the modern stage.
Based on the 1952 M&G Publishing Company edition, the punctuation and wording are revised according to the habits of modern readers. While retaining the original meaning, it is as close to the present as possible and eliminates inaccuracies. The necessary sense of age shows the charm of Lao She.
The young intellectual Lao Li is dissatisfied with the vulgarity and perfunctoryness of his marriage and workplace. He wants to escape but has no courage.
He is surrounded by people. People who are confused and have no dreams: the clever and nosy big brother, the young but evil office guy, the henpecked and incompetent director, the domineering wife of the director, the country wife who was infected with the vulgar disease by the wives, it is ridiculous The giant "revolutionary"...
He struggled in a vulgar environment, sometimes compromising, sometimes struggling. When his friends were killed, he sacrificed his status and money to save them, and in the process he saw through the thoughts of the people around him. Degenerate and hopeless. He was moved by the heroic deeds of a society that no one looked down on, and made him determined to leave the seemingly colorful Peiping and the stable job, and return to rural life and a simple family.
< p>Lao She (1899 ~ 1966) Chinese writer. His original name was Shu Qingchun. His most commonly used pen name was Lao She. He was born in a poor urban family. >Life and Creation He graduated from Beijing Normal School in 1918 and served as a primary school principal and a student counselor in the northern suburbs. The ideological trend of democracy, science, and individual liberation set off by the May 4th New Culture Movement transformed him from "running a primary school conscientiously to respecting others." He was awakened from the life creed of "serve the emperor obediently, marry and have children in an orderly manner"; the rise of the literary revolution made him "fascinated with new literature and art", and thus began a new starting point in his life and career.In 1924, Lao She went to the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, to teach Chinese and Chinese literature. Since 1925, he has written three novels: "The Philosophy of Lao Zhang", which vividly exposed the smoky education world; "Zhao Zi said." "The criticism is aimed at young students who claim to be new-school but are actually drunk and dreaming; the protagonist of "Two Horses" is a Beijinger living in the UK, and the irony is that he is an "old man who has left home" cultivated in the social soil of feudal small-scale production. They use crisp Beijing colloquialisms and playful humor to exaggerate the folk customs of Beijing. Through the analysis of the closed-minded and contented national psychology, they express their worries about the fate of the motherland and show their unique artistic personality. and ideological perspective.
After the three works were serialized in "Novel Monthly", they attracted the attention of the literary world. In 1926, Lao She joined the Literary Research Association. In the summer of 1929, he returned to China via Europe and Asia. During his stay in Singapore, he was inspired by the rising local demands for national liberation and wrote the novella "Xiaopo's Birthday", which reflects the awakening of the oppressed nation.
From July 1930, he taught at Qilu University in Jinan. In the autumn of 1934, he was appointed professor at Shandong University in Qingdao. At these two universities, courses such as Introduction to Literature, History of Foreign Literature, European Literary Trends of Thought, and Novel Practice have been offered. He continued to engage in creative work after school.
Following the original artistic direction, there are novels such as "Divorce" and "The Biography of Niu Tianci", both of which are full of life interest and comedy effect. Compared with his earlier works, the descriptions have shifted from explicit to subtle, which has quite maturely formed his unique artistic style as a humorist, a genre painter of Beijing's human world, and an expressor and critic of civil society.
Facing the increasingly harsh social reality, two new trends have emerged in creation: First, there is increasing concern for national affairs, which triggers inspiration for writing, such as being inspired by the May 3rd massacre caused by the Japanese invaders. Stimulated, he wrote "Da Ming Lake". The September 18th Incident caused him to be "disappointed with national affairs", so the allegorical novel "Cat City" came out; first, he paid more attention to the suffering of the urban poor and used it as the main description object. "Crescent Moon" tells the story of two generations of a mother and daughter who became prostitutes, and "My Life" tells the story of the rough experiences of subordinates. In "Camel Xiangzi", a painful social tragedy is written based on the personal destruction of Xiangzi, who came to the city from the countryside to pull a cart. Introducing the dark life at the bottom of the city into the art world of modern literature is a major achievement of Lao She. "Camel Xiangzi" is his personal and important work in the history of modern Chinese literature. He began to write short stories in the early 1930s, and his works are included in "Going to the Market", "The Collection of Yinghai", "The Collection of Clam Algae", etc. Among them, chapters such as "Liu Family Courtyard", "Taking the Appointment", "Time-honored Brand", and "Soul-Destroying Gun" are rich in variety, exquisite and complete, and are rare masterpieces.