At least half of the French enlightenment thinkers mentioned just now are writers, such as Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu and Rousseau. Voltaire was full of praise for The Orphan of Zhao, and specially adapted it into Orphan of China on 1755. The story of this Yuan Zaju is recorded in Sima Qian's Historical Records. It happened in the state of Jin during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. This is a story of sacrificing one's life for justice, saving orphans for friends and revenge for getting rid of traitors. Voltaire, on the other hand, set out from humanitarianism, moved the story to the era of Genghis Khan, infected Genghis Khan with those examples of great kindness, and turned him from a violent fanatic who was keen on bloody conquest into a king who knew how to care about the people. Voltaire led the western expedition of China literature.
A few years later, in the 1960s of 18, China's Ten Talented Scholars and The Story of a Beautiful Moon were translated into French and German. However, China literature is also an orphan of Zhao. Goethe, a famous German poet, thinks this play is "the most profound and moving". 178 1 year, Goethe set out to adapt a drama "Helpert Nuo" based on "The Orphan of Zhao" and "Wonders of Ancient and Modern Times", but unfortunately it was not completed. Goethe first put forward the vision of "world literature", and it was also the first time that he created the image of "world citizen" in an important novel (The Roaming Years of William Meister). Therefore, it is natural for Goethe to look to the East and China. But Goethe's understanding of China was not through missionaries, but mainly through literary works. Just as China people don't understand foreigners and regard foreigners as "barbarians", Goethe didn't understand China and misunderstood China in his early years. However, after reading China's literary works such as Good Biography, Yu Jiao Li, Hua, Hundred Beautiful Poems, Wonders of Ancient and Modern Times and Orphan of Zhao, he quickly changed his original prejudice and found that "China people are very similar to Germans" and "China people are very similar in thought, behavior and emotion. In their place, everything is easy to understand and approach ... Therefore, it has many similarities with the novels written by Herman and Dou Lutai and Sun Guohao in the UK. " Although he knew these books were "certainly not" China's best novels. He believes that "there are thousands of such novels in China. When they started writing, our ancestors still lived in the Woods. " Goethe also compared the China poet with the French poet Bertrand Rey, and pointed out, "Isn't it great that China poets strictly abide by morality, while modern French first-class poets are just the opposite?" So he thought, "It is this strict restraint in all aspects that has kept China for thousands of years and will last for a long time. "Out of this feeling for the German people, Goethe wrote a small collection of poems according to the themes of some German poems in his later years, and nominated it as" China Four Seasons and China Shining in the Dawn "with * *14 poems.
Schiller, Goethe's great ally, is also one of the German writers who are very interested in China. 1794, he got the German translation of Good Biography from a German translator Moore, and he couldn't put it down. He wants to rewrite it, because he didn't translate it well. He has signed a contract with a publishing house and finished it at 1806 at the latest. Unfortunately, he passed away on 1805, leaving a regret. When Schiller was young, in 1782, Gotz's opera Durando was adapted into a script. Some people wonder if it is because there is a "Chinese princess" in the play.
China's art conquered the west later than the ancient classics, but earlier than literature, which caused repercussions in the first half of18th century. Mainly France, Italy and Britain. There are two French painters who represent the European painting style in this era. One is Jean-An to in e w atteau (1684-1721), and the other is Francois Boucher (1703- 18). Both of them are the main representatives of European rococo style, and the former is more famous than the latter. They tend to be elegant and soft in aesthetic taste, while China's ink paintings, especially landscape paintings, are indeed much lighter than European oil paintings. Some people commented that Watto "won the six laws of China". It is said that one of his most beautiful Chinese paintings, The Sanskrit on an Island, is hidden in the Louvre. I checked the English version of the Louvre painting collection, but unfortunately there was no one. He and Bosch are teachers and students, so it is often Watto who gives Bosch some questions about China for him to draw. But this is not reflected in their main works. It can only be seen in some decorative works, such as backs, tapestries, ceramics and screens of sofas and seats. And some sketches. At that time, a group of British watercolor painters were also influenced by Chinese painting, such as Collen and his student Tenet.
China's art has a far-reaching influence on western art, which is garden art. They appreciate the pavilions, towering towers, interesting stone bridges, rockeries, bell towers and winding paths in China gardens. They also created a new term for "winding path", which is called "serpentine curve". Schiller appreciated this serpentine curve in those days. Many European countries regard these characteristics of China's garden art as a part of their important garden design. For example, in the18th century, the ruler of Saxony built a Piernitz Palace on the Elbe River near Dresden, and the "Water Palace" was built according to the architectural style of China. William Sohe, the former earl of Kassel, Germany, also built a "Mulan Village" beside a stream called Wujiang River. Even the black people who milked the cows put on fancy clothes and looked like gardens in the south of the Yangtze River. As for Potsdam's tea pavilion and Munich's wooden tower, they are representative works. No wonder/kloc-William Chambers, the British royal architect in the middle of the 8th century and the author of the book Patterns of Architecture, Furniture, Clothing and Vessels in China, praised China's garden art in his classic book Oriental Horticulture (1772): "The garden art designed by China people is really unparalleled. Europeans can't compete with the brilliant achievements of the East in art, they can only absorb its brilliance like the sun. " This senior architect, who lived in Guangdong when he was young, once again emphasized in his book: "China gardens take nature as a model and advocate that all beauty comes from nature and imitate the disorder in nature." Therefore, he advocated that "our gardens are usually just similar to gardening, completely close to the imitation of nature." What best embodies his artistic ideas is his own "Yuan Qiu" on the outskirts of London, where there is a tall China Tower. This aesthetic taste has obviously created a kind of social fashion, such as the British writer Edison and the poet Pope all built China Gardens. There are also theoretical works to support it, such as Havebony's Interesting Pastoral Architecture in China (1750). In this way, there are two modes of parks in Europe: English parks and French parks. The former follows the curve shape, flowing water bridges, towering trees, full of romantic pastoral flavor and wild interest; The latter is in accordance with the geometric modeling, neat and orderly, and the traces of hand-carved are heavier. Kent, the British advocate of curve aesthetics who led the opposition to the "regular garden", has a famous saying: "Nature doesn't like straight lines!" This view of the British obviously influenced France, so the "Chinese-English Garden" appeared in France later.