As one of the representative works of old-school martial arts novels after the May 4th Movement, "The Heroine of the Wild River" has had a certain influence.
Its author Gu Mingdao was one of the five major martial arts novelists in the 1930s and a native of Suzhou. First, he wrote romance novels, such as "Nai
He Tian", "Red in the Snow", "Flower Rain in the South of the Yangtze River", "Dark Flowers in the Willows", "Autumn Beauty", etc.; later he turned to writing martial arts novels
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Said that he wrote dozens of novels in his life, such as "The Heroine of the Huangjiang River", "The New Biography of the Heroine of the Huangjiang River", "Overseas Struggle for Hegemony", "Tiger Roars and Dragon Roar
Record", "The Battle of the Island" and so on. "The Heroine of the Wild River" is his masterpiece. Six episodes were written in one episode. After being serialized in "Xinwenbao·Happy Forest", a single book was published and reprinted many times. , and later it was made into a movie, turned into a Peking opera and staged on the stage, and was very popular.
Gu Mingdao once confessed why he wanted to write martial arts novels. He said: "Yu likes to write martial arts novels and adventure novels,
with the spirit of strengthening the people of the country. He has written "Secret Country", "Pirate King", "Island Battle" in "Detective World" All the chapters in "Records" are about the adventures of our compatriots on the sea, which were resolutely rejected by outsiders and brought glory to the motherland. "It can be seen that his creative purpose is still clear.
Regardless of whether the patriotism in his martial arts novels is deeply reflected, but in terms of subjective wishes, "strengthening the spirit of the country" and "bringing glory to the country" are the basic themes of his works. This is also commendable.
From the early years of the Republic of China to the 1930s, martial arts novels showed a prosperous situation and entered a new climax period. A large number of martial arts novel writers and works appeared.
However, on the whole, most of the martial arts novels at that time were "mediocre and cliched", as Mr. Zheng Yimei wrote in his original "Preface" to "The Heroine of the Wild River" It can be summarized as follows: "There are a lot of books on martial arts,
but they may be obscene, redundant, or mediocre. If you want to find something that is exquisite and meaningful, you should be worthy of it." Works are not easy to come by. "Especially those absurd and bizarre martial arts novels have a very bad social effect, paralyzing the masses and causing them to escape from reality. Therefore, it is completely deserved to be criticized by revolutionary writers. However, not all martial arts novels can be viewed in this way, and a specific analysis should be conducted.
Martial arts novels are the same as general novel creation. The themes can be ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, heaven and earth, but what they reflect cannot not be the emotions of the era in which the writer lives.
Although "The Heroine of the Wild River" did not fundamentally touch upon the rule of the reactionary class at that time, nor did it directly expose the decadence and decline of the ruling class, the chivalrous behavior of the protagonist in the book was only shown in the fight with bandits, robbers, and
The fighting between bullies; however, between the lines, readers can still feel the author's dissatisfaction with the reality of the time and a certain degree of patriotism
And through the mouths of his favorite characters , expressing views on social reality. We might as well quote a few paragraphs:
Yuqin: Today's officers and soldiers are as timid as mice. They usually only bully good people and covet military pay.
Jianqiu: Our country’s military is extremely corrupt today! However, foreign aggression is becoming more and more urgent every day. Once something happens to the border defense, the army will lose ground and the city will beg for alliance.
Yuan Biao: The Manchu slaves have occupied China for more than 200 years. Instead of making China rich, strong and developed, they have lost troops and territory.
They were defeated at the hands of Bi Yaner. ; The country is getting weaker and weaker, the people are living in hardship, and the wooden clogs of the East are approaching every step of the way, and they are formidable. We can see with our eyes
China is suffering from the disaster of land and sinking, and people with lofty ideals privately sigh.
These words have not become the plot content of the book. They are obviously the author's use of the topic. At a specific stage of plot development,
what the author wants to say is said through the mouth of the characters, but , these words were exactly what the broad masses of the people wanted to say at that time, and to a certain extent they reflected the dissatisfaction of the people with the reality of corruption. Of course, martial arts novels are obviously stupid and wrong about how to enrich the country and strengthen the people.
Martial arts save the country, and the behavior of a few knights to eliminate evil and help good people. This is obviously stupid and wrong, and this is what all martial arts novels are like
< p> method to avoid limitations. However, "The Heroine of the Wild River" can express the above lamentation and reveal dissatisfaction with reality. This undoubtedly has a certain positive significance among those martial arts novels that can only lead people to escape from reality.In addition, in general martial arts novels, the plots are deliberately made to be bizarre and absurd for the sake of excitement;
And because they deviate from life, it is inevitable not to copy each other. The similarity of the plots makes readers bored, as Gu Zuiyu once pointed out in the preface to the sequel to "Huangjiang":
The author has no foundation in martial arts, let alone the ability to Observe the world; I just stole the skin of one or two old novels. When I write about a swordsman, I will travel thousands of miles in an instant.
When I write about a thief, I will fly over the walls and over the walls. I will exaggerate the carvings and paintings to make people appalling. I don’t care whether there is reason or not. I just want the plot to be weird and tailor it well. He was poor,
so he came back to save him with demons and ghosts.
These problems pointed out by Mr. Gu show that the creation of martial arts novels at that time took a wrong path, creating a set of formulas, and relying on these formulas, they were created behind closed doors. Therefore, such martial arts novels were not popular even at that time. "The Heroine of Huangjiang
" cannot avoid describing some people's "special powers" and unexpected changes in the situation; but it does not pursue the bizarre plot
as its purpose. The book's handling of the relationship between several main characters, as well as the intentionally arranged love clue in the structure, make this martial arts novel full of social and human feelings. Moreover, the author's handling of these relationships and clues, in order to avoid adultery
robbery, even the chivalrous behavior of Qin and Jian, makes people feel that they have the emotional characteristics of ordinary people. Therefore, the main characters
give people a more intimate feeling. The author also drew on the creative techniques of ordinary modern novels to work hard on shaping the characters
This makes this work a step above ordinary martial arts novels. This is probably one of the reasons why it is so popular.
No matter which dynasty or generation martial arts novels originated from, or the ups and downs of the development of martial arts novels, as a type of Chinese novels
it will always exist, and Shows the trend of continuous development towards a complete form. To this day, the new martial arts novels developed in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1950s are still developing and have a large readership. On the one hand, this is
because of its social and historical reasons. On the other hand, we have to admit that it has its own artistic charm that cannot be ignored.
Of course, we cannot make a general evaluation of martial arts novels because their situations are very complex. However, in the past, we completely dismissed martial arts novels and ignored the positive aspects of some of them, such as certain progressive tendencies in thought, patriotism and sympathy for the oppressed people. wishes, some of the artistic merits are not adequate. On the contrary, martial arts novels
as a branch of Chinese novels, what is its relationship with the development of Chinese novels, what artistic traditions of Chinese novels does it embody, and why does it There are so many readers. Whether it still has any reference significance today is worthy of our study.
First of all, we should give martial arts novels a certain historical status. "The Heroine of the Wild River" was once a hit, and not without reason. It reflects historical reality to a certain extent. Although the novel is about the Qing Dynasty, the plot of the novel, the relationship between the characters, and the emotions of the characters can help us understand the social reality at that time. Therefore, it is not only for people's recreation and entertainment, as someone said, it also has the function of "stimulating people's morale". Of course, the turbulent development of the Chinese revolution in the late 1920s and early 1930s has brought great changes to Chinese society, and revolutionary literature has also made great progress. develop. Compared with revolutionary literature, the role of martial arts novels is naturally very limited. The ideological content of many martial arts novels even conflicts with the requirements of the revolution. However, although works such as "The Heroine of the Wild River" cannot be classified as revolutionary literature, they cannot be simply classified as reactionary feudal dross. Instead, we should see the hidden meanings contained in them. Some of the essence of democracy should be appropriately valued.
Secondly, martial arts novels are all based on plot, and "The Heroine of the Wild River" is no exception. If Chinese classical novels have their own tradition, the emphasis on plot is the most prominent manifestation of this tradition. Martial arts novels exaggerate this tradition, put the plot in the most prominent position, and embark on the path of abnormal development. The result is that the bizarre plot dilutes the incisiveness of the characters
Path. However, this also allows us to see the charm of the plot. When people's various needs for literature and art need to be satisfied in many ways, isn't the entertainment brought to people by tense and tortuous plots also has its merits? What's more, the majority of Chinese readers
accept traditional Chinese art, and they do not relax their requirements for the plot of the works. If our novel creation today recognizes that
this appreciation requirement has its historical and national objective development inevitability, and can respect this appreciation requirement, it will not
get better results. What a big readership! In this sense, some representative martial arts novels, including "The Heroine of the Wild River", still have something to learn from in terms of artistic form.
Third, the study of martial arts novels must adopt a historicist attitude and conduct objective analysis without simplification. Even those martial arts novels that
have some negative elements in their thoughts and have artistic reference significance must be carefully studied to distinguish
the dross from the essence. In order to achieve this goal, we tried our best to preserve the original appearance of the novel and retained some prefaces to provide readers with a relatively complete research object. Gu Mingdao and I are from the same hometown and we know each other very well.
His name is Jingcheng, and he is also signed as Hutou Junsheng and Shi Potianjing House Master. After reading these signatures, I always thought that he was a great man with a high profile. Little did he know that he was extremely thin and sick. Bad at practice. He was born in Wuzhong in 1897. His father died early and he had no shelter. He graduated from Yinghua Middle School in Mujia Garden and stayed at the school as a teacher. The salary was low, and he was writing manuscripts on the side. He buried himself in a pile of old stories. Over the past thirty years, he wrote fifty to sixty novels. The most popular one was "The Heroine of the Wild River", which was published in the supplement of "The News". He was originally asked to write a novella. Unexpectedly, after it was published, it became very popular among readers.
The editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Yan Duhe, wrote to Mingdao asking for permission to expand it into a full-length article. Nai first reviewed the story in the middle of the story, but the situation lacked development. He spent a lot of effort to make up for this shortcoming. After the entire article is published, it will be printed into a single volume by the bookstore. Sequels and sequels continued
and the sales were very wide. At that time, Shanghai Youlian Film Company was producing movies and the Grand Stage Theater was performing Peking Opera, which really caused a sensation in the society. After that, he planned to compile the story of Wu Sangui and Chen Yuanyuan into a narrative part. At this time, Liu Yazi specialized in the history of the Southern Ming Dynasty and provided him with a lot of information. He wrote "Blood Rain Qiongpa" and published it in the supplement "Spring and Autumn" of "Shenbao". When the Japanese invading army entered the concession, the novel was ordered to stop publishing due to the many passionate words in the novel, and "Blood Rain Qiongpa" had no choice but to be published.
He took refuge from the Anti-Japanese War and rented a house beside the Eight Immortals Bridge in Shanghai. It was too noisy for writing, so he moved to a small alley on Weihaiwei Road,
and wrote many books. The last part is "Flower Rain in the South of the Yangtze River". The protagonist Cheng Jing in the book is poor and self-sufficient. He cooks words to cure hunger. He dies of disease and is torn apart and dying. This series of narratives are all Master said to himself. In the last few chapters of writing, he was too ill to write, so his dictation was recorded by his disciples, and he finally managed to write it into a book. Chunming Bookstore rushed to print and publish it, and gave him the manuscript fee to meet his medical needs. One day,
I went to visit him. He was lying on his couch, and Hu Xingguan (the nickname of his son Deji) took a copy of "Jiangnan Flower Rain" from the shelf and gave it to me.
And said, "This is the last book." I held back tears to comfort him. After that, he stopped writing, had no income, and his life became even more difficult. A good friend
helped him, and he recorded his orders one by one in the account book in order to repay him in the future. Nai's illness worsened day by day, so Yan Duhe tried to help him, and the "News News" paid for him to be admitted to the hospital. However, the disease is terminal and the medicine is ineffective. He did not want to waste more money on the newspaper, so he insisted on returning to his apartment, and soon he stopped paying attention. At this time, he still had a little daughter who was about two years old. She was too weak to walk. The family was in a hurry and couldn't take care of her. She fell from the stool and died with a broken skull. The father and daughter died together, leaving people with A painful memory.