Britain is the country where the bourgeois revolution occurred the earliest. As early as the 17th century, it had carried out the so-called "Glorious Revolution". But this revolution was far from complete. After the revolution, it seemed that it had some bourgeois decorations, but in the entire UK with a population of 30 million, only 1 million people had the right to vote. These 1 million people are the so-called old aristocrats, new aristocrats and emerging aristocrats with status. of the bourgeoisie. The power of the country is in the hands of 4,000 people, and these 4,000 people dominate Britain. This situation is not a political situation that should be realized according to the bourgeois revolutionary ideal. However, they still like to emphasize that Britain is a country that has realized capitalism, and they are very afraid of others exposing the various abscesses in British society. The hands of British gentlemen are stained with the blood of the colonial people, but they all wear a pair of white gloves and like to talk about the so-called genileman's demeanor. So this is a country that looks very educated, but actually has a lot of hypocrisy.
The French Revolution was bound to have a great impact on Britain. The first people to feel this impact were some poets who were sensitive by nature. They had also expressed their support for the French Revolution, but when the revolution developed in depth, especially when the Jacobins came onto the stage of history, many of them turned their backs and felt that the revolution was too terrifying. . The industrialized society achieved after the revolution has caused great damage to people's emotions, so they hide in the mountains and forests, by the Yuanxiang Lake, away from the city. The most famous of them are the so-called Lakeside Three Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. Wordsworth can be said to be the pioneer and pioneer of the British Romanticism movement. He made a significant contribution to British poetry, especially the language of British poetry. You can find a selection of Wordsworth's lyric poems in our library. The preface he wrote with Coleridge can be regarded as a British poem. Manifesto of Romanticism. The greatest characteristic of the poems of Wordsworth and other Lakeside poets is that they sing about nature and worship the gods of nature. You know that the understanding of nature is a weak point in Western literature, especially when compared with the Chinese poetic tradition. In Western literary works before Wordsworth, there were only a few excellent works describing nature. When we look at "Homer's Epic" and the works from the European Middle Ages, there are very few outstanding descriptions of nature. This is very different from the situation in China. In China, starting from the Book of Songs and Songs of Chu in ancient times, to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Tang and Song Dynasties, our landscape poems and pastoral poems have become very mature. The West pales in comparison to us at that time. This situation is caused by deep cultural and national character factors. We will not discuss this issue now. Before Wordsworth, only Rousseau had some descriptions of the perfect and happy feeling of unity between man and heaven and earth in his "Rambles". That's very unique. Beyond that, it's more difficult to find much. When Wordsworth and others entered the poetry world, the situation changed a lot: we saw many very unique and beautiful artistic depictions of nature. For example, Wordsworth has a poem "To the Cuckoo". The whole poem does not describe the shape of the cuckoo, but describes its erratic sound and the mental shock that this erratic sound brings to people. However, even for Wordsworth, his poems often make people feel that there is still a certain distance between heaven and man, and they have not yet reached the highest state of unity between heaven and man. Many pastoral poems in China have reached the point where nature and man are one and there is no trace.
The reaction of the Lakeside poets to the French Revolution was to flee. This kind of escape does not mean backwardness or regression. Because as you know, the bourgeois revolution of industrialization has indeed had a negative impact on society. I can see it more clearly today. Therefore, we cannot generally deny the escape faction at that time. In their poetry, in their disgust for bourgeois cities, there are some profound social concerns. Today, they appear even more prophetic.
Some poets in England took a positive attitude towards the huge social changes caused by the French Bourgeois Revolution. They believed that British society at that time absolutely needed a major disruption and a major shock. Who will take on this role of destruction? We are going to mention Byron, as well as Shelley, Keats, and the peasant poet Burns. It is impossible for us to introduce so much, we can only introduce Byron.
When Byron died, Hugo said in a commemorative article:
European poets are divided into two categories. One category is Immanuel ("Savior"). "), gentle and strong, traveling about his kingdom in a chariot of thunder and light; the other is like the proud Satan, who, when he was expelled from heaven, dragged a host of stars down with him. .
The "Savior" drags people toward the paradise they long for; while others adopt a Satanic attitude, that is, the attitude of the devil. They are not building, but destroying "heaven." For Britain or Europe at that time, and for the entire history, "evil" was the driving force of history. Byron has this passage in his long poem "Cain":
Who would pursue evil wholeheartedly for the misery it brings?
No one - never. The reason why we pursue evil is because evil is the yeast from which all living things and non-living things are produced!
Byron’s understanding of the historical role of evil is quite close to Engels’s discussion of the driving force of historical development.
Engels said this, instead of saying that good drives history, it is better to say that evil drives history. In fact, until socialism, history was driven by the evil of greed. Of course, the understanding of "evil" is not purely moral. It has different connotations relative to different social conditions. When Byron was alive, Poet Laureate Southey (one of the three lakeside poets mentioned above) was very much appreciated by the British upper class. He not only received a laurel crown, but also a high annual salary. He mocked and attacked Byron, calling Byron a "devil". In the British aristocratic society at that time, many people did view Byron in this way. It is said that at a gathering of nobles, when a servant came in from outside and announced: "Lord Byron has arrived." An old lady fainted from fright on the spot.
What kind of person is Byron? I don't know how to describe this person better. He was born in a noble family and was very handsome and charming; but he was a lame, which gave him a strong inferiority complex since he was a child. When he was fifteen or sixteen years old, he fell in love with a girl, and the girl said to another boy: "Don't worry, how could I like a cripple?" He overheard this and wanted to commit suicide at that time. . His physical defects caused him a serious inferiority complex. This inferiority complex is reversed into a sensitive pathology of strong self-esteem. Therefore, when we read Byron's poems, we often feel that Byron is very arrogant. After becoming arrogant, he became very depressed. He often thought of suicide and thought that life was meaningless. Because his beloved dog was killed, he wrote a poem to curse the entire human race. In fact, he is a person who cares very much about people, especially the oppressed people at the lower levels. It wrote poems to appeal to workers who went on strike and destroyed machinery, and strongly opposed the laws passed by Parliament to punish these workers. As you know, he not only sympathized with the oppressed peoples in his poetry, but in the end he dedicated his life to the Greek people fighting for freedom and liberation. When he was young, he liked to drink from a wine glass made of a human skull. He claimed to have had more than a hundred lovers in his life. In his poem, he said that every woman in the world opens her mouth and kisses her from south to north. In the eyes of traditional Chinese people, this guy is purely a genius and a gangster. It is really not enough if we only understand Byron in this way. In the first and second chapters of his famous work "The Travels of Childe Harold", he shows his ocean-like mind, his deep sympathy for the oppressed Spaniards, and his sympathy for the women who fought for the freedom and liberation of Spain. The heartfelt and passionate praise of the hero and the fraternal concern for the Greek people in the Elegia are unparalleled. "The Travels of Childe Harold" brought Byron great reputation and made him the object of worship of some aristocratic women in England at that time. But Byron did not revel in their admiration. He continued to criticize the ugliness of British aristocratic society. Those nobles finally discovered that someone within themselves came out to expose themselves. It was completely necessary to put such people to death, but the method must be clever. Instead of fighting him directly, they spread all kinds of rumors about Byron's life and painted him in a dirty way. Among the rumours, the most devastating are those of sex. For example, they say there was a sexual relationship between Byron and his sister, and so on. These rumors forced Byron to no longer be able to stay in England. He said that if all these rumors were true, it would prove that I did not deserve to live in the UK; and if all these rumors were false, it would prove that the UK did not deserve me. He left his country, and his long-term wandering life opened up greatly. It broadened his horizons, provided more inspiration and materials for his poetry creation, and gave birth to masterpieces like "Tang Sulfur" with very broad horizons. He never surrendered to the despicable rulers of England. He sacrificed everything for freedom, as he wrote in the poem:
I have not loved this world,
It does the same to me;
< p>I haven't flattered it to be rancid?Not even breathing?
Bent the knee with resignation,
Worship its various idols;
I did not put a smile on my face,
More Not loud?
Shouting and worshiping an echo;
Fen Jun’s world?
You can’t regard me as one of their groups.
I stand in the crowd,
but I don’t belong to them;
Also Not putting your mind to it?
Those who are not but called them,
among the shrouds of thought,
march together,
that is why they are called Repression leads to meekness.
He yearns for freedom passionately,
But, freedom,
your flag is broken but still flying in the air,
Swinging like a thunderstorm,
bravely defies the strong wind;
Though your trumpet has been interrupted,
the remaining sound gradually fades away,
Still after the storm?
The loudest sound;
The flowers on your tree?
Although it has withered away,
the bark has also been damaged by the axe,
it looks so scarred,
It’s really It's rough,
but the pulp is still preserved——,
And the seeds are deeply buried?
Soil,
Has it even been sown deeply?
The chest of the Northland.
So, a better one?
Spring,
will it be?
A sweeter fruit to offer?
He also said:
I would rather be alone forever,
than use my free thoughts?
Go and change the throne of a king.
In 1823, the Greek struggle for freedom called upon Byron, who interrupted the writing of "Tangsu" and devoted himself to Greece's just war against Turkish oppression. He became one of the military leaders on the Greek side of the war, serving as commander of one side. He was a poet, and it was not important how successful he was in commanding operations. What was important was that he existed in the Greek army, which was a great inspiration to the entire Greek struggle for freedom and liberation. Unfortunately, he caught a cold and had to lie on the cot and let the soldiers carry him to direct the battle. In the end he died on the cot. Before his death, he requested that his body be transported back to England and that his heart be buried in Greece and stay with the Greek people forever.
Byron's death became a huge event in the European cultural world at that time, even causing a greater shock than his poetry. In addition to Britain, many other countries, including France, have set up Byron's memorial hall on the street. Every day people come to lay flowers in an endless stream, and there are even some young people who imitate Byron and devote themselves to the liberation struggle of the oppressed people, forming a so-called "Byron fever".
Byron advocated freedom throughout his life, but he himself was often confused by freedom. This confusion is reflected in the long poem "Manfred". Manfred is a superman like Goethe's Faust. He is very knowledgeable and can use magic to summon gods big and small. He had accumulated so much knowledge in his life that he felt that his mind was filled with all kinds of things that he could not get rid of, making it impossible for him to continue living, but he could not forget it. This constituted a great pain for him. He summoned the gods and asked them to tell him how to forget, but the gods said: "You have only one way, which is to die." But he could not die, which caused him great pain. God said something: You have made yourself your own hell. This sentence has a profound philosophical meaning. In the process of pursuing freedom, if you are arrogant and unrestrained, then in the end you will either be bound by others or by yourself, and you will become your own hell. This sentence is worthy of serious consideration by some extreme liberals.