Postscript: Write the name on the water
Text/Wen Jing
There are several versions of the origin of the interview with Mr. He. I remember that I went to Ge Zhaoguang when he was a graduate student at Tsinghua University. He said with emotion more than once that he should find a group of graduate students to record and organize the lectures for the older generation of experts and scholars, so as to at least leave a precious historical material. Shortly afterwards, Jin Kemu passed away, which was deeply regretted by everyone. In 2004, I was in a bad mood and always had the urge to escape. Thinking of Mr. Ge's words, I felt that at least there was such a specific piece of work worth doing. I could find a reason to fill up my time without having to work straight away. It's just a life for the eyes, not to mention it's meaningful to others. To benefit "others", so "oneself" should do it, has been a crowning and effective reason since ancient times, but I soon discovered that the efficient cause and final cause of this matter were being constantly revised.
It goes without saying that Mr. He is very knowledgeable. There is no need to show off in front of him. Just come with your curiosity, just like when you were a child, you moved a horse in front of the neighbor's radio and flicked the switch. , and then pulled the knob, Grandpa Sun Jingxiu began to tell stories. Mr. He's speech is very funny. He is still as full of whimsical ideas as a child in his eighties. When he compares an ordinary thing to something, it turns out to be funny. When he talks about it, he can't help but giggle. , even a jumping butterfly will be infected with his happiness. How happy is it to accompany such an old man every day, the tables, chairs and benches in the study room?
I am a good listener, but I am by no means a competent interviewer. I cannot grasp the progress or guide my thoughts. The plans I made in advance have never been realized. I think it may have been influenced by Mr. He. Why should we pursue utilitarianism in everything? Unconsciously, at noon, the sound of beeping and cooking came from the kitchen, the fragrance was flowing upstairs and downstairs, and the students of Tsinghua University Primary School were chattering under the windows like sparrows. Only then did they realize that the main topic had not yet begun. Halfway through, it’s time to say goodbye again. For an experienced interviewer, the same topic would probably take only a few months to complete, but I have used it intermittently for nearly two years, and I look forward to the day of meeting every week, thinking that it will never end year after year.
In fact, life is not fair to people of Mr. He's generation. As far as he is concerned, the three sisters are all from Peking University and Tsinghua University. When they were students, one was an underground party and the other was arrested by the Kuomintang. After being detained for a year, one went to Yan'an after the Anti-Japanese War. A few years later, one committed suicide, one went crazy, and one wandered away without news for 20 or 30 years. Mr. He seldom talked about his family members. When he did mention them, he would only ask and answer them without saying much. His helpless regrets could not be concealed in his few words. When he was a child, his father often said: "Politics is a very dark, complicated, and dirty thing. You must stay away from politics." This sentence left a deep impression on him, so he stayed away from various political factions throughout his life and pursued A higher and more profound spiritual realm. Despite this, in the years when intellectuals generally suffered disaster, they were still "suggested" to the bullpen. Their generation, in Mr. He's words, was born under the white flag and grew up under the white flag. They received the so-called bourgeois old-democratic education from an early age. By the time they were 30 years old, their ideas were basically finalized and society However, an earth-shaking change has taken place. Freedom and democracy have been labeled as bourgeois and are all denied. They are required to completely deny the past and themselves, and undergo double transformation from spirit to body. The movements are becoming more and more fierce one after another. During this period, some people choose to betray their conscience. Some people cannot withstand this spiritual reversal and choose to die. More people spend half their lives experiencing spiritual disillusionment. .
In 2004, I personally fell into a similar disillusionment. Although it cannot be compared with the sufferings of my predecessors - it is best not to have the opportunity to "combined", but this is exactly what happened. The experience has already made me realize the confusion and sadness of lack of faith. Just like the land under your feet, you don’t have to know it deliberately, and you may not really believe or worship it. But from the moment you were born, you have felt a belief with your body: the existence of the earth is unquestionable, and it will not increase because you love it. One point, hate it and one point less, it is part of life. But suddenly one day, the solid ground collapsed, and Aladdin's magic lamp did tricks. It evacuated the soles of my feet, leaving me and my confusion hanging in the air like nameless dust. Looking up, I saw all around me. They are full of the same kind of people who can't fly, can't sink, and don't seem to care. The moment the smoke and dust spread everywhere, my soul began to wander, and I heard my shadow crying.
I heard people say that our generation is happy, but I am not happy. In comparison, people of Mr. He's generation were unfortunate. However, he was able to live with peace of mind despite war, chaos, and chaos. What he picked up from sorrow was hope, and what he found out of helplessness was fun. Why? Where are our differences? Some people attribute this to time, experience or the amount of reading, but I think this is just an excuse to comfort myself: time can dilute everything, but it cannot be the reason to explain everything. After all, after experience and reading, it still comes down to personal judgment. with choice. Fifty years ago, Mr. He did not have the same understanding as I do. Fifty years later, no matter how many things I experience and how many books I read, if I continue with my current way of thinking, I am afraid I will drift away. It is difficult to reach his level. Our differences must be due to some more fundamental reasons.
After each visit, I had to spend more time sorting it out, reviewing sentence by sentence, recalling word by word. Because I was so familiar, his voice was all between the lines. Gradually, I could even use his voice. Sound to think. I keep trying to think in his voice and see my world from his perspective. In his stories, I am looking for my own answers and my spiritual home.
I have always liked Milan Kundera’s novels, and there are several classics worth reading several times. One day, I casually took out "The Record of Laughter and Forgetting" from the bookshelf and saw a triangle drawn with a pencil on the chapter "Mom" in the catalog. That was the mark of "Grand Recommendation", so I started reading it again. One of the descriptions says: My mother's eyesight is getting weaker and weaker. Things that are very big when others look at them seem small to her. Places that others think are boundary markers seem to her like houses. And this is by no means the first time a similar situation has occurred. appears. One night, tanks from neighboring powers invaded their country (in August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded the Czech capital Prague). “This thing was so shocking and terrifying that for a long time, no one could Think about other things," but my mother was thinking about the pears in their garden. The pharmacist invited to pick pears didn't come, and he didn't even apologize. My mother couldn't forgive him. This made her son Carlisle and daughter-in-law Marchetta very angry, accusing them: "Everyone thinks about tanks, and you, you think about pears." Later they moved away, and in their memory, their mother Narrow-minded. ...A few years later, Carlisle began to ask himself: "Are tanks really more important than pears?" The answer seemed not as obvious as he always thought, so he secretly had a certain liking for his mother's vision:
"In my mother's field of vision, there is a big pear in the foreground, and a little further away in the background is a tank not much bigger than a ladybug, ready to fly away and disappear out of sight at any time. Oh, yes ! Mom is right: tanks are perishable, but pears are eternal.”
Maybe it’s because of my state of mind, but when I read this passage again, I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Yes, in life, what is important, what is not important, and what is most important is a choice. Why is "tank" necessarily more important than "pear"? The wisdom of nature is far greater than the cunning of humans. In her view, the battle between humans is no different from the fight between two crickets for mating rights. Although sometimes, the battle between humans will lead to a noble fight. , a nearly perfect sign, but the pure ideal cannot escape the dark, dirty, and complicated trap under the control of "people" who cannot escape the burden of the flesh. Perhaps "people" are not qualified to be messengers of faith. In ancient mythology, the position of human beings is between gods and animals, and human nature oscillates between divinity and greedy and selfish beastiality. Using a "limited, variable life" to carry "eternal, perfect ideals" is always the same Mission Impossible.
Perhaps this is the difference between Mr. He and me. The choice between severity and severity depends on a person's attitude towards life and, to some extent, determines the trajectory of a person's life. When Mr. He was working at the Institute of History, he had a very good friend, Yang Chao, who was knowledgeable, good in character, both talented and political. He was the proud disciple of his predecessor, Mr. Hou Wailu. During the arrest of the May 16th Movement in 1968, history uncovered nearly one-third of the suspects, and almost everyone who was uncovered refused to admit it. However, Yang Chao refused to admit it and refused to explain it to others. He wrote a note: " I am not a May 16th person, I don’t know who a May 16th person is.” He committed suicide at the age of thirty-nine. This incident touched Mr. He very much. He told me about it no less than five or six times, or more, each time in a very slow and regretful tone, "He is just too serious, and everyone else is just like acting." The wind blows, but he is serious... He is a very smart person, can't you see through it?" I have heard this story too many times, but I have never told him. You can say what you have said again, and you can listen to what you have heard. If we could learn even a little bit of lessons from history, I am afraid there would not be so many people today. trouble. "Can't you see through it?" Ever since I encountered Kundera's passage, every time I heard Mr. He say this sentence, I thought it was said specifically to me. Did the earth really drift away? Tiptoe, jump twice more, oh, the real earth is under my feet. What is floating away is just the illusion in my heart. I thought that was it, but in fact it is not. And how can the earth in the illusion become the "weight" of life?
So what does Mr. He value in his life? What do you believe in? ——This "faith" is not a religious belief, not a belief in doctrine. It may be understood as "what you believe deep in your heart."
In my opinion, first, he believes in nature. Mr. He always laughs and says that he does not understand natural science. In fact, he has received very good science training since he was a child. At that time, the High School Affiliated to Normal University and the High School Affiliated to Central University were the best schools in the country. Chen Jingrun’s teacher, mathematician Mr. Min Sihe, taught mathematics in his class. Wang Hao, who later became a world-class Chinese mathematical logician, was his best friend. , was also a friend who influenced his life. In 1939, Mr. He was admitted to Southwest Associated University with the second place in the Guiyang examination area and ranked fourth in the civil engineering department he applied for.
It can be said that before he went to college, he developed a very good habit of scientific thinking and had a deep understanding of the mysteries of nature. The more he learned, the more he realized the limitations of human beings. The heroic saying "Man can conquer nature", He couldn't tell. For example, when he was in junior high school, there were two books that "opened his eyes": "The Mysterious Universe" by James Jeans (Jones) and The Mature of Physical World ("The Nature of the Physical World" by A. Eddington). Published by the Press, the Chinese translation is "The True Interpretation of World Truth"). Jones and Addington were great British physicists. They mixed their respective philosophical thoughts on epistemology in some popular science works, which greatly inspired the young He Zhaowu. After decades of ideological reform, he still had nothing to do with them until he was old. Do not lose this layer of idealistic scientific outlook.
“We didn’t understand science at that time and thought that science meant “ironclad nails”. But in their view, science does not have an objective standard. Knowledge is formed subjectively, and the physical world is just what you think. What is the structure of the physical world? There are many mysterious things in it that we cannot understand now... I don’t understand science, but because the author is a scientist, what I think may make sense, and at least it has opened up my own ideas. . ”
During the conversation, I could clearly feel the specialness of Mr. He’s language. He likes to use mathematics, logic, and the universal laws of the universe as references to compare with human behavior. Under this large frame of reference, human arrogance and self-righteousness are no different from the frog at the bottom of the well or the competitive male peacock. They are all small vanities and small calculations, which appear so limited in the vast world. No wonder "human beings" When I think about it, God laughs." If you look higher, even humans themselves will smile sheepishly. After his sophomore year of college, Mr. He turned to liberal arts, so his understanding of science basically stayed at the level of classical physics and relatively superficial advanced mathematics. Among his classmates and friends, the mathematical logician Wang Hao can engage in "real philosophy" and high-energy physics. Scholar Zheng Linsheng can "see the wonders of the world with wonder and awe." His understanding of modern science directly affects his understanding of the world. Mr. He believes that this is his limitation.
Second, Mr. He values ??beauty. Although his major is intellectual history and he is very interested in history, in my opinion, what really touched his heart and fascinated him throughout his life was the pursuit of beauty. Looking through Mr. He's reading list in middle school, we can find that aesthetic works have always been his preference, such as "The Twelfth Letter to Youth" and "Talk about Beauty" by Zhu Guangqian, and "Children's Music" by Feng Zikai , "Stories of the Top Ten Western Musicians in Modern Times", and "Talks on Western Architecture". In the end, this introductory book on architecture made him "very satisfied" and "very interested", and even filled in the "Civil Engineering Department" as his first choice in the university entrance examination. . When he was in college, he was fascinated by the poems of Keats and Tennyson. He read Crossing the Bar on his sickbed, "I thought this was what suited my taste." In the two years from 1947 to 1949, Mr. He was in a very bad mood. "I originally thought that after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, there would be a peaceful and happy world, but the ending was still messy." He had no close friends in Hunan and could not go back to Beijing. Although he had the opportunity to study abroad, the transportation was blocked and he was ill and could not go there. In this boredom, the few books he had on hand became his biggest obstacle. For comfort and spiritual sustenance, one is Goethe's "Faust" and the other is "Li Yishan's Collected Poems":
"I couldn't read the German version of "Faust" at the time, but I had collected several copies. This is an English translation, and everyone will buy one whenever they come across it. Usually everyone only reads the first one, and only plays the first one, the so-called Gretchen Tragedy. In fact, it is the second one that takes readers away from the small world of love. Entering the big world of life, it truly integrates Goethe's mature thoughts. "Everything that disappears is just a symbol" in the world. In the boredom of the sickbed, it is this spirit of "God is moving vigorously, and a gentleman is constantly striving for self-improvement". I injected a ray of inspiration and courage from life. Li Yishan's (Li Shangyin's) poems are confusing and confusing, sometimes they are deeply emotional, and sometimes they are so passionate that they never return... Ji Xiaolan often criticizes his poems without mercy, such as I admit that not every sentence in Li's poems is good, but some of the best ones are truly extraordinary, as if they transport people to another world, unreachable by others. ."
"Believing in nature" makes him tolerant and uncontested, while "believing in beauty" reflects his appreciation of the personal spiritual world and his endless wandering. Maybe you will accuse me of using the wrong word. It should be "pursuit" instead of "appreciation", "intoxication" or "roaming". However, I think the word "pursuit" is too businesslike, too nervous, and even a bit "revolutionary". ", which is far from Mr. He's style. A few words here. While chatting with Mr. He, I found that he (or people of his generation) understood many words differently than we do now. For example, "eat for a living" is a very embarrassing word in my opinion, but To him it was realistic and somewhat ironic, and the context of his language did not give the word a more moral connotation, but rather a lightness. There are many similar situations. Similarly, the word "pursuit" is serious to him. It may make him feel at a loss and think he is talking about someone else.
When Mr. He was a child, he liked Zhu Guangqian's twelfth letter to young people, titled "Walk slowly and appreciate it", which was in line with his outlook on life. Living with him is like looking at the scenery. You see a beautiful flower from a distance, so you can't help but walk over to it. You don't try hard to "pursue" or "pursue", but you get closer naturally. This is the realm, it’s different from the 100-meter sprint.
Mr. He always said that he was used to being free and loose. From childhood to old age, he had always studied aimlessly, and in the end he failed to make any achievements. Maybe others take this as a humble remark, but I think he means it sincerely. Because he knows where the higher realm is and where his own limitations are. This limitation cannot be made up by exerting great effort and sweating profusely. And the interesting things he completes in his spare time, in addition to inner satisfaction, are He didn't seem to be anything special. A few years ago, Tsinghua University and Peking University built new buildings in Lanqiying and gave Mr. He a house with three bedrooms and two living rooms, which was much better than his current conditions. However, he politely refused, saying with a smile: "I am getting older. , I find it troublesome. "Not everyone can be indifferent to success and fame. Of course, we can't ask everyone to be indifferent to the world. You can set your own standards of life, and forcing others to do so is almost a cult. But when you see an old man doing it in his life, you will still be moved.
Kant’s epitaph reads: “There are two things that fill the mind with growing admiration and awe the more often and persistently we think about them: the starry sky above me and my home. The moral law in my heart." At this point, I finally realized the connotation of this sentence, and at the same time gradually understood why Mr. He could overcome the disillusionment in life. If you want to believe, believe in something more eternal and infinite: this universe really exists, and your heart can also be infinitely profound, so take a swim. As for the perfect world that humans imagine, let it remain completely on the spiritual level. Pandora's box needs to be closed.
Procrastination in doing things, coupled with my selfishness, made this oral autobiography take a long time. The two books took nearly two years. During this period, Mr. He's second sister and his wife passed away. He himself was hospitalized twice due to femoral head necrosis and heart disease. His granddaughter who had been accompanying him also went abroad. Mr. He said: "From now on, I have to get used to living alone. Life." As usual, he was still smiling when he said this, as if it was a happy thing, but I felt bad about it.
God knows that such a respectable and lovely person should not be allowed to grow old, but he said: "Life is nothing more than writing your name on water." ① No matter how hard you work and how hard you pay, you still No matter how careless it is, the result is the same. As the name is written, it disappears with the flowing water.
①The epitaph of the poet Keats: Here lies the man whose name was written on water. (Here lies a man whose name was written on water.)
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