Most people always like to compare the Gao family in Home and Spring and Autumn Annals with Ba Jin's hometown of Chengdu, and regard Ba Jin himself as the awakened wisdom in the novel. Does that make sense? ……
Text/Xu
Generally speaking, people always like to compare the Gaos in Home Spring and Autumn with the Li Mansion in Zhengtongshun Street, North Gate of Chengdu, Sichuan, Ba Jin's hometown. It's natural. Because the author was born in such a family, the gaos thought in Riptide is the projection of Li Mansion. But this does not mean that every character in Riptide can be compared with every character in Li Mansion. Just as people should not compare Jia Baoyu in A Dream of Red Mansions with Cao Xueqin in life; If someone regards Chueh-hui in Home as Ba Jin in his youth, he will never know the richness, authenticity and complexity of Ba Jin's life image in his youth as a China writer.
As we all know, Ba Jin himself said that there were three "gentlemen" in his youth. This is his mother, Lao Zhou, a sedan chair bearer, and Wu Xianyou, a young partner who runs a bimonthly magazine with him.
1923 Before I left home in April, I took a group photo with my stepmother and four brothers. Ba Jin (first from right)
1904165438+1October 25th, that is, 10 year 10 month/9, the warm sunshine shone on the window of the upper right room of Li Mansion. It's past noon and there is a baby crying in the room. A boy was born with a delicate face, regular facial features and a round face. He came to this world from chaos, opened his bright eyes and saw the world at first sight, which was the image of his gentle and kind mother: her chubby round face, always smiling kind face, and her hair smoothed with shaving water. She held him tightly in her arms. Although it is winter, the love of Mother Earth is so warm. Surprisingly, this day is also the birthday of Ba Jin's mother, Chen Shufen.
My mother was born in a small town with beautiful mountains and rivers in Zhejiang Province. She followed her brother in private school classes and recited many poems of Tang and Song Dynasties. Perhaps it is the beautiful mountains and rivers and pure poetic art that cultivate her temperament. She treats people with humility and compassion, and often teaches children not to put on airs as masters, to care about others, to pity the servant girl, and not to scold people around them casually. She believes that "the master is a person, and the maid is also a person. Everyone is the same. Don't think of yourself higher than others. " She advised Ba Jin's father not to use corporal punishment on prisoners casually. She prepared a little book for each child, copied a word from the White Elephant Ci Poem for them with beautiful handwriting every day, and then explained it to them, asking them to recite it, guiding these young hearts to contact literature and music and move towards the palace of art.
There is another big difference between Ba Jin's mother and her husband's family, that is, when someone in the Li family is sick, they always burn incense and worship Buddha, asking God for mercy, and only when they are in a hurry can they ask Chinese medicine practitioners to come to the door and prescribe their pulse. She believed in western medicine and made friends with several British female doctors in Shen Si Tiantan Hospital, asking them to treat her daughter (Ba Jin's second sister). Sometimes I take Ba Jin to the hospital to play, so that Ba Jin has a direct contact with foreign friends since he was a child. Seeing the cover and binding of the New and Old Covenant they gave his mother is different from China's thread-bound book, which surprised him and aroused great interest. This is completely different from his grandfather and father who are both afraid of foreigners and look down on them. This also laid the foundation for Ba Jin's thought that he taught himself a foreign language at home and later longed to study in a foreign language school.
Lao Zhou, Ba Jin's second "Mr." sedan chair bearer, has a wealth of wandering experience, which makes Ba Jin an eye-opener in Deep Chamber Courtyard. Ba Jin often listens to him in Lao Zhou's dark stable to talk about the local scenery, the ups and downs of the world and complain about the injustice of the world. "Be fair, be trustworthy, don't cheat, don't take advantage of others". Lao Zhou's attitude towards life through his experience also influenced Ba Jin's later life.
Wu Xianyou, who runs a publication with Ba Jin, is regarded as the third "sir" by young Ba Jin. He is enthusiastic about serving the public and often sacrifices his own interests to achieve others. He is strict with himself and insists on not drinking, smoking, eating meat, sitting in a sedan chair or using servants. In order to run a publication and maintain funds, he engaged in "sacred labor" and stopped studying to become a tailor. Sometimes, his salary hasn't been paid yet, but when the publication goes to press, he takes off his clothes and goes to the pawnshop to exchange money for emergency. Wu Xianyou's words and deeds left a deep impression on Ba Jin. Until a few decades later, he also said: "My friend Wu taught me' self-denial' and he also taught me courage. Although I still can't do that; But my behavior has always been dominated by this influence. "
It is self-evident that young Ba Jin was influenced by these three "gentlemen" thoughts. But not just three people. I don't think so. Although Ba Jin didn't call his father "Mr.", his father still had some influence on him. Especially after the death of his ten-year-old mother, his father cared more about him than before and often took him to the theatre, which gave him the opportunity to contact Sichuan opera from his teens. Although Ba Jin's father has been crawling on the official career according to his grandfather's arrangement, his career is not prosperous. Although he treats people kindly and doesn't put on airs, he is straightforward, not good at judging appearance and color, flattering his superiors and not getting their favor. Finally, I worked as a county magistrate in a remote mountainous area for three years and returned to my hometown in Chengdu to resign. He soon died of a plague. In the years before his death, he spent all his energy on a theater called Keyuan. He personally arranged to invite the troupe, arrange the life of the actors and decide the repertoire of the performance. Even when the children at home began to play drama, he sometimes watched it with relish. He also made up a script for them called "The Governor in the Sky" to laugh at the local feudal bureaucrats and let them perform, and he laughed himself. At that time, my father was frustrated in officialdom and hoped to make a revolution. When he heard that Xun abdicated, the Republic of China was founded. He spread a piece of foreign cloth at home, personally took scissors, took a needle and thread, sewed a new national flag and hung it at the gate of the mansion. However, it turns out that the rule of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China were nothing more than a change of medicine. Therefore, he compiled "Tian Du Du Du" for children to perform, which actually reflected his dislike of officialdom at that time. This kind of father's emotion has an imperceptible influence on Ba Jin's view of reality.
The cruel reality did educate the young Ba Jin: four months after his mother died, his second sister also died of "daughter tuberculosis". She is gentle and familiar with the biography of a fierce woman since she was a child. From that book, she learned a lot of feudal "women's morality" and knew that as a woman, she should be obedient and patient in everything. There are many terrible characters in that book, but they are all her role models: a widow cut off her hand because a strange man pulled her hand; A princess caught fire in her office. She was willing to be burned to death because she was afraid of losing face. A woman, knowing that her father had drowned in the river, jumped into the water to look for her father's body. After reading this book carefully, Second Sister seems to be silent and melancholy, in line with her age. When her mother is here, she is also asked to see a doctor and take western medicine. Now that her mother has passed away, her family has also cut off contact with several British female doctors in Shensi Temple Hospital, because my grandfather and father did not believe in Western medicine. At that time, Chinese medicine could do nothing about tuberculosis. The second sister kept coughing and dying, but there was still a three-day drama in the hall of the mansion to celebrate grandpa's birthday. Ba Jin saw that the second sister was lonely and pitiful, so he asked his father to help her to the hall to see the play. She sat on the cane chair and stopped on the stage, not knowing what she saw. I only heard her whisper "I want to go in" in the dark, so I asked the maid to help her in, and I haven't seen her since. Three days later, her life at the age of 16 was over.
Shortly after the death of the second sister, she encountered a scuffle between the warlords of the Sichuan Army and the Yunnan Army. Trenches are everywhere in the streets of Chengdu, and artillery fire keeps on day and night. Bullets from street fighting also passed through the walls of Li's house. After years of wars and epidemics, the second and fifth brothers of Ba Jin's uncle's family all died of this plague disaster, and then Ba Jin's tenth sister and his father died one after another. When his father died, he called Ba Jin's eldest brother to the bed and said to him, "When your mother died, you entrusted all your brothers and sisters to me. Now that your tenth sister is dead, how can I be worthy of your mother? " It seems that my own illness will not get better. Now I'll give you my stepmother and sister-in-law. You should take good care of them. "He also wrote these words as a will and gave them to his eldest brother in front of the Ba Jin brothers.
Brother's situation is very difficult, and Ba Jin knows it very well. Eldest brother had a good relationship with his cousin Ba Jin, who walked around the Li family since childhood, but later this marriage didn't succeed, because my father got grandpa's consent, and in the marriage object mediated by the flood of three aunts and six grandmothers, he chose another girl named Zhang by drawing paper balls in front of the ancestors. My brother's heart was empty, and although his stomach was full of twists and turns, he was heartbroken, but he didn't resist and never thought about it. After the death of his father, eldest brother, as the eldest son, became the target of the whole family; Fortunately, with grandpa's support, I kept several rooms peaceful for a while. Later, grandpa died, and the eldest son became a rafter. Just then, my eldest sister-in-law was pregnant and was about to give birth. This became an opportunity for my uncles and aunts to attack them. On the one hand, they put forward inheritance in front of my grandfather's mourning hall. On the other hand, they think that shortly after my grandfather died, my eldest son gave birth at home during the mourning period, which will conflict with my grandfather's spirit. So he asked my eldest brother to send his wife to a remote village outside the city to have a baby, saying that the farther away from home, the better.
Faced with such a realistic challenge, Ba Jin did not think that he would run away from home at first, but felt angry and painful. Because although the eldest brother understands Ba Jin, he is used to obedience, perfunctory, compromise and obedience to his elders in the big family, and he can't accept the suggestion that the Ba Jin brothers let the eldest sister-in-law stay at home and have children. Finally, he accompanied his wife in the sedan chair with his clothes and quilt and went out of town to have a baby. Although the eldest sister-in-law didn't die in childbirth like Jui-chueh at home, when the child was pregnant, the eldest sister-in-law went home with her child in her arms. Ba Jin looked at the hypocritical expression of the winner on her uncles and aunts, which deepened his hatred for this big family.
Similarly, Chueh-min's escape from marriage, Ming-feng's diving, Shu-zhen's jumping into a well and other events never happened around him. However, his sixth sister was blocked by his parents, and he was not allowed to get close to his third brother, nor was he allowed to attend the new book reading meeting organized by the Ba Jin brothers in the long room after the May 4th Movement. The girl Cuifeng was married by her father; A cousin was forced to bind her feet; Fourth sister was forced by her second uncle to marry a rich man with no ink in her chest; Third sister was crying when she was about to get married in the sedan chair. The reality he came into contact with was more complicated and diverse than the tragedy Chueh-hui saw. And these are the real life of the new generation at that time.
Is Ba Jin Chueh-hui? To be sure, from a certain point of view, Chueh-hui seems to be more direct than Ba Jin's suffering, because Feng Ming, the object of his love, committed suicide by throwing himself into the pond, leaving an unforgettable wound on his mind. But in a deeper sense, the tragedy of the Gaos originated from the tragedy of the Li family. The birth of Ming Feng, Jui-chueh and Cousin Mei was extracted by Ba Jin from the tragic life experience of the Li family. This is because Ba Jin felt not only a personal tragedy, but also a generation tragedy. It was after Ba Jin suffered a lot of mental torture in the feudal family that he finally evolved into Chueh-hui's refusal and tears in the novel Home. He sees more widely and deeply than Chueh-hui.
Therefore, I said that Ba Jin is Chueh-hui, but he is not Chueh-hui.
(Excerpted from the essay "Ba Jin's Family and His Youth", issue 1 this year)