The Complete Works of Xu Zhimo's Classical Prose

Chapter 43 Laughing at Life's Hibiscus Bird (15)
I also boldly assert that only people who care about life can care about art.By caring for life, I mean consciously uncovering the natural resources inherent in human nature, taking every opportunity to transform them into something useful.In other words, we must consciously develop the awareness with which the creative spirit that resides in the soul can function.In fact, few of us dare say, "I've fully known myself." Remember that the pursuit of performance will always lead to self-disclosure and understanding, which will often surprise you.The revelation of inner things depends on inspiration and potency from ideas absorbed from outer things.At this point, aesthetic appreciation is very important, and delicate emotions are far more important and effective for beautiful things than strong reason and character.As long as you strive to pursue the passion of art, you will know the value of beauty and life.If "Hamlet" or "Prometheus Unchained" doesn't move you, it can't be blamed on Shakespeare and Shelley.When a well-conducted Beethoven symphony plays its climax, you still can't be ecstatic. I think you'd better ask an ear specialist to check whether there is something wrong with the hearing organ.To put it mildly, if Tristan und Isolde doesn't tug at your heartstrings, unless you don't like Wagner's style, you should at least feel ashamed as you dodge math or sports.If you stand unimpressed by a statue of Moses in Rome or Cologne cathedral, if you see nothing but a nice swatch of color from a Turner, Whistler, and Matisse painting, you can safely convince Ask yourself that your education is not as good as you think it is.When you walk through the inner courtyard of Shunzhi Gate and see a row of exquisite ceramic artworks displayed beside the solemn ancient wall, and you don’t feel any joy in your heart, you’d better give up the plan of admiring the post-impressionist masters such as Cézanne, or Sit back in your easy chair and curse the ugliness of the world around you.I am certainly not saying that each of us can immediately fall in love with European art like a professional critic without training and understanding.On the contrary, the basic ideas embodied in Western art and techniques are relatively foreign to ordinary Orientals, so they are always puzzling.I think that less than one percent of the Chinese students studying abroad have at least a sense of art beyond superficial physical pleasure.But don't forget that what's worth getting is often hard to get.In short, it is stupid education and rigid habits that prevent us from feeling and appreciating things as they are.Clear away these factors, and you can restore your aesthetic intuition, which may become hot, greedy and penetrating with hunger.Then, life itself should be seen as a work of art, or as an artistic problem.We are given this earthly body, brain and heart just as an artist is given subjects and scenes to paint and carve.Shouldn't we feel a sense of responsibility when we apply our paintbrush or carving knife to the physical material we wish to master?A piece of finite and fragile material may be ruined at once, or it may become a masterpiece of beauty.As the passionate Italian poet Danon Leo said, if we put in the effort, even in this world, we can turn our lives into beautiful fables.The best path to the good is beauty; and since we are so ready to follow the wisdom of the Greeks, our aesthetic intuition is a safer and more reliable ultimate standard than a vague sense of moral goodness.Life is a work of art!So, get ready for the final review.When you are 70 years old, the rosyness of youth will turn into ugly wrinkles, and the sweet voice will turn into the hoarse dry cough of old age. Let's see if you are gratified that you have shaped a colorful career with your own hands.Read biographies of great or lesser figures like Goethe, and evaluate your own life against that standard, and see how it compares.Goethe's great life cannot but be considered a work of art, a masterpiece.At least no less than the masterpieces of St. Peter in Rome, their lives are full of mysterious beauty and mysterious beauty.As for the precepts and principles of a noble and sane life, I think it best to quote again Walter Petel's famous treatise on the Renaissance, "Conclusions":

"The contribution of philosophy and speculative culture to the human spirit is to awaken it in keen, passionate observation. Every moment some form is perfected in hand or face; some voices from mountains and seas are more Fascinating; some passion, epiphany, or intellectual excitement that is more real to us, to the moment, more captivating, more captivating. The feeling itself, not the fruit of the feeling, is the end. In our rich and dramatic lives , the number of pulse beats is limited. How can we observe everything we want to see through the most sensitive perception in the limited pulse beat? How can we go from one point to another in the fastest speed, always in the relationship between life force and its purest What about the focus of condensed energy? Always burning with this jewel-like flame of passion, and maintaining this ecstasy of selflessness, is the success of life."

He added:
"As Victor Hugo said: We are sinners, condemned to death for an indefinite period of reprieve. We all have a period after which the world no longer remembers us. Some are ennui , some live this period in enthusiasm, and the wisest, at least among the 'children of this world', live their lives in art and song. Our only chance lies in as many Increase the beating of the pulse to prolong this limited time. Great passions can bring us a revived sense of life, the joys and sorrows of love and the various forms of intense activity, which will come naturally whether we are interested or not. among many of us. But remember that it is passion alone that will truly reap the fruits of your revived consciousness. The passion of poetry, the longing for beauty, the love of art for art's sake, are the highest wisdoms. When art awakens you Frankly, it only confers the highest quality on the fleeting moments of life, and it comes only for those moments."

原英文标题为“Art and Life”，载《创造季刊》1923年5月1日第2卷第1期

Schopenhauer and Schopenhauer's Essay on Women

We're making a big mistake again!Schopenhauer's Discourse on Women is an unscrupulous "destroying essay". His eccentric temper, his remoteness, his world-weary outlook, and his iconoclasticism are all vented in this short essay.The philosopher's mind is not that of the common man; nor is his vision, like that of the poet and the artist, that of the common man.To our naked eyes, a chair is just a chair, and a cat is a cat; to the philosopher, a chair is not just a chair, and he wants to ask himself all sorts of weird questions about chairs and at the same time absolutely nothing about chairs. He will not be comfortable until he gets a satisfactory answer. "What is a chair?" "Why is a chair not a cat, and a cat not a dog?" This is relatively simple.A philosopher is like a very naughty child, who can't keep everything safe once it gets into his hands. Although he may not feel happy when he breaks things apart, it is better than not taking things apart.Such a huge universe, such a complex phenomenon, cannot withstand the dismantling of the eldest philosopher, and within a few minutes, the entire universe and life will be gone; He has to touch the wall and say "Ayo" in order to believe in his own existence unconditionally.But their naughtiness is more than mere destruction; they also want to rebuild their dismantled pieces according to their own ideas, and that is what we find philosophers really troublesome and annoying.A white horse is a white horse, and a white jade is just a white jade; even if you say that the white horse you are riding on is really in your own heart, and there is no such thing, it doesn’t matter; no, he just wants to come out of nothing. A white sex is extracted from the sentence of "and white jade and white", which is called white sex.This is the beginning of endless trouble.Therefore, there are various outlooks on life and the universe. Yours won’t fit into me, and his’s won’t fit into yours. You say his’s has no bottom, and he says mine’s leaky and can’t hold water. , each other is unwilling to let each other, everyone is crowded in the shadow of the ghostly words, eager to find the light.Chinese philosophers cannot do without his nature and Tao, and Western metaphysicians cannot do without his realism and epistemology.We mortals with simple minds really can't figure out this interesting trouble, and can't keep up with the excitement.One day I accidentally spoke foreign language with a friend in a rickshaw, but the gentleman pulling the rickshaw annoyed me. He turned his head and said, "Sir, what are you talking about? We really don't understand! I think we also want to turn our heads and say the same thing to philosophers: "Sir, what are you talking about? We really don't understand!" But at the same time, we don't doubt that they are indeed smarter than us, What they said couldn't be completely unreasonable, and the one who pulled the cart always had a lot of admiration for the one who rode it.So every time a philosopher's tone can be understood by ordinary people, we must not lose the opportunity.

Schopenhauer is such a philosopher.At least sometimes his words are not too profound, he can actually understand our shallowness, if he doesn't come all day long, he will scare us with his hometown songs.And not only did he use more obvious words to explain his "system", he actually talked about women.

Nietzsche said he could not conceive of a philosopher with a wife.No, we simply cannot conceive of a philosopher who has any relationship with any woman.At least in this he's "Superman".He is standing alone on the top of a peak, but the clouds of men and women are surging in the mountainside, never touching the ground.Socrates passed the age of sexual desire, and someone came to mourn his misfortune. He replied that if a person escaped from the tiger's claws, you would hang him or congratulate him.Bentham in England lived to be more than 80 years old and only learned to play with kittens.Kant, Russell called him "the old eunuch of Berg in Coney City", needless to say, he never met a woman in his life.Spencer was also an old boy.Nietzsche himself only knows how to fencing and drinking beer.Schopenhauer was even more shabby, and he walked quickly with a puppy (called "Little Schopenhauer") in Frankfort all day long.Of course, many philosophers have wives, such as Heigl and Hume, but they all follow the rules. We seldom hear authentic philosophers have any sex, unless you also count the old Lussau, which is everywhere. Yes, with the current Russell, he is a famous Lady killer.

Philosophers rarely discuss women directly.When the Greeks talk about love, they are always gay, and it has nothing to do with women.Medieval philosophers were all monks, and they were afraid of women stealing their souls just as they were afraid of tigers eating their flesh.Women, in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, were only women; there are tigers in the mountains, snakes in the grass, and women in the world, so there is no room for discussion.Ovette in Rome, yes, talked about women, but he is only a realist here. His Amores is a work of the same nature as Mr. Ye Dehui's Double Plum Landscape Series, and Ovette is a poet with many classifications.

Women seem to be the monopoly of poets, and philosophers are not divided.Because of their lack of experience, they have nothing to say.When they have considerable experience, they do not see it as important enough to merit serious discussion.Schopenhauer was the first to make an exception.And it's not because his female experience is necessarily superior to that of "the old eunuch of Berg in Coney City", what makes him different is his bad temper; A short article scolds a thorough.Schopenhauer is the close ancestor of pessimistic philosophy (the distant ancestors of all philosophy can be found in Greece); he only recognizes that pain is reality, and happiness is only the absence of pain; he rewards suicide, which comes from India, from the destruction of the body. Seeking spiritual liberation; women, needless to say, he certainly regards it as a necessary evil karma.Some people say that his pessimistic philosophy is completely derived from his early failure in love.I have never checked whether he has any love experience.The center of his universe is himself, and around him; he has only himself.His vanity is majestic.He has no close friends in his life, neither male nor female; his mother and sister have quarreled with him to death and never see each other.No one can get along with him, except his puppy.He will be weird; when he was not famous in the first half of his life, he complained all day that the society didn't recognize his genius, and in the second half of his life he still complained all the time, complaining that the society's compliments to him were not enough for his addiction.He cursed life, and at the same time, he himself was most afraid of death, and the slightest shadow of danger could drive him far away for his life.It is unbelievable that his colleagues are jealous; what he said about Heigl and Fichd's family will always be a big stain on himself.He once lost his temper because of a trivial matter, and threw a woman straight out of the house, making her disabled. As a result, she was sued for several years and had to support her for life.Like Lu Sao, he was also called the "Inferiority complex" (Inferiority complex, I flipped it randomly) and chased him all his life.

This is our philosopher, the philosopher who slanders women.We cannot fail to admire his boldness.I don't know what the reaction was then.No feminists beat his head anyway; German women are moderate after all.No, on the contrary, Schopenhauer won the favor of readers because of this, and it is still the case today. A knowledgeable woman in Western Europe has never read his great essays with a smile.Nietzsche said, every time you approach a woman, don't forget to bring a whip.In some places, it is proof that men do not hit women without emotion.Britain loves to watch Bernard Shaw's plays, and it's the same psychological effect that makes it comfortable to scold.But this is not all true. It is true that Schopenhauer and Shaw would have to write articles.When his Theory of Will and his criticism of Kant's philosophy are no longer consulted, his Theory on Women can still be recited; but this is not our original intention of translating it today.Wei Ci's translation is not very careful. He originally added a paragraph of apology and warned readers who lack humor not to risk getting angry.But one of the proofs of higher education, Qian Sidden said, is that not only will you not be angry when you are beaten by others, but you will not be angry when you scold yourself.We hope that our male and female readers will have a certain degree of humor, so as not to get unrealistic about the old dead sixty years ago.

Of course, Schopenhauer's observation of women is not only very extreme, but also wrong in some places.But in his time, the women in his level of society, we can infer that they were scolded by him.I believe in the principle of evolution. Of course, human beings are not perfect regardless of gender, but they can evolve, and historically they have indeed evolved. Our current culture, it cannot be denied, is indeed a completely male business.Women are oppressed by men, all over the world, not just China.But it has changed a lot in the past hundred years.Not only has our fundamental concept of women changed completely in terms of academic theory, not only has women's status in society changed, not only has her personality been recognized on an equal footing with men in all human activities, but women have actually given We have amazing achievements in learning, in career, and even in the creative art world (a mouth to our philosopher, he said that women not only cannot create but also cannot understand art).We have seen great women scientists, women scholars, women musicians, women painters, women sculptors, women poets, women novelists, even women politicians, women lawyers, in any intellectual and creative activities, They have amply proved their ability when all oppressive forces give way.Along with this intellectual increase and spiritual expansion, the habits and dispositions which they had acquired under the unequal and even barbaric social conditions, of course, have undergone great changes.So Schopenhauer’s article can be read as an account. Here he put an end to the feudal society in which women in Europe are irresponsible, immoral, childish, deceitful, false, shallow, extravagant, trivial, Vanity, jealousy, etc. have since begun a new era of honorable women.This is also an article that our modern Chinese society can learn from. We might as well take the social women we can see in Beijing to compare with the European women that Schopenhauer scolded and scolded at the beginning, to see if they have become fossilized. We are still graceful and bright flowers and plants, see if we are imitating the flawed women who have gradually completely escaped from them; at the same time, we should also think about the shadow of the dignity and genius of women that they have realized. To see if women's newly-won rights are their due rights, and fair rewards for ability and achievements are not unreasonable demands for us.

(End of this chapter)