Balzac (1799-1850), a great French critical realist writer in the 19th century, was the founder and outstanding representative of European critical realist literature.

He experienced a turbulent period in modern French history (Napoleonic Empire, Bourbon Dynasty, July Monarchy). When he was a child, his grades were not good, and he ranked 32nd in a national examination that only 35 students took part in. Therefore, his parents and teachers had no hope for Balzac, let alone discovering any genius in him. After graduating from university, Balzac entered a law firm. As his parents hoped, this was an "iron rice bowl." But despite family opposition, the young Balzac resigned from his position to concentrate on writing. In a slum attic, Balzac began his career as a writer. His first work, the tragedy "Cromwell", was not a success. Later, he collaborated with others to create comic novels and supernatural novels, which did not attract attention. He then became a publisher, ran a printing factory and a type foundry, but ended up losing money and being in debt. Tired. This huge debt haunted Balzac like a nightmare until the last moment of his life in 1850. But he was not depressed. He installed a small statue of Napoleon in his study and wrote the motto that inspired him throughout his life: "I will use my pen to accomplish what he failed to accomplish with his sword."

Balzac stumbled forward in life, but he got to know life in this collision, and he got to know it more deeply than others. In 1829, he published the novel "The Zhu'an Party Members", which took the first step in realist creation. "Donkey Skin" published in 1931 made him famous. In order to become Napoleon in his literary career, he created a large number of works with amazing perseverance in the 1930s and 1940s, and wrote 91 novels, collectively called "The Human Comedy".

"Human Comedy" is divided into three categories: "Customs Research", "Philosophical Research" and "Analytical Research". The original title of the book was "Social Research". In 1842, Balzac was inspired by what Dante called the "Comedy of the Gods" in "The Divine Comedy", so he changed the name. That is, he used bourgeois society as a big stage and compared bourgeois life to a "comedy of gods" full of ugliness. comedy". In the "Introduction" Balzac wrote: "French society will become a historian, and I will be just the secretary of this historian. Make a list of vices and virtues, collect the main facts of passion, describe various characters , select the main events in society and combine them with a number of similar character traits to form a typical one. In doing so, I may be able to write a history that historians have forgotten, that is, a history of customs. "The Human Comedy" has " Known as the "Social Encyclopedia", it truly reflected the social life at that time, described the doomed destruction of the aristocratic class, exposed the greed, plunder and all social relations based on money of the bourgeoisie. Balzac focused on specific and detailed He is good at describing the environment and details, and is good at revealing the soul of the character through his words and deeds. The whole book has created more than 2,400 characters, and one character often appears in multiple novels. Among the famous chapters are: "The Schuang Party", "Old Man Goriot", "Eugénie Grandet", "The Loan Shark", "Antiquities Showroom", "The Bank of Nümigen", "Disillusionment", "Peasant"... In just 20 years, he wrote 4 to 5 novels every year. Working at his desk for at least 18 hours a day, he wrote "Secha Biroteau" in 25 hours. "Country Doctor" took 72 hours, while the masterpiece "Old Man Goriot", which is hundreds of thousands of words long, was completed in three days. In order to ensure that he was awake when writing, Balzac was addicted to strong coffee. He once said: "I will die from 30,000 cups of coffee." Sure enough, due to early debts and the hardship of writing, he died on August 18, 1850. He passed away and chronic coffee poisoning became one of the causes of his death.

Shakespeare: British poet and playwright. (1) Life: Born on April 23, 1564 in the town of Stratford on the Avon River in Warwickshire. His father, John, was a yeoman farmer in Warwick County. He moved to Stratford Town in 1551 and engaged in wool, leather manufacturing, grain trading and other industries; some say he also worked as a butcher.

In 1565, John served as civil administrator of Stratford Town and was elected mayor three years later. William, the eldest son, was sent to a local grammar school to study Latin and ancient history, philosophy, poetry, logic, rhetoric, etc. When he was 13 or 14 years old, his family was in dire straits and he may have dropped out of school to help his father in his business. In November 1582, he married Ann Hathaway, the daughter of a wealthy yeoman farmer in the neighboring village. In May of the following year, he gave birth to a daughter, Susanna. In 1585, he gave birth to twins Judith (daughter) and Hamnet (son). Hamnet was 11 years old. Died at an early age. From 1585 to 1592, his life experience is unknown, but there are many legends from later generations. For example, it is said that he worked as a village teacher, that he worked as a clergyman in a noble mansion, and that he served as a soldier. It is widely said that he stole the deer of the nearby aristocratic squire Sir Thomas Lucey and fled to London. The time is generally estimated to be around 1586.

In 1592, Robert Greene, the playwright and one of the so-called "university wits", wrote an article attacking some actors of the time, warning playwrights "Don't believe them; there is an upstart crow among them, He decorates himself with our feathers and wraps up his tiger and wolf heart with an actor's skin; he writes a few lines of boastful blank verse and thinks he can compete with the best writers among you; he is a real handyman. He works hard, but he shamelessly thinks that he is the only one in the country who can rock the stage." "Heart of a tiger and a wolf" is a sentence quoted from the second part of Shakespeare's "Henry VI", and "shake the stage" is an allusion to Shakespeare's surname (shake means shock, spear means spear). It can be seen that Shakespeare was already quite famous in 1592.

From the time he left his hometown to 1592, it is said that he watched horses for noble customers in front of the theater, and gradually became a busboy, actor, and shareholder of the theater. When he started writing plays, he mostly adapted old plays or collaborated with other playwrights, and later he wrote independently. He had a fellow businessman named Field in London, who was engaged in the printing and publishing industry. Shakespeare's first published work, Venus and Adonis (1593), was published by Field. The work is dedicated to the young new aristocrat, the Earl of Southampton. His troupe has been under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain since 1594, and was called the "Lord Chamberlain's Troupe". In 1603, when James I ascended the throne, it was renamed "The King's Servant". He had frequent contacts with some of the new aristocrats of the time, such as the Earl of Essex. His troupe also performed at the Queen's Court, and in the provinces during the summer or during plague epidemics. In 1596, he helped his father apply for and obtain the "family crest" (symbolizing the social status of a squire). It is speculated that he visited home every year and purchased property in his hometown in 1597 and another estate (127 acres) in 1602. He spent the last 3 or 4 years of his life in his hometown. He died on April 23, 1616 and was buried in the town's "Trinity" church. (2) Creation Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, 154 sonnets, two long poems and other poems in 22 and 23 years. Except for two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Humiliation of Lucrece", which were published during his lifetime, some of his plays are available in quarto "pirated editions". These "pirated versions" were dictated by certain actors in the troupe, or were written down in shorthand during the performance. At that time, it was customary for playwrights to sell their scripts to theater troupes, and the theater troupes had full rights to deal with the scripts. In order to maximize their monopoly, the theater troupes tried their best to prevent other theater groups from getting the scripts and kept them secret. This led to the emergence of "pirated versions". All of Shakespeare's plays were collected into a book by fellow actors Hemming and Condel after his death. They were published in folio in 1623, called the "First Folio", which included 36 plays, half of which were written during his lifetime. Unpublished. The era when the work was written: At that time, the performance and publication of plays required registration and approval from the government, and the dates of performance and publication of Shakespeare's plays are well-documented. However, the date of performance and publication may not necessarily coincide with the time of creation. It may be one or two years before the performance or the same year, or it may be revised after the performance before being finalized. The plays in the First Folio are not arranged chronologically, but are organized into three categories: comedy, historical drama, and tragedy.

Since the late 18th century, scholars such as Malone have begun to study the creation dates of Shakespeare's plays. After 200 years of exploration, they have basically reached a consensus, which has become a more reliable basis for studying the evolution of Shakespeare's thoughts and art (see the attached table of dates of Shakespeare's works). surface). Classification of Drama: The First Folio divided Shakespeare's plays into three categories. Later, scholars further divided the plays about Roman history into "Roman dramas" and later comedies into "romantic dramas" or "romantic dramas". "Legendary Drama". Periodization of Drama In 1850, German scholar Galvinus studied the development of Shakespeare's artistic skills. Based on the study of Shakespeare's poetry, he divided Shakespeare's drama into three periods: 1.1590 to 1600, that is, the period of historical drama and comedy; 2.1601 to 1601. 1607, the tragedy period; 3.1608 to 1612, the "romantic drama" period. In 1870, British scholars Dowden and Furnifer also divided Shakespeare's drama into four periods based on poetic techniques and the mood of the works. That is, the first period was divided into: 1590 to 1596, the early lyric period; 1597 to 1600, period of historical drama and comedy. (3) Author Issue In the mid-19th century, some scholars considered that Shakespeare’s plays reflected a wide range of knowledge (involving many aspects of law, history, geography, politics, and the lifestyle of court nobles) and high literary achievements. Despite the education he received, it was impossible for him to write these works, so he thought the author was Bacon; others thought it was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, or even Marlowe. But Shakespeare's plays were collected by two actors from his company, and the contemporary playwright Ben Jonson also wrote a dedication poem to the complete works. This alone makes the skeptic's theory untenable. Skeptics completely ignore an author's potential to learn from life and his predecessors. (4) Introduction to the Works The basic idea of ??all Shakespeare's works is humanism or humanism, which in his language is "love". His works are the multi-faceted expression of the concept of "love". Humanism is the ideological weapon of the emerging bourgeoisie against feudalism. Shakespeare's works reflected the ideals of the emerging bourgeoisie. He has a deep sense of life, is good at thinking, has high artistic accomplishment, and the image of his works is strong; he absorbed new cultures and new ideas from various European countries, so his works profoundly and vividly reflect the British reality from the 16th to 17th centuries, focusing on Represents the literary achievements of the entire European Renaissance.

Long poem Shakespeare's earliest poem is "Venus and Adonis". The theme comes from the Roman poet Ovid's "Metamorphoses", in which the love goddess Venus pursues the young Adonis. But Adonis did not love her and only loved hunting. During a hunting trip, he was injured by a wild boar and died. Venus was very sad. At the place where Adonis died, a flower named Pulsatilla grew out of the pool of blood, and Venus took it back to the island of Cyprus. The main purpose of this poem is to show that love is irresistible and the words are beautiful. After its publication, it became very popular. By 1602, 7 editions had been published, and by 1640, the total number had reached 16 editions. "The Humiliation of Lucrece" is based on Ovid's "Annals of the Years" and other works. It tells the story of Sextes, the son of Tarquin, the last king of the Roman Empire, who ran back from the battlefield and defiled his fellow race Coratinna. Lucrece, Si's wife, recalled her husband from the war and told him to avenge his shame and then commit suicide with a knife. Finally, the dynasty was overthrown and the aristocratic Republic was established. The author believes that Sextus violated the concept of "honor" and the new aristocracy should take this as a lesson. The author also appeals for sympathy, mercy and humanity through Lucrece. The text of this poem is more complicated. Sonnets There are 154 Shakespeare's sonnets, which were written one after another in about 6 years. The themes are friendship and love. This style of poetry imported from Italy mostly takes the form of a continuous group of poems. Poems 1 to 126 describe the ups and downs of the poet's friendship with an aristocratic young man; poems 127 to 152 describe the poet's love for a "dark-skinned woman"; the last two poems end. In the first 17 poems, the poet urges young people to get married, and beautiful things should be passed down from generation to generation for eternal life, which reflects the humanists' belief in "people" and their hope for the new nobility. Later, the young man was sometimes indifferent to the poet, sometimes favored another poet, and even seduced the poet's girlfriend, but the poet put friendship first and showed a spirit of reconciliation.

(5) Comments on Shakespeare in the past. Revolutionary mentors Marx and Engels spoke highly of Shakespeare on many occasions and recognized his important role in the history of drama development. In a letter to Phil Lassalle on April 19, 1859, Marx criticized the creative method of "Schiller-style turning individuals into mere mouthpieces for the spirit of the times" and put forward the important argument of "Shakespeareization". In a letter to Lassalle on May 18 of the same year, Engels praised "the perfect fusion of vividness and richness of the plots of Shakespeare's plays" and also criticized the creative method of "forgetting realism for conceptual things" , praising the "Falstaffian setting" in Shakespeare's history plays. Comments on Shakespeare in each era reflect the literary views of that era, as well as certain characteristics or aspects of Shakespeare's works. Shakespeare's contemporary playwright Ben Jonson called him "the soul of the age" but criticized him for lacking "art". This comment set the tone for previous criticism by the Romantics in the 19th century. From the mid-17th century to the 18th century, under the influence of classicism, critics acknowledged that Shakespeare had genius, but had no concept of creative rules. Voltaire called him a "drunken savage." Shakespeare not only did not abide by the "Three Unities", but also mixed comedy scenes with tragedy. During the Sturm movement in Germany, Lessing and Goethe broke through the shackles of classicism and were inspired by Shakespeare's reflection of "nature" (reality). During the Romantic period, critics further saw the depth of thoughts and feelings in Shakespeare's plays, saw the achievements of Shakespeare's poetry, and were particularly interested in the analysis of characters. The representatives of this period were the Schlegel brothers in Germany and Coleridge in the UK. It reached its peak in the early 20th century with Bradley in the UK. In the 19th century, Russian revolutionary democratic critics, represented by Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, opened up the road to realism and emphasized that Shakespeare's plays truly reflected life, especially the characters were deeply portrayed. Since the Romantics, most reviews have been positive about Shakespeare. Among those who disagreed was Tolstoy; Tolstoy also started from realism and pointed out that the plot of Shakespeare's drama was not credible. The reason why the characters were successfully written was that the material he was based on was good. Western Shakespeare criticism in the 20th century has gone through several stages, but it is mainly nothing more than the alternation of two schools and their variants, which can be called "objective school" and "subjective school". The former is studied from the outside, such as from the stage techniques and drama traditions of the time, Shakespeare's adaptation of old plots and specific historical events at the time; the latter is studied from the perspectives of poetic language, "imagery", psychology, philosophical thoughts, etc. The most extreme comments in the 1960s regarded Shakespeare as an absurdist writer and compared him to the contemporary absurdist playwright Beckett. After the October Revolution, Marxist Shakespeare criticism in the Soviet Union and European and American countries made a new evaluation of Shakespeare's plays from the perspective of materialist dialectics, based on Lenin's theory of reflection, and in conjunction with the actual class struggle in history and the social role of literature. After China was liberated, it also made many achievements in Shakespeare's research. Generally speaking, Marxist Shakespeare criticism is still in development. (6) Shakespeare in China Shakespeare’s name was introduced to China by missionaries in 1856. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, and later Lu Xun, the representative figures in my country's ideological circles, also mentioned Shakespeare's name in their translations. Shakespeare's works were first introduced through the translation of "Shakespeare's Tales" by the British essayists Lamb and his brothers in the early 19th century. It was published by Shanghai Darwin Press in 1903 under the title "Extraordinary Tales", with an unknown translator, and included 10 a story. At the same time, Lin Shu and Wei Yi translated all 20 stories in the collection and published them in 1904 under the title "British Poets Sing Bianyan Language". The first Shakespeare plays performed in our country were mostly based on this book and adapted. It was not until the May 4th Movement in 1919 that Shakespeare's plays were translated and introduced in the form of vernacular Chinese and scripts. Tian Han translated Hamlet in 1921 and Romeo and Juliet in 1924. From the 1920s to the 1930s, there were many translations of Shakespeare's plays in more than ten years. During the Anti-Japanese War, translation and introduction work continued uninterrupted, especially Cao Weifeng and Zhu Shenghao, who persisted in systematic translation work under difficult conditions.

Cao Weifeng translated 11 kinds of works and published them one after another from 1942 to 1944. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, 10 kinds of them were published under the general title of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare Translated by Cao". Zhu Shenghao translated 31 scripts from 1935 to his death in 1944, and published 27 scripts in 1947.

From the late period of the Anti-Japanese War to the eve of liberation, there were Cao Yu's translation of "Romeo and Youliye", Sun Dayu's "The King of Liya", Liang Zongdai's "Shakespeare's Shang Lai", etc. After liberation, especially in the 1950s, many new translations appeared, such as "Hamlet" translated by Bian Zhilin, "Henry IV" translated by Wu Xinghua, "Richard III" translated by Fang Chong, "Chasing the Wind and Shadows" and "Catching the Wind and Shadows" translated by Fang Ping. "The Merchant of Venice", "Henry Fifth", etc. On the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, Zhu Shenghao's translation was published in 11 volumes, entitled "Shakespeare's Dramas". After that, the translation was comprehensively revised, and the missing plays and poems were completely translated. It was published in 1978 as "The Complete Works of Shakespeare". Shakespeare's plays were performed in China only after the rise of drama. Among the foreign scripts that can be examined for early stage dramas before the May 4th Movement, the most are Shakespeare's works, with 20 kinds. After the May 4th Movement, "The Merchant of Venice" was staged by the Shanghai Drama Association and Nanjing Drama School in 1929 and 1937. In 1937, the Shanghai Amateur Experimental Theater Company performed "Romeo and Juliet". During the Anti-Japanese War, Shakespeare's plays were also staged in the rear areas, including "Othello" in Chongqing and "Romeo and Juliet" in Chengdu. Shakespeare plays performed after liberation include "Romeo and Juliet", "Twelfth Night", "Much Ado About Nothing", "The Merchant of Venice", "Macbeth", "Tit for Tat" staged in Beijing and "Much Ado About Nothing" staged in Shanghai ”, “Romeo and Juliet”.

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

Thinker, essayist, and poet. Born on May 25, 1803 in Boston into a priest family. Died in Concord, Massachusetts on April 27, 1882. Graduated from Harvard College at the age of 17. He entered Harvard Divinity School in 1826 and was allowed to preach the following year. In 1828, he became the pastor of the Second Church in Boston, belonging to the Unitarian sect that was dominant in New England at that time. Later, because he did not agree with some of the teachings of this sect, he gave up the priesthood and traveled to Europe in 1833. He visited Randall, Coleridge, Wordsworth, etc., the pioneers of the Romantic movement, and became close friends with Carlyle. And was deeply influenced by Kant's transcendental philosophy. After returning to China, he published "On Nature" in 1836. This book contains the germ of almost all his important thoughts. On August 31, 1837, Emerson delivered a speech titled "On American Scholars" at an American college fraternity, criticizing the money worship in American society where the soul is subordinate to money and the phenomenon of capitalist division of labor that alienates people into objects. , emphasized the value of human beings; he proposed that the task of scholars is to freely and bravely reveal the truth from the surface in order to inspire, improve and guide people; he called for the promotion of national self-esteem and opposed blindly following foreign doctrines. This speech was a sensation and had a significant impact on the rise of American national culture. It was hailed by Holmes as "our ideological declaration of independence."

On July 15, 1838, Emerson delivered a famous speech entitled "Theological Seminary Address" at Cambridge Theological Seminary, which was protested by New England Calvinists, Unitarians and other forces. and attack. Emerson's philosophical thought retained the positive elements of Unitarianism's emphasis on human value, and absorbed the transcendental ideas of European idealism, developing into a transcendentalist viewpoint. Its basic starting point is to oppose authority and advocate intuition; its core is to advocate that people can transcend feelings and reason and directly know the truth. This view helped break the shackles of theology and foreign dogma at the time, establish national culture, embodied the spirit of the times, and provided a theoretical basis for the development of American political democracy and economic capitalism.

Since 1836, Emerson, Alcott, Ripley and others have met irregularly in Concord, Boston to discuss "the bad state of theology and philosophy." This can be said to be extraordinary. The starting point of the experimentalist movement.

They founded the quarterly review journal "Richiori" (1840-1844), publishing literary works and papers advocating reform of education, ethics, politics and other aspects. Emerson once served as editor-in-chief and was a major representative of the Transcendentalist movement.

Most of Emerson's works are written in prose. Important works include "On Self-Help" and "On the Supersoul", etc., which are collected in "Essays" (1841) and "Essays: Second". Collection" (1844). Two volumes of "Collected Poems" were published in 1847 and 1867 respectively. In addition, there are "Representative Figures" (1850), "British Character" (1856), etc.