In my prejudice, reading foreign literature translated by others is no less than eating steamed bread chewed by others. Therefore, after graduating from school, I seldom browse this work.
Early this year, I made a reading plan. Speaking of foreign literature, I looked at the rows of long-lost foreign literary masterpieces in the bookcase, hesitated for a long time, and finally chose only one, namely Turgenev's short story collection "Hunter's Notes".
I chose this book for two reasons: first, this book has always accompanied me through my youth, and I have feelings for her; Secondly, the beautiful language, exquisite skills and profound thoughts of this book left a deep impression on me, and I can't forget it.
It is not a lie to say that you have feelings. This Hunter's Notes belongs to People's Literature Publishing House (version 1979), and it is one of the famous foreign literature series jointly edited by the Institute of Foreign Languages of Chinese Academy of Sciences, People's Literature and Shanghai Translation. Translated by Mr. Feng Zikai. I bought it in high school at a price of 1.3 yuan. It has been almost 30 years, and the cover of the book has turned yellow.
As for unforgettable, it naturally has her charm. I won't say anything critical. I only quote a sentence from Hamlet in Higley County. I believe you will never forget: "Even if you know everything, are rich in knowledge and pursue the times, what's the use if you don't have your own, special and inherent things?" Even if you are stupid, it must be your own. It is most important to have your own breath, your own inherent breath! "
From this sentence, I think of being a man, doing things and so on, such as reading the current blog, how can I do it well? This sentence seems to have an answer. Of course, The Hunter's Notes contains more than one sentence. I just quoted a sentence that I can't forget.
brief Introduction of the content
Hunter's Notes is Turgenev's first realistic work. This short feature, which gives a vivid and poetic description of the Russian people, has entered the treasure house of Russian classical literature and has many readers abroad. The works express the purity of farmers' nature, the dignity of personality and the sacred and lofty humanitarian theme in a lyrical style, and show their love for the people and praise for the spiritual strength, wisdom and genius of the working people, which makes their works have wise thoughts and great artistic appeal. When the writer was engaged in the creation of Hunter's Notes, Russia was in the early stage of the liberation movement. Under the oppression of this deep thought and dark sadness, Turgenev, like a superstar in the darkness of the sky, expressed endless pity and sympathy for those who lived in the lower classes. He is an enthusiastic supporter of peasants' liberation from serfdom. After the publication of Notes, the society regarded it as a "book that set us on fire".
One,
Before reading Turgenev, I only carefully read the works of two Russian writers. One is lev tolstoy's Resurrection, and the other is Gorky's autobiography trilogy. Although I admire Dostoevsky and sholokhov more in terms of the style of their works, I have only skimmed their works, so naturally I can't read them. I always need some motivation to read the works of some famous artists or great books carefully. Some time ago, I saw that Xu's film Letter from an Unknown Woman won an award at the Spanish Film Festival, so I carefully read several novels by Zweig. And when a friend told me that Turgenev made me tongue-tied, I secretly made up my mind that it was time to read Turgenev.
Turgenev appeared in Russian literary world from 65438+1940s. In his creative career of more than 40 years, he has created six novels called "artistic chronicles", as well as a large number of short stories, features, plays, lyric poems, narrative poems, prose poems and other works of various genres, and also wrote a considerable number of literary comments, memoirs, literary letters and so on. Russian novels should be counted from Raskolnikov at the earliest, followed by lermontov's contemporary heroes. In Turgenev's hands, Russian novel creation has made great progress. The structure is no longer as simple as that of contemporary heroes, and political content and love stories are often closely combined, which has very obvious characteristics of the times. Therefore, Turgenev's achievements in novel creation are not as outstanding as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky later, but his position in the history of Russian novels is irreplaceable.
Turgenev was born in a noble family in Orel province, Russia, and his mother was a serf owner. This made him witness the cruelty and tyranny of the landlord class from an early age and deeply sympathize with the tragic situation of the peasants. After going to college, a series of progressive thoughts, especially the influence of the famous critic belinsky, made him unconsciously stand at the forefront of the times. During his life, Russian society experienced great changes. He crossed the period of aristocratic revolution and the period of civilian revolution. /kloc-At the beginning of the 9th century, the uprising in The Decemberists awakened the democratic trend of thought in Russian society. The failure of the Crimean War in the mid-1950s promoted the further upsurge of the struggle against serfdom. The reform of serfdom in 186 1 caused drastic changes in Russian society and opened up a development path for capitalism. In the whole19th century, Russia "all social problems boil down to the struggle against serfdom and its remnants". Turgenev is a writer who grew up in such an environment. His works are bound to be branded with the times and closely linked with the great changes in Russian society. The most obvious performance is that he changed the description of "redundant people" of the nobility from "Luo Ting" and "Noble House" to the description of "Xinmin" of the civilian intellectuals in "The Night Before" and "Father and Son".
Turgenev's novels are basically simple in plot, structure and characters. The writer's language is also very simple, and there is a pure poetry between the lines. French writer Mo Luoya once used "poetic realism" to evaluate Turgenev's works. Turgenev has shown himself to be a realistic writer more than once, and he regards "accurately and forcefully reproducing the truth" as his great happiness. Tolstoy also praised Turgenev's creation as "authentic". Because of this, his novels with love as the main line all present a historical picture at the same time, so that some of his love novels are also understood as political novels. Although Turgenev's contribution to novel creation can't be ignored, we can't help but see that in Russia in the middle of19th century, novels are far from mature. That kind of family introduction that goes back three generations, lengthy moral preaching, and excessive pursuit of the integrity of the story can easily make people lose their patience in reading. As soon as any hero appears, it must be followed by a detailed introduction to them-family history, family status quo, personality characteristics and so on. Almost every work is like this, which makes people feel stale and easy to get bored. It's like reading Arabian Nights or decameron. No matter how wonderful the story is, no matter how touching the language is, it will inevitably leave people with a dead feeling only by this monotonous structural model. Therefore, it is not easy to read such works and really make people like them very much.
If you want to know a work in depth, you must first know its author in detail. This is my consistent idea when I was studying. A thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets, and the practical significance of many works is endowed by later generations, not the original meaning of the writer. Understand the author and the social environment in which he lives as much as possible, that is, understand the original intention that the author wants to express when creating a work as much as possible.
Second,
Hunter's Notes is my favorite among Turgenev's works I have read so far. First, because each article is short, I feel easy to read. Second, because this work not only has extremely beautiful scenery description, but also the characterization is quite successful. A few strokes, or outline the charm of natural scenery, or admire the soul of a character. People can't help but resent it.
Hunter's Notes is Turgenev's famous work and his first realistic work. Hunter's Notes is a unique collection of short stories. When the first feature of this book, Holly and Kalinechi, was just published, belinsky immediately gave the author great encouragement. Belinsky personally wrote a letter to the writer, praising him for "finding a creative form that suits him." With this encouragement, Turgenev was full of ideas and excellent works came out one after another. Until 1852, the author compiled 2 1 features published successively, together with an unpublished new work "Second Landlord", and published a single book called "Hunter's Notes". By 1880, the author had added three later works: The End of Certo Fanov, The Ring of Wheels and The Withered Woman, totaling 25. Through the footprints and eyes of a hunter, Hunter's Notes reveals the crimes of oppression and exploitation of peasants by aristocratic landlords in rural areas of central Russia, and depicts the real picture of the vast number of serfs being tortured and destroyed. So this work is called "continuous shooting" of local tyrants. Turgenev is also famous all over the country. So that in the street or at the station, when people know that he is the author of Hunter's Notes, they all take off their hats to pay tribute to him. Because of this incident, Turgenev was persecuted by the czar government and sent back to his hometown for one year.
The central idea of The Hunter's Notes is to oppose serfdom. This ideological tendency is not only manifested in exposing and criticizing the landlord class, but more importantly, in praising the talents and spiritual world of farmers. In exposing and criticizing the landlord class, Nikolai Gogol, the founder and outstanding writer of Russian "naturalism" literature, made outstanding contributions. He successfully created a series of landlord images from Maniloff to Polikin in Dead Soul. Turgenev inherited and developed Nikolai Gogol's realistic literary tradition. In The Hunter's Notes, he not only described a series of images of new and old landlords, but also described some unprecedented images of talented, creative and excellent farmers.
Peinuojin is the most outstanding landlord in the book. This man has a "good" education and a "civilized" manner. His home is clean and tidy, but no one wants to come because there is a terrible atmosphere in his home. On the surface, he is polite, but in fact, the servant will be severely punished if he is careless. There are also some landlords who arrogantly seize other people's land, such as "the grandfather of the hunter"; Some are spiritually empty, torturing farmers and domestic servants through reform, such as Komov; Others set up special "offices" to manage farmers through a group of slaves, such as the female landlord Roniakova. Under the control of these evil landlords, farmers live in dire straits.
In addition to these landlord images, a series of talented peasant images appeared in the writer's works, which made people seem to see the hope of Russia under serfdom. In Holly and Kalinech, one is hardworking and confident, and the other is passionate and romantic. Kasijan in "Mecha Beauty Kasijan" is pure, kind, intelligent and good at thinking. Yakov in The Singer has extraordinary artistic talent. These excellent qualities appear in The Farmer, which is not only the writer's bold attempt, but also reflects the writer's creative attitude of pursuing "truth".
Finally, the landscape description in the hunter's notes is also excellent. Turgenev is very good at describing natural scenery. Natural phenomena, such as the sun, moon and stars, white clouds in the sky, dew in the morning, rain and wind and frost, as well as natural lakes and mountains, forests and Yuan Ye, fragrant flowers and weeds, animals, insects and fish, are full of poetic and endless affection in his works. Landscape description has many functions in the book: sometimes it marks the environmental atmosphere and time and place when the story takes place, sometimes it sets off or sets off the inner world of the characters, and sometimes it plays a symbolic role in the development or ending of the plot. For example, when Kulina, an innocent girl in tryst, is waiting for her lover to come to tryst in the Woods, the scenery in the Woods is also very cheerful. "There is sunshine everywhere. Through those jubilant leaves, I see the light blue sky, as if it were shining ..." When the fickle lover left her coldly, the scenery in the forest changed greatly, and the sunshine "seems to be getting lighter and colder", which is obviously a projection of the girl's sadness and disappointment. The blending of emotion and scenery makes the scenery have vitality and become an indispensable part of the work.
Third,
Krupotkin, a Russian writer, said: "To judge the importance of Turgenev's works, we must finish reading his six novels as he wishes: De Mudri Luo Ting, The House of Nobles, The Eve before, Father and Son, Smoke and Virgin Land ……" These six novels are called Russia 6544. I wanted to do it honestly, but unfortunately I never found the book Virgin Land. I have seen Luo Ting before, and my impression is a little vague. "The House of the Noble", "The Eve" and "Father and Son" are all works that most people are familiar with, and what I want to say is without exception, so my attention naturally focuses on cigarettes, which I have never been exposed to before.
The novel still adopts Turgenev's consistent writing technique. "Infiltrate the changes of the times into the extremely delicate poetic description of love", so this work is regarded as a political novel by many people. The background of the novel is that after Russia announced the liberation of serfs, it caused different repercussions in all walks of life. In order to show his political views, the writer did not hesitate to make a big taboo in novel art, created a figure who was detached from the plot-Potujin, and directly advocated the theory of social improvement. However, in terms of conception and main plot, I think the work is more suitable as a love novel.
The novel tells the love story of Russian youth Litvinov. The story happened one year after the Russian serfdom reform in the19th century. Litvinov went abroad to study industry and agriculture in order to help his father manage the deteriorating industry. In the novel, he is waiting for his fiancee tatiana to arrive in Baden, a German tourist resort. There, he met Irina who fell madly in love with him ten years ago. Irina abandoned him ten years ago to pursue a luxurious life and became the wife of a general. Their old love rekindled, and Litvinov tore up his engagement with his fiancee and decided to elope with Irina. But Irina finally can't give up her superior flashy life and turn her back on him again. Litvinov was disappointed and had to go home alone.
The story is simple, but it seems to be full of twists and turns in the writer's pen. The writer described the psychology of the protagonist Litvinov in detail: "At first, it was as calm as a cloud; Then, the burning passion holds destructive power and quickly sets off waves in the spiritual world; Then everything returned to calm, but it was already a state of pain and numbness, and it was desolate after a catastrophe. " The whole novel is full of confusion and sadness about the fate of the nation and individuals, which makes people feel a sense of poetic hesitation and nothingness. In the novel, the writer also used a paragraph to explain the title of "smoke": "smoke, smoke. He said it several times, so he suddenly felt that everything was just smoke, his life, the life of Russians, all people, especially Russians-everything was just smoke. Everything is smoke and steam. He believes that everything seems to be constantly changing, new characters and new phenomena are emerging everywhere, but in fact everything is static; Everything runs to a certain place, but disappears without a trace before reaching the destination; When the wind changes, everyone runs there, and then there is endless anxiety-there is really no need to play online games. " From this passage, we can realize the experience that the writer hopes to express through smoke.
Irina is the original image of Turgenev, which is unprecedented in Russian literature. Compared with the female images in Turgenev's previous works, Irina lost a layer of ideal brilliance and gained a layer of realistic power. She doesn't have superstitious religious beliefs like Lisa in The Noble House, and she is also different from the heroic image of Lina in The Night Before. She won't say things like "I married someone else, and I will always be loyal to him" like Pushkin's tatyana. She is more like a person in real life, with advantages and disadvantages, neither beautifying nor slandering. Ten years ago, she loved Litvinov. Her first betrayal was forced by life, not even completely conscious; But when she refused to elope with Litvinov ten years later, the second betrayal showed that she clearly realized that this kind of love could not last long. She still loves Litvinov, but she just wants to keep her lover relationship, which can't last long. It is impossible for her to abandon her flashy life and her average husband and follow Litvinov around the world. Although she is not satisfied with the empty and depraved life of the upper class, she can't really give up. In fact, there is no real external force forcing Irina's choice at this time, and more restrictions come from her heart or some desire rooted in human nature. Her inner struggle is actually a kind of pure and beautiful human nature struggling in poverty, vanity, vanity and material desire. The result of the struggle is failure, but the human nature reflected is true.
The image of Irina reminds me of Catherine in Wuthering Heights. I think there are many similarities between these two characters. Young Catherine also dares to love and hate. She tried her best to resist the unequal class system and dedicated her love and courage to Heathcliff, who had no property and low status. She and Heathcliff supported and cared for each other in their common activities against oppression, and their love lasted until death did us part. For this love, she betrayed her class. However, Catherine's rebellion is incomplete. She lived in Thrushcross Grange for some time. Influenced by Linton's civilized lifestyle, her rebellious feelings were replaced by vanity and temptation. She loved Heathcliff, but chose to marry Linton. "Because he is beautiful, young and lively"; Because "he is going to make a fortune, I am willing to be the most amazing woman in the neighborhood, and I will be proud of having such a husband." In a sense, Catherine, like Irina, did not bow under the real external pressure, but could not stand the money, family status and temptation, thus betraying their proud love. It is true that such an outcome is the responsibility of social factors, but individuals also have some unshirkable responsibilities.
I have always been willing to treat novels as pure novels, and I don't want to delve into their political significance. Therefore, my thoughts will not always be entangled in the questioning of the fate and future of the country and individuals in the smoke. Perhaps remembering the character Irina is my greatest gain from reading this novel. Copy the address and send it to MSN friends!