Aesthetics in the past hundred years
1998101On October 22nd, Guangming Daily published Liang Heng's Hundred Years of Beauty. I didn't expect this seemingly casual essay to receive rave reviews after publication, and it was selected as a national normal teaching material by People's Education Publishing House. In the new round of textbook revision that started in the last two years, it has been selected into the textbooks for middle schools and colleges compiled by Beijing Normal University Press, Shandong Education Press, People's Health Press and East China Normal University Press. In the four years since its publication, this article has been included in various collections, and Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House has also published a collection of essays on this topic. This shows that the essay "Great minds think alike" is also the fourth time that the author's prose has been selected into the middle school textbook after Jinci, Summer Feelings and Crossing, Crossing and Where to Cross. Among contemporary writers, Liang Heng's works have been selected into more textbooks.
The story of Madame Curie is well known. From childhood to adulthood, what we remember is that she was a scientist: she discovered radium, won two Nobel Prizes, endured the pain of losing her husband and devoted herself to science ... However, it is such an old story that, in Liang Heng's pen, created another scene. Liang Heng said: "The great man is an old topic, and the old topic is the most difficult to study. This is because many aspects of it have been made clear to people. If you understand it, you can see every detail, and the reader has no doubts and ignorance. But if you want to make something out of nothing, this is great. This is a new road and there will be some surprises. " We really have some surprises here. People saw a different Madame Curie: she lost her aura and changed into a serious face. Marie Curie, a quiet Polish woman, stood before us gracefully and vividly. So simple, so strong, so persistent, through the years of heavy dust, we saw her heart, felt her personality strength, and touched her spiritual beauty. Thanks to the author, we really know that she is a role model for women.
Madame Curie has always been one of the women admired and admired by Liang Heng. As early as 1984, when he wrote The Popular Romance of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, he had collected detailed information about Madame Curie and thought about what is the value of life and what is the true beauty of women. The author once again paid attention to and discussed these problems in two articles, 199 1 "External Beauty and Internal Beauty of Man" and 1994 "Let's Talk Slowly". He said, "A person can achieve the greatest career with the most beautiful face at the best age, just as the best poem uses the most beautiful song. Such a person is really a swan song. " From this point of view, "One Hundred Years of Beauty" is by no means an accidental feeling of the author, but a work with a long history. 1998 is the birthday of Madame Curie100th anniversary. Liang Heng was then the deputy director of the State Press and Publication Administration. When he was looking through the documents, he saw the news about the commemorative activities, which moved him again: a century later, Madame Curie is getting farther and farther away from us, but why haven't people forgotten her? In the collision between reality and history, the author feels it necessary to help readers, especially young journalists, get to know Madame Curie again. He said: "Great men have had a great influence on people in society, but this is mainly due to their great achievements and theories. People who accept their results are the results of being abandoned, so they tend to stay away from them. In many places, they don't communicate with readers. Literature is to pull this expanded distance back. It is to reveal the process before this result, that is, to be flesh and blood, to communicate rationality, and to make readers amiable and credible. Therefore, I don't want to repeat those results, but I want to try to' follow the trail' and find those flowers with fragrant green leaves, so that readers can understand for themselves, the beginning of the fruit, the appearance before the fruit. " So he picked up a thinking pen and wrote this article "A Hundred Years of Beauty" in just two days. This article really puts the author's ideas into practice and draws us closer to this great man with soft and profound writing.
As we know, Liang Heng is a writer who pays equal attention to both creation and theory. In addition to writing prose, he also has a large number of monographs on writing theory. In five essays published recently, he attributed prose writing to the combined application of five elements: form, material, emotion, rationality and classics. "A Hundred Years of Beauty" is favored by readers and publishing circles, and it has been selected into teaching materials again and again precisely because it is well-behaved and embodies his writing principles and skills. This paper begins with the word "shape", ends with the word "reason", and takes "thing" as the main body in the middle. The full text has vivid modeling, vivid feelings and meticulous analysis, and receives a comprehensive aesthetic feeling. A century-old beauty is still the only theme about women in Liang Heng's prose works. She is fresh and meaningful, concise and profound, with a hint of casual tenderness between the lines, which profoundly reveals the beauty and personality of women. Read it carefully, such as the breeze and the bright moon taking the lead, but also like a good friend present, the lights shine on people, and the feelings are extremely deep. This essay of less than 4,000 words gives a good answer to what is a good article and what can be passed down from generation to generation.
Look at how Madame Curie jumped into our eyes: "One hundred years ago, 18981February 26th, the French Academy of Sciences was crowded with people. A solemn and slightly tired young beauty stepped onto the platform, and the audience was suddenly silent. Her name is Marie Curie. Today, she and her husband pierre curie will announce an amazing discovery here. They discovered the natural radioactive element radium. Originally, she wanted her husband to make this report, but pierre curie insisted that she speak, because no woman had ever been on the podium of the French Academy of Sciences before. " A heavy topic about the value of life has chosen such a soft and humanized beginning. Through the contrast, contrast and integration among people, feelings and environment, the author vividly and skillfully expresses a profound theme with philosophy, which makes this over-written theme suddenly have a new artistic conception and a new feeling. It is the most important image created by Wen. He often says that although he writes prose, he always refines his image like a novel. This article is a typical V-shaped beginning.
For another example, this narrative about things: "At that time, there were very few female students in universities. This foreign beauty with high forehead, blue eyes and slender figure quickly became the center of discussion. In order to see her more, or get together to say a few words, male students often crowded in the corridor outside the classroom, and her girlfriend even had to drive away these admirers with an umbrella handle. But she is dismissive of all this excitement. She arrives the earliest every day, sits in the front row, and gives those searching eyes a merciless back of the head. She is always wrapped in a layer of frost, so that those "fans" dare not approach. " This is "taking things as shapes". Through the narrative process, the author outlines a Madame Curie who is not tired of beauty and overcomes herself. There are many other reasonable descriptions. For example, "this beautiful light blue fluorescence in the old wooden shed was bought with the life and belief of a beautiful woman." "For thousands of years, beauty is a woman's highest honor and biggest capital-but she just didn't use this capital. It is from this point that she defeated herself. As long as she releases her hand a little and turns her head back, she will fall into a gentle embrace and a bubble of praise. But she is ambitious, ambitious. She knows that only by discovering the flowers of creation can there be beauty that will never fail. Therefore, she is willing to let acid and alkali erode her soft hands and let the choking smoke wrinkle her beautiful forehead. " The author interweaves form, material, emotion and reason, fully arouses people's long-term accumulated aesthetic feeling, blends into their own unique experience, and suddenly opens up the space for feeling and thinking. Make our perception rise from perceptual to rational.
Tagore said: "You can judge a flower and a butterfly by their beauty, but you can't judge a person like this." In A Hundred Years of Beauty, the highlights are the exploration of philosophy and the successful use of the word "reason". The author captures its form with image thinking and explores its reasons with abstract thinking. He excavated the value of women's life from Madame Curie-"Marie Curie let women all over the world know that they are not just from family background. There are more valuable and important things. " The power of spirit is beyond the beauty of appearance and the power of intelligence, and it is a shock, a guidance and a yearning. Both the title and the content contain such a philosophical proposition: how can beauty last forever? However, the beauty that was washed away by the historical storm expressed in this paper is in sharp contrast with the instantaneous beauty in people's minds. Obviously, this kind of "beauty" that spans a hundred years is by no means beauty in the general sense. This suspense makes us bow our heads and think: what kind of beauty can make time pass, and the wind and rain beat, but it remains the same? Inadvertently, the realm of this kind of thinking has also climbed from formal beauty to the beauty of personality and spirit, reaching the height of philosophy. So the article becomes more and more profound and beautiful. There are many philosophical sentences in the article: "Beauty is an appendage of human beings, just as meter is an appendage of poetry."
"Philosophy penetrates into the pores of atoms. Marie Curie almost completed this great natural discovery and also completed the discovery of the meaning of life. " "She made us understand that people have multiple values and need multi-layer development." At the end of the article, there is such a wonderful exposition: "Some people stop at the form of selling pictures, while others stop at the courage to show their strength;" Some people stop at the heart and only have technology; Some people seek reason and use their wisdom. Zhuge Liang fought all his life and swallowed Cao Wu, but he didn't wear armor or bring a knife. Mao Zedong commanded the army and the people, and created a new China in the war, but he never got a rank and never fired a shot. Great voices are heard, the road is invisible, and people with great wisdom are not obsessed with form, relying on strength and technology. They live calmly, think quietly, make persistent progress, go straight to the highland of wisdom, control the law freely, and praise a rational beauty forever. "This elaborate exposition has risen from Madame Curie to the discussion of personality strength and life value, which has greatly sublimated the theme of the article, and the aesthetic feeling and ideological content have reached a harmonious unity, which is also the unity of philosophy and artistic realm. Liang Heng said that the outline of society and history is determined by outstanding figures, and figures are masterpieces of society and history. Therefore, he tirelessly and persistently led us to find and experience their creation and failure, struggle and sacrifice, joy and sadness among the mountains of characters. He is always working hard, leading us to gently touch the coordinates on these life trajectories with a pen and move forward slowly. Let us appreciate the brilliant beauty, profound beauty and tragic beauty of personality.
If great thoughts and achievements are a big tree, then facing this big tree, what the author is looking for is its growing point and its annual rings. He tried to write an article about the growing point of that new idea, hoping to inspire readers with a process and open a new way of thinking. Therefore, his works always have new artistic conception, and always break through and transcend the limitations of patterns and self.
This essay about Madame Curie, like Madame Curie herself, has entered the highland of wisdom, and has the same lasting beauty because of its profound philosophical thinking and rational light.