1In July, 934, Yu Dafu came to Beiping from Hangzhou via Qingdao "thousands of miles", once again tasted the "taste" of autumn in the old capital, and wrote a beautiful essay-"Autumn in the Old Capital". In the description of the color, taste, artistic conception and posture of autumn in Beiping, the author expresses his attachment to the natural scenery of the old capital and his persistent pursuit of beauty, revealing a calm and indifferent state of mind. The language is fresh and distant, with a sense of color and rhythmic beauty, which embodies the unique personality and aesthetic value of Yu Dafu's prose.
The first feature of Autumn in the Old Capital is the sense of color harmony and the beauty of the picture formed by the unity of subjective feeling and objective description.
As an aesthetic concept, color has two aspects: everything in nature has its own color, which we might as well call objective color; The objective existence is reflected in people's thoughts, and its color is subjective, which we call subjective color. These two colors complement each other in Yu Dafu's works.
Autumn, no matter where, is always good; However, the autumn in the north is particularly clear, quiet and sad.
This kind of "purity", "quietness" and "sadness" is the general projection of autumn in the old capital Peiping on the writer's thoughts, which constitutes the tone and background of the article. Readers may ask this question: as far as the whole text is concerned, the author intends to praise autumn. Why did he paint a layer of sadness on the reader's feelings from the beginning? Is it against the logic of life? No, this kind of quietness and sadness is the characteristic of autumn in the old capital, which is expressed by the author, because this color itself is the expression of beauty. Liu Xie said in "Wen Xin Diao Long Looking for a Job": "In the Spring and Autumn Period, the Yin and Yang families were miserable and their hearts were shaken when looking for a job." It means that people's mood changes with the changes of external things. Spring makes people feel comfortable and autumn makes people sad. There are many emotional sentences in the autumn of the old capital:
After sweeping the street in the shade, the silk pattern of the broom that fell on the dust looks exquisite and leisurely, and subconsciously feels a little lonely. The ancient dream that the world knows autumn is in these depths.
Qiu Chan's faint lingering sound is a specialty of the North. ...
If the descriptions of "exquisiteness" and "silk thread of broom" are barely objective, then "leisure" and "loneliness" are totally subjective and ideological. A wandering locust leaf can touch feelings, and a few cries of autumn insects are enough to touch the soul. This profound anxiety and feeling of being left out by the lonely were the feelings of Yu Dafu at that time. Because writers feel lonely and sad when describing objective things. Like the old capital Beiping, the author's feelings are also shrouded in a faint autumn.
When commenting on the ancient people's grief over autumn, the article wrote:
It serves to show that sentient animals and interesting human beings always have the same deep, distant, severe and bleak feelings for autumn.
Put the above subjective words together: Qing, leisure-quiet and quiet, which is the "Qing" of autumn in the old capital; Delicate and distant-quiet and deep, this is the "deep" of autumn; Loneliness, weakness, depression-depression and desolation, this is the "sadness" of autumn. Yu Dafu painted a delicate and profound subjective picture with his emotions, which constituted the skeleton of the article. Readers can feel the power of beauty in their works by appreciating autumn colors, autumn tastes, autumn artistic conception and autumn gestures. Excellent prose writers often pay attention to creating poetic artistic conception, but most of them are done in describing objective life, while Yu Dafu pays attention to expressing the characteristics of autumn in Beiping from subjective feelings, which is probably beyond the ordinary people's ability.
If the above subjective colors are called "rational thinking" and can only be completed with the help of readers' literary literacy and certain appreciation ability, then the description of objective colors in Autumn in the Old Capital can also be called "natural reproduction", which directly appeals to readers' senses. This essay, for the natural scenery, has neither heavy makeup nor deliberately carved color levels. It just touches the negative film of life and endows readers with all kinds of charm endowed by the natural forces in autumn in Beiping, which not only embodies the background color of autumn, but also harmonizes the tone of the text. You see:
It is in the sea of people in the Imperial Capital ... Get up in the morning, make a bowl of strong tea, sit in the yard, and see the high green sky and hear pigeons flying in the blue world ... When it comes to morning glory, I think blue or white is the best, followed by purple and black, and pink is the lowest.
This is a huge picture with a three-dimensional aesthetic feeling. The background is a vast blue sky; On the ground, colorful morning glory gathers into a colorful wild garden; Between heaven and earth, occasionally one or two white or tile-gray tame pigeons appear, dotted in the middle of a large blank, with appropriate density and shade, which can be comparable to the Tiangong. People are sitting in the yard, holding tea bowls, looking up at the blue sky and leaning over to pick morning glory. The voice of pigeon training came from time to time. The picture is static and vivid, and the beauty and interest of autumn are completely integrated into the blue sky and white flowers. This light artistic conception with a little "game" embodies the simple beauty and primitive beauty of autumn in the old capital. On the surface, the author is just an ornament, but in fact, the author's choice of color is quite clever. Most of the "cool colors" used in this painting, such as cyan, blue, gray, white, etc., show the characteristics of deep and indifferent. If red, yellow, orange and other "hot colors" are used, it will destroy the coordination and unity of subjective colors and dilute the unique flavor and spirit of autumn in the old capital. It is the reflection of the writer's aesthetic view in literary works.
Look at the description of jujube:
Among the small oval leaves, there is a light green and yellowish color, which is the peak of autumn. At the turn of July and August, jujube trees shed leaves and are red, which is a good day for clear autumn in the north.
This section describes the seasonal characteristics according to the change of jujube color, and describes the color from a dynamic perspective. Readers can rely on the subtle changes of colors in words to expand their imagination and understand things. Obviously, the front picture is composed of several color points in space. Jujube from light green to light yellow to red is undoubtedly the color of a line, just like a physical spectrum, subtle differences can be distinguished. If you don't observe things carefully and feel them carefully, it's hard to be so accurate.
Autumn in the Old Capital is like a piece of crystal glass, but it also transmits some colors that have never been colored. Please see:
Get up in the morning and make a bowl of strong tea. ...
From the bottom of Sophora japonica leaves, count the leaked sunshine to the east. ...
The best, and the morning glory at the bottom, is called the autumn grass with a few sparse and slender roots. ...
The northwest wind is about to blow. North Convenience is a dusty world. ...
There are no words that directly express color in the above sentences, but because the author shows some characteristic things with a certain color to readers, and readers can "supplement" things with its color (objective or subjective) according to the artistic realm of the works and their own observation experience of life. Isn't it? Through the above description, people's minds will present the image of golden sunshine and yellow grass; Seeing the dust flying, readers will feel desolate and desolate like the author. The content of the article is also constantly expanding to the inside, gradually showing depth. Another example is The Moon on the Twenty-four Bridges, The Cool Fog on Mount Putuo, The Lotus in Litchi Bay, which also has this feature.
In the autumn of the old capital, the sense of rhythm and the beauty of music are more intense. Rhythm is a special term for poetry, and here we can reveal the poetic beauty of this essay.
On the natural rhythm of prose, Yu Dafu has made a clear exposition in Prose II, an Introduction to China's New Literature. He said: "In prose, Wang Yuyang's charm, if not in terms of the death law of melody, refers to the natural rhythm in a broad sense ... but it can also exist; Because of the return of the four seasons, the coordination of yin and yang ... is against the rhythm of nature. " In other words, the movement of all things in nature is consciously or unconsciously following certain laws and rhythms, which is a natural rhythm. As a prose describing natural scenery, it can naturally have this aesthetic feature. When Yu Dafu wrote Autumn in the Old Capital, it was on the eve of compiling two sets of essays for the book company's "good friends", so this work better embodies this artistic proposition.
Look at the description of autumn rain in the works first:
Under the gloomy sky, a cool breeze suddenly came and it began to rain. There was a layer of rain, the clouds gradually rolled westward, it was sunny again, and the sun appeared again. ...
Look at the description of Sophora japonica:
Like a flower, but not a flower, when you get up in the morning, it will be all over the floor. When you step on it, there is no sound, no smell, only a little tiny and soft touch.
After reading these two paragraphs, who doesn't think the author is writing poetry? In narration, he created infinite poetry. First of all, what the author chooses is poetic, moving (cool breeze, falling rain, flowing clouds) and static (gray sky, silent falling flowers), as well as perceptual scenery. Writing style is like white clouds drifting gently, tinkling mountain springs. The rhythm of nature and the rhythm of music melt in a calm and delicate description. Wang Yuyang's "verve" is also cleverly embedded in the autumn rain, embedded in the "delicate and soft" falling heart, or sound or silence, or things or feelings, between the lines secretly permeated with the meaning and artistic conception of autumn. This is the most beautiful rhythm in nature.
The rhythm and rhythm of poetry strengthen the musical beauty of autumn in the ancient capital. "Jiangnan, of course, there is autumn; But the vegetation/withers slowly, the air/comes/moistens, and the color of the sky/looks pale ... "The above three sentences have the same structure, and the structural auxiliary word" de "is added after the verb, which has a unified form and an overall aesthetic feeling. Adjectives as predicates, such as "slow", "moist" and "light", all express plain and delicate meaning. It's all loud syllables. "màn", "rê n" and "dàn" have the same tone, and the two words before and after are Ye Yun, so they sound powerful and have a strong sense of music. Tolstoy once said: "When a modifier is forcibly used, the result is not only the modified word, but also verbs and even brackets." (On Creation) Because many words in Autumn in the Old Capital have this feature (such as "embellishment" and "lightness" above), it is very rhythmic to read. Look at the following: "Every autumn in the south, I always think of Taoranting/Luhua, Diaoyutai/Liuying, Xishan/Insect Singing, Yuquan/jathyapple/Bell and Tanzhe Temple." The author arranges these places of interest neatly with radical phrases, circling back and forth, like a string of pearls, with bright rhythm and light rhythm.
All scenery words are love words. The perfect integration and unification of "things" and "I" in this article shows the author's outstanding artistic talent. It is not only an objective description of Beiping's autumn, but also a reflection of the author's mood at that time. It is one of Yu Dafu's many lyrical essays.
original text
Autumn in the ancient capital
Autumn, no matter where, is always good; However, the autumn in the north is particularly clear, quiet and sad. The reason why I have traveled thousands of miles from Hangzhou to Qingdao, and even from Qingdao to Peiping, is to enjoy this "autumn", the autumn flavor of this old capital.
Jiangnan, of course, there is autumn; But the grass is carved slowly, the air is moist, the sky is pale, and it often rains and windy; A person sandwiched between Suzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, or Xiamen, Hong Kong and Guangzhou can only feel a little coolness, and the taste, color, artistic conception and posture of autumn can never be fully satisfied, tasted and enjoyed. Autumn is not a famous flower, nor is it wine. That kind of half-open and half-drunk state is not appropriate in the process of enjoying autumn.
It has been nearly ten years since autumn in the north. Every autumn in the south, I always think of the reed flowers in Taoranting, the willow shadows in Diaoyutai, the insects in Xishan, the jathyapple in Yuquan and the bells in Tanzhe Temple. Even if you don't go out in Beiping, you can rent a shabby house and live in the sea of people in the imperial city. Get up in the morning, make a bowl of strong tea and sit in the yard, you can see the high blue sky and hear the pigeons flying in the blue sky. From the bottom of Sophora japonica leaves, counting a ray of sunshine leaking to the east, or in the broken waist, facing the blue morning glory like morning glory, you can naturally feel the autumn breath. When it comes to morning glory, I think blue or white is the best, followed by purple and black, and pink is the lowest. It is best to have a few sparse and slender autumn grasses as a foil at the bottom of the morning glory.
The locust tree in the northland is also an ornament that can remind people of Qiu Lai. Like a flower, but not a flower, when you get up in the morning, it will be all over the floor. When you step on it, there is no sound, no smell, only a little tiny and soft touch. After sweeping the street in the shade, the silk pattern of the broom that fell on the dust looks exquisite and leisurely, and subconsciously feels a little lonely. The ancient dream that the world knows autumn is in these depths.
Qiu Chan's faint lingering sound is a specialty of the north; Because there are trees everywhere in Beiping and the houses are low, you can hear them singing everywhere. In the south, you have to go to the suburbs or the mountains to hear Qiu Chan's cry, which is like a cricket and a mouse in Beiping and a housefly that every household keeps at home.
There is also autumn rain. The autumn rain in the north seems to be stranger, more delicious and more decent than that in the south.
Under the gloomy sky, a cool breeze suddenly came and it began to rain. It rained a layer, the clouds gradually rolled to the west, the sky turned blue again, and the sun appeared again; City idlers in thick green cloth coats are biting their pipes. In the shadow of the oblique bridge after the rain, they walked to the bridge and stood under the tree. When they meet acquaintances, they will use a slow tone and say with a sigh:
"Oh, it's cold-""This word is pronounced very high and dragged on for a long time. )
"Isn't it? A layer of autumn rain is cold! "
People in the north always read array words like stacked words, flat and even. This mispronounced rhyme is just right.
Fruit trees in the north are also a miracle for Qiu Lai. First of all, jujube trees, corners, walls, toilets and kitchen doors will all grow up. This is the heyday of autumn. Jujubes are like olives and pigeon eggs, showing light green and yellowish colors in small oval leaves. Jujube leaves fall, jujube is red, and there will be a northwest wind. Convenience in the north is a dusty world. Only these dates, persimmons and grapes mature at the turn of July and August, which is a good day for clear autumn in the north and the best in a year.