Author:Liang Heng
I have been to the modest Qu Qiubai's memorial hall in Changzhou city three times. From the first time I saw the old black shed, I wanted to write an article. But six years have passed and I still haven't written it. Qu Qiubai is really a mystery, he is too broad and deep, so you can not see and touch the incomprehensible, no way to write about it, but also can not put the pen. Last year, my third visit to the former residence of Qiu Bai when he sacrificed the 60th anniversary of the local and are preparing for his seminar. He was only thirty-six years old when he was killed, but people have been commemorating him for sixty years, and will always be commemorated. Is it because he was a party leader? Is it because of his literary achievements? Is it because of his talent? Yes, and no. His short life is like a famous painting that can never be read.
I first visited the memorial in 1990. The memorial hall was an old ancestral hall of the Qu family, and there was a river in front of the ancestral hall called the Forodu River. When I heard the name, I was shocked. Where is the river? Qu Qiubai was a self-proclaimed professional revolutionary, but starting from this ferry did not let him get out of the way. He was appointed to the White Terror at the "August 7 Conference", and with the shoulders of a weak scholar, he took up the burden of commanding the whole party and raised the roar of armed struggle. But he was then slapped down by Wang Ming, his own people, and never reused. Later, during the Long March, he was excused for being ill and not taken north. And Xu Teli and Xie Juya, who were older and weaker than him, all arrived safely in Shanbei and lived to found the country. In fact, he was not killed, but for the "left" line killed. He was killed by the "leftist" line. It was his own people who pressed down on his neck so that the enemy's butcher's knife could cut him. And he first gave a careful monologue, and then went on to his death.
If Qiu Bai was a character such as Li Kui type, shouting, "You toward grandpa cut it, twenty years later is a good man again." Maybe people have long forgotten him. He was a scholar, ah, a typical Chinese intellectual, look at his picture, what a pretty but somewhat pale face. He was not a gun dancer to begin with. He lectured at the Whampoa Military Academy and at Shanghai University, where his talent shone so brightly that people filled the auditorium, climbed up on the window sills, and even the schoolteachers crowded in to listen. Ding Ling, who later became a great writer, was also staring at the stage at this time with a pair of big childish eyes. Qu Qiubai's literary talent had convinced a generation. Later became an expert in cultural history, vice minister of the new China Zheng Zhenze, was ready to get married, wanted to ask Qiu Bai to carve a pair of seals, Qiu Bai opened the run rate is fifty yuan. Zheng couldn't afford to pay and turned to Mao Dun. Wedding day, autumn white handheld a handkerchief small bag, said to send gold fifty, Zheng was terrified, open a look but two stone seal. You can imagine the level of his sealing at that time. Autumn White was sidelined after leaving the party leadership, turned to literature, in just a few years, his writings and translations actually have five million words. The respect and friendship between Lu Xun and him was as perfect as with. When Qiu Bai and his wife came to Shanghai to stay at Lu Xun's home, Lu Xun and Xu Guangping slept on the floor and gave them their beds. After Qiu Bai was arrested, Lu Xun immediately organized his rescue, and after his inauguration, Lu Xun personally compiled an anthology for him, the binding and materials used at that time were first-class. Qiu Bai and Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Zheng Zhenduo these modern cultural history of the peak, but also the shoulders to the top of the ah, he should know his own body contained within the cultural value, should go to the bookstore to realize the value. But he did not, he witnessed the sinking in the fire, witnessed the party on the verge of extinction, he threw up his arms and jumped into the darkness. As long as he could light the way for the advancement of society, he resolutely raised his whole body and set himself on fire. His level of Russian was one of the best in China at that time, and he had a great desire to introduce literary masterpieces to China. After his death, Lu Xun lamented that it would have been most appropriate for Qiubai to translate "Dead Souls". This reminds me of another incident. One of Qubai's contemporaries, Liang Shiqiu, was criticized by left-wing writers for his "irrelevance of the war" because he was still writing leisurely words in China. In his self-defense, he said that people could certainly kill with kitchen knives when they were in a hurry, but killing was not the mission of kitchen knives after all. He kept on working on his pure literature, and later on, he did achieve great success, translating the Complete Works of Shakespeare by himself. Now, when we recognize Liang Shiqiu's contribution generously, we should not forget Qiubai, who was so eager to use the chopper to save the country and the people that he even pounced on his own body. If he hadn't done so, and had kept the chopper for later use, and had kept the green hills for firewood, he would have become one, or even ten Liang Shiqiu's in the literary world. But he didn't.
If Qiu Bai's bones had been as weak as his body, and he had confessed to the crime as soon as he was arrested, history would have long forgotten him. Revolutionary history is full of heroes and traitors. Xiang Zhongfa, who was a member of the Party, and Gu Shunzhang, who was a member of the Bureau, had a good working-class background, but they confessed as soon as they were arrested. As for Chen Gongbo, Zhou Fohai, Zhang Guotao and other high-ranking officials, many more could be cited. Qiu Bai, on the other hand, performed a heroic drama with a weak body that did not move before the collapse of Tarzan. When he was arrested, the enemy did not know his identity, he claimed to be a, reading and writing in prison, even the warden also begged him to prescribe medical treatment. In fact, he is really a scholar, painter, in addition to the name is false, these identities are not false to him. At that time, Lu Xun and others in Shanghai were trying to rescue him. But a traitor who had heard him lecture finally recognized him. Taking advantage of his surprise, the agent suddenly shouted, "Qu Qiubai!" But he did not respond. The enemy was unable to do so, so they had to pull the traitor out to confront him. At that moment he smiled faintly and said, "Since you have recognized me, I am Qu Qiubai. The confession I wrote in the past should be read as a novel." When he heard that Qu Qiubai had been captured, he urgently telegraphed Song Xilian to deal with the matter. Song, who had listened to his lessons at Huangpu and practiced student etiquette, wanted to persuade him to surrender on the basis of teacher-student love and sent a military doctor to treat him. He was determined to die and said, "It is possible to alleviate a little pain; it is quite unnecessary to cure him." When a man understands the great justice of life and death from reason, he gains the greatest strength and the greatest ease. This cannot be attained by physical endurance or by the outpouring of emotion; the power of reason is as firm as the extension of the track. A true intellectual has always acted with reason, the so-called scholar can be killed but not humiliated. When Wen Tianxiang was arrested, he jumped into the water and crashed into the wall, seeking only to die. Lu Xun was so terrorized that he went out without his keys to show that he would not return. Praise Zhu Ziqing who would rather starve to death than eat American relief powder. Qiu Bai is just such a typical intellectual who has reached the stage. Threats and inducements really can not make it yield, then ordered the shooting. Before the sentence, qiu bai sang "international", sing the red army song, calmly by himself to the execution ground, shouting "long live the Chinese party", sitting cross-legged on the ground, so that the enemy shot. From the arrest to the inauguration, there is no fear of death here.
If Qiu Bai so shouted mouth for the revolution, people may not be so long to miss him to study him. He favored the deathbed and grabbed to write a "superfluous words", which in the general view of the people is really superfluous. We look at his short life struggle how resolute, he in the country **** cooperation on the right refutation, in the party on Chen Duxiu right-leaning line of criticism, how sharp, he presided over the "eight seven meeting", decided to armed struggle, and will always be a great success in the annals of history, he was in prison from the enemy, and finally heroic, sobbing heaven and earth and mourn the ghosts and gods. What a complete sentence. But he refused, he felt that he was really contemptuous, really ashamed of the title of party leader, so with a scalpel, his soul carefully dissected once. Others see him as a bright conclusion, but here he had to say something about the darkness before the light, or the shadow behind the light. It was another amazing calmness. It's like when his enemies want to heal him and he says, No need. He took life lightly. Now, in order to be a man, he took vanity lightly again. He thought he had come from a gentleman's family, from the old literati to the revolution, and he suffered in the struggle between the new and the old, in the choice between literary love and duty. He said that there would be no more old literati in the future, and he wanted to record this typical, painful process of transformation truthfully and dedicate it to the future generations. He said, "When the light and the flame burrow out of the heart of the earth, it is inevitable that they will have to go through several attempts to test their path and exercise their strength." Not only did he dissect his own soul, but in these Extra Words he also instructed that after death, please dissect his body, for he was a man who had had lung disease for many years. Again, this is his greatness, his selflessness. We can compare this with how many people in the world are smearing and digging to dress up their own history, trying their best to conceal the evil and promote the good. In particular, the higher the status of some people, the more they love to do this, and others help him to do this, so to speak, for the sake of the honored one. And he refused to do so. As a leader, people wanted him to be completely bright red inside and out, while he stubbornly said: No, I am a multi-colored person. Where the average person puts his life into the revolution, in him he puts the revolution into his life, and the revolution is part of his life's experiment. When we only look at his cause and see him going to his death with ease, he is a high mountain in the plains, which is revered; when we then look at his dissection of himself, he is more of a peak down in the deep valley, with the wind roaring in the forest and the strange and treacherous, which gives people more to think about. He is a man whose heart is both vertical and horizontal, but also as frank as a blank sheet of paper.
In this old shrine, I come and go year after year, wandering again and again, and I imagine the small river in front of the door in those days, and the boats coming and going on the river to look for a ferry. Qiubai is from here, to Shanghai school, and later met with Lu Xun in Shanghai; to Guangzhou to participate in the national **** cooperation, to meet Sun Yat-sen; to Soviet Russia to work as a reporter to participate in the international conference; to Jiujiang to preside over the "eighty-seven meeting", to launch the armed struggle; to the Jiangxi Soviet Union to preside over the educational work. His life was short and he was in a hurry. When he went out to board the boat, he must have thought of "no one in the wild boat crossing the river" and "lightly unzipping the robe, alone on the orchid boat". What a leisurely life it was, what a beautiful poem, what a peaceful harbor. He expressed his love for literature again and again in "Unnecessary Words". How he wanted to lean on that pier, but he didn't, and until the moment before his death he was still searching for a place to go in life. It is a tragedy that he spent his whole life searching for a ferry, but in the end he did not find a good pier. But it is precisely because of this tragic regret that people honor him with double, triple, or ten times the years of his life. If he had never started any revolution, if he had just plucked a hair from his body and cultivated it, he would have become a famous writer, translator, jinshi writer, calligrapher, or famous doctor. Aren't Liang Shiqiu and Xu Zhimo still enjoying the honor of posterity? If he had turned the ship around after the revolution and retired to study, he could still have become a great literary figure. His contemporary Chen Wangdao, who originally worked with Chen Duxiu to build the party, later retired to study rhetoric and wrote Rhetoric Fafan, becoming the first Chinese rhetorician, and people remembered him. But Qiu Bai did not do so. Like a beautiful woman who refuses to act, like a tall man who refuses to play soccer. He wanted something else, but he wanted nothing, and was even misunderstood. It is all right for a man to have no talent, or to have one point of talent to accomplish one thing. The most unfortunate thing is that he has ten talents and only accomplished one thing, or even not accomplished one thing, which is what makes the future generations feel sorry for him. Look at Yue Fei's poetry is so well written, he has literary talent, but the world only remembers his martial arts. Xin Qiji is a martial arts talent, when he was young, he led 10,000 volunteers to fight against the Jin and join the Song Dynasty, but the Southern Song Dynasty did not use him, he could only "drunkenly pick the lamp to see the sword, dreaming of blowing the horn back to even the camp", and the future generations only know of his poetic talent. Qu Qiubai was a man of letters in politics, and because of his failure in politics, he looked back on life. If he had just been generous and said nothing more, he might have long been lost in the annals of history. But he also said some seemingly superfluous words, he felt that exploration is more valuable than arrival. When Xiang Yu was defeated, he refused to cross the river even though there was a ferry in front of him. If Xiang Yu was killed by Liu Bang, or if he crossed the Wujiang River after his defeat, it would not be as good as cutting his own throat in front of the river so as to leave an everlasting aftertaste in history. Xiang Yu raised a sword to cut his own throat in the face of the hope of life, and Qiu Bai raised a dissecting knife when he was about to be famous, both of them pushed up the value of the life which was about to be finalized to another level. The philosopher is willing to give up the matter and become his heart.
Qiu Bai immortal