Let s talk about Lin Yutang s idle prose, an accurate summary of Lin Yutang s early prose

Lin Yutang proseLin Yutang's prose covers a wide range of fields, and it can be said that everything in the universe is talked about. He is familiar with Chinese and Western cultures, and often talks about them in his writings, and the examples he extracts are both Chinese and Western, large and small, all of which are interesting and have a high cultural content. He believes that the ideal prose "is the prose of the natural rhythm of language, such as chatting around the fireplace on a stormy night, good at pulling, with emotion, also solemn and harmonious, in-depth and simple, such as talking with eminent monks about Zen, such as talking with celebrities, like coherent without traces, like scattered but not without a line, wanting to stop, wanting to delete can't be, reading its text like hearing its voice, listening to its words like seeing its people."

From his creative translation of the Western humour into "humor" until his later years, Lin Yutang has always maintained this artistic paradigm of conversational style, and has taken the style of leisure and humor and the transcendent spirit of sexuality as his standpoint. Although his articles also talk about facing life head-on, they are not embellished with bleak pen and ink; He also talks about changing the mill cherry blossom to create the national character, but he does not attack any object, he treats the complexity of the world as a play with the attitude of the viewer, writes its funny and ridiculous, and then pursues a kind of spiritual enlightenment, chic and free, and takes the diluted state of mind as the best.

This is obviously different from the fighting style advocated by left-wing writers, but stands above reality and writes wisdom articles in the spirit of liberalism that "look at the world with a warm and cold eye". In the end, he failed to listen to Lu Xun's advice not to regard the essay as a "knick-knack" (see Lu Xun's "The Dangerous Blind Chain of the Essay Article"), and insisted on using the tone of prose as the text, so as to be complacent and lyrical. Throughout the prose works of the May Fourth period, Lin Yutang's humorous taste of integrating Eastern and Western wisdom lacked the critical strength of mainstream literature, but it also expanded the aesthetic dimension of modern prose and opened up a new way, which was of great significance to readers at that time, especially today.

This book includes seven collections of essays by Mr. Lin Yutang: "Yaren Yashi", "Reading the City", "Dahua Chinese", "Also Speaking of the Ancestors", "Tea People Wisdom", "Old Times" and "Ideological Fireworks".

An accurate summary of Lin Yutang's early prose is humorous and leisurely, and expressive spirituality.

Lin Yutang's prose writing style is different from that of many writers, so Lin Yutang has also become a controversial figure in the history of Chinese literature. Lin Yutang insists on independent thinking, saying his true feelings, and not going against his own thoughts, which is inseparable from the education he received. Lin Yutang's works contain a lot of artistic characteristics that are worth noting.

Lin Yutang's early prose art characteristics.

1. The artistic characteristics of spirituality and leisure.

Lin Yutang once wrote an article "The Art of Writing", which mentioned that "sex" refers to human personality, and "spirit" refers to human soul and spirit. "Sexual spirit" does not have a definite meaning, but Lin Yutang has always believed that the characteristics of sexual spirit literature should be individual, interesting, and approachable, and it should be able to sway freely, bringing readers a sense of detachment and leisure.

Second, the artistic characteristics of humor.

From the perspective of descriptive style, the most important artistic feature of Lin Yutang's prose is its sense of humor. In the history of modern Chinese literature, Lin Yutang was the first writer to adopt the word "humor". In his view, "humor" is originally a major element of life, a part of people's lives.

Therefore, "the culture of a country, to a certain extent, will inevitably produce humorous literature." ”

At first, Lin Yutang only regarded "humor" as a style of language expression, but after that, Lin Yutang gradually discovered that "humor" is actually a psychological state, people's thoughts and opinions, and also their views on life. Lin Yutang once said that "the reason why humor is different from the funny and absurd" is mainly because "sympathy is for what is seen." ”