The world is so big, there are so many roads, why is it getting narrower and narrower?
Cao Xueqin's painstaking efforts to create such a radiant and beautiful image of Jia Baoyu, why is it not recognized in any real society
How can Anna, a person who was so resentful at the beginning of Tolstoy's writing, win our deep sympathy?
Twenty-nine passionate speeches, hundreds of life problems. Professor Zhu Guohua locked on some difficult life questions, throwing himself into the ancient ideological battlefield, about the meaning of life, about the possibility of knowledge, about morality and merit, about happiness and death, ......
"Falling in the Sky" is the first lecture collection of popular professor Zhu Guohua. It guides us to be knights again, to tenaciously accept the problems that fate throws at us, to follow the brilliance of the stars of the ideas of our predecessors, and to pick up auspicious pieces of light and feathers. The world is so big, the years are so long, and there are so many roads, and as a member of all living beings, we have the right to be unhappy.
Epilogue
Text: Zhu Guohua.
I grew up lacking self-confidence, which probably had something to do with where I was at home: for three generations in a row, the male family was passed down from one line to another. I have two older sisters above me, and in this way, in a family that cannot hide the atmosphere of the patriarchal center, on the one hand, I am given special treatment like a rare animal, and even a favor, but on the other hand, because of my age, I am deprived of political status to a certain extent, that is, whatever I say, I am assumed to be insignificant and not worthy of being taken seriously.
This has a structural homology with Jia Baoyu's position in Jia's mansion, although he comes from Zhong Mingding's family, and I live in a poor white house, and I can't find even a meritorious ancestor worthy of boasting.
Therefore, since I was a child, my self-expectation was that I was a little person who did not ascend to the hall of elegance, and I never expected myself to be a square hero who would be full of emotions when I ascended to the heights. On the other hand, if I am on the margins of a group and are not known, I feel like a fish in the sea.
In fact, when I was sitting in a crowd and trying to make any formal public statement, my heart would beat faster, my expression would be panicked, my mouth would open my mouth, and another ego would immediately jump out of my heart, and I would brutally and mercilessly conduct negative scrutiny next to me, declaring that everything I said was meaningless. I don't know if Han Fei's eloquence is a compensation for his longevity, but for me at least, the written expression may have been a lifesaver for me to regain my confidence.
Seven or eight years ago, I was deprived of the head of the Chinese Department of East China Normal University, and then transferred to the dean of the School of International Chinese Language and Culture, which has become a reality that repeats itself. In order to avoid the incoherence that can occur when speaking on an impromptu basis, I write a speech before each speech.
According to Derrida, in human history, written symbols have long been suppressed by the myth of phonocentrism. It is believed that speaking is a temporal process, and that every word, word, and sentence, as a living spirit, is immediately swallowed up by the black hole of history as soon as it is issued.
Even if they can be captured faithfully by the best recorders, they will lose their concreteness, uniqueness, and vividness—that is, all presence—just as a taxidermy tiger can never restore the voice, speed, breath, body temperature, expression, gait, and even the majesty of the king of the forest—and the language that remains is nothing more than a dry vestige of the spirit and spirit that has been extinguished, in the words of Zhuangzi, "rotten".
But one of the discursive events created by the Internet is that it allows our speeches to be presented in at least two ways: once as a speech on the spot, and again as a written expression of the new world.
Because the latter can get rid of the time constraints, allowing readers to read repeatedly at any time, and more importantly, it breaks through the space limitations of the speech venue and can be disseminated to netizens around the world, which in turn gives it the opportunity to gain a wider influence.
I don't know when it started, but on the occasion of the graduation season, the ceremonial speeches of the heads of departments and even the president of the university have always become an annual discourse show performance in the WeChat circle, which has attracted the attention and even chased by netizens.
But people don't necessarily care about having to be present to listen to these people's speeches, and modern digital technology allows us to postpone reading and spread it in a way that lasts in the circle of friends. In this way, writing seems to have a chance to defeat phonocentrism, especially for me, I can avoid showing a voice that is not smooth and pleasant, and a face that is not elegant and dignified, and with the disappearance of the body, the abstract text gains its own autonomy, has its own history and life, no matter how short the future survival of these words may be.
In 2016, after I gave my first graduation speech in the Chinese Department, Xu Yanting, who was in charge of the WeChat of the Chinese Department, came to me out of breath and told me that the speech had been read more than 10,000 times. I still remember the look of surprise she had at the time.
Of course, even if the number of readers reaches 100,000+, this number is almost negligible compared to the billions of Chinese citizens. But for me, the weight of the many accolades I received for my speech was enough to form an irrepressible motivation for my writing: henceforth I have been compelled by this motivation to make repeated statements to our graduates (and sometimes not limited to them) about my understanding of the social world, my vision of the future, and my expectations and suggestions for what they may not be able to grasp. In this way, year after year, there are more than ten articles for a long time.
In order to strengthen the diversity of speeches, in addition to the speeches at the opening and graduation ceremonies, other public speeches have been added. If a pamphlet only has temple Zhuang dialect, it may seem too dull and uninteresting, and it needs to be mixed with some humorous words to add a little readability. In this way, I have added a number of speeches on other occasions, from the testimony of the wedding to the speech at the retirement ceremony.
Rao is so, and the length is still light. So I brazenly asked my two friends, Hua Xuecheng and Professor Wu Xiaodong, for a preface, and I got their generous promises. One of them specializes in antiquity, the other in the modern and contemporary; One is the leader of the field of linguistics, and the other is the head of the field of literary studies. The two prefaces are gorgeous, and the arguments are far-reaching, and readers can enjoy and judge by themselves, but the two boya gentlemen have a lot of praise for me, which is the inevitable etiquette of the literati's rhetoric, and it is naturally not true. But the meaning of the fist moved me.
In 2024, I am about to enter the year of my ear. The collection of speeches could not have come at a better time: for me, the time had come for me to put an end to a mouthful of personal history. I often think of the teachings of Confucius: "When the four seasons are in motion, all things are born, what is the heavens?" "It's always a helpful reminder for me, who often get carried away without realizing it.
Zhu Guohua, Professor of East China Normal University, Editor-in-Chief of Studies in Literary and Artistic Theory, President of the Chinese Literary and Art Theory Society. He has been selected into the New Century Excellent Talent Support Program of the Ministry of Education, the Changjiang Scholar Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, and won the special prize of Baosteel Outstanding Teacher and the title of "Famous Teacher" of the Ten Thousand Talents Program. He has published a number of books, including "Literature and Power", and also published a collection of essays, "Brothers' Days in America".
"Falling from the Sky".
Zhu Guohua.
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House.