“现代史”

鲁迅-> 伪自由书-> 现代史

从我有记忆的时候起，直到现在，凡我所曾经到过的地方，在空地上，常常看见有“变把戏”的，也叫作“变戏法”的。

这变戏法的，大概只有两种——一种，是教一个猴子戴起假面，穿上衣服，耍一通刀枪；骑了羊跑几圈。还有一匹用稀粥养活，已经瘦得皮包骨头的狗熊玩一些把戏。末后是向大家要钱。

一种，是将一块石头放在空盒子里，用手巾左盖右盖，变出一只白鸽来；还有将纸塞在嘴巴里，点上火，从嘴角鼻孔里冒出烟焰。其次是向大家要钱。要了钱之后，一个人嫌少，装腔作势的不肯变了，一个人来劝他，对大家说再五个。果然有人抛钱了，于是再四个，三个……抛足之后，戏法就又开了场。这回是将一个孩子 装进小口的坛子里面去，只见一条小辫子，要他再出来，又要钱。收足之后，不知怎么一来，大人用尖刀将孩子刺死了，盖上被单，直挺挺躺着，要他活过来，又要钱。

“在家靠父母，出家靠朋友…… Huazaa! Huazaa!” 变戏法的装出撒钱的手势，严肃而悲哀的说。

别的孩子，如果走近去想仔细的看，他是要骂的；再不听，他就会打。

果然有许多人 Huazaa 了。待到数目和预料的差不多，他们就检起钱来，收拾家伙，死孩子也自己爬起来，一同走掉了。

看客们也就呆头呆脑的走散。

这空地上，暂时是沉寂了。过了些时，就又来这一套。俗语说，“戏法人人会变，各有巧妙不同。”其实是许多年间，总是这一套，也总有人看，总有人Huazaa，不过其间必须经过沉寂的几日。

我的话说完了，意思也浅得很，不过说大家 Huazaa Huazaa 一通之后，又要静几天了，然后再来这一套。

到这里我才记得写错了题目，这真是成了“不死不活”的东西。

汉学之难

Elling O. Eide, “Methods in Sinology: Problems of Teaching and Learning” Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1 (Nov., 1971), 131-141.

[Page 134]

…

…Achilles Fang has said that competence in Chinese demands an effort roughly equivalent to that required for the mastery of Greek and Latin plus all the Romance Languages. That may be an extreme position, but there was, I think, some merit in the dragon speeches that used to greet the beginners in a Chinese program. Chinese is not, after all, just another language, and competence in Chinese does require much more than the mere learning of a foreign tongue. The student deceived on this point is almost sure to suffer, for not only is he likely to have come ill prepared for rigorous language training, but he will then even be denied a refuge for his wounded ego. It is one thing to be having difficulty with the most difficult language in the world, quite another to be going down for the count in your struggle with something promoted as “just another language.” Further, and worse, such a student is ill prepared for the other demands that will, or should, be placed upon him. We cannot expect students to learn everything at once, but it is important that they know from the beginning what our standards are. You cannot talk purposefully of methods, or even of Sinology, with a student who eyes you resentfully when you refer to works in French or German, and who has not yet dreamed of the things in Japanese. It is essential, therefore, that we not promote Chinese in such a way as to conceal the elements of training that are necessary for competence and expertise.

…

[Page 137]

…

… It is not surprising that administrators are ignorant of our special needs, but it is, certainly, our duty to explain. To remind them that the mere fact Chinese is a language does not mean we need, or even want, the same facilities as other language programs. An English professor does not, after all, have to worry in the slightest about the arrangements of the books on the shelf when he suggests that a student look something up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But what if that encyclopaedia, call it “The Primary Tortoise of Her Britannic Majesty,” were in a thousand volumes rather than twenty-five, written in unpunctuated Chaucerian English, and arranged not alphabetically, but by subject or by rhyme—the rhyme, let us note, of Caedmon’s day. Clearly, we can make a strong case that our problems really are peculiar, and for the sake of our students it is important that we do so at every opportunity.

…

“变天账”史前史

革 命 倡 议 书

我们要粉碎旧世界，创造新世界。目前城市中还存在着大量的私有房屋及私有土地出租，资本家和房主还白白的拿着大量定息、定租进行剥削，这是封建主义残余，是修正主义的温床，要向他们猛烈的出击，直至砸碎、砸烂。我们倡议：

1、废除封建的土地私有制，凡私有土地一律没收归国有。

2、私有房屋一律归国家所有。

3、停发经租房主的固定租金。

北京市房管局革命领导小组

1966年8月22日

最 后 通 牒

正告你们资产阶级房霸们，造你们的反，专你们的政的日子到了！

现在命令你们：

1、除了你们自己住用（不得多于一般居民面积）外，统统要到房管所登记、交出、归公，自己留住的房子按公价交房租。

2、凡是由房管局“经租”的房屋和私人出租的房子一律归公。

3、黑帮资产阶级反动“权威”和一切牛鬼蛇神占用的房子面积，不得超过一般居民的最低水平，把多占的房子统统交出。

4、自即日起，限你们在十天之内，主动到房管局办理登记，交出手续。

你们要明智点，如果你们用任何借口拒不执行，顽抗到底，我们绝不放过你们，我们将采取一切必要行动，由此而引起的一切后果，将由你们自己负责。

关于中国的火

鲁迅——>且介亭杂文——>关于中国的两三件事

一 关于中国的火

自从燧人氏发见，或者发明了火以来，能够很有味的吃火锅，点起灯来，夜里也可以工作了，但是，真如先哲之所谓“有一利必有一弊”罢，同时也开始了火灾，故意点上火，烧掉那有巢氏所发明的巢的了不起的人物也出现了。

和善的燧人氏是该被忘却的。即使伤了食，这回是属于神农氏的领域了，所以那神农氏，至今还被人们所记得。至于火灾，虽然不知道那发明家究竟是什么人，但祖师总归是有的，于是没有法，只 好漫称之曰火神，而献以敬畏。看他的画像，是红面孔，红胡须，不过祭祀的时候，却须避去一切红色的东西，而代之以绿色。他大约像西班牙的牛一样，一看见红色，便会亢奋起来，做出一种可怕的行动的。他因此受着崇祀。在中国，这样的恶神还很多。

然而，在人世间，倒似乎因了他们而热闹。赛会也只有火神的，燧人氏的却没有。倘有火灾，则被灾的和邻近的没有被灾的人们，都要祭火神，以表感谢之意。被了灾还要来表感谢之意，虽然未免有些出于意外，但若不祭，据说是第二回还会烧，所以还是感谢了的安全。而且也不但对于火神，就是对于人，有时也一样的这么办，我想，大约也是礼仪的一种罢。

其实，放火，是很可怕的，然而比起烧饭来，却也许更有趣。外国的事情我不知道，若在中国，则无论查检怎样的历史，总寻不出烧饭和点灯的人们的列传来。在社会上，即使怎样的善于烧饭，善 于点灯，也毫没有成为名人的希望。然而秦始皇一烧书，至今还俨然做着名人，至于引为希特拉烧书事件的先例。假使希特拉太太善于开电灯，烤面包罢，那么，要在历史上寻一点先例，恐怕可就难了。但是，幸而那样的事，是不会哄动一世的。

烧掉房子的事，据宋人的笔记说，是开始于蒙古人的。因为他们住着帐篷，不知道住房子，所以就一路的放火。然而，这是诳话。蒙古人中，懂得汉文的很少，所以不来更正的。其实，秦的末年 就有着放火的名人项羽在，一烧阿房宫，便天下闻名，至今还会在戏台上出现，连在日本也很有名。然而，在未烧以前的阿房宫里每天点灯的人们，又有谁知道他们的名姓呢？

现在是爆裂弹呀，烧夷弹呀之类的东西已经做出，加以飞机也很进步，如果要做名人，就更加容易了。而且如果放火比先前放得大，那么，那人就也更加受尊敬，从远处看去，恰如救世主一样，而那火光，便令人以为是光明。

人民英雄纪念碑

这是一段言简意赅、精心而有力的历史叙事。它全新地成就了一段可歌可泣的百年史，又以此碑奠定了一个全新的纪元。当时，尽管诸如你我一样的升斗小民尚未获得书写历史的权威，此篇铭文的立意和字句倒也并不寒碜。毛的文笔：

三年以来在人民解放战争和人民革命中牺牲的人民英雄们永垂不朽

三十年以来在人民解放战争和人民革命中牺牲的人民英雄们永垂不朽

由此上溯到一千八百四十年从那时起为了反对内外敌人争取民族独立和人民自由幸福在历次斗争中牺牲的人民英雄们永垂不朽

一九四九年九月三十日

张贡士

聊斋志异 卷六 张贡士

安丘张贡士，寝疾，仰卧床头。忽见心头有小人出：长仅半尺，儒冠儒服，作俳优状。唱昆山曲，音调清彻；说白，自道名贯，一与己同；所唱节末，皆其生平所遭。四折既毕，吟诗而没。张犹记其梗概，为人述之。

[但评]
人之一生，不过一场戏耳。只要问心，自己是何脚色，生平是何节末。要作发眉毕现，毋为巾帼贻羞；要认本来面目，毋作粉脸相迎；要求百世流芳，毋致当场出丑。能令人共看方有好下场。

[何评]
此疑是贡士心神。

mimēsis praxeōs

Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (1) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984).

To conclude, I would like to return to the question of mimesis, the second focus of my interest in reading the Poetics. It does not seem to me to be governed by the equating of the two expressions “the imitation (or representation) of action” and “the organization of the events.” It is not that something has to be taken back from this equation. There is no doubt that the prevalent sense of mimesis is the one instituted by its being joined to muthos. If we continue to translate mimesis by “imitation,” we have to understand something completely contrary to a copy of some preexisting reality and speak instead of a creative imitation. And if we translate mimesis by “representation” (as do Dupont-Roc and Lallot), we must not understand by this word some redoubling of presence, as we could still do for Platonic mimesis, but rather the break that opens the space for fiction. Artisans who work with words produce not things but quasi-things; they invent the as-if. And in this sense, the Aristotelian mimesis is the emblem of the shift [décrochage] that, to use our vocabulary today, produces the “literariness” of the work of literature.

Still the equation of mimesis and muthos does not completely fill up the [End of Page 45] meaning of the expression mimēsis praxeōs. We may of course—as we did above—construe the objective genitive as the noematic correlate of imitation of representation and equate this correlate to the whole expression “the organization of the events,” which Aristotle makes the “what”—the object—of mimesis. But that the praxis belongs at the same time to the real domain, covered by ethics, and the imaginary one, covered by poetics, suggests that mimesis functions not just as a break but also as a connection, one which establishes precisely the status of the “metaphorical” transposition of the practical field by the muthos. If such is the case, we have to preserve in the meaning of the term mimesis a reference to the first side of poetic composition. I call this reference mimesis1 to distinguish it from mimesis2—the mimesis of creation—which remains the pivot point. I hope to show that even in Aristotle’s text there are scattered references to this prior side of poetic composition. This is not all. Mimesis, we recall, as an activity, the mimetic activity, does not reach its intended term through the dynamism of the poetic text alone. It also requires a spectator or reader. So there is another side of poetic composition as well, which I call mimesis3, whose indications I shall also look for in the text of the Poetics. By so framing the leap of imagination with the two operations that constitute the two sides of the mimesis of invention, I believe we enrich rather than weaken the meaning of the mimetic activity invested in the muthos. I hope to show that this activity draws its intelligibility from its mediating function, which leads us from one side of the text to the other through the power of refiguration.

国民革命轶事：指马为牛

（冯玉祥 1882-1948，照片取自 Wikipedia）

指马为牛

西北军出动北伐时，共产党正在主持全军政治部。时在五月，共党用红墨印行特刊一张，名为“红色的五月”，到处张贴，甚至豫西穷乡僻壤也到处可见。有几个不大识字、不分青红皂白的乡人看见“红色的五月”内有共产主义始祖马克思、列宁的肖像，指着说：“这是帝国主义！”

又一则：

缘悭一面

十六年夏会师帝国主义后，革命军俄顾问嘉伦将军亦随诸中委到郑，屡欲与冯会晤，均未有机缘。一日特请人与冯约商会晤时间，冯指定次日清晨六时。翌晨，嘉犹拥其恋人女秘书高卧未起，及醒来已误了时间，乃请原人道歉，另约时间。冯又指定翌晨五时——比上次更早一个钟头。次日嘉仍误点，会晤之议终作罢论。冯后与人谈及此事，犹捻髭微笑也。

大华烈士（简又文，1896-1978），《西北东南风》。

丰子恺的画（十一）：不妨同享北窗风

飞来山鸟语惺忪，
却是幽人半睡中，
野竹成阴无弹射，
不妨同享北窗风。

宋 陆游 护生吟

为迷人而迷人：林语堂的北平

王敦

为迷人而迷人：林语堂的北平

林语堂〈迷人的北平〉，见于姜德明 编的《北京乎》（北京：三联书店，1992），507-515。

林语堂的文章为幽默而幽默，为性灵而性灵，也为迷人而迷人。这个“为”出来的迷人可以从林氏《迷人的北平》一文看出来。且看开头第一段：

北平和南京相比拟，正像西京和东京一样。北平和西京都是古代的京都，四周是环绕着一种芬芳和带历史性的神秘的魔力。那些在新都，南京和东京，是见不到的。南 京（一九三八以前）和东京一样，代表了现代化的，代表进步，和工业主义，民族主义的象征；而北平呢，却代表旧中国的灵魂，文化和平静；代表和顺安适的生活，代表了生活的协调，使文化发展到最美丽，最和谐的顶点，同时含蓄着城市生活及乡村生活的协调。

第一句话有些发虚发飘。推测上下文意，可以改为“北平和南京相比拟，正像西京和东京一样，充满对比。”或者“北平和南京的对比，正像西京和东京一样。”虚飘的原因在于，当林氏写下“比拟”两个字的时候，他可能自己也知道如此的“对比”不能当真。

此段的第二句话要把中国的北平比做日本的西京（京都）。不用说也明摆着，北平和西京“都是古代的京都” ，这没错。然而二者究竟如何才算神似？林语堂说不出来了，只好说“四周是环绕着一种芬芳和带历史性的神秘的魔力”。这是故弄玄虚，在语法结构上也欠佳。因为没有实实在在的语言图像来再现北平或西京的样子，所以他笔下“芬芳和带历史性的神秘的魔力”既不属于北平，也不属于西京，只代表着林氏本人对“迷人”的 追求。

在林文此段的第三句话里，林氏把南京（一九三八以前）和东京归为一类，“代表了现代化的，代表进步，和工业主义，民族主义的象征”。这很牵强。且不说南京当时的现代化和工业主义比日本的东京差得太远，南京就是跟临近的大上海相比，也被公认为“乡下”。在一般人眼里，南京生活的宁静正好对比着上海的繁华喧嚣。对当时南京的党国要人来说，南京是办公的地方，安稳的六朝古都；上海才是现代大都会，“东方的巴黎”。(不过话说回来，我毕竟没有在三、四十年代生活过。 照国民党元老回忆，南京政府机关，在抗战之前，确实有一股紧张活泼，奋发向上的气氛。年青职员，不敢涉足舞厅，赌场，周末下馆子都有顾虑。大家把上海当成腐败的地方，从这个意思上说南京也没准儿一度象征着“主义”与“进步”。)

林语堂写此文的时候应该是“一九三八”抗日 战争爆发和南京沦陷以后。这篇文章是收在一九四一年上海人间书屋出版的《语堂随笔》。当时，包括北平和南京在内的众多名城都在日寇的铁蹄之下呻吟。（南京大屠杀之事，不知当时的国人是否已经知道？）能“随”出这样的“笔”来，拿北平比日本京都，拿南京比日本东京，确实别具一格。

其实也不必对林语堂过于苛责。他可能只是觉得北平南京的“南北”，正好可以配东京西京的“东西”，煞是迷人。

这种“迷人”是禁不住细看的，还是在第一段里——如果你问林语堂：文化发展“最美丽，最和谐的顶点”到底是什么样子？“城市生活及乡村生活的协调”的具体表现是什么？他很可能也不知道。

以上是对林文第一段的分析。

林氏此文一共二十七段，每一段都是这样为了迷人而迷人。如果每一段都分析一下，连语法带逻辑，太累。下面就只从全文正中挑出第十三段，粗略地读一下：

这里也是多色彩的——有旧的色素和新的色素。有王家宏大的，历史时代的，和蒙古平原的色素。蒙古和中国的商人带着骆驼队从张家口和南口来进入这有历史的城 门，有数里相接的城墙，四五十英尺阔的城门。有城楼和鼓楼，那是在黄昏时报告给居民听的。有寺宇，古花园，和宝塔，那里的每一块石头和每一棵树，以及每一座桥都有历史和古迹的。

林氏在此段的第一句话里，提到了“多色彩”——“ 有旧的色素和新的色素”。当然，这个色彩学是个比方，其实是说北京在视觉上即有历史遗存，又有现代场面。然而，在这个主题句后面的四句话里，“新的色素” 完全看不到了。（这跟林语堂的方言有无关系？北京话说得好的人如老舍、梁实秋，可能不会这样写。不过也难说，沈从文一辈子讲不好普通话，但是善于描写地方 景物。把他们两人的文字比一比，可能会有的说。）

读者所看到的都是诸如“王家”、“宏大”、“蒙古平原的色素”、“骆驼队”这样的字眼，还有城墙、城门，城楼鼓楼寺宇古花园宝塔等等古老的建筑与空间。这些 “旧的色素”的运用，在风格上感觉像是意大利歌剧《图兰朵》里的北京城布景，或者像几十年前洋人观光客写给纽约时报的小文，而不像现代中国作家用中文描述的北平。

我真怀疑这篇文章本来是用英文打的底稿，原本是想投合洋人口味的。那个时代每个对中国着迷的洋人到了中国都幻想着自己是踏上这神秘东方的唯一西方人。于是他们眼中的北平就总也离不开马可•波罗为“汗八里”（马可•波罗所称呼的元大都）定下的“色素”。

殊不知，曾经有成千上万的洋大人端着毛瑟枪、来复枪、机关枪、拉着迫击炮、加农炮、榴弹炮，从塘沽一路杀进北京，再大包小包地把宝物都运走。在那段时间里， 这座古城是屠宰场、废墟和匪窝，一点也不迷人。那是在一九零零年。更不用说在之前四十年圆明园就被洋人烧掠一空。“那里的每一块石头和每一棵树，以及每一座桥都有历史和古迹的”。是的。不知从咸丰皇帝以来的事儿算不算历史？林语堂没有说。不过他也建议读者到“避暑山庄（圆明园？）中意大利式宫殿的废墟上去凭吊古迹”。（第二十四段）意大利式宫殿是如何成为废墟的？凭吊哪般古迹？他也没说。连带着，东交民巷的洋房汽车洋兵，六国饭店的繁华，以及属于现在进行时的“新的色素”，也都将“真事隐去”，不去说它了。

从前清的京师到民国的北京、北平，这座城市饱尝了国破家亡的味道，特别是林氏写作此文的时候，北平早已落入日寇手中。“国破山河在，城春草木深。感时花溅泪，恨别鸟惊心。”这样的泪水不会闪烁在洋大人的眼中，在这篇以迷人为目的的随笔里也是没有的。对林语堂来说，泪水也要溅得迷人。于是就有了《京华烟云》。

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人，有时会对自己宽，对别人严而不自知。现在回过头来看这篇文章，就觉得写得偏颇了。以此为戒。王敦，2008年4月15日补记。

© Copyright by Dun Wang (王敦). All rights reserved. 著作权拥有者：Dun Wang (王敦)。

Darwin and Scarlet Cloth/ 达尔文与一块红布

Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993).

Take Darwin’s account of the following joyous exchanges, with each party delighted at the other’s delight, the other’s silliness:

Both parties laughing, wondering, gaping at each other; we pitying them, for giving us good fish and crabs for rags, etc.,; they grasping at the chance of finding people so foolish as to exchange such splendid ornaments for a good supper. It was most amusing to see the undisguised smile of satisfaction with which one young woman with her face painted black, tied several bits of scarlet cloth round her head with rushes. (227) [End Page 94]

That was 1832, by which time the European bourgeoisies, male versions, unlike the aristocracy and Middle Ages of time past, were deeply invested in grey to a degree that brilliant colors such as red took on a wild, primitive, not to mention even a revolutionary hue—obviously the perfect gift for the Fuegians (whom, we are later told, had the practice of daubing their naked bodies with black, white, and red). But from the beginning of European discovery and conquest, redness itself, first from a species of tree in India, called Brasilium on account of its fieriness, and later from Bahia (in what came to be called Brasil), and from Central and South America, fetched enormous prices in Europe into the eighteenth century. Indeed, after gold and silver and perhaps slaves, the commodity that seems to have most interested the buccaneers of Spanish Main, those same sailor-buccaneers with whom the Cuna Indians allied themselves in the famous Darien peninsula in the seventeenth century, was red dyewood.

The Guilty Desire to Appear Innocent: Colonial Imagination

Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European novel: 1800-1900 (London: Verso, 1998).

Penetrate; seize; leave (and if needed, destroy). It’s the spatial logic of colonialism; duplicated, and ‘naturalized’, by the spatial logic of the one-dimensional plot. And then, at the end of the journey (with the exception of Heart of Darkness), we don’t find raw materials, or ivory, or human beings to be enslaved. In lieu of these prosaic realities, a fairy-tale entity—a ‘treasure’—where the bloody profits of the colonial adventure are sublimated into an aesthetic, almost self-referential object: glittering, clean stones: diamonds, if possible (as in King Solomon’s Mines). Or else, an enigmatic lover: a sort of jungle Dracula, who in two very popular texts (She, Atlantide) is actually a supernatural being. Or again, and most typically, at the end of the journey lies the figure of the Lost European, who retrospectively justifies the entire story as a case of legitimate defense. The Congo, the Haggar, central Africa, the land of the Zulus, the Sahara outposts: in this continent teeming with white prisoners that long to be freed, Western conquest can be rewritten as a genuine liberation, with a reversal of roles (a ‘rhetoric of innocence’, I have called it in Modern Epic) this is possibly the greatest trick of the colonial imagination. [End Page 62]

And innocence—that is, the guilty desire to appear innocent—is what comes to mind in front of figure 29. I found it by chance, in an issue of the Journal of Geography for the year 1974 (nineteen-seventy-four), in an article entitled ‘A Game of European Colonization in Africa’. As you can see, it is a board game designed as a teaching aid, a sort of ‘Monopoly’, where the five players (‘England, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal’) throw the dice, move, buy the various territories (the most expensive one if the Cape of Good Hope), draw the ‘Fate’ and ‘Fortune’ cards (the worst, a ‘native [End Page 63, Figure 29 Omitted] uprising’; the luckiest one, a gift from an ‘American philanthropist’). And I will add only this: to win, you must build, not houses and hotels, but schools and hospitals.

丰子恺的画（十）

"女墙上黯黯的一抹斜阳，人在城外了。"