10 Thoughts after Reading Classics on Women’s History_After Reading Thoughts after Reading Classics of Women’s History
"Women's History" is a paperback book written by Yang Dian and published by Chengdu Times Publishing House. The book price is: 39.8, the number of pages: 347. In the article, I have carefully compiled some readers' comments. I hope It can be helpful to everyone.
Thoughts after reading "Women's History" (1): A "their" book
A "their" book
China's traditional culture has always emphasized "One yin and one yang are called Tao." It is said that men are yang and women are yin. Men and women are integral parts of society. Only when yin and yang are balanced can society develop harmoniously. Whether it is a feudal society with strict male dominance or the modern women's liberation movement, "writing for women" seems to be something that is not on the table. There is a vast amount of culture left over from ancient times. Most of the books that specifically record women are "Biography of Women" and other books that emphasize the three obediences and four virtues of women. Many women have been lost in the dust, or have only been written down by others. Women are one half of the yin and yang polarity, and this half deserves to be taken seriously.
This "Women's History" is a book of Yin specially written for those unknown women by using knowledge and philosophy to clear away the layers of fog. The author, Yang Dian, is a writer, guqin player, and painter. He was born in a musical family. He is the author of "Portable Papers" and "Qin Martyrdom". The jumping words are like plucked strings, each string and column, showing the poet's tenderness and the writer's wisdom. It adds a magnificent color to this book.
Most of the women recorded in "Women's History" are those who have been ignored. "Especially those women who really existed but were ignored, and try to write from a female perspective." People often say that behind a successful man there must be a great woman. The value created by men also includes the unknown efforts of women behind the scenes. But in history, it is men who shine. It is worth noting that "the more cruel the era and the environment, the more profoundly it is reflected in the little women." It is obvious why we should write about women.
In the big era, think small. Yang Dian uses poetry as a carrier and combines a variety of writing techniques to reproduce as much as possible the joys, sorrows, joys, and ups and downs of life of a woman living in the world, either in the light or in the dark. Their rouge tears, melancholy, separation, and charming smiles, as well as their red hands, cherry mouth, snow-white wrists, and small waists, are engraved on the gears of time and will not let them go with the wind.
What will not go away with the wind are the deaths of many young lives. Chastity has been a strict curse on women in ancient times. In "Ben Xun" and "Gong Xun", women whose husbands have died must remain chaste, and if the deceased is an emperor, they must be buried. Among those who keep their virginity, there are some who disfigure themselves (cutting off their noses, gouging out their eyes, cutting off their hair, etc.), some who stay alone in the attic (no one has seen anyone since their husband's death), and some even go on hunger strike, throw themselves into jail, or commit suicide. Yuan Martyrdom Festival. Among modern women, some of the Jinlan League collectively jumped into the sea, young women voluntarily married water ghosts, and some even committed suicide by burning charcoal with both scientific and cultural knowledge. And abroad, the beautiful spy Mata Hari was tortured to death, and the talented female sculptor Camille Claudel, whose soul was extinguished in a mental hospital, "the first half of her life is art and love, the second half is darkness"... …Who can tell clearly about a woman’s life? Is it a blessing or a misfortune to be born a woman? In the concept that brothers are brothers and women are like clothes, how innocent are those women who are insulted and harmed?
In the poetic style, there is the beauty of women, but also the sorrow of women. In his simple words, there is a compassionate nature. He is personable yet caring. He writes about women because of "***", and releases his nature because of "emptiness and nothingness". Through love and desire, he is like a monk who has a profound understanding of life. This unique writing method expresses the voices of millions of women. Women are history and poetry.
Thoughts after reading "The History of Women" (Part 2): Only women understand poetry
When I first read Yang Dian and opened "The History of Women", I felt like Grandma Liu who accidentally entered the Grand View Garden and saw the pages of the book. There are many strange things in the world. The author's writing style is light but the lines are heavy. Yang Dian said in his own words that the title of this book "Women's History" not only contains the original meaning in "The Rites of Zhou", but also includes real female representatives from ancient and modern Chinese and foreign historical facts. Regardless of their identity or status, they are all included in the book to disrupt the confusion. The order of time and space is "mixed into one".
This way of writing a book gives Yang Dian's "Women's History" a bit of an ancient meaning. In form and spirit, it is close to the notebook style popular in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It melts fleeting inspiration into the carrier of poetry. It is a poem and a story. , and they are vivid portraits of women.
Yang Dian’s understanding of women is by no means classifying them as rouge and vulgar powder, as is the tradition, nor is he overly exalting them like the white snow in spring, but as he said: "Eternal women lead us to find another way." . Looking at the entire "Women's History", it can also be called an attempt to find a new approach. In order to better express the real human feelings in this world, Yang Dian chooses to write about women, and chooses all kinds of well-known female heroes or unknown lovers in his articles without distinction. Whether they are female writers or female killers, Yang Dian's writings all occupy got a place. The style of the poem is in perfect harmony with femininity, and the jumping and sensual language is very appropriate for describing women's trivial living conditions and delicate emotions. Although the poem is a short poem with intricate details, it still contains a life story with rich meaning and a profound background of the times. In the process of reading "Women's History", the reading of the annotations is also indispensable. It should be combined with parallel and prose, without delay or ambiguity. This arrangement is naturally very clever, and one sentence in the book sums it up as "because only women understand poetry."
After reading the whole book, the most unforgettable thing is not the legendary women who left their names in the annals of history mentioned in his writings, such as the early death of Shi Pingmei who was once known as one of the four talented women in women's liberation together with Zhang Ailing, or Is it "Lin Heiniang", the female leader of the Boxer Rebellion in the late Qing Dynasty, or the once famous "Shadow Princess" Riefenstahl, "the most beautiful woman in Germany" in Hitler's eyes. Compared with these shining brilliance and violent fall, the silent struggle of ordinary women has a deeper and slightly sad poetic flavor. In "Women's History", Yang Dian wrote more than once about women who committed collective suicide. Proudhon said: "Love is death." For women who are between ignorance and awakening, choosing to commit suicide has become a tragic life gesture. Yang Dianyi wrote "Jinlan League", mentioning that during the Republic of China, the women in Hui'an, Fujian, who were "in their cardamom years and possessed of beauty and wisdom", thought carefully about death "when the night was quiet and the moon was bright in the sky", and then decided to die together with their sisters. . Another poem depicts Hong Kong at the end of the last century, where women burned themselves to death one after another, which is similar to the secret political parties active in Italy in the 19th century. However, these women who committed suicide "never understood nationalism, nor cared about chemistry or Italy, but they were revolutionizing for the secret freedom of their hearts."
In "Women's History", we can understand something This kind of imaginative and unconstrained style that transcends ancient and modern times and transcends regions, or a moment of extraordinaryness, pervades the poems about women, leaving lingering sounds and a pleasant fragrance.
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Yang Mu
This peach-colored book titled "Women's History" is on the table. It only took two days from knowing it to holding it in my hands. The paper in the book is crisp, the text is square and small, and the layout is simple and elegant, making it easy to read. In one afternoon and one evening, I swallowed the 347 pages of "Women's History". For several days, my mind was filled with pinging, pink and blood. I also wonder, how curious do you have to be about the other sex to spend a book on it? Especially when the author's more famous identity is a painter or a piano player? Writing a book is usually because: there is a puzzle that needs to be solved; there is something to say; it is profitable. What is the author's reason? "Women's history" refers to the name of female officials in ancient times; in medieval times, descendants refer to generally educated women; in modern times, it can also refer to women's history. This set of branch text, which originally had 108 items but was reduced to 101 items when published, focuses on which one?
"The pictures of female historians are colorful and colorful." This is the first sentence of the "Sex Ghost" chapter in the whole book. In this article, the author lists famous ancient women such as Shangguan Wan'er, He Shuangqing, and Princess De Ling; he also lists famous foreign women like Andreeva; interspersed with the mention of a "she", this may be someone around the poet. People: "I use her elegant sitting posture as politics"; also speaking about myself: "When you rebel against the system, I rebel against myself" - this pattern is roughly the pattern of "Women's History": classics, official history, unofficial history, A short biography of a strange woman from anecdotes; a comment on the extraordinary fragment of a strange and magnificent woman abroad; a surprising glimpse of a certain "her" in memory; and the trajectory of the author's inner evolution in the process of reading classics and writing "Women's History".
To describe these separate lines of text as a "biography" or commentary of a certain female historian (occasionally there were men who came and went, but their behavior was very strange) would be to oversimplify Yang Dian's intention and text. The first thing that makes me curious about the whole book is the people and things chosen by the author: people, most of them choose ***, ill-fated socialites, arrogant aunts, female spies, and women suppressed by various forces and names; Most of the things chosen are strange things: 烝, tail criminals, and hate guns; it seems that the author believes: "Goodness is just repetition, evil is creation." From the perspective of writing, "housewives" are the same, Women outside the home are all different. When it comes to writing books, choose something different.
What is also new is the style chosen or created by Yang Dian. Its structure is two parts: text and notes. The text is structured with historical materials, allusions, quotations and poems. It is written in separate lines, and the language and meaning are basically unchanged when choosing words and sentences. That is, just say what you see and think of. It is classified as "poetry" by critics. The author himself seems to agree with this classification, and rightfully believes that " Narrative is lyricism.” What is more vast, complicated, and time-consuming than the main text is the annotation after each frame of the text. It not only indicates the source of data and annotations, but also the author's understanding and re-creation. For example, on page seven, the entry for "Diem": "...In my opinion, people such as Kolchak, Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Ching Wei, Syngman Rhee, Diem (family), Emperor Bao Dai and Lon Nol of Cambodia are... The relationship between sequence and inheritance is by no means an independent phenomenon. Studying them is the collective knowledge of a generation..." These words are not limited to annotations, but provide the author's research perspective and understanding of such issues. These annotations enrich and broaden the connotation and extension of the poems, making each poem stand at the center of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign historical materials, "like a utopia built among girls." Because of its rich indexes and annotations, it is not an exaggeration to call "Women's History" a natural history of women. It can be read as "another history of women".
It is self-evident that writing itself has the function of cleaning and healing, and it is a two-way street that only the writer realizes. I don't know how many years it took "Women's History" from the beginning to the 108th chapter, but I clearly felt that the author, who was aggressive at the beginning, went around from the outside, looking for the objects of his writing one by one, and also looking for understanding of other people. Gender breakthrough. When he describes, interprets and reorganizes the "women's history" at home and abroad in ancient and modern times, he not only enriches or deconstructs your original image of women, the author also becomes more and more thoughtful, humble, sympathetic and considerate in the vast index and notes. In the narrative Sprinkle sparingly. Yang Dian's writing is sharp, precise and ruthless, but also has a bit of "Yamato"-style sharp eroticism (rather than Southern Song Dynasty-style pornography). In his writing, his penmanship is profound and his heart is kind, which makes the fateful people on the pen of the pen The woman with a bad reputation has the possibility of being understood; and the strange events narrated from his personal perspective seem to have been illuminated again and emerged from the classics.
I have known Yang Dian online for many years. Everything we know is that he was born in a musical family. He learned violin, guqin, and traditional Chinese painting since he was a child. He was good at calligraphy and seal cutting, and practiced Tai Chi. I have never seen boxing before, and the other skills are all extraordinary. He seems to take turns releasing his talents in these skills every day, releasing a batch of works every ten and a half months. Looking at it from a distance, this way of life is very similar to that of Chinese literati a hundred years ago: reading in sunny days and rainy days - writing out feelings and understandings while reading. Writing is a part of daily life. Just like the planting and production of the ground, as long as you take care of it carefully, a batch of fruits will be produced every once in a while. Are these chapters of "Women's History" selected from a vast collection of texts? It is very close to reading, very close to the author, but not necessarily close to the readers. After all, it is unlikely that the writer standing on the sixth floor will let the readers on the third floor get close. There are three motivations for writing a book. I believe that "Women's History" is written for profit rather than the other two reasons. But is there a fourth reason for writing a book: writing (including playing the piano and painting) is just to spend time with a beautiful thing. ? The author uses the expo to memorize and draw parallels, coupled with the timely capture and powerful writing of the mood at this moment, it is actually living life and getting along with time gracefully.
The first sentence of the last one, "Holding a Skip", is: "The female history's admonitions are far away, and the books are colorful and strange." It is only two words more than the first sentence. This echoing layout makes "Women's History" come full circle, and it seems that the author's heart has also come full circle - from "sex ghost" to "holding a basket", it is a return in terms of mood and content. Creative people always spiral upward. As you can see, the author has already manly "grinded his teeth".
Finally, I have a little doubt: in addition to chess, calligraphy, painting, boxing, novels, poetry and TV dramas, does Yang Dian also know about traditional Chinese medicine? Ancient literati generally read medical books and were able to prescribe medicine for themselves and their families... I will have to ask if I have a chance.
October 16, 2015
In Suzhou
Introduction to the book reviewer:
Yang Mu (1964—) Contemporary female poet and writer, originally from Jiangsu, now living in Hainan. Member of the Chinese Writers Association and five-term director of the Hainan Provincial Writers Association. He is currently the chairman of the labor union of Hainan Geological and Mineral Construction Co., Ltd. Mainly engaged in novel creation, he has published several poetry collections, as well as the novels "Elegant Island" and "Dance for Two". Won the second prize in the novel category of the 9th China Population Culture Award.
Thoughts after reading "The History of Women" (4): Every woman is a piece of history
Able to calligraphy and painting, recite poetry and compose, and play the piano well, Yang Dian is a natural A madman from the Wei and Jin Dynasties who came out of an ancient painting. And this madman, not only does not think that he is "the one who has nothing to talk about in the world", but is willing to be the commentator of Fendai skirt and hairpin. He has a bit of the demeanor of Cao Qinxi and Li Songshi.
"Women's History" is a unique collection of essays. The term "women's history" has both the meaning of intellectual women and female history. Looking at the whole book, it feels like Yang Dian's reading notes from a wide range of books, but also like a sudden glimpse of inspiration. The modern poems and miscellaneous notes in an informal style are composed of short sentences and mixed fragments, and are full of quotations and metaphors. It is as if the woman in the poem was dictating it herself, and each person's temperament can be seen clearly. Yang Dian, on the other hand, escaped far behind and wrote the whole story into an annotation, explaining it eloquently.
What kind of women can be included in history, biography, or be acted out? Works on women at home and abroad, both ancient and modern, give a variety of answers. Yang Dian pays attention not only to famous women from past dynasties with endless anecdotes, but "whether they are intellectual women, legendary women or unknown folk women, women who have been insulted and discriminated against, or women around individuals, etc.", they can all be included in this list. Department Essay. His criterion for selecting materials, in the words of the Englishman Clive Bell, is "meaningful form." Just like a painter selecting a model, the beauty and ugliness of the facial features are secondary, the charm of the gestures and the charm that makes people think is more important. Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring", Renoir's "Little Irene", this is probably the case. In other words, the women included in the list may not be stunning or talented, but they must be attractive. They may remind readers of a certain fragment of their own lives, of a certain book they have read, of someone they have met, of their past dreams and desires, of some kind of disillusioned but real existence. As a result, those women came out of the book and settled in the readers' hearts because of the touch.
Nadezhta thoughtfully protects her frightened husband Mangerstam. The duet between the two is like a mother-child picture, telling the delicacy and tenacity of a woman. Housewives who clean the house have their unknown joys and sorrows. When the man vowed to clean up the world, Yang Dian said: "A single kitchen is as big as the universe. No matter how hard you wipe it, you can't finish it." The prototype of the hit TV series "The Legend of Mi Yue" is also a female hero. She uses sexual intercourse as a metaphor for politics and is well versed in the ways of governing a country and people. The Hui'an women who committed collective suicide during the Republic of China seemed helpless and passive, so why weren't they fighting against ethics in their own way? The two-year-old girl Yueyue was left alone in a car accident, causing countless moral debates. Yang Dian gave passers-by the word "walking corpse" as they turned a blind eye.
The same encounters and similar thoughts can make two people cherish each other and transcend time and space. Not only is the love between people and readers in the book, Yang Dian often connects the stories of two or several women together. Hu Lancheng's The Japanese Lover Yizhi and Xiao Zhouhou of the Southern Tang Dynasty, the female poet Gu Taiqing and Zhang Ailing, Shanzu, Fanzheng and the female cook, and the female disciples of Suiyuan... The quotes and comments interspersed are like the exchanges across time and space, and the readers' sighs and pity It seemed as if there was an extra layer of weight, and it was also deeper - heavier.
Some familiar names often appear in pairs with another person's name, such as Wang Xizhi's first teacher Mrs. Wei, Chen Yinke's wife Tang Yun, Lu Xiaoman to Xu Zhimo, and countless other wives and The buried palace ladies. But they are not men's vassals. They have their own deeds and contributions, which are enough to make men pay attention. The dark clouds that cover up their names cannot cover up the "Bi Zhen Tu" that is well known to all writers, nor can they cover up the peerless elegance in looking back - Yang Dian wants to write a biography for his boudoir in a dignified way.
Let them tell it with their own stories, as deep in love and as obsessed as they are, perhaps mixed with desires and weaknesses, but they are real women’s stories and real history, because they are rich and complete, and because they are true and moving. .
More than a hundred articles cannot describe everything about women in the world, so there are many supplements and endless narrations. The childlike words of the author's daughter are full of intelligence and agility. As the closing chapter, it says: Today's women's history, and the future women's history, are brewing meaningful sentences, like the flowing river of history, stretching endlessly.
There has always been someone in my boudoir who is unwilling and unwilling to be forgotten. Every woman is a piece of history, and those who know it are the book-noters.
——Reading Yang Dian's "The History of Women" in the Year of Yiwei
Thoughts after reading "The History of Women" (V): A history of women's lives, but also a history of tragedy
Chinese characters "She" is a new word, coined by Liu Bannong in the early days of vernacular writing. Women in history are so insignificant that there isn’t even a word specifically used to refer to them. They hide in the shadow of patriarchy and disappear from the subject of history. Fortunately, their number is large enough and their colors are rich enough, and they can finally leave a few touches of red in the manuscript of history, which also makes Yang Dian's "History of Women" traceable.
When I first read Yang Diansha, I was amazed. I thought that in a corner of the modern city of Beijing, there was a middle-aged man who moved a lamp and took a seat, burning incense, playing the piano, practicing Zen, and painting and calligraphy. It felt like he had traveled back in time. However, his thoughts are by no means tolerated by ancient times. He said, "In a sense, our patriarchal world is no longer worth writing about. The more cruel the era and the environment, the more profoundly reflected in the little women." The word "female history" originally meant ancient female officials, and later generally referred to intellectual women. Yang Dian's "Female History" is an authentic female history book. It's just that this history book is eclectic, with a mix of ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, serious and unofficial history, and it involves hundreds of women. Among these hundreds of people, there are no overly famous women such as Wu Zetian and Li Qingzhao, because they have been rendered clearly enough by literature, film and television, and Yang Dian just wants more neglected women to be revealed under his pen.
It seems to have been a foregone conclusion since ancient times that women are not good at mathematics. Who can believe that books such as "The Jingxingbian", "The Theory of the Earth Compared with the Nine Heavens", "The Pythagorean Triangle" and "The Lunar Eclipse" actually came from The hand of a 27-year-old woman? Wang Zhenyi, a female mathematician, miscellaneous scholar and poet in the Qing Dynasty. "He is familiar with astrology, calculation, poetry, medicine, painting, and even meteorology." Not only did he have the experience of "saying that good weather and good weather will always come," but he could also use chandeliers, round tables, mirrors, etc. as tools to understand the eclipses of the sun and the moon, and even wrote "The Burial Sutra's Preface to the Unusual Preface" to question the ancients' Feng Shui theory as a scam. It is said that her works amounted to 64 volumes, but most of them were lost. She deserves the word "genius", but this genius is too unknown compared to her colleagues Zu Chongzhi and Zhang Heng. Does this have to do with her identity as a woman? Doesn't matter? Or is it because her stay in history was too short? Died of illness at the age of 29, is this the fate of a genius?
There are countless women in the book who have been ignored like Wang Zhenyi. Lin Heier, the leader of the "Red Lantern Zhao" who fought bravely against foreigners, and Camille Claudel, a French female sculptor whose talent was jealous of her lover Rodin. They admired the leader but said to him, "You have committed a big crime in front of the people and the country." Yudina, the Soviet female pianist, was summoned to the grassland by the quilt, and more than 4,000 "lowest women" were divided among men at will... Such a complicated history of women is written in a minimalist style of poetry and notes. In a few words, five or six women were involved. Without extensive knowledge reserves, it is impossible to do this. You need to know that Yang Dian came from a scholarly family. He had read a lot of books since he was a child and had countless miscellaneous historical notes. Without detailed annotations, it would be difficult for ordinary people to understand this "Women's History".
There is no value choice in the history of women recorded by Yang Dian. The talented, the deviant, the shocking, the poets, the assassins, the spies, the killers and the artists are all rarely commented on, but they are listed as historical facts. No matter what kind of woman she is, she often ends up alone, crazy, committing suicide, dying violently, going into exile, or disappearing into a mystery, and there are almost no happy endings. It comes to mind, but how can a woman who lives a stable life by following the rules, caring for her husband and raising children, be recorded by writers and known to us? No, even ordinary women may not be able to achieve perfection due to observing festivals, being buried, being robbed, etc. It is just because they are too "normal" that their names are not known. A woman's life and death are beyond her control.
On the title page of Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" is written the famous saying of the philosopher Kierkegaard: "A woman's greatest misfortune is not knowing that it is misfortune." But, do they really not know?
Perhaps it was this kind of "misfortune" and misery that touched Yang Dian's Zen heart and made us see these submerged women. This is both a woman's life history and a woman's tragic history.
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" Thoughts after reading "The History of Women" (6): The only thing left in the book is an ode to Hongzhuang
This is a strange book, first of all, it is strange in its genre. If you just look at the title of the book, you will think it is another prose style like An Yiru and others, but it is not. Every article is like poetry but not like poetry. Although arranged like modern poems, they are not completely abstract. Many of them contain narrative elements. As the author himself said: "The genres covered in this book include notebooks, prose, news, exploration, and dialogue. It deconstructs the cultural motif and social phenomenon of "women's history" from a variety of perspectives, including poetry, ancient poetry, and even short stories. After reading a few articles, you will know that choosing this genre is the easiest way for the author to express himself. Each article has a theme and is classified at a time: it may praise individual women, such as Sai Jinhua, Yujinna, and Dong Xiaowan; or it may describe women's behavior, such as sexual intercourse, sacrifice for love, cooking, etc.; or it may excerpt Buddhist scriptures, biology, Philosophy and other understandings of women...at home and abroad, are all-encompassing. Even using the quotation and annotation methods in ancient poems cannot explain them all, not to mention the author's own emotions that he wants to express. If you want to write in detail, you can even write a book on a topic. From this point of view, it is most appropriate to use poems and notes to point it out.
The second strange thing is its content. Since the rise of postmodernism, criticism of big narratives and big history has never stopped, and questioning these male-dominated historical narratives from the perspective of women’s history is one of the most common methods. This is a "small" narrative, but the author just writes about those little-known women in order to "avoid suspicion." However, not being famous doesn't mean those things didn't happen. Perhaps it is through these strange women and anecdotes that we have never heard of before that we can have a deeper understanding of the extraordinary courage, talent and suffering of women in China and even around the world.
"Zhou Li·Tianguan·Nu Shi" says: "Nu Shi is in charge of the ceremonial duties of the queen, and is responsible for internal governance. She governs internal affairs with edicts." This is the earliest source of the word "Nu Shi". Later, the word no longer specifically referred to female officials, but to general intellectual women. It also happened to be the abbreviation of "Women's History" and was used in this book with a pun. The author Yang Dian is a contemporary writer and guqin player. His knowledge makes his writing calm and ancient. However, in the article, the author refers to the historian Chen Yinke (who wrote "Liu Rushi's Farewell Biography" in his later years) as saying that "the only thing left in the book is to praise Hongzhuang." The article certainly contains praise for women, and it is more like using women to clarify their aspirations. This may be a criticism that male writers cannot escape when writing about women.