林语堂:华语文坛最幽默睿智的一支笔两脚踏东西文化,一心评宇宙文章 Versed with both oriental and
western culture concentrated in reviewing writings of the world.
林语堂双语作品首次全部结集出版 犀利冷静的视角 幽默诙谐的笔调
深刻剖析中华民族之精神与气质人要像个人,得脱下僵硬的西装,松开狗领一样的领带,回家盘坐在火炉边,手上再夹根烟。 After all,
a man can be quite a human being when he takes off his dog-collar
and his stiff shirt, and comes home sprawling on the hearth-rug
with a pipe in his hand. I want the freedom to be myself.
我要能做我自己的自由,和敢做我自己的胆量。
钱锁桥,香港城市大学副教授。1996年获美国加州大学伯克莱分校比较文学博士。出版有Liberal Cosmopolitan:
Lin Yutang and Middling Chinese
Modernity(英文,Brill出版社,2011)、《华美文学:双语加注编目》(编撰,南开大学出版社,2011)、《林语堂双语文选》(中英文双语,编选并序,香港中文大学出版社,2010)、《傅柯:超越结构主义和诠释学》(译著)(台北:桂冠图书公司,1992)等。主要研究方向:中国现代性、中西文学文化研究。
目錄:
Introduction by Qian Suoqiao
引?言钱锁桥
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
论现代批评的职务
Marriage and Careers for Women
婚嫁与女子职业
A Hymn to Shanghai
上海之歌
If I Were a Bandit
假定我是土匪
Ah Fong, My House-Boy
阿?芳
Han Fei As a Cure for Modern China
半部《韩非》治天下
My Last Rebellion Against Lady Nicotine
我的戒烟
Confucius as I Know Him
思孔子
Zarathustra and the Jester
萨天师语录——萨天师与东方朔
Do Bed-Bugs Exist in China?
中国究有臭虫否
A Pageant of Costumes
萨天师语录(三)
What Is Face?
脸与法治
On Political Sickness
论政治病
The Spirit of the Chinese Culture
中国文化之精神
How I Bought a Tooth-Brush
我怎样买牙刷
In Memoriam of the Dog-Meat General
悼张宗昌
First Lesson in Chinese Language
今译《美国独立宣言》
In Praise of Liang Zuoyou
哀梁作友
The Lost Mandarin
思满大人
I Like to Talk With Women
女论语
I Committed a Murder
冬至之晨杀人记
On Freedom of Speech
谈言论自由
On Chinese and Foreign Dress
论西装
The Monks of Hangzhou
春日游杭记
What I Want
言志篇
In Defense of Pidgin English
为洋泾浜英语辩
The Necessity of Summer Resorts
说避暑之益
Should Women Rule the World?
让娘儿们干一下吧!
What I Have Not Done
有不为斋解
An Open Letter To M. Dekobra:A Defense of the Chinese Girl
262
与德哥派拉书——东方美人辩
How To Write Postscripts
怎样写“再启”
The Beggars of London
伦敦的乞丐
Spring in My Garden
纪春园琐事
A Day-Dream
梦?影
On Bertrand Russell’s Divorce
罗素离婚
A Lecture Without An Audience: A Wedding Speech
一篇没有听众的演讲——婚礼致词
Our Tailor-Morality
裁缝道德
New Year 1935
纪元旦
Hirota And The Child: A Child’s Guide to Sino-Japanese
Politics
广田示儿记
I Daren’t Go to Hangzhou
我不敢游杭
In Defense of Gold-Diggers
摩登女子辩
Confessions of A Nudist
论裸体运动
Preface to “Six Chapters of a Floating Life”
《浮生六记》英译自序
On Shaking Hands
论握手
On Lying in Bed
论躺在床上
On Crying at Movies
论看电影流泪
On the Calisthenic Value of Kowtowing
叩头与卫生
A Bamboo Civilization
竹?话
On Mickey Mouse
谈米老鼠
First Impressions in America: Letter to a Chinese Friend
抵美印象
Source of Essays(文章来源)
內容試閱:
Marriage and Careers for Women The following is the substance
of a talk given at McTyeire School on June 4. The subject assigned
was “Literature As a Profession,” but it was found impossible in
the time allowed to go into the special aspects of the problem. I
understand this is your “vocation week,” and I understand the
subject assigned me is “Literature as a Profession.” Now I do not
believe in such a thing, and there is a double reason why I am
going to advise you against it. First, because literature cannot be
a profession, and he who would devote his or her life-time to
literature would do well to solve the problem of his “rice-bowl”
first through some other means. Literature is par excellence a
product of leisure, and the man who has to worry about the
provisions for his living cannot have much leisure. One can, of
course, earn a living by being a literary hack and produce poetry
or essays by the yard, made to order and delivered on time. But
doing what Matthew Arnold calls the “journeyman work of literature”
is not the same thing as true authorship, and hack-writing is known
to be one of the worst professions a man can choose. The world is
full of tragic tales of the Grub Street, and modern China is no
exception. I know there are extreme cases where a writer is paid
thirty cents per thousand words. The example of Friedrich Hebbel is
worth imitating: how his Muse prospered and his genius expanded
when he had been delivered from poverty and dire want by marrying a
rich Viennese actress! And in China, you have the clear example of
your greatest poetess China ever produced, Li Qingzhao 李清照. Li
Qingzhao could write poetry because she was married and was free at
least from worries about the necessities of life. She could not
have sold her poetry for a bowl of pottage, if she had to live by
it, and she would have written an infinite quantity of inferior
stuff besides. The story of Edgar Allan Poe is always touching and
beautiful when you contemplate it in the distance across the
stretch of a century or so, but I can assure you it would not be so
pleasant to live Poe’s life yourself. I always believe that, had
Poe married a rich wife, he would have bequeathed to the world, not
a finer, but a more important, literary heritage. Secondly, because
I believe your best profession is marriage. You should make clear
the difference between a profession and a life work, between making
a living and leading a career. Profession may be defined as that by
which a man earns his bread. A professional photographer is a man
who has to feed his wife and children by taking photographs of
other people’s wives and children. An amateur photographer is one
who loves picture taking for its own sake. One is a purely economic
problem and the other is a question of the heart and soul. No
doubt, there are times when a profession may be so well chosen as
to answer both. But I want you to think clearly in terms of
economics. If I advise you to get married and am against your
choosing literature as a profession, it is because I do not want
you to be poor. You may revolt against the present system of
marriage and against the whole economic arrangement for men and
women in the present society, but you should clearly understand
what the present economic arrangement is. That economic
arrangement, as you are all aware, is a highly unequal and unfair
one as between the two sexes. A lady teacher is paid generally less
than a man teacher. There are fewer professions open to women than
to men, and in those that are open to you, man is still your most
deadly competitor in this man-made society, both as regards
remuneration, opportunity and talent. I need hardly remind you that
today the best cooks and tailors are men and not women, so we are
beating you on your own traditional ground. An unmarried woman
today suffers disadvantages in the present society that an
unmarried man is exempt from. Only women who have gone forward to
earn their own living know how unfair the present system is against
them. The only profession in which there is no competition from men
is marriage. So, outside marriage, we have all the advantages over
you, while inside marriage, you have all the advantages over us.
That is the present arrangement. You may object to my realistic
view of marriage. My answer is that I am discussing purely the
economic side of the question. No profession, as a profession, is
particularly noble or ignoble. Seen from the point of view of work,
there is no reason why home-making is a more degrading work than
selling bean-curd or won-ton on the street for men, for example.
There is a man at Wing On, who opens and closes the door for you as
you enter. He lives by it, and he is going to open and close doors
for strangers in the next twenty or thirty years, very probably
until he dies. That is not particularly noble. Seen from the point
of view of the “rice-bowl,” both are equally noble or ignoble, and
no one need be ashamed of earning a few pennies for which he does
honest work and renders real service. Of course, .you can
demoralize your profession and make it unworthy of you and of the
comforts and protection society gives you. There are today running
around Shanghai wives and concubines whose only contribution to
society is in powdering themselves and making up parties on the
majong table, and there are other sillier ones who cannot even
contribute this, who cannot even look beautiful or pleasant when
they want to. These women are a dead loss to society. But there are
also men who demoralize their professions. There are returned
students today who are willing to serve any master and prostitute
their talents, and who spend their days in shaking hands with and
handing out ice-cream to foreign visitors in return for the
education abroad society gives them. So, either way you look at it,
the problem is the same for both sexes. Then there is the question
of fitness. Women are more fit for making happy homes than most men
are fit for their jobs, which somehow or other they happen to
stumble into. If you know the full tale of incompetency in the
men’s world all round, you would agree with me. There are college
presidents who ought never to be college presidents but soap-box
orators, and there are government ministers who would do well as
elevator-boys. The machinery of government is not “carried on,” but
is somehow bungled along. Every year in China millions of dollars
are lost and tens of thousands of human lives are sacrificed on
account of incompetency, pettiness or shortsightedness in the
places higher up. You like to hear the words “heart and soul,” and
I can assure you there is a closer approximation between one’s work
and one’s heart and soul in woman’s profession of marriage than in
most men’s professions. Your way of talking pretty little nonsense
to babies and coo-cooing them into silence is the despair of all
fathers. I need hardly also tell you that you also like to get
married. At least, ninety per cent of you do. Of course, ninety per
cent of the men like to get married also, but besides marrying, we
have to seek a means of livelihood to support the family, which you
are exempt from. So you see the knife of unfairness cuts both ways.
If the Legislative Yuan should pass a law tomorrow ordering married
women to provide for their homes, and exempt men from the same, I
should have no great objection. The question of profession is
different for men and for women under the present social system. So
we come to the conclusion that marriage is your best profession:
you know it, you want it, and you are best fit for it. Having
settled the purely economic side of it, the next question is what
you do with the profession of marriage. I have said already that
making a living is not leading a life. Having advised you to settle
your rice-bowl question by marriage, which is a preposterously
unfair bargain for men from the economic point of view, you are now
free to consider the life you lead, morally, intellectually and
spiritually, and the service you can render to society. I am not
talking about feeding husbands’ stomachs, darning socks and rearing
children. That is the mechanical side of it, and it is taken for
granted that you will make as good wives as I expect man college
graduates to be good secretaries and teachers. The question is
deeper than that. The pity of it is that most women cease to live
and exist as machines for producing children. These women take
altogether too realistic a view of their profession. They bear
children for their husbands and, in China, for their husbands’
families and clans and they think their profession is well
fulfilled and they can eat their rice at peace. There are also such
men, clerks, who are satisfied with being good clerks and do not
think of improving their minds or being otherwise useful to
society. I think women, and especially college educated women,
ought to lead their independent lives besides being wives. I think
the idea sponsored by Mrs. Bertrand Russell is worth considering.
Mrs. Russell believes that a woman should get married at about
twenty-five, bear three children at the intervals of three or four
years, and, when she is about thirty-five, should resume her
service in society outside the family. With proper knowledge of
birth control, and with clever arrangements, some women could be
useful to society in general even while they are in the period of
bearing children. The trouble is most women would not. They have
secured their rice-bowls, and they are content. This is altogether
too professional a way of looking at marriage. Mrs. Russell points
out that a woman after thirty-five who has given birth to two or
three children will make a better school teacher or kindergarten
leader than an unmarried girl. Experience and years have given her
a certain mellowness of character and knowledge of the child mind
and the children’s ways which young unmarried girls lack. Nurses
could go on and serve as nurses, and students of medicine could
resume work as assistants or chiefs of hospitals. Publicists could
write articles in periodicals and discuss politics. And lady
authors, who want to try their hands at authorship, may then safely
do so. So far Chinese ladies in the past have only written poetry.
Why shouldn’t they indulge also a little in economics and study the
labor and industrial conditions? Where are all our women gone to?
The trouble with us is that unmarried girls teach kindergartens,
waiting to get married, but married women do not wait to become
kindergarten teachers again. They disappear.
婚嫁与女子职业(十九年六月在中西女塾演讲稿)诸位女士,本周为贵校毕业班之“职业周”,派给兄弟的题目是“文学职业”。兄弟以为世上没有这种东西,我根据两种理由,要劝你们不要选文学为职业。第一,因为文学不能为一种职业,凡要专心著作的人,应先解决饭碗问题。文学是有闲者之产品,要谋生的人,却没有这许多闲暇。自然,也有人卖文为生,无论诗词墓志,都可吁定润格,按期交货。如为大书局编教科书的编辑,在颁新课程标准一二月之后,便有甚合行情之出品上市。但是这是卖文,而不一定是卖文学。诸位须知卖文是世上最苦的一种职业,中外都是这样,伦敦就有Grub
Strect专给卖文的穷人住的街巷。奥国诗人及戏剧大家黑贝尔(Friedrich
Hebbel)起初文章做不出,后来娶了一位有钱的维也纳明星才文章大进,著作等身,这足证明余说之不谬。在中国,女诗人李清照,也是嫁了丈夫,解决饭碗问题,才能做出好词来。使李清照靠卖稿为生,我想她的《漱玉词》是换不到三碗绿豆汤的。《漱玉词》之外,又必写了几千万字的无聊作品。所以赵明诚在中国文学史上的大功,就是能养活一位女诗人。我想Edgar
Allan
Poe能娶一位有钱的太大,他即使不能有更精到的,也必有更丰富的作品留给后世。第二,因为我相信你们最好的职业是婚嫁。你们要认清职业与人生建树之不同。职业就是谋饭之路。比方以照相为职业的人,可以说是照他人妻子之相以养自己妻子的一种生计。以照相为嗜好者便又不同。一个是纯粹经济问题,一个是心头上的一种偏好。自然,有时职业也可以与心灵所好相近。但是我要诸位清楚认识此中的经济问题。我所以劝你们出嫁,不劝你们卖文,就是不愿意你们穷乏。你们也许要叛抗现在的婚姻制度及经济制度,但是你们至少须认清现在的经济制度是怎么一回事。现在的经济制度,你们都明白,是两性极不平等的。女教员薪水总比男教员少,英美诸国也是如此,在英国则甚至法律不许太太们教书。无论中外,女人可进去的职业(如按摩,打字,女招待等)总比男人可进去的少,而在女人可进去的职业中,男子还会同你们竞争,而在酬劳机会天才上都占便宜。我不必提醒诸位,世上最好的厨夫及裁缝都是男子,并不是女子,所以在你们的传统地盘,也是男子占了胜利。独身的女子比独身的男子在社会上吃种种的亏。只有独身自给的女子,亲阅其境,才知道这吃亏不平等到什么程度。所以唯一没有男子竞争的职业,就是婚姻。在婚姻内,女子处处占了便宜,在婚姻外,男子处处占了便宜。这是现行的经济制度。也许你们认为这样看婚姻,未免太实利,太拆台。我的答复是,现在讲的是纯粹关于经济方面。世上职业,原无所谓贵贱。当作谋生讲,女子出嫁并不一定比男子卖豆腐馄饨卑贱。永安公司有一个人整天价站在那儿替你们开门。这是他的职业,也许他要一生站在那儿替不相识的姑娘太太开门。问他这有什么人生意义,他也答不出。但是作职业看,凡有工作,都值得报酬,并无贵贱之可言。自然,你们也可以得了饭碗,成为社会废物,对不起你们的职业。上海就有许多太太姨太太,她们在社会上惟一的贡献,就是坐汽车,买熏鱼,擦粉,烫头发,叉麻雀,度此一生。这种人是白吃社会的。但是也有不少男子,也是对不起他们的职业。有许多留学生受国家培养,回来做几篇救国论等政客收买,或是回来专门端冰琪琳给外国贵客,所以男女都是有好有坏,谁也不比谁强多少。还有一点,就是职业与才性相称问题。女子造一快乐家庭,大概比通常男子碰上的职业可以说才调相称。假如你们知道男子尸位素餐祸国殃民的底细,你们必定与我同意。有的大学校长只配吹牛,做那里的交际科员,有的部长才调只配开电梯。世上的要人治国,并不是真正“治”的,世上的饭,多半是“混”的。你不混饭吃,总有人会来替你混饭吃,每年中国人民死于灾,死于战,死于病,或流离失所,丧亡沟壑,都是因为有男子在混饭吃所致。说一句良心话,女人治家很少混饭吃的,多半是与才调相称的。我常看见母亲去哄小孩睡觉,不一会又出来同人谈天,心中非常佩服。做过父亲而哄过小孩的人,才知道这种饭不是人人可以混的。再一层,我不必说,你们是称心甘愿出嫁的。至少你们十九是如此。自然十九的男子也愿意娶亲,但是我们于娶亲之外,还得另找一种职业,并无所谓称心不称心。所以我们的结论是:出嫁是女子最好,最相宜,最称心的职业。经济方面解决,我们可以进而讨论第二问题,就是对比婚嫁职业,应该作如何观法。我已说过,谋生与在人世建树二者不同。你们既选了那给男子大吃亏的婚嫁职业,解决了饭碗问题之后,就可以自由研究,何以为社会上有用的人。我不是指梳篦箕帚烧菜补袜诸事,因为我假定你们都是贤妻,如我假定大毕业学生都会记账抄账,问题是更深了。可惜许多女人嫁后只知道做生育机器,不另求上进。自然也有许多男子,只管抄账,问心无愧,处之泰然。这才是过于实利主义的人生观,或婚姻观。我想女子,尤其是受过教育的女子,除了做妻之外,还应有社会上独立的工作。我想罗素夫人的意思是可取的。她以为女子应廿五岁左右出嫁。隔三四年生一小孩,这样生了三个小孩,到了三十五岁,又来加入社会工作。有了适宜的节育方法及相当的设备,有的女人在生产期间仍可服务社会。罗素夫人指出一点,就是三十五岁养过小孩的女人做教员比闺女好,因为从她做母亲的经验,她更能明白儿童心理而有应付儿童的本领。我向来反对闺女做校长,尤其是女校的校长,因为她们的人生观道德观都不是成熟的。现在最可惜的,就是女教员等出阁,出阁者并不等着出来再做教员。她们不见了。你们要做文人的女子,到此时来做文人,还不迟。关于女文人,我有一样不满意。她们只会做诗。清朝出了一千余女“诗人”,却出不了一个女史论家或考据家。诗是最难卖钱的。这也是我反对女子卖文为生之一重大原因。