Library

In addition to epistolary prose, "Letters of Zhou Zuoren" also includes seventy-seven private letters published for the first time. They are all leisurely and natural expressions, reflecting Zhou Zuoren's interests and hobbies at that time: writing, searching for books, collecting stamps, talking about dreams, having dinner parties, drinking, admiring the moon, looking at flowers, engraving, making paper, etc. Through these, you can see the author's life, which is very interesting.

"Lu Xun's Youth" is a collection of commemorative texts written by Zhitang at the invitation of newspapers and magazines on the 20th anniversary of Lu Xun's death. It is another kind of work about Lu Xun after "Lu Xun's Hometown" and "Characters in Lu Xun's Novels". On the basis of the former, it adds new facts and more systematically introduces Lu Xun's early life, cultural interests, and the foundation of his thoughts. Different from many one-sided and conceptual works that deified Lu Xun at that time, Zhitang particularly emphasized the "human" side of Lu Xun, such as "Lu Xun's Smile" and "Lu Xun and His Brothers", which allow us to see the "angry" but "amiable" Lu Xun.

"Ku Yu Zhai Preface and Postscript" contains fifty-four chapters. Zhou Zuoren's preface and postscript best reflect his style and characteristics, and are also his summary and reflection on his own ideological context and writing process. They are called prefaces and postscripts, and they are actually beautiful and wonderful articles. Zhou Zuoren divided "Ku Yu Zhai Preface and Postscript" into two parts: self-preface and other prefaces. The 36 articles in the first part are all self-titled, that is, they are prefaces and postscripts for themselves. The 17 articles in the second part are all prefaces and postscripts written by others. This is a preliminary division from the perspective of the objects served by the prefaces and postscripts. However, from a stylistic perspective, the author believes that they can be further divided into narrative prefaces and postscripts, argumentative prefaces and postscripts, and lyrical prefaces and postscripts based on different ways of expression.

"Reminiscences of Zhitang" is a relatively comprehensive memoir written by Zhou Zuoren, which can also be said to be an autobiography of his later years. It records Mr. Zhou Zuoren's life in detail. The book is divided into four volumes, taking time as the line to tell the important events that Zhou Zuoren experienced in his life. The book retains many important historical materials of modern literature and society, and cites a large number of the author's previous works in the process of tracing the past. It can be called a "collection" that reflects the purpose of Zhou Zuoren's life writings. This book is rich in content, covers a wide range of topics, has vivid and fluent writing, and is highly readable. Readers can get a more comprehensive understanding of Mr. Zhou Zuoren's life.

Includes fifteen articles written by Zhou Zuoren before and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War (April to December 1945). The articles continue the style since the 1940s. One type still talks about "leisurely", describing scenes, objects, and commentaries, and eloquently talks about it, such as "Poems about Bamboo Branches", "Stone Road" and "Dongchangfang Story"; the other type continues to "seriously" explore ideas, trace their roots, and speak loudly, such as "Mortal Faith" and "Past Work" "Articles of Two Ghosts" plays an important role in the history of Zhou Zuoren's writing and thought. In memory of three old friends, Chen Duxiu, Qian Xuantong, and Liu Bannong, by excerpting and annotating their official slips, he recounted their past interactions and emotions.

Includes twenty-eight articles written by Zhou Zuoren in the occupied Peiping from 1940 to 1943. Different from the leisurely conversations about making a cup of tea under the paper windows of the tiled houses in the early days, and different from the flashes of thoughts in the form of short notes in the middle period, here are "serious articles" about Chinese literature and thought. From the traditional future of Chinese literature to Chinese thought, from enlightenment to morality and women's studies, from recollections of studying abroad to nostalgia for old friends, although it is not a lengthy discussion, it is a sorting out of Zhou Zuoren's own thoughts, who has experienced the pain of bronze camels and thorns and was stranded in occupied areas.

It contains eighteen articles by Zhou Zuoren (including inscriptions), most of which were written in the late 1940s. Among them are the history, customs, and famous things that Zhitang always likes to talk about. They cover a wide range of topics, have far-reaching ideas, and are inspiring in their calm talk, such as "The Story of Kong Rong", "Poems About Bamboo Branches", "Custom Poems of Beijing", etc.; There are also serious articles such as "The Transformation of Moral Affairs" and the continuation of "Medicine" "Japanese Insights No. 4" And "Re-Understanding of Japan" bring his Japanese studies to a close; there are also works of memory such as "Hangzhou Prison Fifty Years Ago" and "Inside and Outside the Red Mansion", which are plain and true, do not fall short of empty words, and are the forerunners of "Reminiscences of Zhitang".

This book is a collection of Zhou Zuoren's essays, including 21 essays, including "A Sweet Mouth", "One of the Dreams", "On Novel Education", "Mr. Warrior and Me", "The Story of Encountering a Wolf", etc. In this book, the author begins to recall his reading and enters a "summary period", so the included articles contain many articles discussing ideological issues. Similarly, this book also continues his consistent style of remembering old friends and expressing his feelings while reading.

The title of "Characters in Lu Xun's Novels" seems to be a collection of reviews that explores the art of Lu Xun's novels, but it is actually the same as "Lu Xun's Hometown". The focus is still on "writing about the garden and its surroundings" and "writing about the characters, time and place in the two novels", that is, "describing without pretense". The novels discussed in the book are limited to "The Scream" and "Wandering", plus "Morning Blossoms Picked Up at Dusk", which is classified as a collection of essays. The various characters who appear in it are archetypal indexed and their background deeds are verified, but they will never fall into Dong Heng's positivist school. On the surface, it is an index for textual research, but in reality it focuses on illuminating customs, introducing interesting local dialects, and focusing on the artistic issues of the novel such as the relationship between poetry and reality. It occasionally makes brief comments on one or two places, with insightful insights, and can often reveal the best features of Lu Xun's novels that others have not seen in one sentence.

"Lu Xun's Hometown" is one of Zhou Zuoren's important works recalling Lu Xun in his later years. It describes Lu Xun's life, study, and friendships during his youth from four parts: "Baicao Garden", "Inside and Outside the Garden", "Lu Xun in Tokyo" and "Old Stories of Bu Shu Bookstore". It not only outlines Lu Xun who was active inside and outside the garden, but also touches on the people and things looming in the background. In his "living atmosphere", volumes of genre paintings of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China are slowly unfolded. The article follows the plain and sincere style of Chengzhitang's works that recall people's memories. The writing is concise and unsophisticated. With just a few strokes, it can describe people, events and scenes in a way that no one else can.

"Woodchip Collection" is the representative of Zhou Zuoren's later prose. The subject matter continues the previous themes of nostalgic memories of the past, famous objects and customs, plants, trees, insects and fish, reminiscing about the founding of "Silk", stories about old friends such as Cai Jiemin and Qian Xuandong, talking about Greek mythology, northern and southern snacks, analyzing the lunar and fishing calendars, avoiding taboos about changing surnames, and even topics such as bats and owls, crows and parrots can be discussed comfortably. But I no longer write long essays, and I also reduce the quotation of large paragraphs of ancient texts. I only write short chapters and eloquent stories, which are concise and lively, and sometimes have humorous conversations.

Mainly includes Zhou Zuoren's works from April to October 1937. As the author said, "There are many leisurely topics in the articles in this book." However, they are all leisurely topics, but the content can be divided into two categories. One expresses interest, and the other is false. The author continues to criticize the darkest phenomena in Chinese and Western cultures in articles such as "On Literary Inquisition". In Literary Prison, the author pays special attention to the category of "killing people with thoughts" and points out that the essence of ideological tyranny is that people generally lose their ability to think and judge, and consciously converge towards tyranny itself. Zhou always maintains a clear understanding of traditional Chinese culture, carefully distinguishes it, and does not let go of the bad side.

"A Corner of the Study" can be said to be a companion volume to "Quotations from the Medicine Hall". It contains one hundred and ninety-one reading notes by Zhou Zuoren. It is also a work of Zhou Zuoren who "didly study the opinions of his predecessors, discern them, pick out the sand with gold, and grind the pestle into a needle." Therefore, it is short and flexible, perhaps even less than ten lines. It also involves many ancient books, which to a large extent reflects Zhou Zuoren's thinking and analysis of traditional Chinese culture. It incorporates modern thoughts into the comments on ancient books, making it a unique and interesting read.

Sabo was a famous female poet in ancient Greece who was comparable to Homer. She had a great influence on European and American literature at that time and in later generations. It has been more than a hundred years since Sapo entered the Chinese people's horizons at the beginning of the last century. The spread of Sapo in China was aided by Zhou Zuoren. This book introduces the ancient Greek poetess Sappho, with poetry as the main subject and life as the secondary. The six articles are all taken from "The Life of Sappho" written by the British writer Weigall. The poems by Szabo collected in this article are also translated according to the original text of the poetry collection.

This collection selects Zhou Zuoren's works from 1937 to 1941. According to the author himself, this collection "contains a lot of things that I cherish very much, and I think there are quite a lot of interesting essays in them." It is one of the best collections in his life. Zhou's prose style has always been described as leisurely. In his opinion, this can be divided into "small leisurely" and "big leisurely". The latter means "it is helpless, so there is no need to bother yourself much, and you can only deal with it with a gentle and interesting attitude." He also said that "leisure is originally a melancholy thing." The emotional component of wanting to say leisure just adds to the "bitter taste" of the article. "Collection of Medicinal Flavors" best reflects this feature of Zhou's articles.

It contains thirty-three articles by Zhou Zuoren, most of which were written from August 1944 to January 1945. The serious articles about literature refer to historical records and trace the source, the emotional articles about remembering old friends are indifferent to life and death, sincere and touching, and the talks about rain, sending off stoves, and the beauty of Japanese paper are leisurely. As the editor, Mr. Zhi'an, said, "Almost all the features of prose in previous issues are shown in "Before the Beginning of Spring", and it is given a new and contemporary color, so it is unique among Zhou's works."

Containing forty-five articles, it is the most representative one in Zhou Zuoren's self-selected collection. Zhou Zuoren called himself Zhitang, and its significance can be seen in the "Zhitang Shuo" in this collection. The greatest value of this collection is that it shows Zhou Zuoren's early achievements in his creative career, including poems, essays, sketches, essays, translations and other styles. It not only maintains his own taste, absorbs various knowledge, but also adheres to cultural criticism. It can be said that it is clear, gloomy, evil, elegant and upright in one furnace. It was his most satisfying work at that time.

It contains fifty articles written by Zhou Zuoren around 1940, which is a new attempt in his prose writing style. It is in the same category as "A Corner of the Study". The articles are short in length and are close to "notes written by predecessors". The author describes his writing process as a book: "After reading it or having some thoughts, I often take a piece of paper to jot down its outline, and over time I accumulate one or two hundred entries." "Yaotang Quotations" is one of them. The title "Quotations" is not intended to imitate Confucianism and Buddhism and record one's own words and deeds for future generations, but to "speak more concisely" and select a few points to capture some flash of thought.