The disappearance of heroism in western culture

Heroism is one of the most frequent revolutionary discourses in the official ideological propaganda of the Soviet Union in the Babel era. Since it is official and revolutionary, its characteristics of perfection and solidification are outstanding, and it often shines with dazzling sacred aura, which is beyond doubt and can not be blasphemed. Therefore, when Babel 1924' s series of cavalry novels were published in The Red Virgin, Leo, Modern Russian and other magazines, it attracted sharp criticism from Budiyoni, the former commander of the First Cavalry. In his view, Babel's novels about cavalry are not about cavalry, but about gangs in Machno. His artistic fiction is a slander on cavalry heroes, and Babel is an out-and-out class enemy. The novel's author uses such a resounding name as cavalry, apparently to bluff and convince readers that our revolution is an outdated lie made by a handful of gangsters and shameless usurpers? Decadent old intellectuals are dirty and lustful. Their representative figures, such as kuprin, ran to the other side of the barricade, but I don't know whether Babel was timid or accidental, but he relished spreading the old nonsense reflected through his tyrannical and degenerate prism. . Because budyonny's criticism is very political, Babel's literary tutor Gorky has to defend his beloved disciple. Budyonny himself likes to beautify not only his soldiers and appearance, but also horses. Babel beautifies the soul of cavalry soldiers. In my opinion, it is better and more real than Nikolai Nikolai Gogol's beautification of Zaporoge. Man is still a beast in many ways, and he is also a man. In culture? Still a teenager (Huo Ming 199 1: 87). Although Gorky's defense is not so powerful, he can still jump out of the shackles of political ideology to the greatest extent and evaluate cavalry from a higher and purer literary humanity perspective. Budyonny, like most ordinary people, evaluates literary works by the national ideological discourse and the political first standard. The sad reality is that the latter is powerful and ruthless, so even with Gorky's defense, Babel's life could not be saved. 1940 was executed politically.

Babel subverts the war hero expected by readers with a brand-new artistic theme in Cavalry. To some extent, his sharp and ruthless pen completely disintegrated the inherent connotation of heroism in the official discourse of the Soviet Union, and at the same time brought him bad luck in life. This subversion is not done in the form of shallow and naked criticism. As an intellectual, Babel's humanitarian enlightenment and human nature anatomy will never be single and one-sided, otherwise he will lose the depth and poetry of literature and become a kind of political propaganda, so he will not be highly praised by Gorky and other masters, nor will he conquer the western literary world in his later years.

Through in-depth reading, it is reasonable to believe that irony and intuition are Babel's secret weapons to disintegrate the official heroic proposition of the Soviet Union. In the cavalry series of short stories, Babel's genius is brought into full play, and the forms of irony and intuition are varied and the connotation is complex and profound, which completely exceeds the category of pure literary skills mentioned by Han Shaogong. Avenue is invisible, and without literature, it is far away. Does he no longer need form, or does he have no form, just like nature itself? This may be a rare exception in the history of literature. Because his blood vessels are full of the peak feelings of the century's pains, just sprinkling a drop or two can take people's souls. He is not a writer, but a soul stenographer and a soul reporter who climbed out of the dead. Even if his skills and methods are ignored, they are redundant? (Han Shaogong 2009: 67). His skills and methods are insignificant. Compared with what he wants to express, the strangeness and magnificence of art are in a secondary position. Those heroic propositions that are completely different from our expectations excite readers and inspire strong aesthetic effects.

2 satire

Irony has almost become a cliche in modernist literary terms, and its understanding has become mediocre, and it has completely lost its artistic shock in the hands of writers. Babel is an exception, and his satire has melted into the blood. His keen sense of smell for English and French literature and the profound accumulation of Jewish tradition, coupled with the baptism of blood and fire, made his irony basically divorced from its superficial meaning and integrated with literary themes. Babel is full of novel genius, and his fighting life is changeable and fresh. Therefore, in the re-examination of heroism, irony is used in various ways: joking, sharp or melancholy, like a multi-part ensemble, pointing to the same dimension, while the listener's experience is changing.

In my first goose? Me? In order to integrate into the Cossack group and gain their recognition in dignity, they took an extremely ridiculous behavior to express themselves: I turned around and saw someone else's sword not far away. A noble goose is pacing in the yard, quietly combing its feathers. I dashed forward and knocked the goose to the ground. The goose head smacked under my boots and the contents fell out directly. Snow-white goose neck separated by feces, dead goose wings are still flapping? (Isaac? Babel 2004)。

Sabre is used to kill the enemy, ready to wave on the battlefield. Here, the sharp sabre is in sharp contrast with the serene and weak goose. This seemingly brave behavior is playful and absurd, just like a children's game. What is even more ridiculous is that those brave and tenacious Cossacks actually agreed with this boring move and accepted Lyutov. Compassion and compassion, humanity and love disappeared in the bloody war, and heroes lost their traditional sense of helping the weak and helping the poor and hating evil, but showed it in an unconventional way. However, the author did not stop there. After the wolf-like soldiers destroyed the delicious goose meat, the author strengthened his psychological feelings with such brushstrokes. At night, I was wrapped in fresh moisture by its boundless sheets, and the palm of its loving mother pressed on my forehead at night? . At that time, that war, the judgment of heroism lacked a dazzling sacred aura and more complicated humanitarian content. Soldiers only admit bloody laws in bloody reality. ? Me? In this case, we have to follow this law, and the natural instinct of intellectuals makes? Me? Can't be at ease, because that's not after all? Me? Ideal value.

After all, killing geese is a child's game, and killing talents is the duty of the so-called hero. In St. Valentine's Church, after a division occupied the small town of Brezhko, the author presented us with a set of ironic pictures: the clerk of the division copied official documents at the Catholic priest's house, leisurely eating cucumbers, while the orderly snored. An old woman with long hair limped along? Me? Next to it, hold it? Me? My boots fell to the ground and kissed. A soldier is playing a vulgar joke on a nurse. Here, the sacred meaning of revolution is dissolved in comedy, and the mask of heroism is pulled down and then shredded:

? Under the cloudy sky background, there was a bearded man in an orange robe, running barefoot, with his mouth torn open and blood dripping. At this time, our ears suddenly seem to think of a hoarse howl, only to see hatred chasing the man in the robe and catching up with him. He held out his bent arm to stop the blow, and purple blood gurgled out of his hand. A Cossack boy standing next to me saw a dramatic cry, lowered his head and ran away. In fact, there is no need to escape, because the statue in the niche is just Jesus Christ? This is the most unusual statue of God I have ever seen in my life? (Isaac? Babel 2004: 197).

A Cossack soldier actually tore open the old man's mouth in front of the statue of Christ and nailed his foot in. Obviously, the last sentence is the most powerful, which is equivalent to criticizing the above-mentioned series of atrocities. The soldier's courage should have been applied to the battlefield, but now it is applied to the helpless Jewish old man. Here, the author regards Jesus as the opposite of atrocities, which is extremely ironic and sharp in criticism. Some critics believe that Babel's non-public condemnation was a circuitous strategy based on the official context of the Soviet Union at that time. In this regard, the author cannot agree. If we want to avoid the entanglement of national consciousness, it is more effective to simply hide it completely. In fact, his so-called strategy failed to protect himself from stormy attacks and eventually died. Therefore, the reasonable explanation that can be found is that Babel himself loves this artistic way, which is precisely the best form for him to express his observation and perception of life. His status as a novelist and temperament as a poet do not allow him to adopt other explicit and spicy political forms. Ehrenburg once said. The similarities between Babel and all the great Russian writers from Nikolai Nikolai Gogol to Gorky are humanitarianism, striving to defend the people, protecting their joys and hopes, and their short-lived lives? (ehrenburg 199 1: 135). His warrior complex and intellectual nature do not allow him to portray tyrannical soldiers as hooligans, but only to pull them down from the altar of heroes.

The connotation of heroism must have the heroic spirit of conquering everything. But Babel tells us that sometimes their helplessness and sadness are suffocating. Satire and melancholy interweave in The Widow, which has a touching artistic effect, and the sad mood of the protagonist's ending is also shrouded between the lines: the battle-hardened colonel is about to die, but the coachman forces his wife to indulge in the wilderness. What is even more unbearable is that the colonel is watching all this:

? They both landed on the lush weeds, and the moon slowly climbed out from behind the dark clouds and stayed on Saska's naked and hot knees. ?

? Why don't you get warm? , chevlev muttered, look! He is catching up with the 14 division.

? Levka gasped in the bushes and made a killing sound. The hazy moon lingers in the sky as if begging. The distant gunfire echoed in the air. Stipa grass rustles on the restless earth, and the stars in August fall into the grass. ? (Isaac? Babel 2004)

? Why don't you get warm? ,? Look! He's chasing the first 14 division? It is a genius to suddenly insert a short monologue into the head in the embarrassing situation of men and women having sex. There is no abuse, no resentment, and the calm tone is full of black humor, but it makes readers strongly feel the author's silent satire on men and women and the deep pain and helplessness in his head. He couldn't stop the coachman from adultery with his wife. At this moment, who can feel the prestige of the hero in the past? Who can not lament the hero's ending? Later, the author clearly told us that this happened on the battlefield filled with smoke. At this moment, many shells flew down to the ground with many sounds? . There is a tension between fierce fighting and wanton sensual pleasure, and we really feel the humble helplessness of heroes as mortals in this tension.

3 intuitive

If the author's instinctive humanitarian complex can be more or less revealed in irony, then more often, when he expresses these heroes, he only shows readers a completely objective world in the most objective and calm language. Babel is called a naturalist writer because he hides himself as much as possible in his creation and disappears behind the narrative like Flaubert. At this time, Babel, as an outsider and observer, presented some things that are easy to cause mental shock concisely and vividly to the maximum extent, sometimes even coldly. As he himself said in his diary, it should go deep into the hearts of soldiers. Everything I am doing is shocking. These principled beasts? (Isaac? Babel 2005: 2 13). It is with a great genius that Babel suppressed his surging passion and recorded the other side of the hero with a hidden objective narrator. There are two narrative ways of his intuitive artistic expression: one is the third-person narrative, in which the author objectively records the external performance of the characters and expresses the meaning through some extreme disharmony; The other is the first-person narrative, in which the protagonist tells and explains the inconsistent behavior himself, and his inner world tells the whole story without any comments from the author.

Prishaupa is a special item among cavalry. Through more than 1000 words, Babel created a different kind of hero. Prishaupa, as a variant of Hero, makes you have to rethink the ethical culture and even make readers doubt their moral cognition. At the beginning, the author told us that Prishaupa was a scum: he was a beggar, party member, a carefree syphilis patient, who was cleared out of the production party, and he was a king of cowhide who lied and didn't draft, and only deserved to collect junk in the future? . However, the reader's first reading impression was immediately shattered by subsequent memories. In the political struggle, Prishaupa's parents were betrayed by their neighbors and died in the hands of the White Army. After his death, his home was ransacked by his neighbors. Later, Prishaupa returned to his hometown for revenge and staged a bloody scene. He wore a black cloak and hung a machete around his waist, and went door to door looking for his family's relics. Whenever he found her mother's things or his father's pipe, he nailed the old woman to the cross, hung the dog on the pulley by the well, and painted the excrement on the icon. More and more people are killing people, as if it were revenge by the original blood relatives. ? The young Cossack sat in the field and counted the children. The numbers kept expanding, and the whole village was silent. ? Bloody violence, inhumanity! Just when your reading psychology is about to collapse, Prichopa's revenge brings you into the fog again:

? He shut himself in the room and drank for two days and nights, crying while drinking and chopping the table with a saber. ?

? On the third night, the villagers saw smoke coming from the farmhouse in Prishaupa. He was injured by the fire and his clothes were burned. He slipped out of the cowshed, put a pistol in the cow's mouth and shot the cow. The fire burns like Easter. Prishaupa untied the reins, jumped into the saddle, cut off a lock of hair, threw it into the fire and fawned on him. ?

The reader can't see his heart, nor can the author, and perhaps even Prishopper himself can't fathom the abyss of his heart. Here, the author's first impression is by no means fiction or melodramatic. A dissolute woman who likes to brag and suffers from syphilis. This is the state of mind of Prishaupa now, and I am afraid it will be in the future. However, who can associate cowardly waste with vicious avengers? Intoxication and despair after atrocities are another level. The triple impression outlines the ups and downs and constructs a three-dimensional portrait of the characters. Here, our inherent moral concepts are challenged as never before. Fallen villains and tough soldiers, bloody avengers and happy heroes, crazy killings and frustrated sadness are strangely mixed. How can we get rid of the true essence of heroism? Maybe it will never work, and it will never be entangled. At this moment, the aura of perfect heroism in the official ideology was shattered, and the reader was led to the fate of Prisopa, and he was drunk and cried with him.

In this article, the characters are first non-heroes, then become bloody and cold heroes, and then become passionate heroes. Several qualities are unified in one person, which is extremely complicated. To complete this process, Babel did not exaggerate in language, but condensed and flashed in thousands of words; There is no subjective discussion suggestion, only a calm narrative. He said it himself. In a letter Goethe wrote to Aikman, I came across the definition of short story style, which I think is more natural than any other definition? Tolstoy used this to describe the story that happened around him every minute? But obviously I can only use this to describe the most interesting five minutes in a 24-hour day? (Asia? Chukowski 2004: 79)。 This is not only his calm and intuitive way, careful choice, the weight of his pen and the thickness of his lines drown out the narrator's subjective emotional will, but also a reinterpretation of heroism.

Another masterpiece, Salt, shows the hero's other world in the first person. Narrator? Me? (Barmashov) Sitting on the train, she hated the female stowaways who hitchhiked, thinking that they were sabotaging the revolutionary cause and digging the corner of the revolution. When a woman with a baby in her arms asks. Me? Out of a hidden heart, I begged to take the train? With the consent of her comrades-in-arms, she was allowed to get on the bus and prevented her comrades from trying to be indecent.

? Every cossack was burned by my words full of truth, so he sat her down and said to her, woman, you sit in the corner and nurse your children like all mothers. No one will touch you in the corner. You will go back to your husband as you wish, and no one will destroy your chastity. We believe that you are a kind person, and you will take good care of our successors, because we are getting older every day, but there are few young people. Whether we are in active service or extended service, life is hard, and we are hungry and cold. As for you, woman, please feel free to sit here.

The night passed, and the woman passed the night safely, while the other girls who hitchhiked were suffering? Is it reasonable? Gang rape? Me? At this time, I found that the woman holding the baby was also a salt dealer, denouncing the woman's shameful behavior:

? But, woman, look at the Cossacks. They promoted you to the status of working people's mother in the Republic of China. Look at these two mother-in-law They are still crying there. How much pain they suffered overnight. Look at our wives who grow wheat in Kuban wheat field. They are widowed, exhausting women's strength, and their husbands are living a bachelor's life. Human nature is evil, so they can't help raping girls who fall into their lives. But you, they didn't touch you, although you are a cruel woman, you deserve to fuck you. Look at Russia, black and blue.

? Me? Comparing her to a flea and a counter-revolution, I threw her off the train in a rage and was furious to see that she was still safe and sound. At the suggestion of the Cossacks, I took the loyal gun off the wall and washed away this shame from the workers' land and country. ? In this novel, Bama Schouw's behavior before and after is very different and sincere. His logic is that respecting women with children is their special privilege, and there is no moral problem in gang rape of young girls, although he also suffers for their pain. However, once he found out that this woman had cheated him, he was even so angry that he wanted to die with her, which showed his loyalty to the revolutionary cause in an unusual way. The purpose of the revolution is to save all the people who suffer, and that woman is one of them. She was forced by life to smuggle salt, but Barmashov and his Cossack brothers didn't understand this. The hearts of these soldiers and heroes have been greatly distorted, and the war has mutated their values. First-person narration hits the heart of Cossack soldiers. Although the author has no comments, it is enough to subvert our narrow understanding of the connotation of heroic soldiers.

In fact, taking revolutionism and heroism as one pole and Judaism and intellectuals as the other pole comes down to the conflict between official heroic values and humanitarian humanistic traditions. Bater achieved this kind of confrontation with profound satire and indifferent and intuitive art form. Some critics point out that Babel has double feelings about violence? He waved the sword of literature with infatuation and resistance, and his disintegration of heroism was carried out in resistance, but the infatuation complex made this disintegration so special.