Creation background
Wilde lived in the Victorian era of19th century, and the British industrial revolution was in full swing. The whole society has undergone unprecedented drastic changes, materialistic, money first, and the wind of "mercenary" permeates every corner of Great Britain. From 65438 to the beginning of 2009, after the establishment of the capitalist system in western Europe, it had a great impact on social psychology. People's world outlook and values have changed greatly. In that society, the bourgeoisie erased the sacred glory of all the most respected professions. It turned doctors, lawyers, priests, poets and scholars into paid servants. "Faced with the money worship, bourgeois philosophy and hypocritical morality of the society at that time, Wilde described a fictional story in the fairy tale" The Nightingale and the Rose "to reveal the naked money relationship between people in British capitalist society and all kinds of ugly phenomena arising from it. Pursuing the aesthetic world of the soul and confronting vulgar social reality with the beauty of art [2]
character introduction
nightingale
The nightingale in the work is a believer in love, or a representative of art. She saw a student crying because she couldn't find a red rose for her lover. In order to help this "lover", she exchanged her singing and life for a red rose. The nightingale expects human love and is willing to sacrifice her life for the love between people. [3]
works appreciation
Thought of works
The protagonist in The Nightingale and the Rose is a weak nightingale. With extremely small strength and fearless spirit, she has done "earth-shattering" things that neither the wise nor the strong can do for the happiness of strangers, which is thought-provoking. In the work, Wilde ingeniously placed his nest in the branches and leaves of a 25-meter-high tree to shelter him from the wind and rain. Metaphor is weak and needs the care of the strong.
However, even this weak person still needs the care of others. When she saw the students crying because they would lose their love if they didn't get the red roses, she was deeply moved by her "sincerity" for love. When she learned that she had to sing a beautiful song in front of a sharp rose to get it, she said without hesitation, "The price of death is huge, but love is more precious than life." Willingly sacrificed his precious life for "love" and dyed the rose white with one cavity of blood. Wilde spent about a quarter of his works describing the process of nightingale making red roses with all her strength and extreme pain, especially when the plot reached its climax. "When it was dying, it hurriedly sang the last note. The bright moon heard her sad and moving song, moved to wander in the sky and forgot the dawn. The red rose she painstakingly cultivated heard this song, and on a cold morning, she trembled ecstatically, and she didn't bloom soon. " At this moment, the rose tree shouted eagerly, "Look, look! The roses are in bloom. " But the nightingale did not answer. Thorns pierced her chest, and she was already lying dead on the grass-this is what Wilde eulogized that she was willing to sacrifice her noble sentiments for the happiness of others. He believes that pure beauty can touch the world-the moon is stagnant, and red roses are in full bloom in winter. In contrast, when the nightingale couldn't wait to go back and tell the students the good news, the students who were influenced by the vulgar world thought, "Like most artists, she just pretended to be insincere, and it is even more impossible to sacrifice herself for others." Here, Wilde once again mocked the so-called "men of insight" in the upper class at that time. [4]
The student frowned when she dedicated this hard-won red rose to the daughter of the professor who promised him love. "How can it go with my evening dress?" . Everyone knows that the nephew of the minister of command gave me a lot of jewels, which are more valuable than flowers. This sharp contrast reflects Oscar Wilde's ideal and pursuit of using "beauty" in art to compete with "ugliness" in secular reality. In order to further make readers tremble, Wilde then launched a sad scene: the student who reprimanded the professor's daughter for being "extremely forgetful and ungrateful" threw the "red rose" bought by the nightingale with her blood and life into the street, rolled it into the sewer, and then a wheel ran over it heavily. What a ridiculous scene, the nightingale shows its noble soul in contrast with shallow women and young students. Wilde made the finishing touch and tore up the so-called aristocratic fig leaf in the upper class at that time. [2]
If we understand this fairy tale carefully, from the perspective of philosophy of life, we can also see three different outlook on life expressed by the author. The first is the idealistic life represented by the nightingale, which the author praises strongly: they pursue all good things and pay the price of their lives for their ideals; They are not afraid of death, because death is a necessary means for them to realize their ideals and values in life. The second kind of students' outlook on life: on the one hand, they are eager to realize beautiful ideals and pursue beautiful things, on the other hand, they are addicted to fantasy, do not seek progress, and place their hopes on the lucky god for the realization of their ideals; Once the ideal conflicts with reality, they will blame others and avoid contradictions, and eventually either send their feelings into the ideal world of books, or indulge themselves and wander in the troubled world. The third vulgar outlook on life, represented by the professor's daughter, is to go with the flow and love vanity: the professor's daughter has only external beauty and nothing in her stomach. Beauty is just a springboard for them to pursue a luxurious life. They are vulgar, obsessed with power, reputation and material enjoyment, and have no sympathy. They are ugly representatives in the secular world. [ 1]
Artistic feature
In this work, the author selects a large number of common things in nature and gives them beauty, including beautiful animals such as green lizards, flowers, mermaids, pigeons and corals, beautiful plants such as oak trees, daisies and daffodils, and beautiful emeralds, opals, rubies, gardens, oceans, snow-capped mountains, grasslands, moonlight, music, harps, violins and the moon. Nightingale and rose are the embodiment of beauty. They not only have a beautiful appearance, but also have a beautiful inner spirit. This ideal beauty is what all arts should express. [ 1]
The Nightingale and the Rose is not only a well-known imaginative fairy tale, but also a profound prose. Gorgeous rhetoric and elegant style all exude beauty. At the same time, this fairy tale is a thought-provoking critical discussion, written by the author with great sympathy and compassion. It is the opposition between sincerity and hypocrisy, eulogizing summer, goodness and beauty, and lashing falsehood, evil and ugliness. The aestheticism advocated by Wilde's calendar reached its acme in The Nightingale and the Rose.
In addition, Wilde also used personification and symbolism in his works, which made his works have profound social critical significance. For example, the conceit of lizards reflects the arrogance of emperors and literati; Butterfly drift is the spokesman of bourgeois money worship; Daisy's ignorance represented those ignorant and mindless yes-men in society at that time. These people are despised by Wilde, but it is lizards, butterflies and daisies who are insensitive to true love that set off the nightingale's persistence in love. This persistence is touching, and it is the concrete embodiment of spiritual beauty-giving everything for love. [2]
The influence of the work
Wilde was a representative figure of the British aestheticism movement in the second half of the19th century. The Nightingale and the Rose is his masterpiece of fairy tales, which embodies his transcendental aestheticism. [5]
Publish information
Translation situation
Besides Zhou Zuoren and Lin, a talented woman in the Republic of China, introduced The Nightingale and the Rose to China. Lin's translation of The Nightingale and the Rose was published in the fifth anniversary supplement of Morning News on June 1 923+February1. [5]
Brief introduction of the author
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is an English writer, dramatist and poet. He was born in Dublin and graduated from Oxford University. Although he is mainly known as an adult writer, there are two collections of fairy tales in his early works: The Story of the Happy Prince and Pomegranate Manor, which have been recorded in the history of British children's literature.
On Wilde's tombstone, he is known as a "gifted scholar and dramatist". Indeed, he is a well-deserved playwright. At the peak of his career, his major plays include Mrs. Windermere's Fan and The Ideal Husband. , are temporary swan song. Speaking of "gifted scholar", Wilde was only 24 years old long before he was known to the world, and his poems won the grand prize; In his short creative career (46 years old), his works are full of wisdom and interest. However, the rapid development of his career and the formation of his style can be said to have originated from fairy tales. It was not until his first collection of fairy tales was published that people really regarded him as an influential writer. Elegance, a British magazine, compared him with Andersen, saying that his selfish giant is a "perfect work" and the whole collection of fairy tales is the crystallization of pure English. His aesthetic view of "art for art's sake" has a wide influence.