Love and marriage are eternal themes of human beings, which can be seen everywhere in China and the West, "because the essence of love and marriage is the embodiment of a nation's profound culture". On the other hand, the difference of cultural background affects and restricts a nation's love style and marriage customs, and determines the actions taken by the hero and heroine on love and marriage issues. The difference in love between China people and westerners "can't be attributed only to the feudal tradition, but is more likely to be influenced and restricted by the cultural background". So, what is the essential difference between Chinese and western cultures? What influence does it have on shaping the tragic hero's character, dominating the actions of the hero and heroine, and determining people's attitude and value orientation towards love? This is the center of this article.
1
The long history of mankind has branded Chinese and western cultures differently, which restricts people's behavior.
In the west, the commercial culture of ancient Greece and the modern capitalist industrial culture of the west, as their products, have a remarkable basic attribute-continuity, that is, the outward expansion centered on individuals (or nations), which requires people not to avoid conflicts, but to bravely meet conflicts and even actively provoke conflicts, and strive for a bright and attractive future in conflicts. Reflected in philosophy, this national mentality is a world outlook in which matter and spirit are completely separated, and it is a dialectics that emphasizes exclusion and struggle. This philosophy has dominated the whole western thought for more than two thousand years. Plato's ideal world is out of touch with the real world. Descartes divided the world into two unrelated entities: thought and matter. Kant's philosophy focuses on the confrontation between "things themselves" ("noumenon") and phenomena; In Hegel's philosophy, "idea" and nature are awesome opposites. In a word, not only thinking and existence, man and nature, god and the world, noumenon and phenomenon are antagonistic, but also individuals and society, subject and object, self and non-self, sensibility and reason are antagonistic and irreconcilable. Not only that, most philosophers emphasize the necessity and rationality of one side defeating and denying the other.
Contrary to the characteristics of industrial and commercial culture, the ultra-stable agricultural culture produced by the Chinese nation on the basis of self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy is characterized by inward adjustment. Due to low productivity, it is inevitable to rely on the weather for food. In the face of harsh nature, people can only do everything possible to adjust themselves to conform to nature and strive for "harmony between man and nature" in worship. As a result, this inward adjustment mentality of "harmony between man and nature" permeates other areas of society, and there is bound to be a tendency to try our best to alleviate and reconcile various social contradictions and conflicts. Its philosophical reflection is a unified organic world outlook and practical dialectics for stability and harmony. Ancient philosophers in China also put forward many categories of opposites, and saw that things contain two opposing sides, but they did not emphasize the sharpness and inevitability of the conflict between the two sides, and even did not realize that the struggle of opposites was the driving force for the transformation of things from low to high. What they want to say most is that opposites are interdependent, complementary and interpenetrating, in an attempt to maintain the balance, stability and harmony of the whole system.
It is precisely because of the profound opposition between China and the West that westerners' view of tragedy contains the idea of emphasizing the inevitability, antagonism and necessity of contradictions and conflicts, while China's tragedy tends to reconcile contradictions and conflicts.
This cultural accumulation of different nationalities is reflected in the tragedy of love, while in the west, the actions taken by the hero and heroine to pursue their freedom of love and happiness in marriage are often positive, resolute, intense and uncompromising. On the contrary, the actions taken by the hero and heroine in China's love are often passive and extremely pitiful, and they even adopt the attitude of "forbearance" and "concession" to ease the contradiction, and finally get the tragedy of their love.
Romeo and Juliet is a famous love tragedy of Shakespeare. It shows the image of a pair of young men and women Romeo and Juliet fighting for freedom and happiness against the feudal marriage system. They strongly accused the feudal patriarchal clan system and arranged marriage, expressing the ideal of young men and women pursuing free love and happy marriage. Reflecting this theme, China's Yue Opera "butterfly lovers" also eulogized a young man and woman, Liang Shanbo, who fought against the arranged marriage of feudal parents and bravely sacrificed their precious spirit. Although these two immortal works in the history of Chinese and western drama have the same theme, the actions taken by the tragic protagonists to realize their ideals are different. Once love awakened Juliet's awakening to human nature, she went forward bravely. Despite the discord between the two families, she went her own way for love. In the most difficult time, she brought a ring to her lover and lit the light of happiness in Romeo's heart, which was almost desperate. Not only did she secretly marry Romeo, but she even secretly spent her wedding night under the eyes of her parents. In order to keep her happiness, she did not hesitate to lie and feign death. Look at Romeo again, once the heart is ignited by the flame of love, all actions become unscrupulous. After the dance, he risked being discovered and abused by Juliet's family, flew over the fence with the light wings of love, sneaked into Pratt's garden and revealed his love to Juliet. Then he boldly entered Juliet's boudoir and shared the happiness of love with her. It can be seen that the actions taken by the hero and heroine for love are bold and positive, at any cost. Look at butterfly lovers again. Although the hero and heroine are affectionate and eager to get married, once her father announces that she is going to marry Ma's family, her fiercest resistance is only a fierce argument with her father on the marriage issue. When Liang Shanbo complained, Zhu Yingtai suggested, "It's no use complaining, you must suffer first.". Finally, Zhu Yingtai succumbed to the pressure of his father and the power of Ma family and agreed to marry Ma family. A pair of lovers would rather die for love than openly fight to death. In China's another love tragedy, The Story of Jiao Hong, the hero and heroine have the same ending. Jiao Niang and Shen Chun really love each other, but they are weak in the face of their parents' orders.
When her father promised to marry her to a powerful handsome family, she could only refuse to die unkempt and did nothing else. Finally, he died with resentment. Look, the hero died after hearing the news of his beloved, and died of hunger strike. Both the hero and heroine are double suicide, which is the evil of feudal marriage system, but it also shows the weakness of tragic heroes.
For the sake of lofty and fiery love, it is not uncommon for tragic heroes to defend love with their lives and storm hostile forces with heroic actions. In Othello, another love tragedy of Shakespeare, Othello is the embodiment of pure love, martial spirit and romance, while Desdemona is the embodiment of beautiful and holy women. They are isomorphic to one pole of tragedy: human nature. Iago is at the opposite extreme, representing the evil that cynicism and absolute reason trample on human nature. Iago despised romantic love and firmly believed that the final victory must belong to cold reason, so he poisoned this pure love by various means. But his plot failed: Othello once felt that a poisonous gas was eroding his love, and he took the most extreme action to ensure that this love was not defiled. He killed Desdemona to "love her forever". Desdemona died, but the ideal was still maintained, and Iago's faith was finally shattered. The hero defended the sanctity of his love at a high price, which is really a heroic move.
In contrast, China's love tragedy is far less determined than the hero in the western tragedy, and the struggle is not so fierce and uncompromising. Some even do the opposite, and the tragic hero retreats into his love, allowing evil forces to spread and grow around him, and finally being swallowed up by evil forces. Another love tragedy of China, Autumn in the Han Palace, is an excellent representative. Emperor Han Yuan sincerely loved his beloved Princess Wang Zhaojun, and Wang Zhaojun remained faithful to the emperor until his death. However, under the pressure and threat of the Xiongnu army, Emperor Hanyuan had to send his beloved princess away. Weakness and compromise stifle passionate love. This is by no means a tragedy of positive action, but a tragedy of laissez-faire.
From the above analysis, we can see that different cultural backgrounds have a direct influence on the actions taken by the tragic hero in the struggle. Let's analyze the influence of national cultural differences on tragic characters from the same angle, so as to find out the root of love tragedy.
Both Chinese and western love tragedies end in the double martyrdom of the tragic hero or the destruction of love, but the factors that cause the tragedy are different, among which the protagonist's personality is also a factor that cannot be ignored.
The hero and heroine in Romeo and Juliet fell in love at first sight, regardless of family feuds, and decided to spend their lives together in private. They resolutely decided to flee to the paradise of love, which fully showed their independent personality. They failed not because of outside intervention, but because of accidents (if it weren't for the epidemic of plague and traffic jam, the messenger sent the letter in time, the tragedy might not have happened); Othello, on the other hand, only destroyed love in order to maintain its purity. Looking at the love between Liang Shanbo and Wang Jiaoniang and Shen Chun, we can only be at the mercy of our parents; The love between Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and Wang Zhaojun was also influenced by external forces. If the heroes and heroines in butterfly lovers and Jiao Hong Ji eloped together, ignoring their parents' orders like Romeo and Juliet, and if the emperor of the Han and Yuan Dynasties fought back and fought to the death with the Huns, perhaps there would not be these tragedies. This tragedy just shows the weakness and incompetence of the hero's character, and an attached personality destroys his or her love.
2
The personality differences between Chinese and western love tragedies are precisely the characteristics of their respective national personalities. This difference is closely related to their respective political, economic and ideological structures.
Generally speaking, the emergence of independent personality is based on political equality, economic autonomy and freedom of thought, which can be found in ancient Greece and modern western countries.
Judging from the political conditions, ancient Greece was a city-state established on the basis of breaking the blood relationship of patriarchal nationalities, and slave owners enjoyed roughly equal rights. With the establishment of capitalist system in modern western countries, the democratic political tradition of ancient Greece has been inherited and carried forward, and political ideas such as social contract theory and civil equality have been greatly promoted and legalized. Although political democracy and equality are still far from being realized, it is undeniable that this form of political thought still plays a great role in promoting the independent personality of westerners.
Economically, the commercial economy based on individuals in ancient Greece and the large-scale capitalist economy in modern western countries first broke people's worship of natural slaves. People's subjectivity, initiative and independence have been liberated and developed to a considerable extent. As a sacred principle of capitalism, the inviolability of private property also makes it possible for individuals to be independent of politics to some extent.
In the ideological structure, it also presents an extremely active state, and the diversification of thought and the liberalization of ideological creation have become one of the remarkable characteristics in the history of western thought. In the identification of truth, thinkers are free to choose and discover according to their independent value judgment ability. Correspondingly, the independent ethical thought used to explain individual personality has attracted more and more attention from westerners. /kloc-French materialism in the 0 th and 8 th centuries called for political freedom, equality and fraternity, while trying to demonstrate the independence of individual personality. Park Yung-soo of Latin America denounced the slave personality of "obliterating oneself and imitating others" under feudal autocracy, and advocated the independent personality of "keeping true colors"; In German classical philosophy, Fichte promoted "ego" to the center of creating everything above everything else. After him, Nietzsche attacked "slave morality" and flaunted the ideal of "superman". Wait a minute. It can be said that the western thought of taking the individual as the standard and attaching importance to the independence and freedom of individual personality has been pushed to the extreme.
It is precisely because of the satisfaction of the above conditions that a large number of people with independent personalities have appeared in western history. At the same time, the tragic protagonists in literary and artistic works, such as Prometheus, Medea, Hamlet, Nora, etc., mostly have distinct personalities. In contrast, before the 20th century, China did not have the conditions to create independent personality, but had the cultural background to produce dependent personality and enslaved personality.
Politically, the form of state organization in China is the expansion of patriarchal clan organization, and culturally, it is a specific cultural structure identical with the state. The close combination of family system and autocratic politics makes the dominant political thought and moral ethics theory of China culture characterized by emphasizing the simple obligation and unconditional absolute obedience of individuals to the country or the collective when solving the contradictions and conflicts between individuals and the country.
Economically, due to the characteristics of small-scale peasant economy and agricultural culture for thousands of years, the Chinese nation generally relies on and succumbs to natural forces. On the one hand, politically, not only farmers, but also all social strata expect the shadow of wise men, honest officials and honest officials; On the other hand, people passively adapt to society. The small farmers in China depend on the landlord economy in their relations of production, while the traditional "scholar", "worker" and "merchant" classes are inseparable from the dependence on imperial power and bureaucrats. Therefore, the traditional class in China can't obtain economic independence, and the formation of independent personality has been fundamentally curbed.
Corresponding to the above economic structure, the ideological structure is extremely rigid and unified. The complete and rigorous ethical system of Confucianism not only presupposes everyone's position, but also standardizes and unifies everyone's way of thinking, modality and behavior, such as "see no evil, don't listen to evil, don't speak evil, don't move evil" until "three obedience and four virtues" and so on.
It is precisely because of this cultural background that generations of people with dependent personality and enslaved personality came into being in China before the 20th century. In literary and artistic works, especially in love tragedies, such as Du Liniang, Liang Zhu and Wang Jiaoniang. Although he rebelled against feudal ethics, he finally pinned his love, marriage, freedom and happiness on his ideals. "I can't marry you before I die, and I want to die with you." It is difficult for tragic characters to jump out of the trap of attached personality.
From the above analysis, we can see that different cultural backgrounds have created different personalities, and independent personalities dominate tragic heroes to fight to avoid tragedies; Dependence on personality binds the hands and feet of tragic heroes, which eventually leads to tragedy.
three
Looking at Chinese and western love tragedies, it is not difficult to find that the protagonists have different attitudes towards love.
In the west, the hero and heroine are passionate about love. However, in China, it is prudent, serious and realistic. The love between Romeo and Juliet originated from love at first sight at the ball. They are all fascinated by each other's beauty. They fell in love first and then got to know each other. In another western love tragedy Hippolytus, the heroine Phaedra falls madly in love with Hippolytus, the son of her husband's ex-wife. This is an unusual love, irresistible and not subject to any moral constraints. When Phaedra can't get Hippolytus' love, she is determined to make her love and Hippolytus' chastity mutually assured destruction. Phaedra's love is strong, sweeping everything; Her reckless action for love is quite different from China's tragic hero. Zhu Yingtai and Jiao Niang treat love soberly, rationally and maturely. Their love comes from the process of getting along with their loved ones, living together and studying together. This is a pure and lasting love. Wang Jiaoniang's mate selection criteria are more realistic. She despises those ignorant playboys and doesn't want those frivolous literati. She wholeheartedly hopes to "get a heart, die in a cave, live with her, and then make a * * * home, which is the joy in my heart", even if it is "buried in a barren hill".
The totally different attitudes of Chinese and western tragic figures towards love and marriage are rooted in different cultural backgrounds, which are reflected in the different marriage views and value orientations of China and the West. The west is an "individual-oriented" society. As mentioned above, as early as in ancient Greece, commercial competition and long-term overseas colonization created westerners' enterprising consciousness of paying attention to individual rights and freedoms and taking risks. The domination of Christian theology in the Middle Ages further developed the life consciousness of Europeans' two-level cultural mentality of "individual standard" and "formed a unique life mode, namely" Apollo mode "and" Dionysian mode ". The former stresses rules, emphasizes order and pursues rational principles; The latter pursues the enthusiasm and indulgence of life. This Dionysian spirit is manifested in the concept of marriage, just like the "inquiry" mentality summarized by Mr. Wu Sen, a professor of philosophy at China, California Capital State University. This mentality is characterized by love for independence, freedom, novelty and adventure. Starting from this mentality, no matter men, women and children, no matter how beautiful or ugly they look, no matter whether they are married or not, as long as they can meet the demands of exploration, they have no scruples about everything. Romeo and Juliet's romantic and fanatical love, Phaedra is not bound by morality, and the love of total annihilation is the embodiment of this mentality.
China has been a "gregarious" society since ancient times. People's family-based farming life from generation to generation has created the psychology of mutual care and interdependence and the self-value orientation starting from the overall existence. Professor Wu Sen said that this is a state of mind of "caring for each other", pursuing the unity of subject and object, and has the characteristics of "attaching importance to the whole, respecting human relations, loving nostalgia and persistence". From this mentality, people regard the relationship between men and women as a kind of interdependent, closely related and shared weal and woe. Therefore, young men and women in China are cautious in choosing their spouses, such as Yingtai and Jiaoniang. They always consider each other's conduct, life experience, education, and care about each other's health, studies and future until they live together and promise each other for life. China people's attitude towards marriage is essentially different from that of westerners.
From the above analysis, we can easily see that although the endings of Chinese and western love tragedies are mostly similar, the tragic characters are essentially different in character, action, view of love and marriage, and value orientation, which is closely related to their respective cultures. Only by carefully examining the cultural background can we have a deeper and more thorough understanding of the love tragedy between China and the West.