The female students in the auditorium were not listening to what Zhou Hexuan was saying at this moment, and all of them were busy copying new poems.
As a love poem, "To the Oak" has neither the pathos of lingering sadness nor the passion of eachother, but its attitude towards love can be unanimously approved by both male and female readers.
"I must be a kapok tree next to you, staying with you as the image of a tree."
"We share the cold waves, wind and thunder, and thunderbolts. We share the mist, mist, and neon lights. It seems like we will be separated forever, but we will always be dependent on each other."
Tan Yanqiu sat in the audience, pondering these words repeatedly, her eyes shining with an inexplicable brilliance.
Isn't this the love she longs for? To share the joys and sorrows with her lover, support each other, and live hand in hand until old age. Enjoy love but be able to maintain yourself, not be a man's appendage, not a canary in a cage.
"Mr. Zhou really understands women. He said everything our daughter wanted to say in her poems." Chen Biyun laughed in a low voice.
Tan Yanqiu muttered: "He must like women with independent personalities."
Chen Biyun said: "Among so many scholars, I admire Mr. Zhou for always thinking about us women."
The moment the lecture ended, dozens of girls rushed to the stage and asked Zhou Hexuan for his signature with the poem they had just copied. Some bold girls even asked Zhou Hexuan face to face whether he was married.
Tan Yanqiu couldn't squeeze through, so she had no choice but to return to the dormitory, write an article and submit it to "Women" magazine, and included Zhou Hexuan's "To the Oak".
More than ten years ago, when Yuan Shikai was in power, because he was dissatisfied with the press's coverage of the "Song Jiaoren Case" and the "Second Revolution", he blatantly purged newspapers and periodicals that had opposing views. More than 500 newspapers across the country were closed down, leaving only
139, at least 24 journalists were killed, and more than 60 people were arrested and imprisoned.
It is known in history as "Gui Chou reports disaster".
An interesting result of Guichou's reporting of disaster is the rise of women's magazines. Because this thing is risk-free, the government's censorship is not strict, so that some literary publications are published under the banner of women's magazines.
Shanghai's "Women" magazine is one of the leaders. At first, it mainly published housekeeping content and advocated women to be good wives and mothers in the new era.
During the May 4th Movement, new scholars took over the magazine "Women" and advocated women's liberation and women's revolution. Even Lu Xun often contributed to this publication. However, just the year before last, the editor-in-chief Zhang Xichen went too far. When discussing sexual morality, he even
He said that as long as it does not harm others or society, monogamy, two wives or one wife and two husbands are acceptable.
This view not only attracted criticism from conservatives, but also other scholars of the New Culture Movement expressed strong opposition.
Seeing that the matter was getting serious, the Commercial Press, the owner behind "Women" magazine, had no choice but to remove Zhang Xichen from his position as editor-in-chief. The style of the publication subsequently deteriorated greatly.
Nowadays, "Women" magazine mainly publishes the school life of female students and the experience of married women in running a house. This move has won the support of more female readers - it used to be too high-end and cutting-edge, but now it has changed to a low-end route, and its sales volume has actually increased.
good.
Just when Zhou Hexuan boarded the ship and left Shanghai, Du Jiutian, the editor-in-chief of "Women" magazine, happened to read the manuscript of female student Tan Yanqiu.
The article was written carelessly, mainly talking about her lectures, and some of Zhou Hexuan's views were also quoted. Du Jiutian didn't take it seriously at first, but when he saw "To the Oak" in the appendix at the back, he suddenly became excited.
"What a poem!"
Du Juotian read it repeatedly, and finally wrote a review of the poem himself——
"Zhou Hexuan's new poems have novel ideas, magnificent images, exquisite language, a school of their own, and a distinctive personal style. "To the Oak" uniquely chooses the two images of 'oak' and 'kapok' to metaphorize men and women respectively...
The oak tree is tall and majestic, full of masculine charm. The comparison of women to kapok also shows the enchantment. The poem is shouted in a female tone, not to be a soaring flower that follows the crowd, not to be a bird singing in the green shade, not to be
The spring of wishful thinking should not be the mountain peak that blindly supports the oak tree. From these images, the central theme of this poem is expressed: that is, women should not lose themselves in love. Love needs to be based on equality of personality, mutual respect, and mutual understanding;
The goal is to support, stay together through thick and thin, and work together through thick and thin.
This poem uses novel and magnificent metaphors to appropriately express the ideal view of love in the poet's heart, giving people unlimited space for imagination. What is even more rare is that it contains the idea of women's liberation. Women's liberation is not blindly deviant.
But we must have persistence and principles, responsibilities and obligations..."
When this issue of "Women" magazine was released, Zhou Hexuan had already returned to Tianjin and was temporarily unaware of the sensation "To the Oak" caused in the southern women's circle.
As soon as this poem came out, it was reprinted by many women's magazines such as Women's Times, Women's World, and Chinese Women's World. It was hailed as China's greatest and most progressive love poem. New poetry groups and literary societies all over the South
, all discussed and studied "To the Oak".
In the following 20 years, "oak" and "kapok" also took on new meanings, and many female writers gave themselves pen names with the word "cotton" in them.
Since Zhou Hexuan had joined the Crescent Society, he was regarded as a poet of the Crescent School. Later Liang Shiqiu commented: "To the Oak" is a poem that surpasses the entire Crescent Love Poems and is indeed a rare masterpiece.
At the same time, Lu Guchun, the school director of the Chinese and Western Girls' School, also elaborated on Zhou Hexuan's views of "self-esteem, self-improvement, self-love, and self-reliance" in an article for Women's Times.
"Women's Times" referred to it as the "Four-Self Principle" and characterized it as "the standard of women's virtue in the new era". It also praised Zhou Hexuan as a "friend of women" and "a strange man in the Republic of China".
Nowadays, the women's liberation movement in the south is intensifying. The "Four-Self Principles" have been unanimously recognized by women's associations in various places and have been widely spread with the development of the movement. Women should be self-respecting, self-reliant, self-loving and self-reliant. In a subtle way, it is gradually accepted and accepted by the people.
support.
Even those conservatives highly admire the "Four-Self Principles" because the "self-love" in it is different from those feminist ideas that advocate complete liberation and is more in line with traditional social moral standards.
For a time, people seemed to have forgotten Zhou Hexuan's identity as a historian, speaker, writer, and journalist, and only remembered that he was a poet and feminist activist.
But no matter what, Zhou Hexuan could not take off the title of "Friend of Women". Four years later, when Shanghai's "Shenbao" selected "Beautiful Men of the Republic of China", although Zhou Hexuan could only squeeze into the top five, according to the questionnaire, more than
60% of women voted for him.
In an interview in her later years, Zhang Ailing said: "When I was in middle school, Mr. Zhou was recognized by girls as an ideal lover, and his every move would attract attention. Whenever Mr. Zhou's works were published, countless female students would be seen in bookstores.
