Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” begins with a paragraph about an extreme and foolish world of chaos, which is certainly celebrated in later generations. The hero of the novel is a lonely and desperate lawyer who goes to the guillotine for the sake of his crush on the love of his life who can’t catch up with him and marries someone else. He carries the cross for humanitarianism, and the last paragraph of the novel, written in plain English, has the weight of a thousand pounds: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.
The martyr’s sentiments are very noble, but the fools of the world are very numerous. Why did he go alone with a smile on his face when everyone was retreating from the sword and the axe?
It is because there are very few people in this world whose vision of life does not lie in a moment, but also beyond an inch. What he saw was his own life, thousands of years ago; also see in his own death, not yet out of the world of beings.
Jin Sheng sigh commentary on the West Wing exclaims: “The one before me is the ancients, the one after me is the descendants. The ancients and the descendants are the same? I said all the same. The ancient people do not see me, and the later people do not see me. Since they have not seen me, they are all the same. However, I suddenly thought: the ancient people do not see me, but I do not think about it every day; the later people do not see me either, but I have not thought about it at all. If I do not think of the ancients, then I know that the people after me will think of me.”
These words are not too lame, but they are really ambitious: Jin Sheng sigh lives in this world, likes to read, and appreciates and admires the talent of the authors when he reads the classics. However, whether it is Shakespeare or Mozart, the great authors have already left. So as a reader, I especially miss these dead philosophers and sages.
But how can I, having read so many books in this narrow world, be like them and leave some merit for those who are not yet born?
Let those who come after me read my writings and my deeds, and miss me as I miss those dead elites today.
Jin Sheng sigh said: When I was reading, I could no longer see the authors who had become ancient. When I die, I will not be able to see those who come after me. This great loneliness is called “no relatives”, but between the three lives, we can maintain people we don’t know and have never met in the corridor of time with respect and thoughts. This is where the great love of humanity lies.
Therefore, “before not see the ancient, after not see the future, miss the heaven and earth of the long, alone pathos yet snot”. The sentiment of Jin Sheng sigh, the feeling of Chen Zi’ang who climbed the Youzhou Terrace alone, and the final soliloquy of Sydney Carton who died fearlessly in Dickens’ book, transcend the borders and transcend the world, making the noblest hearts in the world meet in the starry sky of the universe.
The Ming and Qing dynasties were a dark period for Chinese intellectuals. Jin Sheng sigh likes to read and criticize the six masterpieces. When reading the notes, in addition to commenting on the author’s talent, he rarely got the mood of birds flying on a thousand mountains and people disappearing on a million trails, and suddenly his mind was distantly connected to the universe.
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