Chapter 54 oxford fairy tales

one I regretted it as soon as I went out, it was so cold and I got up so early. Yesterday I made an appointment with two Chinese students studying here, and I got up early today to climb St. Mary's Church, the highest in Oxford University.Waking up early is to covet the abstraction of Oxford when it is still asleep, so that we can fill in many imaginations about it.If it gets to the point where there are figures moving everywhere, it's too specific. They said that the door of the church would not open so early, of course, but there was a small side door behind it, and there was a cafe inside that served breakfast, and someone should be busy even before the opening time.This is just speculation, no one has come so early, and it is more certain that if they can open this small side door, they will be able to find the ascending stairs, and they have gone up there before.

Finding that little side door was easy, but knocking on it wasn't easy.Once hard, once light, knocked dozens of times in succession, but no one agreed, so I had to wait in the cold with my neck curled up.I was almost too cold to stand up, so I ran laps and laps on the stone road.After waiting for a long time, a thin middle-aged man finally came. Seeing that we had turned blue and red noses from the cold, he quickly took out the key to open the door. He asked us that we were not here for coffee but for climbing, and led us to a Old inner door. There is a wooden ladder there, and I lead the way up.The wooden ladders staggered up one by one, turned two big bends and replaced them with iron ladders.The iron ladder was very long, and after climbing it for a long time, it finally turned into a stone ladder that only one person could squeeze in.The stone ladder has a large span and a high slope, and a thick rope hangs in the middle of the tower for climbers to grab.I was already out of breath, but I saw the names of a large number of climbers engraved on the wall around me, some of them may be graduates of our school, and some were scholars from various countries who came to visit, because they also engraved their nationality and nationality before their names. The name of the school to which it belongs.

Finally climbed to the top of the church tower, which is very narrow, only room for a person.Of course, the cold wind was sharper than the one below. I hid in a recess in a stone wall and looked up. The heavy frost last night had covered the whole of Oxford in a silvery white. Ten thousand windows were drawn down, and professors and students hadn’t woken up yet. I closed my eyes and imagined this tower top many years ago.At that time, I was writing the history of European drama theory. The event that Queen Elizabeth went to Oxford University to watch Shakespeare’s plays was the cause. Looking back at the history of Oxford, I knew that the university had repeatedly conflicted with the surrounding residents, and this St. Mary’s Church was still in conflict. fortress.

It seemed like every conflict started with a spat in a tavern, quickly developed into a fistfight, and then both sides responded to each other and turned into a large-scale brawl.The students at that time were all monks of the church, wearing religious academic gowns. When they fought, they saw the variegated clothing of the citizens and the black academic gowns of the students wrestling together, forming a special English vocabulary for a combination of opposites: town gown. and gown), two enemies who differ by only one letter.The two enemies could not reconcile because of their completely different cultural concepts. When the conflict was at its most intense, thousands of citizens poured into the university to besiege them, using bows and arrows with each other, causing casualties on both sides.I guess the function of this St. Mary's Church is first to guard the students with a dangerous pass where one man guards the gate and no one can open it, second is to issue a battle call with the bell, and third is to shoot arrows.But it is obviously not possible to shoot arrows on such a high spire. The person standing here at that time should be the commander of the battle, so that he can observe the situation of both sides from a condescending height.

The university president and the mayor can't control the fights between college students and citizens. They can only ask the king to arbitrate again and again.Originally, most of the British students crossed the sea to study in Paris. By the middle of the twelfth century, Britain and France became enemies, and the king recalled students from his own country to run schools in Oxford.Therefore, the great affairs of Oxford do concern the country, and only the king can handle them.Different kings have different inclinations when dealing with it. It was not until after the big brawl in the middle of the fourteenth century that Edward III ordered that the students who died in the brawl be mourned in this church, and the day when the brawl started was regarded as a memorial day. The ceremony was held in this church, and the mayor and gentry of Oxford were required to attend.

That long-standing conflict also had a positive result, that is, a group of Oxford teachers and students wanted to leave this volatile environment, so they traveled 80 kilometers eastward to continue their teaching career there. This was the prototype of Cambridge. Many years later, a Cambridge alumnus ran Harvard in the United States. Thinking about it this way, I couldn't help becoming more devout towards the silvery white in front of me.Oxford, this simple free translation of the term, happens to indicate that this is a real ferry, and everything exists only for the other side. two Oxford University and Cambridge University, which grew up in the fight, seem to have spent a long time showing how different they are from this land.

All heights appear in the form of rebellion against the land; all rebellion is proved by the fact of being besieged; all sieges are characterized by ignorance of the besieged objects; all ignorance is Redemption was gained at a costly time. Analyzing it in detail, the students were also very responsible for the frequent fights in those years, for example, because they were young and energetic, they uttered wild words and caused displeasure to the citizens.But generally speaking, the main responsibility lies with the citizens, who regard their conservative and backward ecology as the only reasonable ecology in the world, and thus develop extreme sensitivity and fierce resistance to ecology they are not familiar with.

History always answers the earth with results.First, Newton and Darwin stood out proudly. After that, almost the entire modern scientific development, it is difficult to do without Oxford and Cambridge in every link.The earth was weighed, electromagnetic waves were predicted, electrons, neutrons, and atomic nuclei were analyzed, and the structural chain of DNA was discovered. Behind these major events, stood outstanding wise men.Until modern times, Keynes, Russell and most of the prime ministers of the United Kingdom have come out in an endless stream, batch after batch.It's too late for the surrounding residents to pay their respects, so why would they come to besiege?

Being in a university city, sometimes there is a misunderstanding, thinking that the pace of human civilization has completely started from here.It was under this misunderstanding that Mr. Needham, who made the Chinese people feel warm, stood up. He spent decades of careful research and revision, and used real materials to remind people not to be blindly intoxicated by Britain and the West, and forget the vast East, Mysterious China. I hope that Chinese readers will not abstract away the environment in which his works were produced, and only seek one-way comfort from him, thinking that human progress is all shrouded in those few inventions in ancient China.It should be noted that when he wrote this book, Britain was still making firsts.The first bottle of penicillin, the first electron tube, the first radar, the first computer, and the first television set. Even recently, they have announced the news of the first cloned sheep and the first test-tube baby.In such a wave of creation, the British actually sorted out the ancient Chinese inventions and creations more completely than the Chinese themselves, which is really a kind of grandeur.If we are complacent about it, we will be stingy.

three I asked two international students: Are you nervous about studying here?They said: Fortunately, the British are not lacking in humor no matter what they do, and they ridiculed more than half of the pressure. I asked them to give a few examples, and they talked about each other, and finally confirmed what I felt many years ago: the highest form of humor is self-deprecating. For example, the story they told about happened in Oxford on a Christmas day in the sixteenth century had such a flavor.It is said that a student was walking on a mountain road with a schoolbag that day, and when he encountered a wild boar, he could no longer escape and could only fight.The wild boar opened its mouth again and again and jumped at the student. The student had an idea and felt that he had to find something that could not be chewed or swallowed and stuffed into the wild boar's mouth to choke it.what?The student immediately came to his senses, took out a copy of Aristotle's work that he was still dizzy reading from his schoolbag, and stuffed it into the wild boar's mouth.

Sure enough, the wild boar couldn't bear Aristotle, choked a few times and then suffocated to death.As soon as the students returned to school, the students went up the mountain to cut off the wild boar's head, roasted it, and brought it to the teacher's Christmas table that night.The meaning is self-explanatory: Dear teacher, the knowledge you teach is really amazing, you suffocated a wild boar to death. The teachers laughed and went to enjoy the delicious food. Since then, this delicacy has become a signature dish at Christmas dinner. I think this is the self-mockery of the teachers, the self-mockery of the students about their studies, and the self-mockery of Oxford in general. Self-deprecation comes out of humor, but when teachers and students put it into action and continue year after year, it becomes a game and a fairy tale. Thinking of this, I can't help but miss Wu Xiaoli.A few days ago, she asked someone to bring me a contemporary British fairy tale "Harry Potter" (Harry Potter), and wrote a letter on the title page of the book, saying that it was not only for me to amuse during the journey, but also to prove It's great fun to read some fairy tales in the busy work. Lily is right.Although I have long understood that the starting point and end point of human culture are games and fairy tales, but when the reality is deep, it is often covered by the chaotic reality, and the mood becomes heavy, so someone always needs to be reminded.This time it was Xiaoli, so timely, lest we get lost on the way. It was the book Xiaoli sent that made me smile when I saw "Alice in Wonderland" in a bookstore in Oxford yesterday.I was familiar with this fairy tale when I was a child, but I later learned that its author was actually Charles Dodgson, a mathematics teacher at Oxford University. It was during a trip that this mathematics teacher told a little girl this fairy tale that he made up casually. After telling it, both the little girl and himself found it interesting, so he used Lewis Carroll The pen name is written out.He certainly did not expect that this would become a world famous book. Queen Victoria also read this fairy tale, couldn't put it down, and ordered the author to present it to her immediately no matter what book he published next time.So, she soon received a new book by the author: "Simple Method for Calculating Numerical Values ​​with Determinants". The queen was of course surprised, but I think she will soon realize that the more serious the crowd, the more naughty and naive it is, otherwise it would be impossible to explain why she herself is busy with political affairs, authoritative and grand, and is fascinated by fairy tales that are out of proportion to her age. Comprehend this, also comprehend a kind of secret demeanor of Oxford University.