On Victory Day in 1993, this documentary made people cry.

　

　

　

　　One Hundred Years of Solitude Penguin Edition

　　Not long ago, the topic of whether "Four Great Classical Novels" is suitable for teenagers’ reading triggered a social discussion. In fact, the discussion about famous books has a long history. A question that cannot be avoided in many discussions is: What kind of works can be called masterpieces? On this issue, this newspaper interviewed many experts.

　　The readership is relatively large.

　　I felt it when I was drinking: "till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon, to bring me my shadow and make us three"; Being in a foreign land can’t help feeling: "lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight, sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home"; Even if you are not a literature lover, you may blurt out the classic dialogue in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that is the question".

　　These works have become recognized masterpieces by virtue of their huge readership. Mortimer J. Ejdero, an American educator, pointed out in How to Read a Book that masterpieces have the largest number of readers, and masterpieces have accumulated a large number of readers by time.

　　Take "Four Great Classical Novels" as an example, they have a high degree of popularity and a large readership. According to a set of data recently released by China Edition Library, according to CIP statistics from 2013 to August 2016, the top 10 repeated publications are masterpieces. Among them, 525 were published in The Journey to the West, 492 in A Dream of Red Mansions, 485 in Water Margin and 484 in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

　　Take Lu Yao’s novel "Ordinary World" as an example. According to the data of the publishing house, by September 2015, "Ordinary World" had sold at least 3 million sets.

　　Enlightening influence

　　"Whether a literary work can be called a masterpiece depends on whether it truly reflects social reality and social problems, and whether people can observe society and history from literary works and then think about it." Dang Shengyuan, secretary of the Party Committee of the Institute of Foreign Literature of China Academy of Social Sciences, told this newspaper that if a book is to become a masterpiece, it should be original and reach a certain ideological depth, thus inspiring readers to think.

　　Mortimer J. Ejdero also believes that masterpieces are the most influential, because they are the most enlightening and instructive, and contain unique insights, which are what predecessors have not said and what predecessors have not said.

　　One Hundred Years of Solitude by Colombian writer Garcí a Má rquez gives many inspirations in literary creation. Mo Yan, a China writer, admits that his literary creation was inspired by Marquez’s magical realism in Latin America. And Marquez himself admitted that his creation was also inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

　　Cheng Guangwei, a professor at the College of Literature of Renmin University of China, told this newspaper that literary masterpieces can be divided into literary classics and literary history classics; The former has a long artistic vitality, while the latter may be slightly less artistic, but it has great influence in the history of literature, especially in the historical turning point. For example, Liu Xinwu’s novel The Head Teacher, published in 1977, is the first of its kind and has great influence.

　　Of course, masterpieces don’t refer exclusively to literary works. Dang Shengyuan said that if other theoretical and research works want to become masterpieces, they should be able to promote the development of their disciplines with ideological and originality.

　　There is continuity in time

　　"Although different readers and readers in different periods have different criteria for judging masterpieces, masterpieces should have something in common. Mo Yan’s works and Jia Pingwa’s works are still being studied. After twenty or thirty years, these works are still not out of date. " Cheng Guangwei said.

　　Famous works often have continuity in time, and many works have been circulated for decades, hundreds or even thousands of years.

　　The Art of War was written about 2,500 years ago. Zhong Shaoyi, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences, believes that some basic orientations of Sun Tzu’s strategic thinking, such as "emphasizing fundamentals", "being prepared for everything" and "striving for total victory", are of reference value for properly coping with the long-term complex situation of national security. Bernabe, president of Italian Eni Company, commented on Sun Tzu’s Art of War, saying that it is a comprehensive textbook on strategy and can still be applied to various human activities today.

　　　　Dang Shengyuan said that the development process of a discipline and a research field is composed of one masterpiece and one masterpiece. China’s literary history of thousands of years is so rich and splendid because there are high-level masterpieces in every stage and era. "Although the achievements of masterpieces in art and thought belong to its birth period, masterpieces may also transcend history and time and space, and can still give people new inspiration and be continuously interpreted after thousands of years of birth. The bestseller is different, and it is likely to disappear after a while. "

　　When it comes to bestsellers, Dang Shengyuan thinks that there are differences between bestsellers and masterpieces in terms of whether the readers are broad or not. Dang Shengyuan said that bestsellers can accumulate a lot of readers in a period of time, while masterpieces are likely not to sell well in a certain period of time.

　　Ejdero also mentioned this point in How to Read a Book. He believed that readers of famous books gathered through time, not for a while, and that famous books were not bestsellers within a year or two, but enduring.

　　Dang Shengyuan believes that, unlike bestsellers, masterpieces may not be paid attention to during their birth, and it will take some time for them to be rediscovered and interpreted. Tao Yuanming’s landscape poems in the Eastern Jin Dynasty were rediscovered only after the rise of landscape poems by Wang Wei and Meng Haoran in the Tang Dynasty. (Li Zeyan Pan Xutao)