In order to respond to the call of national reading, to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the founding of SWJTU, to further promote the process of the talent training system of our university, to strengthen the spiritual civilization construction of the college, to create a strong cultural atmosphere of the college, and to improve the cultural accomplishment of our students, the School of Foreign Languages held a series of lectures on world literature and cross-culture during the college students' culture and arts festival.

The "Witty Words and Elegant Books" series lectures on world literature and cross-culture was held at 7 p.m. on Jun. 2, 2016 in X1405. The lecture was given by Fu Zhengyong, the Bachelor of Arts from the Department of Russian of Peking University and lecturer from Department of French and Russian of SFL. Associate Prof. Wang Junqi, Deputy Party Committee Secretary of SFL, and Counselor Long Yanqiu attended the lecture. The lecture was based on "Воскресение" (Resurrection), around which Mr. Fu introduced Tolstoy's religious philosophy system, systematically explaining the profound doctrinal roots of his literary practice from Tolstoy's ideological turn, as well as the creation background and text content of the book.

In order to let the students get a better understanding towards Tolstoy, Mr. Fu first introduced Tolstoy's noble background, his marriage and family, and analyzed his representative works and thoughts in different periods. At the same time, he also compared Tolstoy with other Russian writers. He pointed out that Tolstoy was different from Dostoevsky and Turgenev because Tolstoy was a moral giant with strong religious feelings and his works had a profound and lasting impact on the country and the nation.

When talking about Tolstoy's ideological turn in 1880, Mr. Fu said that Tolstoy's change from a realist to a religionist didn't happen overnight, but had been foreshadowed many times. For instance, his marriage, the death of his brother and the religious background in Russia at that time all affected his ideological change.

As for his representative work "Resurrection" in his later years, Mr Fu thought that it is actually a story of self-redemption. The protagonist Nekhludoff encounters Katyusha Maslova, a prostitute accused of murder, while attending the trial as a juror. Ten years ago, his brief affair with the maid had resulted in her being fired and ending up in prostitution. So he wants to redeem her. While he redeemed Katyusha, he also redeemed himself and revived his soul from repentance to rebirth. This also reflects Tolstoy's important religious value, namely "never fight evils with violence", because violence cannot essentially eliminate evil. He also believed that the physical life is limited while the desire is unlimited, which led to people's pain in pursuit of happiness. Therefore, he advocated that people should be close to morality in order to obtain happy and eternal life.

During the lecture, Mr. Fu not only spoke vivid and funny words, but also quoted many classics, which showed his profound knowledge and benefited students greatly. In addition to the book "resurrection", Mr. Fu also recommended Tolstoy's other works worth reading, such as "After the Ball", "A Landlord's Morning" and "A Confession" etc.. Mr. Fu believes that literature is a good reserve for a person, and Russian literature is a part of world literature. He encourages college students to read more literature and become the intellectual aristocrats.

At the end of the lecture, Secretary Wang also made a summary. He said that the students who major in foreign languages and cultures should read more classic works to improve their literary attainments. In addition, he also encouraged everyone to develop in different fields, especially in the era of diversified expectations of talents. The expansion of personal ability and knowledge is conducive to self-promotion and self-development.

Article: Huang Lin

Photo: Yang Zhihui

Editor:Shu Xiaohua