主题:【原创】打老虎与拔萝卜 -- 孙勇进
虎,据称是百兽之王,是以在中国古代小说里,打虎便成了最能体现英雄气概的举动之一。《水浒传》里有武松打虎、李逵杀四虎,《说岳全传》里有关铃打虎,就连《西游记》中的孙行者,保唐僧西天取经上路第一战,也是打死一只猛虎做了条虎皮裙。当然,其中最是脍炙人口可称妇孺皆知的,还得说是武松打虎,《水浒传》中这一段文字,用金圣叹的话来说,就是“山摇地撼、使人毛发倒卓”,确乎惊心动魄。
不过,这里有一个问题,就是这一段精彩文字,作者何所据而云然?明代袁无涯刻本,在“原来那大虫拿人,只是一扑,一掀,一剪;三般提不着时,气性先自没了一半”句旁,批曰:“今虎食人法,安得如此分明,可谓格物”,清人金圣叹的批语则是“才子博物,定非妄言,只是无处印证”,在他们看来,此类人虎相博,虽未必作者目见,但也一定深体物理,可以信得过。另外,笔者多年前曾看过一个据称是民间传说的故事,说施耐庵为了写好老虎,尝夜宿深山老林的树上,做过仔细观察,若照这样说来,那么《水浒传》中的写法,就是有现实依据的了。
其实未必。这段文字中所谓大虫一扑一掀一剪,周作人就曾在《大虫及其他》一文中认为不确,说根据现已了解的动物习性,这种食肉兽捕食,只在一扑,万一失败,还得从头再来,亦不用一掀一剪,若再不着,只得罢休,因为大虫的攻击对象多是快腿的动物,既经逃脱,便追赶不上也不必再追了。至于这段文字后半截所说的武松按住虎头一通拳脚将虎打死,清末民初夏曾佑也在《小说原理》中指出:“夫虎为食肉类动物,腰长而软,若人力按其头,彼之四爪均可上攫,与牛不同耳。”所以,“盖虎本无可打之理,故无论如何写之,皆不工也。”有意思的是,夏曾佑还特地指出一试验方法,即以猫代虎,“以武松打虎之方法打之,则其事之能不能自见矣”,不知夏本人是不是这样试过,不过听起来倒的确有趣。
如果周、夏二位所言为真,这就有些麻烦了。原来这著名的武松打虎一段,虽然精彩,却是凭空而造,并不合于事理,那么这样的写法又该如何评判?夏曾佑说是“不工”,即不好,不对,但即使不对是不是也可以这样来虚构,夏没说。周也没说,不过从周的另一篇文章里,可以大抵推知周对此类描写的态度,在那一篇里周谈的是《阿Q正传》里阿Q偷萝卜一节,问题和上面所说《水浒传》中的武松打虎不无相似,所以也不妨拿来说说。
在《阿Q正传》里,有一段说阿Q翻进尼庵的菜园,见有一畦老萝卜于是蹲下便拔,“拔起四个萝卜,拧下青叶,兜在大襟里”,后有黑狗追来,堪堪要咬着阿Q的腿,“幸而从衣兜里落下一个萝卜来,那狗给一吓,略略一停,阿Q已经爬上桑树,跨到土墙,连人和萝卜都滚出墙外面了。” 人而与萝卜同滚,这应是个有趣的画面,以前读到这里,想象中那萝卜都是圆滚滚的,其中的一个,自阿Q的衣兜里掉出,于地上跳而且滚,将狗吓住,其余三个,与阿Q一起滚出了墙外。但从周作人后来的批评文字来看,阿Q于春尽夏初时节翻入未庄外尼庵的菜园,其实是并无这样的萝卜可拔的:
“在阴历四五月中乡下照例是没有萝卜的。虽然园艺发达的地方春夏也有各色的萝卜,但那时代在乡间只有冬天的那一种,到了次年长叶抽苔,三月间开花,只好收萝卜子留种,根块由空心而变成没有了。”
在《〈阿Q正传〉里的萝卜》中,周引用了他在先前一篇文章里的这段话后,又补充了一条材料,即徐绍华《蔬菜园艺学》中的说法:“萝卜采种,不采收根部,任其在圃地越冬,至翌春开花结实,至荚变黄,乃刈下阴干而打落之。”因此,无论据周自己的经验,还是据专门家的说法,阿Q都不可能拔到萝卜。而鲁迅却这样写了,在周看来,是鲁迅在写小说,并不是讲园艺,萝卜有没有都是细节,不必拘泥。
是不是真的不必拘泥,不同人只怕有不同的看法。不过不管怎么说,打老虎与拔萝卜,以动植物学的眼光来看虽都有问题,却都因妙手文章,而流传了下来。文学作品的接受大抵如此,艺术效果强烈的作品,纵然偶有这样的疏失,也较易获得原谅,乃至被忽略不计,如果是庸手所作,可能就另当别论了。只是对平庸之作来说,一时被指摘这样的错误倒也在其次了,它们的命运往往是被彻底遗忘。如同伟人的缺点可以成为一个话题一样,文学接受也有它的势利眼,不过,这也正是它的大合理处。
一扑不中,即做罢休,在非洲大草原的狮子身上是常见的。这么做,也是有狮子的道理,毕竟人家可以跑的地方大,而且人间跑的也快,追起来费劲。
面对武松的老虎则不同。首先是林中,武松想跑也跑不快,二来武松的确是跑不快。这样,老虎来个“一扑,一掀,一剪”也是可能。至于武松摁着虎头打,这个倒是可以置疑。
艺术效果的一个副产品,大概就是让人弱智,比如此时此刻,我看着这贴,写着回复,嘴巴咧着笑,旁边人看着象傻子样的,只是看到痛快处哪里还会想别的什么。一路看下去,一路打下去,整个一个痛快。恐怕写书的人当时也是如此心情。
It reminds of an article I read in Guardian.
Proud to be pedantic
David McKie
Thursday October 14, 2004
The Guardian
Whatever her other accomplishments, Janet Leigh, the Hollywood star who died at the start of this month, was remembered for a single screen moment: the moment when Anthony Perkins closed in on her as she took a shower in a motel in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Few who sat transfixed through that scene have ever forgotten it, and Janet Leigh certainly didn't: it was even suggested that she never again took a shower thereafter.
Yet among her vast, worldwide audience, one member at least, it appears, was unenthralled, even wholly unfrightened. In a letter to Saturday's Daily Telegraph, Dr Ross Watkin of Chipstead wrote: "Someone should have told Hitchcock that a dead person's pupils are widely dilated. The final shot of the murdered Janet Leigh on the shower floor showed normal-size pupils. It quite ruined the film for me ..."
One of the most awe-inspiring moments in the history of the cinema, one of a great director's most gripping effects, "ruined" by a minor physiological error? There must have been many reading this letter who thought to themselves: gosh, what a pedant! A pedant, that is, in the modern, derogatory sense of the word, not its earliest sense, which carried no hint of derision.
Pedant, the OED tells us, originally meant, simply, a teacher - a word no more necessarily insulting than pedagogue. "He loves to have a fencer, a pedant and a musician seen in his lodgings," Ben Jonson wrote in 1599, with no indication that the pedant was any less to be honoured than his companions.
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The character known as Pedant in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is hardly what we'd now call pedantic. Holofernes, in Love's Labour's Lost, with his Latin tags and his promise to "overglance the superscript" and his sudden wounded cry, when some duffer confuses "unguem" with "dunghill": "O, I smell false Latin!" might be classed today as a pedant of the most preening and tedious kind, but Shakespeare spares him that label.
But already by the late 16th century, the word pedant was coming to mean a person who overrates book learning or technical knowledge or who displays it unreasonably; one whose learning is untempered by practical knowledge; one who lays excessive stress on trifling detail (Dr Watkin's presumed offence in the case of Janet Leigh) or strict adherence to formal rules.
At about the same time, Montaigne, in an essay on pedants, noted that Italian farces he'd seen in his youth had always, to his delight, equated pedants with fools; and indeed, that this was nothing new, since according to Plutarch the Romans used Greek and scholar as terms of reproach. Nor did he think this unjust. Like birds which went out foraging, picking up grain that they did not taste themselves but fed to their young, undigested, pedants, Montaigne complained, grubbed up knowledge here and there out of books to spit out and publish abroad.
Yet I think it is wrong that pedants are lumped together in the uncritical way that they are. A Holofernes behaves as he does out of vanity and conceit. That charge cannot be laid against Dr Watkin of Chipstead. What he remembers from Psycho is not any glow of satisfaction which came from noting that his knowledge of pupil dilation in the recently dead was better than Alfred Hitchcock's. What he says is that Hitchcock's error "quite ruined the film for me".
Life is like that for pedants. A hanging participle, a use of "criteria" with a singular verb, saying "reign" when the writer means "rein"- all these, as the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column demonstrates daily, induce pangs ofgenuine pain.
If I say, as I do because of a sense of history, that Tynemouth on the north-east coast is part of Northumbria, the pedant who writes to complain to the Guardian that I should have put the place in North Tyneside, this being the name of the present local authority, does so (I hope) less from a wish to show off than because he feels wounded.
The astonishing success of Lynne Truss's book about English usage, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, shows that thousands feel the same way. Let's have a fair deal for pedants. When they - well, all right then, when we - flinch at greengrocers' apostrophes, false Latin, or cinematographers' ignorance about the basic facts of pupil dilation, do not mock us, but feel our pain.
水浒中武松打虎确有些蹊跷,甚至有传说是施耐庵看人打狗琢磨出来的。这一点到其成书后已经有人注意到。因此,到《武松演义》就对武松打虎有了新的演绎,这里面的细节如下:
武松上岗之前,因为封山禁令,老虎无食时间过长,体力已经受损。
猛虎扑来,武松反应很快,闪开并抡哨棒迎击,目标是猛虎的双眼,因为是横抡,虎张开大口挡住了眼睛,打在虎口,裂其两腮,不过哨棒一头中空不结识,也被猛虎咬断。这样,虎的第一扑没有后续动作,是因为遭到意料外的打击,这给了武松随后调整的时间。
武松扔掉哨棒,虎再扑,武松闪过,一脚踢在虎腰部,虎受了内伤,此后动作就慢了。
虎再扑,武松再让,并从后骑上虎腰,左手按住虎头向下,老虎欲待挣扎,无奈所扑之处恰好是一滩滑腻烂泥,无着力处,因此被武松按住,把鼻子直按进烂泥里,老虎双爪蹬刨,抓起两堆黄泥。
武松双脚连续狠踢虎腰要害,右拳对虎耳门连击百十拳。。。
武松打虎在这里有了几分运气的成分,看来就现实多了。
用典太多,看着费劲...
私以为,对社会影响巨大的、综合艺术成就很高的作品,还是应该有人严格咬嚼咬嚼的,如这位Dr Ross Watkin,还有咱们的金文明老先生。当然一定要咬准。
对武松打虎也是如此。
至于孔乙己那般“茴”字四种写法的,那才真是腐儒呢...
原来在国内报纸上看过人豹搏斗的真实报道,印象中有两起,一起是一位少年,与豹子血战十数分钟后终于等来了援军,吓跑了豹子。另一起是一位暮年英雄,也是一番血战之后,鬼使神差地骑到了豹子身上,并且这位英雄还碰巧听说过豹子的腰部是其命门,于是用屁股一通猛坐,终于占了上风,随后赶来的同伴们棍棒铁锹地,终于打死了豹子。
不过这个是豹子,力量跟人大致相当。老虎那个力量可就完全不是常人可比的了。从前看武林杂志时倒曾见说有内功上乘的高手 一掌击中猛虎头部,致其重伤而亡的。不过那老虎怎么就给他打中头部呢?我觉得这个就有点那个了。
不知让鼎盛时期的杨露蝉、孙存周等猛人跟成年猛虎干一场会如何...
既然普通牛人可以跟豹子打,那大英雄打死老虎的夸张程度就可以接受了,不然鲁智深倒拔垂杨柳怎么算呀?
鲁爷几天前晚上,偷偷把那棵大树边上的土都刨松了。
这招法若干年后被裘千丈学去并创新了。
只奔出十余丈,便见雪地中两头斑斓猛虎咆哮而来,后面一条大汉身披兽皮,
挺着一柄长大铁叉,急步追逐。两头猛虎躯体巨大,奔跑了一阵,其中一头便回头
咆哮,向那猎人扑去。那汉子虎叉挺出,对准猛,虎的咽喉剌去。这猛虎行动便捷,
一掉头,便避开了虎叉,第二头猛虎又向那人扑去。
那猎人身手极快,倒转铁叉,拍的一声,叉柄在猛虎腰间重重打了一下。那猛
虎吃痛大吼一声,挟着尾巴,掉头便奔。另一头老虑也不再恋战,跟着走了。萧峰
见这猎人身手矫健,膂力难强,但不似会什么武功,只是熟知野兽习性,猛虎尚未
扑出,他铁叉又候在虎头必到之处,正所谓料敌机先,但要一举刺死两头猛虎,看
来却也不易。
萧峰叫道:“老兄,我来帮我打虎。”斜剌里冲将过去,拦住的两头猛虎的去
路。那猎人见萧斗然冲出,吃了一惊,大声呼喝叫嚷,说的不是汉人语言。萧峰不
他说些什么,当下也不理会,提起右手,对准头老虎额脑门便是一掌,砰的一声响,
那头猛虎翻身摔了个斛斗,吼声如雷,又向萧峰扑来。
萧峰适才这一掌使了七成力,纵是武高强之士,受在身上也非脑浆迸裂不可,
但猛虎头坚骨粗,这一记裂石开碑的掌力打在头上,居然只不过摔了个斛,又即扑
上。萧峰赞道:“好家伙,存储有你的!”侧身开,右手自上而下斜掠,擦的一声,
斩在猛虎腰间。这一斩他加了一成力,那猛虎向前冲出几步,脚步蹒跚,瑚即没命
价纵跃奔逃。萧峰抢上两步,右手一挽,已抓住了虎尾,大喝一声,左手也抓到了
虎尾之上,奋力,双手使劲回拉,那猛虎正自发力前冲,被他这么一拉,两股劲力
一迸,虎身直飞向半空。
那猎人提着铁叉,正在和另一头猛厮斗,突见萧峰竟将猛虎摔向空中,这一惊
当真非同小可。只见那猛虎在半空中张开大口,伸出利爪,从空扑落。萧峰一声断
喝,双掌齐出,拍一声闷响,霹在猛虎的肚腹之上。虎腹是柔软之处,这一招“排
云双掌”正是萧峰的得意功夫,那大虫登时五脏碎裂,在地下翻滚一会,倒在雪中
死了。
那猎人心下好敬佩,人家空手毙虎,自己手有铁叉,倘若连这头老虎也杀下了,
岂不叫小觑了?当下左剌一叉,右剌一叉,一叉又一叉往老虎身上招呼。那猛虎身
中数叉,更激发了凶性,露出白森森的牙齿,纵身向那人扑去。
那猎人侧身避开,铁叉磺戮,噗的一声,剌剌入猛虎的头颈,双手往上一抬,
那猛虎惨号一声中,翻倒在地。那人双臂使力,将猛虎牢牢的钉在雪地之中。但听
得客喇喇一声一响,他上身的兽皮衣服背上裂开一条大缝,露出光秃秃的背脊,肌
肉虬结,甚是雄伟。萧峰看了暗赞一声:“好汉子!”只见那头猛虎肚腹向天,四
只爪子凌空乱搔乱爬,过了一会,终于不动了。
打虎这个是YY的小儿科了
谁知李元霸又抄出后山,见众王子进了紫金山,他就拒住山口,大叫道:“山
上何人得了传国玉玺,快快献过来!”众王齐吃一惊。程咬全大怒道:“我们这
里十八家大将甚多,何惧你一个黄毛小厮?”遂令众将一齐杀去。那些将官没奈
何,一齐上前冲杀,高张灯火,喊杀连天。李元霸大吼一声,冲入阵中,锤到处
纷纷落马,个个身亡。罗成挺枪来战,被元霸一锤打来,罗成当的一架,把枪打
做两段,震开虎口,回马逃生。可怜一百八十万人马,遭此一劫,犹如打苍蝇一
般。
李密无奈,只得献上玉玺,求放回国。元霸大叫道:“玉玺我便收了。你这
些狗王若要归国,可写下降表跪献上来。便饶你等狗命,不然便都杀死。”众王
无奈,只得写下降表,跪献上去。却有鲁州净秦王徐元朗,不肯跪献。元霸喝道:
“为何不跪献上来?”徐元朗道:“你是王子,俺也是王子,为何要俺跪献?此
言甚属放肆!”元霸听了,冷笑一声,就把元朗抓过米,擎起两腿,撕为两片。
众王子看了大惊,只得一齐跪下,献上降表,轮到窦建德,说道:“我是你嫡亲
母舅,难道也跪不成?”元霸逍:“不相干,你若在唐家做臣子,自然与你些名
分。如今做了反王,若不跪献,将徐元朗为例。”建德无奈,只得忍气脆下,献
上降表。元霸收完降表,竟奔潼关而去。
众王计点兵马一百八十万,止剩得六十二万。
我从图书馆借来过根据杭州评话改编的《武松演义》和王少堂的扬州评话《武松》,专门看了打虎一段,写法又各不相同。其中扬州评话的《武松》写老虎扑人,就是一扑再扑三扑,不过它还保留了虎尾扫人这一节。另外偶拿偶家猫试过,按住了它的头,以指扣击,但它不做任何挣扎,只是双耳贴伏下来,呵呵,要是野猫大概不会这么老实,只是野猫又何由而得按其头?所以夏曾佑的说法到底是真是假,吾仍不得而知:)
虎的所谓一扑一掀一剪,金圣叹还有其它批语的,说老施下笔前可能先解衣踞地,先演练了下那一扑一掀一剪,一扑一掀倒也还罢了,只是这一剪又如何演练得出?哈哈哈哈哈~~~~~~~~~~
下面是别的论坛的一个回帖:
前几天看了一个介绍训练老虎野性的电视片,从片中我总结出老虎的三招是一扑、一咬、一抓。片中,先是把一只小野猪放进老虎生活的区域内,老虎追上后一扑,把小猪扑倒,然后准确地一咬,咬住小猪的喉咙,因为小猪力量小,两招就令小猪毙命。后来把一只大野猪(个头和老虎差不多)放进,老虎两招使出后没有制服大野猪,老虎就拿出它致敌于死命的第三招,相持中用一只前爪狠狠地抓住大野猪的脊背。因为老虎爪上尖锐锋利的爪钩平时是缩进去的,只有在它捕获猎物时才伸出来,死死地嵌进猎物的肉体内。大野猪还欲往后挣扎,却越挣扎利爪陷进越深,喉咙又被咬住,渐渐地没了力气,最后只有成为老虎的美餐。
如此看来,施老先生写的一扑、一掀、一剪还是有生活依据的。
偶在给学生上课时曾举过这个例子