Gleaners

I bought an old book recently in a book sale of local library. It is Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets (Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1954). I read Giselle & Swan Lake. Somehow it reminded me that I read the same text somewhere before. I happened to have a copy of “笆蕾舞與樂曲的故事", published in 1958 by 拾穗雜誌. It dawns on me that the latter is the translation from the Balanchine’s book. Anyway I am sure most of us knew 拾穗雜誌 when we were in high school & college. It was a pretty high quality monthly magazine. Beside this book, 拾穗雜誌 also published “西洋歌剧的故事”and “交响樂的故事”around 1956. After 1957, 吳心柳 founded “音樂雜誌 and published it for several years. These two monthly magazines were fairly influential in the last five years of 1950’s. 吳心柳, also known as 張继高, wrote some other books like 樂府春秋 and 從精緻到完美 etc. I learned a lot from these two magazines when I was in school. Time goes fast, they are all gone & passed away. It is quite nostalgic when I reread some of these books. After 1960, 文星雜誌 & 皇冠雜誌 entered the center stage. That was the time of 李敖 & 瓊瑤. Somehow 李敖 didn’t like 瓊瑤 & attacked her novel ”窗外”. Anyway, that is another story. Go back to 拾穗雜誌, its cover is the famous painting by Jean Francois Millet, a French impressionist. Millet was a painter fond of the peasant scene. His paintings show the relations between nature & human being. They give you a feeling of hardworking peasants toiling their labors & still find harmony with the nature. Usually the background is the golden sunset or blue sky with patchy clouds couple with a remote chapel with its steeple. It has a profound effect to the viewers. I heard that his several paintings are now on display in Taipei, including his two most famous paintings: The Gleaners (拾穗) & The Angelus (晚祷). I saw these two original paintings at Musee d’Orsay in Paris in 1986. The museum was used to be a railway station. It was just converted to a museum at that time. Several years later, I purchased the reproduction copies in Palo Alto downtown at $16 apiece. I hang them in my family room since then. The Gleaner has three women in the foreground, one looks like mother in the center, the one on the left looks like her daughter and the woman on the right looks a little bit older and can’t bent comfortably. The background is a field with harvest activities and golden sky. The golden field extends remotely to the sky and forms a uniform color---穗野共長天一色.. You watch this painting & realize there are still some poor people live on the grains left by the harvest. Perhaps they have some children to feed at home & so they have to work hard to get by. You feel very sorry for them and hope their children will eventually get good education & get out of the situation. I remember during 1970’s, there was an engineering weekly magazine in Silicon Valley ran a contest matching famous painting with engineering activities. The Gleaner won the contest with title: “Boy, if those guys in Texas Instruments find out this is the way we grow semiconductor chips, ……”

The Angelus is even more famous than the Gleaners. This painting shows a peasant couple takes time off in the field to say prayers before going home. It is after sunset, it is getting dark but the sky is still glowing with golden color. The most prominent & moving scene is the remote church steeple. It gives you the ambient of bell ringing & you seem to hear it. At this moment, you really feel & understand---勞動神聖. Long time ago (1936), 開明書店 published a book by夏丏尊, title 平屋雜文. In this book, there is one article “米萊的晚鐘”. 夏丏尊 said “信仰, 勞動, 恋愛, 這三者融和一致的生活才是我們的理想生活. He then extended the argument that the women need to labor physically or mentally in order to gain economic-independent status in the society. I wouldn’t go that far but I like his imagination. This painting gives me a feeling of peace, harmony & assurance of the future. It is interesting 夏丏尊 used 晚鐘 instead of 晚祷. That means he focused more on the church steeple than the prayer.

Ps: 夏丏尊 also translated the well-known book 愛的教育 (by Edmondo Amicis). There are several versions of translation published after him. However, I think his version is the best. 夏丏尊 was a teacher & educator & I always found passions in his work & writing.