Ah Yuan: To dear life| the creation of "Even I Don't Go"

Dear Life

—— "Even If I Don't Go"

Wen | Ah Yuan

When did the image of intellectuals begin to deteriorate?

In fact, it is still possible in the Analects. Although the Analects is not a novel, but only a collection of quotations, I read it as a novel, because it portrays the image of a group of intellectuals in the Spring and Autumn Period. When reading the "Zi See Nanzi" chapter Confucius swore to the student Zilu gambling curse with a white face, "Heaven is tired! Heaven forbid! ", reading the "Gongxihua Waiter Sitting" chapter "Mo Chun, Spring Dress Ready, Crown Five or Six People, Boy Six or Seven People, BathIng Yi, Wind Dancing Goose, Yong and Returning", reading Confucius in the "Township Party" chapter and talking about his "food is not tired of fine and not tired of fine", I can't help but be fascinated! For the intellectuals of that era, the healthy and beautiful personality, as well as the healthy and beautiful teacher-student relationship.

In addition to Confucius and his students, there was another image of an intellectual in ancient times that I loved, that is, Su Dongpo. Everyone loves Su Dongpo. This guy is not only talented, but also has feelings and righteousness, and is also delicious - if Su Dongpo is not delicious, then he is "white and slightly flawed" in my place, or "flawed and not hidden". No matter which one, there are "flaws" anyway. Zhang Dai said that people who have no fetish cannot have sex, and I am a person who is not good at eating and cannot have sex. A person who is not good at eating, I think is basically not a naïve person. As for Su Dongpo, it can be described by borrowing Jin Shengsi's praise for Li Kui's words- "He is a superior figure, and he is naïve to the end." ”

Just because of Su Dongpo, my view of the Song Dynasty is very good. Danner said in "Philosophy of Art" that the production of works of art and artists is inseparable from the era in which he lives, and what kind of era there is, what kind of art and artist. Then, the Song Dynasty, which can produce such a brilliant and brilliant ideal personality as Su Dongpo, should be good no matter how it is said.

But the image of the intellectual later became the "middle!" in the "History of Ru Lin". Hit! Fan Jinhe, who would not be blinded by the death without extinguishing a single wick, became the Fang Hongxian who graduated from Clayden University and returned to his alma mater to talk about "syphilis and opium" in "Siege of the City", became Kong Yiji in Lu Xun's pen "There are four ways to write anvil" and the four inscriptions that wanted to wash it "In the branches of the coffin", and became the "professor who is a professor during the day and is a beast at night" on the public wine table. And the most elegant image is nothing more than what Mr. Qian Liqun calls a "refined egoist."

I don't know if Wu Jingzi, Qian Zhongshu, Lu Xun, and others are responsible for the collapse of the image of intellectuals, but anyway, the image of intellectuals is really not good now.

Therefore, to write about intellectuals, it seems to be to write about shame and depravity. An unscrupulous intellectual without shame is more credible. The ideal is gone, the wind and bones are gone, and the peach blossom source that should have been a clear wind and bright moon and a colorful fall is more vanity fair than Vanity Fair. This is already the stereotype of intellectuals and universities in society as a whole. This is not to say that intellectuals have been wronged. After teaching in colleges and universities for decades, it is these intellectuals who look down every day and do not look up.

When I say all this, I am not saying that intellectuals are worse than other "elements", but that intellectuals are no better than other "elements" - this is the crux of the matter, when intellectuals are not better than other "elements", others are also angry, he is even more literary than others; others chase fame and fortune, and even more charming than others, which loses the basic identity position of intellectuals. After all, intellectuals have their own identity attributes. Sayyid said in The Theory of Intellectuals that intellectuals should hold a broad sense of "skepticism and criticism," as "failed gods." And we now have too many docile, triumphant, victorious intellectuals. Even by Echo's definition—intellectuals are to be creative and produce new knowledge—they are not intellectuals if they repeat only one lesson about Heidegger for the rest of their lives.

A critic said to me, Ah Yuan, you have to write about the pain of the professor's soul, so that the novel can be more profound.

I know he's well-intentioned, but I'm going to be cautious about it. On the one hand, I am not superstitious about suffering, and I agree with Camus that suffering is no more meaningful than pleasure. On the other hand, I didn't see many professors of soul pain either. The pain of Chinese professors, at least the pain of most professors I know, is not very abstract pain, they are often related to the gain and loss of interests, such as not being a vice president, etc., if a Chinese writer has to write like a Western writer - such as Philip Ross, such as David Rocky, such as Sol Bellow - how the soul of a professor suffers, how to redeem, I think he is not writing a Chinese professor, at least not a typical Chinese professor. Rather, it is an imaginary literary image that conforms to the identity of a professor and a critical paradigm.

Therefore, Ji Yao, the protagonist of "Even I Don't Go", is not a painful professor. This can be seen from the original title, "Dear Life"—the title of the novel has changed several times, from "Dear Life" to "Zi Zhen" to "Even If I Don't Go", each name is related to the theme of the novel, but the emphasis is different. "Dear Life" focuses on Ji Yao's praise of life. The novel is still written in colleges and universities, still writes professors, it can be said that it is a continuation of my college series of novels, but there are two places that are not "still": one is that the protagonist of the novel is a man rather than a woman, before my novel was basically written about women, I once joked that "literature is women's studies"; second, it portrays the image of a college "green pepper", he is no longer a "degenerate professor" in the current university narrative of "degenerate colleges", a "flower of evil" that blooms in this era, no longer the world pitches, Chen Jizi, an aboard the world with exquisite charms and a proud spring breeze, is no longer the su buyu who "can't do the Tao, floating in the sea", but , in a sense , one of the "failed gods". He has a very clear understanding and reaction to the academic ecology and educational status quo of colleges and universities, such as refusing to apply for the cultural project of "letting Xue Baochao go to the world" suggested by President Xu of the International Exchange College, refusing to be the instructor of the International Student Drama Club, refusing to participate in his reading club, etc., so that because of these "ignorant good villains" and "ignorant of current affairs", he offended the leaders, and later had to leave the school because of the policy of "not rising or leaving" in the title selection. These are all ways that Ji Yao "does not go". The novel's title "Even If I Don't Go" is also intended for this purpose.

As a college "green pepper", Ji Yao's "no- and", in fact, is not typical at the moment. If you want to portray a "typical character in a typical environment", the other two characters in the novel, Bao Xiaobai or not to mention, should be the protagonist of the novel, after all, most of the "green peppers" in the current colleges and universities, after years of edification and cultivation, have been very adapted to the ecological environment of colleges and universities, they strive to issue papers, strive to declare topics, and strive to tie the "academic nepotism" very charmingly. And Ji Yao's "green pepper", not to mention the extinct "dinosaur", at least the endangered "owl". In the novel, the head of the department, Lao Shang, repeatedly describes Ji Yao as a silly "owl".

The novel's final "Several Jieju", built at the foot of Lushan Mountain, is easily reminiscent of Taohuayuan, but it is not so much a peach blossom source as it is Heidegger's "poetic dwelling". Because ji yaos - "several jieju" lived a lot of "green peppers" who came here because of "non-ascension or departure" - did not live a high-ranking hermit life like Tao Yuanming, but still diligently engaged in academics and education, diligent in food books, they were full of complaints, and they were also affectionate, always with education and life, love each other, and there was no tragic stage performance meaning, but it was a daily gesture of joy. It can be said that this is not only a kind of "no going forward" of Ji Yao, but also a kind of possibility thinking and poetic imagination that I, as a college educator, have made about our education and the current dilemma faced by "green peppers".

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The novel "Even If I Don't Go" was published in Contemporary, No. 3, 2022

About author:Ah Yuan, born in 1967 in Leping, Jiangxi, graduated from Nankai University and now teaches at the university. In 2002, he began to write novels, and wrote novels such as "Fish Intestine Sword", "Master Mother", and the novel collection "Zheng Sleeve's Pear Garden", "Rice Red", "Pear Garden" and so on.

WeChat Editor of this issue: Yu Wenwei

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