It was an extraordinary year. On the occasion of the centenary of the party, there have been many grand events on all fronts, and good news has been frequently spread. The Tenth National Congress of the China Writers Association was held as scheduled, and while rejoicing and encouraging, I felt more and more that the Party Central Committee attached great importance to the cause of literature and art.
From 1996 to the present, this is my sixth time to participate in the Congress. Five years ago, General Secretary Xi Jinping issued a great call: we must be good at extracting essences and energy from the treasure house of Chinese culture, maintain a high degree of confidence in our own cultural ideals and cultural values, maintain a high degree of confidence in our own cultural vitality and creativity, and make our works become a spiritual force that inspires the people of Chinese and the Chinese nation to continue to move forward. This has also become a powerful inspiration, guidance and driving force for me to engage in literary creation.
After the Ninth National Congress, I began a new creative plan: drawing spiritual nourishment from the excellent resources of traditional Chinese culture, committing to cultural upgrading and ideological transcendence under realistic conditions, and using the abundant values and concepts in traditional culture to promote the cultivation of socialist core values. The times are always the source and driving force for cultural innovation and development, and cloud innovation is not simply portable and transplanted, but must be given new connotations, new styles, and new observations. This idea was enthusiastically supported by Peking University Press. The title of the book was decided to be "The Essence of the Nation: The Book of Humanistic Inheritance". The book focuses on the docking of traditional culture and modern culture, embodies the concept of big culture, and the connotation not only focuses on consciousness, spirit, and conceptual form, but also takes into account human geography, social customs, and philosophy of life. In terms of writing, it is not to start from the general category of "national essence" to spread the pattern of knowledge, define and interpret, and logical deduction, but in the form of prose, hook and sink the propositions that contain the national essence culture, take things as the scripture, take the emotions as the weft, and write out the traditional Chinese humanistic feelings, cultural concepts, value choices, spiritual space, and the spiritual context of many national essence cultural factors. Following this path, I wrote its companion essay, Context: The History of Our Minds.
In order to carry forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture, I also wrote a three-volume "Extra-Poetic Articles - Dialogues in Philosophy, History and Literature" for the People's Literature Publishing House, which appreciated and analyzed the representative philosophical poems of the early Qin and modern times, and each poem was written into nearly 500 essays, relying on the ancient trees of philosophical poetry, blooming new flowers of aesthetic appreciation, and creating a new world. Prose receives the light of wisdom from poetry, and compared with ordinary cultural essays, on top of intellectual judgments, it adds philosophical interest, penetrates into the sense of life, and contains the sobering words of vigilance. The poets of the past generations alluded to the image and turned the philosophical thought into an image symbol that triggered the meeting, which was expressed as a moderate pointing, thus evoking a poetic spiritual awakening. Since I am a "conjoined baby" with a combination of poetry and literature, I pay more attention to grasping its characteristics of being full of hints, saying near and far, and intending to be outside the words, using images, imagination, imagery and bixing, empathy, algae decoration and other techniques to help create aesthetic moods and expand artistic space.
Previously, the Hong Kong Zhonghua Bookstore and the Enlightened Bookstore respectively published the traditional versions of "National Essence" and "Context", and the Hong Kong media interview mentioned such a problem: based on the new technology, film and television and network and other electronic media communication fully displayed its attractive charm, winning the pursuit of modern people who accelerated the pace of life, increased the pressure of survival, and psychological fatigue, while the traditional paper media communication lost the advantage of dominating the world in the past. So, how did you rely on pure literary writing that shows your thinking skills and aesthetic appeals on paper to strengthen your literary confidence and break through the barriers?
I said that in the face of this new literary environment, as a writer, I do not have an advantage in terms of adaptability, stylistic grasp, way of thinking, energy vitality, and modern language characteristics. The reason why you can still pass the customs is to be grateful for the times and literature, and there are also hard work in editing and publishing, the so-called "good wind with strength".
"The unique concept, wisdom, temperament and charm of Chinese culture have added to the self-confidence and pride of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation." This kind of cultural self-confidence has given me strong conceptual support. In addition, the creative direction is relatively clear, adhering to the requirements of "creative transformation and innovative development", I have transformed the connotations and old forms of expression in traditional culture that still have reference value, giving them new era connotations and modern forms of expression, and activating their vitality.
Second, the powerful function of literature itself, with the help of books as a carrier, its integrity, profundity, permanence and rich ideological connotation, unique artistic expression, including the unique charm of ancient Chinese, have been fully displayed, which cannot be replaced by new media.
Third, in the face of various challenges of new media, we should conscientiously absorb their experience of being close to readers, close to life, fast and agile, flexible and diverse, and further strengthen readers' awareness. Develop new literary forms and explore new literary possibilities, from which you can benefit a lot.
Fourth, practice shows that readers and their aesthetic needs are multi-level and multi-oriented; the Zhonghua Wenyuan has unlimited and broad development space, a large enough capacity, and various carriers can bloom with a hundred flowers and coexist and prosper.
Fifth, reading has increasingly become an important part of modern quality life. Even the emerging network literature also has a process from immature and rough to perfect and improved, with the enhancement of the concept of legal system, the tempering of creative practice, the guidance of newspapers, magazines, and television, such as the selection of high-quality works and advanced writers, will gradually improve the level of creative appreciation of new media authors and readers.
In short, I am full of confidence in the future development prospects of literature. It is expected that this session will further clarify the direction of creation, boost confidence, carry forward excellent traditional culture, abide by integrity and innovation, and strive to create new achievements.