Wang Zengqi (March 5, 1920 – May 16, 1997) was a Native Gaoyou of Jiangsu Province, a contemporary Chinese writer, essayist, dramatist, and representative figure of the Beijing school of writers. He was hailed as "a lyrical humanitarian, the last pure literati in China, and the last scholar in China." Wang Zengqi is quite successful in the creation of short stories, and has also studied drama and folk art in depth. His works include "Ordination", "Supper Flower Collection", "Passing Water", "Evening Cuiwen Talk" and so on.
01
Most of the people and things I write about have a little shadow. Some novels, acquaintances read, know who this is written about. Of course, it will not be out of shape at all, there must be some imagination and fiction. Without imagination and fiction, it is not literature. Ji Xiaolan is opposed to adding imagination and fiction to the novel. He thought that what was written in the novel must be seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears: the novel is both seen and heard, that is, it is a narrative, and it is no more than the theater and is casually decorated. He was very disapproving of Pu Songling, and he said: The words of this Yan, the state of the fox, the subtle twists and turns, and the imitations are like life. If there is no such reason to speak for oneself, and if the author speaks for himself, how can he hear it?
Pu Songling really likes to write about the state of the fox, and the writing is very subtle and tortuous, and it is annoying to write too much. But after all these Yan nicknames and foxes, there is not much left in "Liaozhai". This old gentleman Ji is really a pedantic master, so loyal to what is there, what novel is there? Therefore, his "Notes on Reading Wei Caotang" really did not have much to look at. I don't know why Lu Xun spoke highly of this book, thinking that "the narrative is graceful and elegant, and the sky is full of fun."
▲ Paintings by Wang Zengqi
02
The source of imagination and fiction, or life. One is the accumulation of life, and the other is the long-term thinking about life. Contact with life is accidental. Almost all of the subjects I write are encounterable and unattainable. When a writer discovers a certain phenomenon in life, touches it, and feels a certain meaning in it, it will be stored in memory and can be used as a seed of imagination.
I agree with a French psychologist:
The so-called imagination is actually just the reproduction and compounding of memories.
Something that has never been seen at all cannot be imagined out of thin air. Second, it is more important to think about life, long-term, intermittent thinking. Eat good water three times. The meaning of life is not clear at once. Some of my works have been in my memory for thirty or forty years. Several works have been rewritten repeatedly. The children of "Asking for Rain" were personally seen on the streets of Kunming, and I was very touched at that time. They beat the little gong and drum and sang the song of asking for rain:
Little children weep and mourn,
Sow seedlings and do not plant them.
It rains heavily on the old days,
Dark storms and rainstorms come together.
This is not something that any writer can make up. I once wrote something very short, a prose poem, that recorded my feelings. A few years ago I rewrote it into a novel and added a character, Wang'er. This shows more concretely that children in rural China know the hardships of harvesting from an early age, and they participate in farmland work with a small heart, which is closely related. China's farmers have been farmers since childhood, small farmers. "Occupation" originally only wrote about a person who sold pretzels and western cakes, a child I was very familiar with. I rewrote it a few times and was still not satisfied. It was not until the fourth time that I remembered that I had first written six or seven kinds of shouting sounds on Wenlin Street, and put "pretzels and western cakes" in front of such a background, so that it would make people feel more desolate and bitter, and feel even more unfair about the child's premature loss of freedom and being fixed by his profession. Thinking is not abstract thinking, but with a full sense of life, a corner of life, a fragment of repeated examination, so as to discover a deeper and broader meaning. Thinking is always inseparable from life.
03
I am an extremely ordinary person. I don't have any esoteric and unique ideas. When I was young, I was very distracted. In college, he studied Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. I prefer Schopenhauer. Later, I read a little Sartre, just to catch up with the fashion. I've read a little bit of the book, and for a while I was fascinated by Zhuangzi. But I am interested in his articles, not his ideas. I always read like this, browsing at will, for the article, it is easier to absorb; for the content, do not pay much attention.
I was probably more influenced by Confucianism. A Chinese, more or less, will always accept a little Confucian influence. I think Confucius was a very humane person, and from the Analects, we can see a living person with a very good character. Confucius compiled a book of poetry (deleted poems), for what purpose? I don't think "national style" has anything to do with governing the country and the world. It is very thankful to compile such a collection of folk songs and leave so many beautiful lyric poems for future generations. "National Style" still has a great influence to this day, including its true and pure feelings and the form of looping back and forth, singing and sighing. The Book of Verses has a wide-ranging and potential effect on the personalities of many Chinese. "Gentle and generous, the teaching of poetry also." That's how I grew up in this kind of poetry. I wonder why scholars of Confucius never associate Confucius with the Book of Poetry.
My novels are written about ordinary people, ordinary things. Because I'm familiar with these people.
Suddenly feel that the business in front of you is full,
You must know that there are many bitter people in the world.
I have sympathy for my characters. Some of my novels are about the civic level, and I grew up living on a street and coming into contact with these little people. But I do not despise them, and I find some good, good character in them. So I wrote about the doctor who fished all his life, the "Rutted Fish, The Three Friends of the Year". Some of the characters I write are ridiculous, but even these ridiculous points are worthy of sympathy, and I can't laugh at them too harshly. Most of my novels are a little lyrical, so I once called myself a popular lyric poet and called my realism lyrical realism. My novels have something beautiful that can comfort and warm people, but there is nothing profound about my novels.
04
Realism has historically stood in opposition to Romanticism. The antithesis of modern realism is modernism. In China, the so-called modernism has nothing of its own, but only imitates Western modernism. There's nothing wrong with that.
When I was young, I was influenced by Western modernism, which can also be said to be an imitation. Later, it was no longer imitated, because it could not be imitated. Cultures can influence each other and penetrate each other, but one culture is one culture, and there is no way to make one culture exactly the same as another. I saw African sculptures at several museums in the United States and was amazed. It's all weird, but none of them aren't beautiful. I understood why some people say that French modern art was greatly influenced by African art. I also found strange sculptures by Africans, which did not seem strange to them at all. They thought that sculpture was supposed to be like this, it could only be like this, and that was how they knew the world. They do not first have a rational, realistic understanding of things, and then "deform", distort, exaggerate, squash, elongate...
Their performance from the recognition of things is done at once. What they show is what they know. Therefore, I think some of the modernist art in France that imitates Africa is also "fake". The French are not Africans. I saw some original works of famous Western paintings in several museums, and also saw some famous Chinese paintings at the Chicago and Boston Art Museums, such as the practice drawings of Zhang Xuan, who are said to have been imitated by Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty. I deeply feel that the Eastern– mainly Chinese culture and Western culture are definitely not the same thing.
05
The aesthetic consciousness of Chinese painting and Western painting is completely different. Chinese flower arrangement has a lot of exquisite, vase and flower should be matched, horizontal oblique side, get the state of flowers. Sometimes there is only a branch of dry branches, and an iron bone red plum blooms. This kind of fun, Westerners do not understand at all. They just used a glass bottle and randomly inserted a large handful of brightly colored flowers. The folded branches and flowers in Chinese paintings are not found in the West. Not to mention the ink-painted orchid bamboo. Picasso thought that Chinese calligraphy was a great art, but if he wanted to tell him to distinguish between Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi, he must not be able to say why. It is impossible for Chinese literature to be completely Westernized and to produce a "true" modernist. Because you are Chinese, you live in the tradition of Chinese culture, and this tradition is so long, so endless. You have to get rid of it, you can't do it. And, why get rid of it?
▲ Wang Xizhi's "Holy Order"
The most difficult thing to get rid of is language.
The most basic thing in a national culture is language. Chinese characters and Chinese are not the same thing. Literate people in China think not so much in Chinese as in Chinese characters. Chinese characters are hieroglyphs. The shape of the shape of the sound word still plays a great role. Words from wood and words from water produce different images. Chinese characters have a flat entry, which is not found in Western scripts. Chinese writers write in this kind of eccentric writing, and Chinese writers feel very differently about words than Western writers. Chinese characters have some very unique things, such as confrontation and tone. Confrontation is something that can be encountered at any time. Some people say that someone uses this word, not another word with the same meaning, which is "for the sound of the ear". It is difficult for foreigners to understand that "jun" is not "jun", but as a Chinese writer, you can't help but pay attention. He said, "First of all, I would like to ask you a question that is difficult for you to answer yourself: What do you think is your place in Chinese literature?" I thought about it for a moment and said, "I'm probably a stylist." "Stylist" was not originally a positive word. Great writers are not stylists. This concept has changed somewhat in recent years. Modern novels are mostly stylistically focused. In the past, stylistic and content were separated, but now many people think that it is the same thing. I realized the consistency of the two earlier. The basis of style is language. A writer should be interested in language, sensitive to language, and like to listen to people.
06
There was an old Taoist monk in Suzhou, who was doing a dojo at someone's house, and when he squinted his eyes and saw a pair of nailed boots under the table, he did not move, added a few words to the scriptures he recited, and read them to the little Daoist:
Under the stage,
There are pairs of nailed boots.
Take the slang and go,
It's raining,
It's also good.
This kind of neat language with plates and eyes sounds very funny. If you say it in ordinary prose, it is meaningless. We should note that it is interesting to say this in one sentence, but it is not interesting to say so. Second, read a little bit of ancient text. "Familiar with three hundred Tang poems" is still a good way to learn poetry. When we write essays (novel-style essays), we are often influenced by one or more of the ancients' writing style, consciously or unconsciously. Lao She's "Train" writes about the fire after the train catches fire, and it is written so extravagantly that it cannot be done without a number of ancient texts that are rotten and cooked in the chest. I wrote an essay called "The Heavenly Mountains", which began with the first sentence:
The so-called Nanshan is a pine forest.
I myself know that such abrupt syntax comes from Gong Ding'an's "Saying Juyongguan". The first sentence of "Saying Juyongguan" is:
Juyong Guan, the ancient talk of the keeper of the words also.
Such a beginning determines that this 17,000-word essay is a bit of a shadow of Gong Ding'an, and this prose can be said to be Gong Ding'an's body. The formation of style is related to the cultural accomplishment of a writer. Literature and other cultural phenomena are interconnected. Writers should read a little painting and know how to do calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy is pure abstract art, but definitely art. Calligraphy has a variety of calligraphy styles, there are many homes, and these are very specific and can be felt. Most of the ancient Chinese literati were well written. Li Bai's writing is not necessarily reliable. Du Mu's writing is very well written. Su Shi, Qin Guan, Lu You, and Fan Chengda all wrote very well. The only person who wrote poorly in the Song Dynasty was Sima Guang, but the square letters he wrote also had another taste, not tacky. Modern writers don't have to be able to write well, but they don't have to be able to appreciate calligraphy. Although I am not good at writing, "I know that books are better than me", and I often look at calligraphy, especially the grass, which is very good for the inner charm of the writing. I advocate "returning to national traditions", but I do not reject external influences. I have read a little bit of translated works, and I can't help but be affected, including thinking, language, and style. The title of my speech is written in Chinese characters, but it doesn't really look like a Chinese word. I couldn't find a more appropriate language to say what I was saying.
07
I was a student of Mr. Shen Congwen, and I was asked what I had inherited from Mr. Shen. It is difficult to say that it is inheritance, but I am willing to learn something from Mr. Shen. After Mr. Shen's death, at his farewell ceremony to readers, relatives and friends, a Xinhua reporter asked me what I thought of Mr. Shen. On that occasion, without further ado, I said only two things. First, Mr. Shen is a sincere patriot; second, he is a truly indifferent writer I have seen, and this indifference is not only a "human" virtue, but also a "human" realm. Mr. Shen loves China and loves it very deeply. I also love our country. "Children are not ugly, and dogs are not tired of being poor." Although China has such and such problems and shortcomings, it is my country. As Mr. Shen said, under no circumstances should confidence be lost.
I don't have a sense of absurdity, a sense of loss, a sense of loneliness. I am not against the sense of absurdity, the sense of loss, the sense of loneliness, but I feel that a society like ours does not have the conditions to produce so many feelings. If, in order to win readers, we deliberately try to show a sense of absurdity, loss, and loneliness that we do not have, or that we do not have much, I think is not only irresponsible, but also immoral.
Literature should give people confidence in life. Indifference is character and literature. Only a writer who is willing to be indifferent can not grab the market and compete for seats; can he sincerely write out the little life he feels, do not play tricks, and do not deceive readers.
As for what I inherited from Mr. Shen in literature, let the critics talk about it. I can't say it myself, and I can't say it well.
The text 丨 is selected from the Complete Works of Wang Zengqi, People's Literature Publishing House, 2019
The picture 丨 is from the network
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