The modern feel of the wooden heart
Wooden heart (1927.2.14-2011.12.21), modern? Many people talk about Mu Xin, first of all, they will think of works like "Once Upon a Time Slow", they will say that he is very classical, but we say that Mu Xin is a very modern person.
Mu Xin Photography Li Jun
When asked about the origin of the name wooden heart, he gave an explanation: the Englishman said that a man had an oak heart, that is, he was strong. In other words, "wooden heart" means that it is not invaded by poison and refuses any infiltration. At the beginning, when Mu Xin's work was first published, the mainlanders thought he was a Taiwanese, and the Taiwanese thought he was an old man of the Republic of China. We know that he stayed at home until 1982 before going to the United States, where he experienced many historical upheavals and was imprisoned three times. Although Mu Xin had these complicated experiences, his words did not show the slightest trace of complaint.
The preface to "Literary Memoirs" calls Mu Xin an "outsider", and Wu Hong's "Mu Xin: An Exile Without a Homesickness" says that Mu Xin is an exile without nostalgia, "The dancing teenager of Wuzhen set out for the world, exiled, thousands of mountains and rivers, the ends of the world, all the way to the motherland, the hometown." ”
Literary Memoirs
In an interview, scholar Tong Ming wanted Mu Xin to talk about his "Miscellaneous Notes in Prison", which has hundreds of thousands of words of manuscripts, but Mu Xin said: "Mr. Tong, you may expect that in this dialogue, the author will provide a romantic and realistic narrative for this manuscript, but I prefer to describe my attitude with the 'stillness' and 'fade out' techniques in the film." "To be able to say this, to have this kind of style, there may be only one of modern Chinese intellectuals." The Irish writer James Joyce mentioned three words in Portrait of a Young Artist: silence, exile, and cunning. These three words are also the attitude of The Wooden Heart. Mu Xin is not the kind of scholar-type intellectual who fights fiercely; nor is he the kind of cynic who hides and hides, but a person who is in a sense very detached--this character is the modernity and modernity of the intellectual. In fact, this is also a sense of the vastness of life.
There is a unique Chinese aesthetic spirit behind the sense of vastness of the wooden heart, which is also an ontological attitude towards the world. We can see this aesthetic spirit in many Chinese art, especially those freehand landscape paintings—the heavens and the earth are empty, and how small people are. But as far as the sense of vastness is concerned, the wooden heart is not the same as that of the ancient Chinese, and the vastness of the ancients is often an instantaneous vastness, and after the vastness, they think of "hanging on the clouds and sails to the sea". But Mu Xin will feel that the whole self has been pushed away by the dimensions of the world and history, and has lost the basis for settling down. This is a vast expanse unique to modern man. According to him, in the daylight, in the light, in the moonlight, nothing new ...
The Book of Apocryphas Solomon by Mu Xin
Regarding the modern sense of the wooden heart, in fact, we can talk about the other side of him - the external image. Seeing the image of the wooden heart everywhere is always well-dressed. Someone recalls Mu Xin in his twenties: today he saw him in Wilde's attire, and tomorrow he changed into Witt's outfit. In other words, in addition to the sense of detachment and the vastness of life, the wooden heart pays so much attention to the sense of ritual of the body and life, and there seems to be a great tension between the two—exquisite nihilism.
Because man is only a constituent of the combination of causes and conditions, and the various elements that make you up also make up nature, man is actually a very accidental existence. That being the case, then my requirements for life can only be "quantity" rather than "quality." Why aesthetic? It is because only those moments of beauty are the most intense moments of experience, and these intense moments must be collected continuously. Gu Muxin said that the artist "knows that heaven and hell do not exist, but knows that it does not exist, and must be treated as a matter of trouble" and "I seek eternal life in despair". Although "art is the best dream", it is necessary to know that "art is superficial, it is a vain excitement, it is a futile excitement", which is the modern sense in Nietzsche's sense.
Because of nothingness, Mu Xin said, "Man must always harbor the earnestness of death: I look at things that do not know sorrow with a sad eye", which is his basic attitude of writing, narrating and looking at life.
Mu Xinqi and "Chinese Demeanor"
Chinese mainland"Mu Xin Fever" began with the official publication of "Reflections in Colombia" (2006), and the inaugural issue of United Literature in Taiwan was "Writers' Special Volume" as early as 1984, entitled "Wooden Heart, A Literary Robinson".
Reflections of Colombia (2006) by Mu Xin
Writer Chen Cun said that when he read the text in "Shanghai Fu, Only Recognize Clothes and Don't Recognize People", he would feel "dizzy, unconscious, like being struck by lightning". How to understand this? We believe that the Wooden Heart script shows a kind of "Chinese demeanor". The loss of the Sense of Chinese in contemporary writing is actually a loss of grace. The demeanor of the Chinese language is absolutely unhurried, it is not thirsty and thirsty, the oil is explosive, even if it is some writing in the Republic of China period, you can still see such a demeanor, there is no kind of "pounce" of the roughness of the speech. The poet Bai Hua once outlined a vein of Chinese literature, saying that Chinese literature has a calm, peaceful, and hedonistic atmosphere; in the words of the wooden heart, it is plain and earnest, and there is a body temperature, which you can also feel from the wooden heart text. Of course, you can also find a slightly more exciting kind of writing, such as Qu Yuan, Du Fu and Gong Zizhen, but no matter what, even if it is two styles, this kind of demeanor is absolutely not missing.
Gu Muxin said, "A person should be jealous as a vendetta, and an artist should be jealous as a vendetta." What is customary? Vulgarity is indiscriminate affection, indiscriminate affection is the falsification of art, and the so-called indiscriminate affection is excessive lyricism", because they are completely incomprehensible that "temperance is power". In short, "the writing should be soft and quiet, and Yu Su did not make a sound of throwing gold and stones."
The American "New Yorker" magazine said that there is a "shallow chanting power" in Mu Xin's literary works, and his paintings are also "dark when you look at it, but after watching it for a long time, a joy will pour out of the heart", that is, the two things of sadness and warmth can be combined, because "the best state of life is cold and cold wind and fire". We believe that the "coldness" of the wooden heart is due to its sense of emptiness, and his "heat" comes from a kind of compassion, which falls on the text and is not hurried.
Self-conscious artist with a one-man renaissance
Unlike the "classical artist," Mu Xin said, the "modern artist" is a highly conscious artist, so the modern artist will first and foremost be a great critic, such as Baudelaire, Flaubert, Valery and T.S. Eliot. This is a very important modern sense of Mu Xin as a literati - becoming a self-conscious artist. It is because he has this kind of self-consciousness that there are so many golden sentences in "Literary Memoirs". This, of course, is not just a golden sentence that petty bourgeoisie likes, but it is expressed as a kind of judgment. This kind of judgment of Mu Xin may be dismissed by many scholars who study ancient literature. But in fact, Mu Xin sometimes can use a few words to meet many of their books. The intuitive and judgment of the wooden heart is really powerful.
When Mu Xin talked about the Chu Ci, he said, "Song Yu is gorgeous, and he can't reach Qu Yuan. Tang poems are a variety of words, and Qu Yuan's whole text is a kind of mood ups and downs, full of words, but always flowing in the ups and downs, a feeling of flying." This is a kind of aesthetic intuitive judgment like Sikong Tu's "Twenty-Four Poems". This wonderful literary commentary reminds us whether academic literary research, which is dominated by academic jargon, has gone astray and degenerated into what Harold Bloom calls one "school of hate" after another. Or as Mu Xin said, "Inside the academy sits a batch of meticulously crafted big bosses"?
When reading "Literary Memoirs", there is also a feeling that Mu Xin has always calmly "looked at it" when talking about Chinese and foreign literature. What interests us most here is not his specific insights, but the posture and style of this appraisal - this is "my literary history".
Mu Xin said, "I want to be a real artist, even life must become art", that is, "a person's renaissance". Today, many humanistic intellectuals talk about aesthetic liberation and what salvation, in fact, do not engage in such a big framework, from their own doing. Chen Danqing said that one of the happiest things he did was to see Mu Xin cooking one by one without hurrying, "such a ubiquitous inspiration cannot be imitated at all, because it penetrates the personality." Therefore, when the image of the wooden heart flashes in our minds, we always feel that our civilization is not enough.
Mu Xin is a person who has been selected for art. His demeanor makes us feel our own rudeness. (Editor-in-charge: Li Jing)