Zheng Min is a poet and a scholar. She became famous at a young age, and her poems inspired later generations of poets and occupied a place in the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature. Her poetry theory pioneered the 1980s and introduced Western deconstructivist philosophy into a re-understanding of Chinese characters, new poetry creation, literary historical views, and Chinese cultural traditions, which caused profound echoes in the field of literary and art theory. Her hundred years old is like a thick book, recording her unique talent, her unremitting creative practice and efforts to seek knowledge, and also engraving the vicissitudes that echo the fate of our nation, there are ups and downs, and there are also perseverance and indomitable progress.
Mr. Zheng once wrote a poem: I must not forget that although the sun has set on the mountain, the long limbs of the mountains lie stretched out through the impenetrable iron armor, and it returned to my consciousness and released a light that only I could see. (One of the Poems of the Mental Image Group)
The indefatigable light that leads her forward, let us open the poet's books of years to search.
One
Zheng Min's path to study is very special. At the age of 19, she passed the entrance examination of Southwest United University and was admitted to the Department of Foreign Languages. On the day of registration, she remembered her philosophical hobbies and thought that self-study philosophy was more difficult than foreign literature, so she resolutely transferred to the department of philosophy and changed to Western classical philosophy.
In the third year of university, under the guidance and encouragement of Professor Feng Zhi of Devon, she began to publish poems in newspapers and periodicals. In 1947, her poetry was published in a collection of works in the tenth series of the Literary Series edited by Barkin, entitled "Poetry Collection 1942-1947". At this time, Zheng Min was only 27 years old, like a new star in China's new poetry world.
Zheng Min's poems were distinctive from the beginning, and he was called "a poet who wrote poetry with the sanity of a clear-sighted mathematician" The poet Tang Xiang commented: "Although she often unconsciously indulges in a deep affection, her attitude of viewing outside the object, the feeling of the philosopher, often jumps out, singing the praises of the supreme reason." ”
Closely intertwined with love and reason and striving for the detachment and transcendence of reason, this aesthetic pursuit is born out of the personality of the young Zheng Min, inseparable from her philosophical background, but to some extent, it is actually a creative tendency that chinese modernist new poetry at that time jointly promoted.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the European and American modernist poetry trend represented by Rilke, Elliott and Auden landed in China. A group of young poets were attracted by it and carefully pondered the artistic experience of Western modernism and applied it to the artistic exploration of new Chinese poetry. Their creative experiments took their own paths, and the structure, rhetoric, and expression of vernacular poetry showed new developments in various styles in their hands. In the garden of flowers, the poems of young Zheng Min are one of the vibrant and fragrant freesias.
When I was studying at Southwest United University
The new modernist poetry that flourished in the 1940s was distinct from the previous vernacular poetry of romanticism or realism. It extracts inspiration from the artistic dialogue of Chinese and Western poetry, and tries to go beyond the simple "I write my mouth by hand" or "I write my heart by hand", and integrates and creates the modern Chinese language with the social situation, humanistic thinking and poetic characteristics of the time. In the words of Mr. Yuan Kejia, their poems are "new synthesis" of art that "contains, interprets and reflects the reality of life" and at the same time "absolutely affirms the essence of poetry as a poem that must be respected when it comes to art."
However, artistic practices with the avant-garde nature of the times are destined to belong to the minority. In the modernist pen, "the essence of poetry as art" is often embodied in the difficult and obscure verses, poetic circuitous, jumping and multi-layered, and the seriousness and depth of the poets set an intellectual threshold for the reader, which is not easy to approach. Obviously, this artistic stance that alienates the interests of the public cannot directly serve the anti-Japanese war and the salvation of the nation. Thus, in the rolling torrent of revolution, the new modernist poems were attacked and denounced as petty-bourgeois sentiments. After the founding of New China, they were denied and abandoned by the literary evaluation dominated by class analysis.
Two
It was not until more than 30 years later, when the new era began a new journey of poetic exploration, that the new poetry of the modernists of the 40s was re-excavated and returned to the reader's vision. In 1981, the Nine Leaves Collection was published, and Zheng Min was 61 years old.
For the setbacks encountered by Jiuyeshi, Zheng Min expressed profound insights in interviews in the 1990s. She believes that abandoning the specific literary and artistic concept struggles and entanglements brought about by the special process of Chinese history, the historical ups and downs of the Jiuye poetry school ultimately reflect the dualistic thinking mode on China's literary and artistic evaluation system and literary and artistic mentality. For example: the revolutionary/artistic binary evaluation criterion. The "July Poetry School" and the "Nine Leaf Poetry School" of the 1940s originally had complementary themes and different poetic styles, and did not constitute a mutually exclusive and antagonistic relationship, but the standard of revolutionary first art and second "caused a meaningless contradiction" between the two. The language and theme of July's poetry are close to the bottom and full of high fighting spirit, so they are set as models by the new Chinese literary history textbooks, and Jiuye poetry talks about art and is "not revolutionary", and the criticism circles cannot face up to its position and value in the history of the development of new poetry. Another example: the trend of the times that distinguishes between dualistic cultural identities and degrades one and the other. The Nine Leaf poets generally received higher humanistic education, were familiar with foreign Chinese literature, were good at expressing the sensitivity and contemplation of intellectuals, and were described as hamlets in modern China; the July poetry school embraced "people-centeredism", emphasized "collective heroism" and action to the light, and was known as Don Quixote, who was armed and brave to fight. In terms of spiritual values, Don Quixote's simplicity and Hamlet's complexity are opposites and complements, don Quixote's simple folk life logic and optimism and Hamlet's exhaustive worries have their own uses. However, if the intellectuals and the workers, peasants, and soldiers are simply opposed, Hamlet's sense of crisis and tossing thinking will be swept out, and no one will listen to it.
During the Great Leap Forward, Zheng Min was sent to the countryside of Linfen, Shanxi, where he was swollen due to chronic hunger and malnutrition. During the "Four Qing" movement, she then joined the team in the countryside of Shanxi and ate and lived with local farmers for a year. Then the Cultural Revolution, historical investigation and meetings fell from the sky, and she had to burn all the poetry collections and stop talking about poetry until the end of the catastrophe. That is to say, even if you do not count the grievances and traumas suffered by individuals, from your 30s to your 50s, at least 20 years of Shaohua have passed in the vicissitudes of the times. Poetry has no life, it does not suffer for the impermanence of the world, so does the poet hate the waste of time and regret to stay away from poetry?
Mr. Zheng's calmness and detachment are always consistent inside and outside the poem. She said that these 20 years of life experience for her can not be exchanged for anything. If she had not gone to the countryside to live with peasants, she as an intellectual would not have known that There were such poor places in China, how far away people from cultural knowledge and what kind of life they lived. Compared with the humiliation and burden of the Chinese peasants, the physical and mental hardship she experienced was nothing. Moreover, this rural experience made her never forget the most important mission of intellectuals - to guard and improve the cultural quality of the people. Therefore, even in that era, she was always able to stand outside the self and see the world, accumulate speculation and not fall into pessimism and despair.
"True poets always expose their hearts to the storm of history", this is Mr. Zheng's sincere life impressions. She was convinced that only a personal experience could give her a deep understanding of the country. Her lack of regret is real.
It is precisely because he is more concerned about national history and national interests than his own circumstances, Mr. Zheng Min was able to pour hope in pain and understand the historical fate of the Jiuye school from a philosophical level, dualistic epistemology. It is precisely because of her obsession with new thinking and exploration that Mr. Zheng Min has no time to join the scar literature group after the reform and opening up to mourn the past, on the contrary, she is like a return of youth, rushing forward, enthusiastically embracing a new life and devoting herself to new creations.
In 1979, Zheng Min opened a course in English and American literature and Western literature theory in the Department of Foreign Languages of Beijing Normal University, and published "With You by My Side - Poetry, I Found You Again!" in the same year! 》。 Her second literary life officially began.
Three
Mr. Zheng Min liked Heidegger's famous quote "Poetry and philosophy are close neighbors" because it aptly described her spiritual journey. Throughout her life, she wandered freely between literature and philosophy, nourished in both directions.
Zheng Min majored in Western philosophy at Southwest United University, and when she went to Brown University in the Ivy League in the United States in 1948 to continue her studies, she transferred her research back to the field of Western literature and received a master's degree in literature with her thesis "John Dorn's Love Poems".
In 1985, the famous Chinese-American scholar Ye Weilian invited Zheng Min to the University of California, San Diego to teach modern Chinese poetry in English. This is Zheng Min's return visit to the United States since he returned from studying abroad in 1955.
In 30 years, the old student has grown into a professor, and the former youth has two sideburns, but her curiosity about the world has not diminished by half a point. In addition to lecturing, she seized every time to collect and browse British and American poetry from the 1960s onwards, and diligently studied contemporary European and American literary theories that were in the golden harvest.
Is there a theory that can clearly explain the causes of the dualistic mode of thinking, lift the shackles it brings, and lead our understanding of the art of poetry and our thinking about the rise and fall of culture to a deeper level? ——This is the confusion that Mr. Zheng Min has germinated from the ups and downs of half a life, and it is also the academic problem that she has been trying to solve since returning to the poetry world and the university pulpit. Perhaps by chance, or by the inevitable result of deliberate inquiry, the Deconstructivist treatise of the French philosopher Derrida appeared at the right time, illuminating her thinking and solving her long-standing confusion. At that moment it was as if she had written in a poem:
A hand lit a lamp and shrank into the corner in the dark... (The Lamp)
Invited to recite his work at the Rotterdam International Poetry Festival in the Netherlands
Four
Aristotle said, "The spoken language is the symbol of the experience of the mind, and the writing is the symbol of the spoken language." "Westerners have believed since ancient times that humans name everything in the world with sound, and then invent writing symbols to record sound, so that sound is closer to reality than writing. This phonetically centrist belief has been supplemented and consolidated by Western Christian culture. According to the Old Testament Book of Genesis, God created the world with one word, and god's word is the absolute beginning of the universe. Since the Word of God is the carrier of divine truth, then writing imitates the sound, far away from the truth, and naturally inferior.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Chinese lexicographer Saussure found that speech and semantics constitute a complete linguistic symbol, and it is not a common essence or truth attribute that makes the two correspond and bind to each other; the truth is only that any speech is different from others, and any semantics are also different from others. That is to say, language is a complete and self-sufficient system, its function is determined by the difference structure within and between symbols, it is not divine creation, nor does it transfer with the subjective will of man.
In the 1960s, Derrida pointed out that a complete and closed symbolic structure does not hold, and language is not a complete and self-contained symbol system, because the so-called definite one-to-one relationship between speech and semantics only exists in the hypothetical, and once the speech is issued, it will constantly decompose itself, derive differences, and extend the meaning backwards. Saussure believes that differences in the language system are static and unchanging, so meaning is like an entity, certain; Derrida proposes that differences are endless in time, spreading in space, and meaning changes endlessly and never crucifixes in the process, so that language becomes language.
Derrida believes that the source of language lies precisely in the power of forming differences, the activities that produce differences, and the difference itself, and the essence of language is precisely that the meaning is uncertain and unstable, that is, the "writing" that has always been despised by Westerners. The hierarchical relationship between speaking and writing, in Derrida's view, represents the universal feature of the Western philosophical category—the monist as the center and dominant, the other element in a low position in logic and value, dominated and suppressed by the former; the monistic authority center and dualistic opposing mode of thinking of the Western metaphysical tradition are built on this foundation. The deconstructivist position is opposed to metaphysics: space-time, everything is always in the "writing", that is, the invisible, invisible but always ubiquitous derivative movement of difference, and the center of everything contains the power to wipe the center.
Although deconstructivism is a new thing in the 20th century, its conceptual archetype can be traced back to the rhetoric of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, but the belief and interest in "existence" in Western philosophy overrides everything, and eventually metaphysics becomes the dominant system of Western philosophy.
Derrida's revolutionary reading of Saussure's philosophy of language and the history of Western philosophy gave rise to the doctrine of deconstructivism. Deconstructive ideas then spread to the various humanities in the West, and then inspired and derived a variety of new theories that changed the world, such as postcolonialism and feminism. But in the 1980s, metaphysical authority still existed, and the power of deconstructivism, although it was beginning to appear, was still a fresh and avant-garde idea, and even in Europe and the United States, there were a considerable number of humanistic scholars who could not face it. In terms of age teeth, Mr. Zheng Min is 10 years older than Derrida. The Western modernist poetry she adopted in her youth held high the banners of "objectivity", "intellect" and "impersonality", is it not a metaphysical argument that worships transcendental monistic values? However, at the age of 65, she completed the renewal of knowledge, concepts, and self-awareness with an astonishing keen sense of the scholarly significance and potential value of deconstructive thought. Since the late 1980s, she has published a number of papers in academic journals, introducing deconstruction theory into the discussion of current practical issues such as new Chinese poetry writing, literary criticism, and cultural traditions, and becoming a pioneer in the journey of deconstructivism to China.
Five
In his literary career, Mr. Zheng Min has experienced most deeply, perhaps, the imprisonment and harm of new poetry creation and criticism by the dualistic confrontational thinking mode of either-or. Before the reform and opening up, the literary and artistic criticism model that regarded revolution and art as dualistic opposing values was an example, which led to the simplification and distortion of many excellent literary works, and eventually was beaten into the cold palace, and also led to the prevalence of false voids in the field of creation. After the reform and opening up, the anti-sublime trend that has arisen in the literary world is also an example. Although the latter stems from the desire to reflect on history and correct the rigid and false style, its attempt to reverse the noble/humble, elegant/vulgar binary hierarchical order is actually nothing more than the presentation of a rebellious mentality. In addition, after the 1990s, intellectual writing/colloquial writing, academic/folk disputes have arisen, and the "innovation" declarations of various genres of new poetry have all sought to draw a clear line with an imaginary "backward" target to show the vanguard, in Mr. Zheng Min's view, the writing mentality here is still blind, harmful to literary creativity and unhelpful. To this end, she published "What Should New Poetry Pursue Today?" A series of articles such as "Eighty Years of Reflections on Chinese New Poetry" and "Times and Poetry Creation" show her concern for the current situation in the literary world, and then expound her deconstructivist creative propositions: subjectivity/objectivity, individual/group, grand themes/personal monologues, spirit/flesh, elegance/custom is not the relationship between you and me, the east wind overwhelms the west wind, they are interdependent, blending and transforming each other in the works; cutting off the connection and dialogue between the two, choosing one and being hostile to the other end, will inevitably make the poet short-sighted and narrow-minded, and make the poetry lose its quality.
Many literary intellectuals who have suffered injustices and grievances in history can easily defect to the other pole of literary ideology after rehabilitation—since the ultra-left is wrong, the more right it is naturally to the right; since it is wrong to erase the world of personal sensibility, then private experience and even sensory feelings are naturally above everything, representing the destiny of literature. Mr. Zheng Min has always remained calm, not moved by the reverse emotion, and insists on emphasizing "the connection between the poet's heart and the times". She pointed out in the article that in the past, the uniform grand theme requirements and creative form norms obliterated individuality and suppressed imagination, although it caused a fatal blow to literary creation, but, conversely, if the small personal world was the only core of creation, the work would inevitably be mediocre and narrow, because "the rotation of two opposite errors cannot produce a correct reason."
Changing the dualistic antagonistic thinking is, of course, not just a task that needs to be solved urgently in literary creation. Bearing in mind his cultural mission and social responsibility as an intellectual, Mr. Zheng Min has repeatedly written articles calling on the educational and cultural circles to break through the dualistic stereotypes of new culture/old culture, advanced/backward, etc., and to lead the Chinese education and cultural construction to a healthy path.
In 2001, China formally joined the WTO. Mr. Zheng Min quickly realized that the "global integration" that accompanied the strong position of Europe and the United States has eroded and suppressed the earth's diverse ecology. Around her, she found:
Among generations of young and middle-aged national and cultural elites, the word "traditional" has meant conservative and backward, and traditional culture is equated with the antithesis of modernization in the collective subconscious. A hidden sense of national cultural inferiority and Western cultural centrism are quietly spreading among middle-aged and young people along with the pursuit of modernization. (Globalization and the Revival of Cultural Traditions)
In Mr. Zheng's view, the cultural inferiority of the Chinese people and Western-centrism are manifestations of our "understanding of science and democracy only in the May Fourth period" and many important understandings that have not yet come out of the historical stage of the "New Culture Movement". (Education and Interdisciplinary Thinking) We failed to emerge from the radical self-criticism and self-examination of the early 20th century to further deepen our self-understanding, so we fell into "neo-colonialism", so we were easily captured by the dualistic concepts of "modern civilization/backward peoples" set up in the West, and became tamed believers:
The terrible thing about the so-called "neo-colonialism" is that it does not aim at occupying land as the old colonialism did, but proceeds from economic interests and subtly changes the ethical values of a nation's life with commercial culture, so that it forgets the cultural and traditional wisdom of its own nation and becomes a cultural colony of a powerful country. And all this is carried out under the slogan of the grandiose emancipation of backward nations and the granting of modern civilization to them. (Historical Moments: The Revival of Chinese Cultural Traditions and Educational Reform)
Mr. Cheng believes that we must first understand and believe that "cultural traditions and pioneers are not binary confrontations" in order to ensure the independent choice of our nation at the spiritual level. At the same time, we must excavate our thousands of years of ancient cultural wisdom, learn from Chinese cultural traditions, and give them new interpretations that conform to the spirit of the times, so as to resist "cultural aesthetics and pursuits are manipulated by the propaganda of the consumer market" and find our own way in the process of modernization. ("The Balance Between Material Abundance and Spiritual Realm")
Six
If someone today looks back at the travel and localization development of "deconstructivism in China", Zheng Min should be a key point that no one can get around. In fact, however, she is probably the most easily forgotten figure by academic historians.
Her life was not in line with the trend and did not understand the times. In her youth, she was fascinated by "avant-garde art" and rubbed shoulders with the revolutionary theme of the times. In her twilight years, catching up with the wave of globalization, when the literary and academic circles were proud to follow Western fashion, she took the lead in "pouring cold water" and borrowing the spear of the West - deconstructionism - anti-Western centrism. She did not bother with it, and wrote an article advocating the absorption of modern nutrition from classical Chinese literature and traditional Chinese culture, expounding its significance for improving the cultural quality of the people, constructing a national cultural identity, and rebuilding cultural self-confidence, so that she was ridiculed as a "neoconservative" by her colleagues in foreign literary criticism circles.
Of course, this nickname, Mr. Zheng Min, laughed and did not care. Since returning to work in the late 1970s, she has devoted herself to teaching, research, and writing, and has always maintained a polite distance from disciplinary power and academic fame and fortune. In the 1980s, she was awarded the title of "Poet of the Nine Leaves" and her fame soared. Immediately afterward, her deconstructed research and cultural criticism articles caused great repercussions and rose to fame in literary and art theory circles. However, she has always been accustomed to being alone, neither participating in the competition for project funding, nor seeking the recognition of academic organizations or academic circles. In this regard, people often say that she is proud of the world. In fact, she just feels that time is precious and does not allow retreats and wastes.
Not wasting time talking is not only Mr. Zheng Min's unspoken academic standards, but also her teaching guidelines. In 1986, she began supervising doctoral students in the Department of Foreign Languages of Beijing Normal University. Since then, she has maintained the purest academic communication relationship with her students.
She seemed to be the embodiment of reason. When directing the thesis, she was quick-witted and logical. Her serial rhetorical questions are highly lethal, often forcing an ill-prepared student into a desperate situation and forcing him to work harder. In class and after class, she hardly talked about her own private affairs, nor did she ask much about the private lives of her disciples. She never indulged in personal gains and losses and felt nostalgic for the past, as if she did not have the proud deeds of the memory, nor did she have the sorrow and resentment that she cherished. Her interests and conversations are always in the public sphere, and the topics can be any reading experience, academic caprice, current affairs news, international events, or macro topics that extend from it— literature, art, culture, education, national quality, and national paths. When discussing, she was always cheerful and pleasant, sometimes gushing, sometimes full of curiosity and anticipation to explore the ideas of young people and debate with students on an equal footing.
She is always peaceful and open, there is no old man's twilight arbitrariness, no salt I have eaten more than you have eaten, I understand everything, no past time is how beautiful the world was, but unfortunately you did not catch up, no year is not as good as a generation is not as good as a generation I am old, it does not matter what you do in the future... She always felt fresh about every new phenomenon on every new day and longed for new knowledge. For her students, these are the things that she is most inspired and charming, and what she has the most influence and makes people unconscious.
Mr. Zheng Min supervised doctoral students for 17 years. Under her example, there is no exchange of interests between teachers and students, no personal relationship of mutual care and common prosperity. Except for the occasional meeting to exchange academic interests, most of the time, everyone forgets each other. Whether they are together or forget, Mr. Zheng regards it as nature. Mr. Zheng has repeatedly made it clear that she does not welcome students to come to the door without incident to ask for peace. She always said: "Every New Year's Holiday, socializing, saying something innocuous, it is the most boring; if you want to come, come with questions, and we will discuss it together." Because of this, decades of teacher-student affection have penetrated into the depths of the soul, but each person is still an individual who respects each other, and has not formed the so-called "teacher's door".
From a secular point of view, Mr. Zheng Min's style seems to be too serious and a little impersonal. However, as long as you are close to her heart, you can feel her tenderness and interest and be attracted to her. On the walls of her living room, there are light watercolor paintings and drawings. Her furniture is old and simple and neat, and there are always flowers brought by friends or planted by herself in the cupboards and countertops. When guests arrive, tea, cups and saucers and various small snacks are always prepared in advance on the coffee table, and the same is true for students coming to class, so no matter how anxious the visitor is before entering the door, the moment he sits down, he relaxes.
Whether on the phone or face to face, her voice is soft and sweet, the words are clear, the sentences are always natural and smooth, calm, and sometimes she laughs first when she speaks, and the laughter is consistent with confidence and determination. Her voice is gentle and powerful, as if wisdom and will permeate every word, making people naturally feel the weight.
She loves classical music and studied vocal music with her teachers for three years while studying in the United States. However, she never shows this history and does not talk about it on this topic. When the music started, she closed her eyes and listened quietly. Later, perhaps after a brief conversation or two with her companion, you can see the long thoughts and soul immersion on her face.
Mr. Zheng Min wrote in the poem "The Search of Beethoven":
What can be used to embrace hundreds of millions of people? / Stretch out the arm of the Danube / Ignite the eyes of the Big Dipper / With hard lips that open and close like sea mussels / Appeal his love for people, hatred of darkness ...
Like Beethoven, Mr. Zheng loves wisdom, loves truth, and loves people. She wrote love in poetry, in papers, just as Beethoven wrote his love in a symphony, deafness could not stop it. This is the light we find in the life calendar of the centenarian poet Zheng Min.
Author Xiao Sha, Associate Researcher of the Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences This article was first published in Guangming Daily on October 26, 2020