Mr. Zheng Min is an evergreen tree among the "Nine Leaves" poets, and the vitality of creation and thought has always been exuberant. In her long essay "Review at the End of the Century: The Transformation of the Chinese Language and the Creation of New Chinese Poetry" published in the early 1990s, through Western postmodern language theory, she questioned the negative impact of the "anti-traditional" posture of the vernacular movement on new poetry, and in the ideological atmosphere of reflecting on radicalism in that year, the repercussions far exceeded the circle of new poetry and even literary research, and there were many interlocutors and debaters. A young generation of avant-garde poets responded positively, proposing that there is a complex inheritance and transformation relationship between new poetry and "tradition", but this relationship is not decisive, because the "modernity" of new poetry is precisely reflected in the pursuit of "another aesthetic space" outside the tradition, and even asserts that the new poetry itself constitutes a new tradition. Such controversy is certainly not a new problem for new poetry. Breaking out of the cocoon of the aesthetic system of classical poetry, the so-called "rupture" between new poetry and tradition is not only its starting point, but also seems to constitute a kind of historical "original sin", and the dispute between the new and the old, the classical and the modern, the conservative and the avant-garde, the "Chineseness" and the "non-Chineseness" has been endlessly stranded since then, internalized into a lingering problem structure, which restricts and inspires the historical development of the new poetry of the past century. From this point of view, Mr. Zheng Min's inquiry is not nothing more than such a problem structure, or even can be seen as another manifestation of this structural tension at the "end of the century". More than half of the long and short articles included in this "small book" were written in the late 1990s and early new centuries, recording her intensive thinking and continuous excavation in this dimension during a period, and the views and ways of exposition in it overlap, and the urgency and earnestness of her mood can also be seen.
When Mr. Zheng Min was young
As a "modernist" poet of the 1940s, why Mr. Zheng revived the tradition and "rediscovered" the tradition in his later years, and repeatedly stated it bitterly, of course, this is not simply a reversal of attitude, nor is it influenced by the "tide of the times", but has its own internal context, but also out of concern for the development of contemporary poetry. According to Mr. Zheng's self-description, there were two peak periods in her poetry creation: one was during the Period of the Southwest United University, following Mr. Feng Zhi and others to study poetry, yearning for the philosophical realm in the poem, and carrying out a unique intellectual writing; second, in the mid-1980s, the poet revisited the United States, translated contemporary American poetry, studied deconstructivism, and realized that it was necessary to "try to avoid rational logic and let the forces accumulated in my unconscious come alive on their own", so he had a new consciousness and wrote a series of group poems "Mental Images". It should be said that the second peak of writing is not only a kind of "return", but more of a self-breakthrough and transformation in art, and it is in a synchronous and symbiotic relationship with contemporary avant-garde poetry such as obscure poetry and post-obscure poetry. Perhaps because of this, Mr. Zheng has always paid close attention to the writing, posture and cultural consciousness revealed in the poems of the younger generation of poets. Her theory of "tradition" is not a dry academic lecture, but a passion for dialogue in response to the problems and ills of contemporary poetry.
Mr. Zheng mentioned that in the 1940s, the southwest United University, Bian Zhilin and Feng Zhi, the two teachers, belonged to the "British and German departments, each unrelated" in terms of poetic style. If It is said that Bian Zhilin's poems are partial to The Modernism of England and France, they are more able to deal with complex modern experiences with witty ingenuity, while Feng Zhi's writing is more close to the style of Goethe and Rilke, which is both artistic and philosophical, and also connotes Du Fu's human feelings. Mr. Zheng, who has gone from literature to philosophy and back to literature, unconsciously seems to appreciate Feng Zhi's subtle and timeless writing with otherworldly spiritual qualities. She often quotes Heidegger as saying that "poetry and philosophy are close neighbors", taking the philosophical spirit as the foundation and humanistic thought as the inner meridian and latitude, seeking a complete expression of life consciousness and a classical beauty of modeling, which may be a basis for Mr. Zheng Min to evaluate "contemporary" and look back at tradition.
Therefore, for the modern aesthetics of Elliott all the way to the montage in the 20th century, although Mr. Zheng has a deep understanding, he may still have a certain sense of distance from the inner taste. For the various "experiments" and "innovations" in the contemporary poetry world, and for the so-called Chinese-style "postmodern poetry" that flooded in the 1980s and 1990s, it is even more of an attitude of examination and criticism, believing that the tendency to oppose lyricism, anti-poetry, and writing about daily life and pan-prose culture will make poetry become mediocre and trivial, and blindly pursuing "personalization" will also lead to the narrowness of the spiritual world. Introducing the dimension of tradition, Mr. Zheng tirelessly talks about the realm, rhythm, rhetoric, and structure of classical poetry, seemingly the reaffirmation of common sense, and focuses on contemporary "correction" everywhere, or the field of tradition as the argument, with the purpose of breaking the myth of new poetry modernity and pointing to a warm expectation of the development prospects of new poetry.
Of course, from the perspective of a certain "insider", Mr. Zheng Min seems to have a little less sympathy for contemporary poetry after the 90s, and the so-called banalization and generalization phenomenon does exist, but it is not the whole of poetry in this period, and the contemporary poetry after the 90s is also not lacking in efforts to go deep into reality and history from a personal point of view. But aside from specific phenomenal evaluations, whether the single, new and different logic of "modernity" can continue to support the development of new poetry, and how contemporary poetry imagines its own future in a broader cultural and historical vision, these are indeed questions that poetry writers, critics and researchers should consider.
More importantly, Mr. Zheng talked about new poetry and tradition, and also talked about the cultural responsibility and historical position of poetry. In articles such as Poetry and History, she expressed her deep concern about the many ills brought about by postmodern and post-industrial societies, about the new wars and enslavements of high-tech and globalization, and the confusion about where humanistic thought represented by poetry is going. The reaffirmation of the cultural mission and historical consciousness of poetry by poetry and culture, history, and the overall situation of mankind is, in my opinion, an expression of the rich humanistic feelings of Mr. Zheng's generation of poets and scholars, and it is also the deeper meaning of her reflection on "contemporary" through "tradition".
When it comes to the relationship between new poetry and tradition, the history and future of new poetry, Mr. Zheng focuses on the big picture and has far-reaching expectations, but what cannot be ignored is that her careful reading and appreciation of specific poetry works are also particularly wonderful, such as the elaboration of the "high-rise building structure" in Frost's poem, the revelation of the relationship between contradictions and tensions in Mu Dan's poem, and the discussion of the musicality of Feng Zhi's "Fourteen Elements", which are classics. Mr. Zheng is an expert in English and American literature, and has a fairly mature grasp of modern poetics and critical theory in the 20th century, and her interpretation can penetrate deep into the texture of the text and extract the unique structure of poetic generation. This vision of modern poetics also extends to her analysis of classical Chinese poetry. Many of the articles included in the "Little Book of Everyone" "New Poetry and Tradition" revolve around the central question of "what can new poetry learn from classical poetry", combined with specific works, very detailed discussion of the aesthetic characteristics of classical poetry in terms of realm, structure, rhetoric, musicality, picture, color, alchemy, etc. Even if it is only a common sense discussion, it often implies the unique insight of a modern poet, giving classic poems and famous sentences a new modern atmosphere.
Everyone's small book "New Poetry and Tradition" Zheng Min Wenjin Publishing House
Mr. Cheng has repeatedly discussed the "realm" of classical poetry. She believes that "realm" is an experience and evaluation of life formed by a mixture of ethics, aesthetics and knowledge, and is a breath of the national soul. She said that if poetry lacks "realm", if it lacks tangible and invisible breath, it will "lose its luster, just a bunch of words." Mr. Zheng's own writing, full and cheerful, maintains a youthful luster, but also has a sense of comfortable breathing, not out of an indifferent professional mentality, always jumping and vivid writing experience, but also conveys the confidence in poetry culture. In Mr. Zheng's view, new poetry should be based on the vast humanistic spirit and constantly absorb the traditional sweet spring, so as to have a greater future; then nourished by such a sap, in the branches of language, constantly blooming new shoots of feeling and thinking, is undoubtedly the "new" virtue of "new poetry".
The author, Jiang Tao, is a professor at the Department of Chinese at Peking University, and this article is an introduction to New Poetry and Tradition. Published in Beijing Evening News on October 9, 2020