On January 3, Zheng Min, a poet, poetry critic and professor at the School of Foreign Chinese Literature at Beijing Normal University, died of illness in Beijing at the age of 102.
As the last leaf of the "Nine Leaf Poetry School", Zheng Min has grown into an "evergreen tree" in the Chinese poetry world through a century of life tempering and continuous profundity. "Whether as an active and maverick female poet, a scholar of Comparative Poetics between China and the West and a translator of Modern Chinese and American poetry, or as a contemporary Chinese intellectual who has gone through a century of vicissitudes, Zheng Min's writing process, personal life experience and creative achievements have become a living witness of this turbulent and turbulent 20th century." Liu Yan, a professor at the School of Culture and Communication of Beijing Second Chinese University, once commented.
Zheng Min Image source: Beijing Daily Weibo
The star of the poets of the Southwest United University
Zheng Min was born in Beijing in 1920, his ancestral home is Minhou, Fujian, and his original surname is Wang. Grandfather Wang Yunhao, is a very famous lyricist in Fuzhou, his biological father studied in France and Belgium, specializing in mathematics, and his birth mother studied private school and liked poetry. Zheng Min inherited the family's Chinese lineage.
At the age of one and a half, Zheng Min contracted meningitis and almost died. Later, he was passed on to his biological father's brother Zheng Liming during the period of staying in France, and changed his surname to Zheng. Zheng Liming was an engineer who later joined the League. He nurtured Zheng Min with the most enlightened thoughts possible in that era, always encouraging her to discuss issues with him with equal self-esteem. Therefore, Zheng Min's childhood and adolescence were rarely feudal, and he grew into a person who attached importance to independent thinking.
In 1939, Zheng Min was admitted to the Philosophy Department of Southwest United University, and began to contact the new poems of Wen Yiduo, Xu Zhimo, Bian Zhilin, Renming and others, and in the second grade, he was assigned to Feng Zhi's German class and became fascinated by Feng Zhi's poetry. After class, Zheng Min always ran to Feng Zhi's home to "sit silly", listening to Feng Zhi and his wife, chatting and discussing with Guests such as Bian Zhilin. To her, the Feng family is like a library, like an exhibition hall of wisdom. She doesn't speak, she just absorbs.
A year later, after a Lesson in German, Zheng Min handed Feng Zhi a copy of his poems on paper and asked him for advice. Feng Zhi said: "There are poems in here, you can write them, but this is a very lonely road. After I listened, I couldn't calm down for a long time. I think it was at that moment that I was doomed to an indissoluble relationship with poetry. Zheng Min once recalled.
In 1942, Zheng Min published his first group of works in a local newspaper in Kunming. The following year, she graduated from the Southwest United University, and on the recommendation of Feng Zhi, she published nine works in "Tomorrow's Literature and Art", including the masterpiece that was later renamed "Golden Rice Bunch".
"[Zheng Min's poem] can make people see the wisdom accumulated in a rich life, a very ordinary phenomenon in the world, and when she writes it, it turns out the light and darkness, revealing the essence." In 1948, Chen Jingrong published "Sincere Voices: A Brief Discussion of Zheng Min, Mu Dan, and Du Yunxie" in "Poetry Creation", which commented on Zheng Min's poetry. Yuan Kejia said in the article "The New Generation of Poetry": "The force in her poems is not the force represented by heavyweight boxers in the usual sense, but comes from the deep dive, and the softness of the clear flowing water makes people's hearts broken." Since then, Zheng Min, together with Mu Dan and Du Yunxie, has been praised as "the three stars among the poets of the Southwest United University".
In the winter of 1948, Zheng Min went to Brown University in the United States to pursue a master's degree in English literature. During this time, her first collection of poems, Collected Poems 1942-1947, was edited and published by Barkin himself. This collection of works by Zheng Min is an early poetry collection, focusing on the rendering of scenes and atmospheres, a strong sense of rhythm, coupled with the introduction of philosophical thinking, making the whole collection quite modern and penetrating. It can be said that the artistic starting point of Zheng Min's poetry is very high, but with a series of historical changes after returning to China, she had to interrupt her own creation.
In the early 1980s, some of the Jiuye poets took a group photo from left to right: Chen Jingrong, Du Yunxie, Cao Xinzhi, Zheng Min, Yuan Kejia, and Tang Qi
Set off again under the name of the "Nine Leaf Poetry School"
In 1956, Zheng Min returned to China and first went to the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study English literature, and in 1960 he was transferred to Beijing Normal University as a professor.
As soon as she set foot on the land of the motherland, she was followed by a series of historical winds and rainstorms of the times. Zheng Min first stood on the outside and looked at all this calmly and sincerely. Then there was inevitable being in it, testing, and despite several setbacks, it was always safe to come.
It was not until after the reform and opening up that Zheng Min regained his poetry. One day in 1979, Cao Xinzhi invited eight poets from the 1940s, including Zheng Min, to meet at home to discuss the publication of a collection of poetry. This meeting made Zheng Min very excited, and wrote "Poetry, I found you again!" in the car! 》。
The poetry collection was finally published by Jiangsu People's Publishing House in 1981 as "Nine Leaves Collection - Selected Poems of Nine People in the 1940s", including Cao Xinzhi, Xin Di, Chen Jingrong, Zheng Min, Tang Qi, Tang Xiang, Du Yunxie, Mu Dan and Yuan Kejia, and the "Nine Leaf Poets" and "Nine Leaf Poetry School" were also derived.
However, Zheng Min later said many times that he did not agree with the "Nine Leaf Poetry School" as a reference to a literary genre. In her understanding, it is just a few intellectuals who have just come together, all of whom have a common literary background, a common sense of modernist poetry, no ideas and theories of abstract systems, and little contact with each other in private.
However, literary history sometimes coincides with the writer's personal original intention or idea, and the connotation and boundaries of the "Nine Leaf Poetry School", as the first poetry group to emerge in the form of a poetry genre after the founding of New China, may have long exceeded that meeting.
Zheng Min also had to admit that the "Nine Leaves School" summed up the atmosphere of China's new poetry after World War II, reflecting the characteristics of the spirit of the times at that time, that "hope and worry are intertwined, pain and excitement coexist, and human beings have escaped the disaster, but what should tomorrow be like?" "Confused. Stylistically, the poetic language of the "Nine Leaf School" has moved beyond the early colloquial vernacular and begun to use literary language to carry their complex modern thoughts and feelings. Moreover, the "Nine-Leaf School" has brought China and the world together, brought Western cultural trends into China, introduced the poetry of Eliot, Auden and Rilke of Germany, and introduced a postmodern atmosphere into China. This makes the new Chinese poetry come out of the romantic stage of Shelley in the early days, and breaks the old elegance in life and concept. The new Chinese poems give up the feelings of boudoir, and "Nine Leaves" is the first wave.
For example, in February 1980, some young poets who wrote "obscure poems" at that time visited Zheng Min. The young people were taken aback when they read the poems of the "Nine-Leaf Poetry School" and said, "What we want to do, the poets of the 40s have already done." ”
Since the 1980s, Zheng Min has published poetry collections "Seeking Collection", "Heart Elephant", "Morning, I Pick Flowers in the Rain", "Zheng Min", "Zheng Min Poetry Collection: 1979-1999", and every year he will launch new works in "People's Literature" or "Poetry Journal".
According to Wu Sijing, a professor at the College of Literature of Capital Normal University, from the day she stepped on the poetry scene, Zheng Min showed a difference from her contemporaries, and her poetry was full of philosophical contemplation and humanistic temperament. She was first deeply influenced by Feng Zhi, and then extended from Feng Zhi to the metaphysical poets John Dorn, Wordsworth and Rilke, and in the new era she was able to contact contemporary Western ideas such as Derrida and gain a new understanding of Chinese poetry and traditional Chinese culture.
On the occasion of her centenarian birthday, Zheng Min recalled the context of her life, saying that "she can always finish one thing and immediately see another thing there", this attitude makes her later poetry find a balance between Western culture and traditional Chinese culture, integrating philosophical thinking with image, intellect and sensibility, and is full of connotation in ease. For example, "The Poet and Death" and "The Last Birth", written in his later years, are the best works under this poetic concept.
Zhang Taozhou, a poet, critic and professor at the College of Literature of Capital Normal University, told the surging news reporter that there are differences in Zheng Min's creations before and after the period, as well as continuation and development, and he pays more attention to the relevance of them.
"A very important key word in Zheng Min's early poetry is 'loneliness', that is, a very calm, peaceful, philosophical way of writing, which has been continued for a long time after the 1980s, and it is a kind of 'mature loneliness'." In Zhang Taozhou's view, after the 1980s, Zheng Min's poetry has deepened in continuation, paying more attention to mental expression, "the more you write, the better." I think her work in the late eighties and early nineties is her best work, and "The Poet and death" can be said to be the pinnacle of her creation.", "Think about it, she was already a 70-year-old person at that time." ”
Zheng Min Image source: Orange Persimmon Interactive Client
Reflections on the retracement of tradition and reconstruction of new poetry
While zheng min continues to explore his personal poetry writing, he has also been thinking about the problem and future of new Chinese poetry, full of worries. In the 1990s, she published a series of reflective articles, including "Review at the End of the Century: The Transformation of the Chinese Language and the Creation of New Chinese Poetry", "The Classical and Modern Chinese Poetry", and "The Concept of Language Must Change". She regards the excessive denial of tradition and literary language in the New Culture Movement as the crux of the inherent inadequacy of the development of new Chinese poetry: the language of new poetry is deeply influenced by the concept of "I write by hand and I mouth", so that the rhetoric of new poetry lacks the image beauty and profound realm connotation unique to Chinese literary language.
These reflections have sparked a lot of debate in the academic circles, and Zheng Min is also regarded as one of the representatives of cultural conservatism in the 1990s. However, going back and returning to tradition does not mean retro and conservative. While stressing that new poetry should draw nourishment from the classics, Zheng Min also believes that new poetry cannot be separated from the world trend, "We must understand both our own traditions and Western traditions." ”
"On the one hand, Zheng Min is reflecting on may fourth cultural radicalism, on the other hand, she attaches more importance to the reconstruction of new Chinese poetry." Zhang Taozhou saw that Zheng Min's call for classical tradition and the use of foreign cultural resources were not incompatible.
For the future of New Chinese Poetry, Zheng Min believes that New Poetry urgently needs to find contemporary poetry art with its own Chinese language characteristics and establish its own new poetics and poetics, only in this way can it be possible to keep pace with the world's contemporary poetry. As for the anti-sublime, anti-aesthetic, anti-communist, anti-cultural, anti-meaning, anti-theme and other tendencies in contemporary poetry since the 1990s, hoping to achieve "pioneer", Zheng Min does not agree, "Poetry needs poets to sincerely reveal about life." Sincerity is the poet's first virtue, and any slippery play is a blasphemy against poetry. ”
Zheng Min can be said to have made very fierce criticisms of the various conditions of Chinese poetry since the 1990s. In her view, Chinese poetry at that time was too influenced by commercialism and mass culture, and it was misguided, so it proposed a neutralization route. These criticisms, Zhang Taozhou believes, are too intense, but as time goes on, the reasonable parts of them have become more and more prominent, and some of these constructive solutions are still very inspiring today, and they are particularly worth rethinking.
After the road of life is completed, the exemplary meaning will always exist
Wang Zigua, a young poet and doctoral student in the Department of Chinese of Fudan University, once concentrated on systematic reading and study of the works of early Poets of Chinese New Poetry, including Zheng Min, who believes that whether as a poetry writer or an academic researcher, Zheng Min can enlighten today's young people in two aspects.
Originally, I only knew her works in the 40s, but after reading the whole collection, I found that Zheng Min still wrote so many good works after the 80s, even if it is still novel today. Before, we may have a misconception that many early new poets wrote a lot of good works at a young age, but by middle age or later years, either there was no new work, or no progress, or even no regression. Wang Zigua told the surging news that Zheng Min is a very rare "outlier" among them, and when he was sixty or seventy years old, he opened new leaves.
In Wang Zigua's view, there is a strange phenomenon in contemporary Chinese poetry, whether it is the poetry circle or the reader, there is a kind of overly new psychology, scornful and dismissive of the "old poet" things.
But foreign poets, such as Auden and Eliot, were very knowledgeable about their traditions. Chinese poets are often too 'contemporary' to put themselves in the shoes of the new poets to understand and appreciate how new poetry flourishes from scratch and through the efforts of generations. As far as Zheng Min is concerned, Wang Zigua believes that many of her works can still bring him fresh stimulation, such as "Newly Married" and "The Last One" are full of vivid expressions. In addition, the poet's treatment of the real life she faced at that time, how to transform them into poetry, is still full of exemplary significance.
Not only that, Zhang Taozhou believes that Zheng Min's significance lies in her "reshaping the image of the poet.". Previously, Chinese poets often showed people as a prophet, a prophet or a spokesperson or preacher, "Zheng Min has maintained a very individual image from the beginning of creation, a very lonely lonely person, she is not preaching in the noisy downtown, nor is she predicting the future of the world like a prophet." ”
Li Shaojun, editor-in-chief of the "Poetry Journal", gave high praise to Zheng Min in an interview with the surging news reporter on the occasion of Zheng Min's centennial birthday: Mr. Zheng Min was an active explorer of new poetry in his early years, openly absorbing various resources, and she once served the new poems of the past century, which made people sober and re-understood the relationship between tradition and modernity. Mr. Zheng Min represents the rational and constructive voice of contemporary poetry, and it now seems that such a force is the most sustainable and vital.
This voice has also been widely recognized overseas. As a poet who inherited the two periods of the 1940s and 1980s, the translation and dissemination of Zheng Min's poetry overseas has gone through a span of more than 60 years, from the initial sporadic translation to the positive evaluation of various literary histories, from obscurity to the classicization of textbooks or anthologies. His poetic status has gradually been recognized and consolidated, and his representative works have gradually been translated into English-based multilingualism (also including French, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, etc.), selected into important overseas collections of modern Chinese poetry, Chinese women's poetry collections or Chinese literary works anthology, and published English-Chinese bilingual and Japanese one-line editions. Zheng Min's name appears in various research treatises on the history of modern Chinese poetry and the history of modern Chinese literature, and has received appropriate and positive evaluations, and his poetic status has been promoted.
On July 18, 2020, the day of Zheng Min's 100th birthday, the poet and Zheng Min's child Wei helped her record a video. In the video, she says she's 100 years old, "but every day I feel like I'm not done yet!" ”
Today, her path in the world has been completed, but her works and thoughts will continue to comfort and remind us, nourishing Chinese new poetry and continuing to open new leaves.
(This article refers to the reports of Lu Yunhong of Shenzhen Special Administrative Region, Zhou Nanyan of Beijing Daily, Zhang Yan of Literature and Art Newspaper, as well as Wu Sijing's "On Contemporary Chinese Poets" and Liu Yan's "Research on the Translation and Dissemination of Zheng Min's Poetry in the English-Speaking World". ）