● Munch
In 1963, young artists active in New York read an advertisement in a mimeographed publication called The Floating Bear, featuring mimeographed poetry C featuring the work of the poet Edwin Denby, in which it was mentioned that each cover of the journal was a different painting by Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol printed the "only" cover of each book for C with the "silkscreen" technique, and his participation became the biggest selling point of this issue. [1] In the future, the founder of pop art will also be remembered as a "printer". Twenty years later, in 1983, there were also mimeograph publications with such "uniqueness" in the contemporary Chinese poetry scene, except that it was a personal poetry collection with embedded illustrations, because of the "one-time" way of painting, each painting in each poetry collection became an "original work", and the whole poetry collection was thus full of distinct handwritten characteristics. The painting was painted by Ma Desheng and the poem was written by Munch, and this mimeographed collection of poems is Sunflowers in the Sun.
Sunflowers in the Sun is Munch's third mimeographed collection of poems and the last one he printed with his friends in his youth. The reason why he intersected with "mimeograph" and because of "mimeograph" made his early works survive, he had to start from his interactions with friends.
Preparation of mimeographs
One
Munch's three mimeographed poems, Heart matter, Old Dreams, and Sunflowers in the Sun, appeared between 1978 and 1983. The reason why they were printed was first attributed to Munch's friendship network, and it was with the help of friends such as Kitajima, Huang Rui, Gao Jie, Ma Desheng, Yan Li and E Fuming that made these three poems born of friendship and implemented in action integrated into a silhouette and physical evidence of the interaction of Beijing's poetry circles in the early 1980s.
In January 1969, 19-year-old Munch joined Bai Yangdian, and the youth who went to this water town in Hebei Province, as well as his classmates in Beijing No. 3 Middle School, Genzi, Duoduo, and a few children of the North Film Factory, in this way, "the Mao children who did not graduate from junior high school became intellectual youths" and began to "act" in the "vast world" more than a hundred kilometers away from home. Unlike most intellectuals who feel in their memories that "life is desolately banished"[2], Munch, who joins the queue, is like a "monkey"[3] returning to the "mountain forest", and the free side of his nature is more appropriately preserved in his youth because he is far away from the city and family discipline, and in the natural nature of rural life.
In January 1976, in the same batch of rural zhiqing, Munch was the last to return to Beijing from Baiyangdian. But he did not stay in the countryside and did not return home, for him, "going to the countryside to join the team" is a detachment from the previous order and discipline of life, leaving his parents and specific organizations, Munch became a "child of freedom", he can often "talk and go". In 1970, he and his childhood friends traveled around Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, and his idea of "going on the road" was influenced by the "Beat" writer Kerouac's "On the Road" in the "Yellow Book". From books to life, from thoughts to actions, Munch personally practiced the unity of "action" and "thought" in his youth, and the "roaming" temperament cultivated by Lotte's personality and the interest of breaking through the rivers and lakes became the breath of his later recognizable poetry.
So I didn't spend many days in Dayantou Village in 1970, so it's no wonder that at the end of the year, the captain of the production team said to me: You still owe the money to the team! ...... This means that I have not done any work in the village this year. [4]
In his essay "1970-1978: Buried Chinese Poets," Duoduo described the "early winter of 1970" as "an early spring in the spirit of Beijing's youth." This year, Yan Li returned to Beijing from his grandfather's house in Shanghai, and it did not take long for him to become acquainted with Munch. Huang Rui was an alumnus of Beijing No. 3 Middle School, a low-level Munk class, "who painted oil paintings at that time, and his family lived in a small courtyard not far from the school." [5] Huang Rui was the earliest editorial board member and art designer of Today magazine, and one of the initiators of the "Star Painting Society". In his early years, Munch was also familiar with the children of the North Film Studio, "I did not deal with the children of the North Film Studio in the 60s and 70s"[6], and Gao Jie met at this time. In early 1971, Munch began writing poetry, a year in which he wrote seven short poems, but only "To the Fisher Brothers" and "The Vineyard", all rewritten from memory. [7] In 1972, Munk became acquainted with Kitajima, and at the end of the year or early the following year, Kitajima visited Munch in Baiyangdian, and 1972 was "the year when our thoughts and actions began to be active"[8], the year Peng Gang foundEd Munch, they founded the "Avant-garde Art School" of two people, and once again "on the road". The two traveled from Beijing to Hankou to Xinyang, bumpy, young and depressed, relying on the kindness of strangers and the money sent by Munch's mother to stop wandering.
In 1973, Munch wrote Green in Green and Twenty-third Autumn, "The Most Active Year for The Few Poets in Beijing" and "The Most Active Year for Beijing's Underground Cultural Salon." [9] For what purpose were these "ambitious" young men "frantically writing poetry and painting"? "I don't know why, at least I don't know what I'm for." [10] But it is clear that in this "I don't know for what" there is mutual verification of the relationship between poetry and human destiny, poetry and the times. Unfortunately, most of Munk's early poems were intentionally or unintentionally lost by him. After returning to Beijing in January 1976, he became a worker at the Beijing Paper Factory. The "formal" identity in this social system was not so much a "guarantee" as it brought about some kind of "inhibition"; there was tension at the beginning between the constraints of the "worker" identity and the way of life that Munch was accustomed to and happy with, and the stable work became in a sense a counterforce to writing poetry and association, and four years later, Munch withdrew from the system.
At the same time, Munch enthusiastically threw himself into the way he identified life and work, especially after 1978, when important friends and colleagues appeared because of the creation of Today. Due to the trust between friends and the spiritual resonance of the early 1980s, this kind of interaction between interest and friendship became the premise of "working together" in the future. In the early days of the magazine, Ma Desheng came to "Today", a sketchman at the Institute of Commercial Machinery, who loved art and specialized in woodblock prints. "Liu Qing of Today came to me and said they had a publication and asked me to help with the illustrations." [11] Thus, Ma began to intersect with his works and the poets of Today and Today. But in another textual account, Ma Desheng entered the circle of "Today" through Huang Rui's introduction:
At that time, Huang Rui was responsible for the layout design of the folk magazine "Today". He introduced Ma to the magazine's editors and contributors, who later provided the magazine with several prints and poems, including a woodcut print carried in each of the first issues of Today magazine. [12]
Whether it is through the introduction of Liu Qing or Huang Rui to "Today", it shows that there were many young people in Beijing's literary and art circles at that time, and they introduced each other, and the boundaries of intersection were expanded and overlapped from time to time. In February 1979, Li Nan came to "Today" with Efuming, who had just returned to Beijing from Inner Mongolia, and Efuming picked up the ink roller and began to work on the mimeograph magazine on the first day of his arrival in the editorial office.
Roaming, making friends, and writing poems became the preparation for Munch's mimeographed poems. Between 1978 and 1983, Munch printed three personal collections of poems, all of which were mimeographed informal publications, and the prints of the poems were closely related to the above friends. In the catalysis of friendship and action, under the influence of aesthetics and art, these three mimeographed poems are integrated into the unique existence of chinese contemporary poetry that deserves to be salvaged and remembered, and they have both important textual value and unique artistic beauty, namely: "Heart Matter" printed in December 1978 ("Heart Matter" was reprinted again as one of the "Today" series in January 1980); "Old Dream" printed in 1982 and "Sunflower in the Sunshine" printed in 1983. The creativity and "original" attributes of the pioneers of the poetry collection, the rebellious atmosphere and the sense of clarity of the poems were very precious in the poetry world at that time, and they still maintain the power of beauty today. Even if art does not have an obvious standard, "Heart Matter", "Old Dreams" and "Sunflowers in the Sun" creatively complete the intertextuality of poetry and art in a refreshing way.
On the right| cover of Munch's poetry collection "Old Dreams", which is derived from today's website
The intertext of "poetry" and "fine art"
Two
How to reach the exquisite subtlety of art with action and imagination when material conditions are relatively scarce, and complete the poetry inside and outside the text, Munch's early mimeographed poems provide a path of observation. In the pre-market economy era, the creation of "things" was closely related to individual labor. "Heart Matter", "Old Dream", "Sunflower in the Sun" inscribes the specific text of the poet's creative beginning, as a collection of poems of "things", which are close to the heights of artistic possibilities when approaching the starting point.
(i)
"Heart matter": Art begins with the cover
At the turn of the summer and autumn of 1978, Kitajima found Munch. At this time, they had known each other for six years and had a close relationship. That day, Kitajima gave Munch a personal mimeographed collection of poems called "Strange Beaches," which shocked Munch a lot. "I think that when I met Zhenkai in 1972, I saw that the poem he could get his hands on was the one "Golden Trumpet"... My mother, it's different now..." [13] When Bai Yangdian joined the team, Munch and Toto had agreed to exchange a book of poems every year like a dueling pistol, but Kitajima came this time, neither "challenging" nor "showing off", he came to mobilize Munch to also print a book of poems.
Shouldn't you also print a copy? Zhenkai said to me. And I said in my heart that I still have poetry in my hand, and those poems i wrote in the past have long been destroyed, either destroyed in my own hands, burned, or lost somewhere.
……
Haven't you written a lot of poems? Zhenkai continued to talk to me. I told him the truth, it was all burning! He suddenly seemed to remember something, and said I will help you find it, I have seen your poem at a friend's house, he copied it by hand. [14]
On why these poems "went to waste," Munch recalled:
At that time, I felt that these things were useless, it was inconvenient to carry on the body, it was not safe, there was no home at that time, I didn't know where to put these things, I didn't take them seriously, and I burned them. [15]
Fortunately, these early works, which were not "taken seriously" by Munch, were partially preserved in the codices, preserved by Zhao Yifan, a legendary figure in Beijing's underground literary circles at the time. "Strange Beach" is a great shock to Munch, and the temptation to write poetry is re-emerging. Kitajima takes Munch to Zhao Yifan's house in The Kidnap Alley in Dongcheng District, where several of his early poems are revealed.
This visit to Zhao Yifan was too rewarding for me. He didn't know who he had seen many of my early poems, and he copied them all. These poems were all written by me from 1972 to 1974, and several poems such as "The City", "Sky", "Autumn", "Moon on the Road" and "Poems in October" were the more important works of my years, which was really lucky, and I had the confidence to mimeograph my first collection of poems without these poems. [17]
In 1978, Munch began writing poems frequently again for his self-published poetry collection. Based on the poems that Zhao Yifan found everywhere, and then found some old works from friends, "Zhenkai and I both felt that printing a thinner collection of poems was almost the same, so we began to plan to engrave wax paper to find paper and print." [18] How to engrave wax paper? Munch found Gao Jie, "He is my old friend, who has been practicing calligraphy since he was a child and writes very well." In the courtyard of the dormitory of the North Film Studio, Munch took the poem manuscript to Gao Jie, "Gao Jie promised with a full mouth and handed me the engraved wax paper within ten days." [19] Paper issues are also addressed. "At that time, I could never get paper"[20], but Munch happened to be working in a paper factory in Beijing at that time, knowing that he wrote poems and wanted to print a book of his own poems, Xiao Liu, a young colleague of the factory, "patted his chest" and took over the task of solving the paper, and soon he was carrying a large bag of high-quality paper from the workshop, and the first version of "Heart Matter" was attached to the friendship of the unit. Immediately after, Huang Rui found a mimeograph machine, and in the courtyard of Huang Rui's family, Munch, Kitajima, and Huang Rui cooperated to mimeograph "Heart Matter".
The cover of "Heart Matter" was written by Huang Rui and was "drawn one by one",[21] and judging from the surviving poetry collections, Huang Rui designed at least two versions. The first cover I saw, the background is made of irregular geometric figures stitched together, the names of the poems "XIN SHI" and "Heart Matter" are located on the upper right and lower left sides, the pinyin letter part is blue, and the Chinese character part is brownish red. The second cover has a black background, "XIN SHI" and "Heart" are curly green handwriting, which are on the left of the middle of the cover, and the entire cover is decorated with orange, pink, blue, white, and red color dots, scattered on the black background. "Heart matter" has been printed for more than forty years, and its delicate and light cover is still beautiful today. Either confined to the printing conditions of the time, or the vigorous creative impulses of young artists, the cover was composed of hundreds of "one-off" artistic creations. Since the covers of both editions are hand-drawn, and I have not seen other editions other than these two, it cannot be confirmed that this design is a "one-time" original or a special design for the final edition.
The author sent the cover of what he saw to the poet for verification, and Munk recalled:
None of the covers of "Heart Matters" are exactly the same, because it is not printed, each sheet is made, spray-painted or handwritten, like the names of poems, they are all handwritten, so it is impossible to have two copies that are exactly the same.
We printed out the "Zhen'er" of "Heart Matter" first, the cover was made later, made a sticky sheet, and each sheet was made freshly. The cover of "Heart Matter" is probably these two styles, each one is similar, but the details are different. (Geometric background) This is the earliest look of "Heart Matter", the cover is colored, and the later cover is colored on a black background, and each sheet is different. I'm not sure if this initial design was Huang Rui, but I think some of it should have been designed by him, and there were a few people who were engaged in cover design at that time, and I can't remember the specific names. [22]
There are two covers of Munch's mimeographed poem "Heart Matter", designed and produced by Huang Rui
Stylistically, "Heart Matter" had two versions earlier. "Anyway, let's just make a joke, just design these, several covers are different." [23] The basis of young people's "playfulness" is the similarity of fun, and in the process of "playing", some "positive karma" is quietly brewing. "It is precisely because of this mutual trust and friendship that we will discuss the joint creation of a literary magazine one day." [24] The birth of "Heart Matter" was in fact a prelude to the founding of "Today".
"Heart Matter" is hand-engraved wax paper mimeograph, 16 open, a total of 60 pages, double-sided printing, a total of 27 poems, of which "Autumn", "Dedication Poems: 1972 - 1973", "Sky", "October Poems", "Heart Matter", "Birthday" and other works that have been widely circulated in the future have been published for the first time in the style of "printed materials". It is worth noting that with the exception of the first Prologue poem, each poem is marked with a specific time of creation at the end, and although the poet has lost most of the original poem manuscript to the point where it is impossible to fully examine the early context of Munch's poems, the catalogue of "The Heart" still draws a trajectory for understanding the enthusiasm of the poet when he first wrote the poem. Judging from the works included, 1973 was the first "explosive period" in Munch's creation, and in this year he at least wrote poems such as "The Moon on the Road", "Frozen Land", "Autumn", "Dedication poems: 1972 - 1973", "The Sky", "The Sun Has Set", "The Smoke of the White House", "The City" and so on. From 1974 to 1976, his enthusiasm for creation declined relatively, including two poems in 1974, "Dedication to October" and "Give"; two poems in 1975, "I Am the Wind" and "The Skinny Girl"; and one poem in 1976, "It Was a Morning". Beginning in 1977, the poet once again showed a high enthusiasm for creation, "Grave", "My Heart", "Night Sky", "Moon Appreciation", "Night in Sleep", "Commemorative Book for Shanshan", "Heart Matter" were all written in this year, "White Snow", "Black Earth", "Farmer of the Earth", "Really", "I Am a Poet", "Birthday" was completed in 1978. From this point of view, it seems to be a little jet lag from the poet's claim that it was only in 1978 that the interest in writing poems was revived after seeing the Kitajima mimeograph poetry collection.
The fluctuation of the number of works included in the collection was affected by a variety of factors, or the loss of poetry, or the poet's preference for writing at different times after precipitation, although the collection of poems did not fully reflect Munch's early creation, but the probability of this sample basically coincided with what he recalled in the article: in 1973, their group of "ambitious" young people "frantically wrote poetry and painting", "this is the most active year" of the few poets in Beijing, and for self-printing or simply "competition" with Kitajima In 1978 or even earlier, Munch began writing poetry again.
For two years after the fall of 1978, a small group, led by Kitajima, Munch, and Huang Rui, devoted themselves to the founding of Today magazine. In January 1980, "Heart Matter" was reprinted again as the first copy of the "Today" series, when the editorial department did not have a speed printing machine, Efuming commissioned the Dongcheng District Beixinqiao Transcription Press to print 1,000 copies in the form of typing wax paper mimeograph. However, this version only changed the cover to the uniform blue cover of "Today", and the content was consistent with the first printing of "Heart".
Munch: Selected Poems of Munch
Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House / 2015
(ii)
Old Dreams: Woodcuts and Poems
In September 1980, Today was discontinued, and Kitajima Munk and others were still working on the survival of the magazine, during which the "Today Literary Research Society" briefly existed. By the end of December 1980, Today had ceased all activity. At the same time, Munch, who was busy with "Today" and had been absent from work for hundreds of days, received a letter from a paper factory in Beijing, informing him that he had been removed from the unit. In 1981, Munch went to Fujian for a while, which was a distraction. "That year, I had nothing to do, so I wrote a long set of poems called 'Old Dreams.'" [25] As a farewell to Today, Munch bid farewell to this youth of literary action and labor with the old dream record, and this group of poems written in November 1981 subsequently became the subject of his second mimeographed poetry collection. E Fuming wrote in the article "Early Affairs Remembrance":
The social system was also gradually loosening, the sword of Damocles hanging over his head was invisible, and the signs that reminded him were quietly issued to him with a marriage certificate that had been delayed for two years. However, none of this could resolve the sadness left in his heart by the departure of "Today". In the collection of poems "Old Dreams" created during his period, the deep thoughts of "Today" that are everywhere like lovers are soaked with all the lines of poetry. [26]
In fact, the editorial staff of Today, who have invested a lot of time, enthusiasm and patience, have difficulty retreating from the sudden suspension of the magazine, and a kind of inertia of doing things together in the name of "Today" is still there. In 1982, although the editorial office was dissolved, Munch mimeographed the poem "Old Dreams" in a way related to "Today". Fearing that Munk would "get into trouble" again, his mother found a temporary job for her son at the Fuxing Hospital where he worked, so Munch spent more than a year in the hospital's communications room and at the doorman. This "really reluctant" but also unable to do work made Munch rarely "quiet", "during this period is also fruitful, I used the evening shift time to complete the poetry collection "Sunflowers in the Sun"" . [27] In 1983, Sunflowers in the Sun was printed under the name of today's editorial board, and the specific work was still done by Munch and his friends. Old Dreams and Sunflowers in the Sun not only preserve Munch's earlier texts, but also document the insistence of today's colleagues in beauty and art. Instead of devaluing the artistic expressiveness of the two collections of poems due to abrupt changes in the environment, the beauty of the poems and the works of the poems show a surprising delicacy.
Old Dreams was printed in 1982,[28] mimeographed, 16 open. The text of "Old Dreams" is a group of 27 poems, a total of 28 pages, printed on both sides, and the back cover of the poem collection has a chapter entitled "Today's Editorial Department Collection". The collection of poems I saw only has the complete text, and the title page is noted in the lower right corner: "Woodcut author: Ma Desheng." In this regard, the author asked Munch to recall the specific process of printing "Old Dreams":
At that time, I had a relatively good relationship with Ma Desheng and Yan Li, and I walked closely, so after the "Old Dream" was written, the three of us discussed mimeographing this group of poems. The part of the poem was entrusted to help people to mimeograph, and I remember that at that time, there were some transcription agencies in Beijing that specially printed things, you gave them the manuscript, they were responsible for typing, and when they finished mimeographing it for you, it was not very expensive, but it cost a little money. Aren't there also some print illustrations in this book of poems? The printmaking illustrations and cover designs are both woodcuts by Ma Desheng at that time. The three of us were in Yan Li's house, and the woodcut illustrations needed in the poetry collection were printed out one by one, mainly relying on Ma Desheng.
Those woodcuts are quite wonderful, each book of poetry has it, how many specific illustrations I don't remember clearly, anyway, there are at least five or six, you think, how many copies do we have to print in total to meet the inserts of these poems? A lot was printed at the time. We were in the hut of Yan Li's house, and the walls were all over the walls, which was very interesting. Later, we bound this woodcut and mimeographed collection of poems together, which we did by the three of us, in 1981[29], and I forgot about it a few months.
"Old Dreams" was printed at that time, there were estimated to be about 200 copies, anyway, they were all friends, who saw who took it, who gave it to whom, and now who has this poetry collection in their hands, I am not too clear, anyway, I am not a copy. [30]
In the "Poetry today" section of the Today magazine website," "Today's Information," Munch's mimeographed poem "Old Dreams" and its illustrations are published,[31] although it is impossible to confirm whether the works are complete, but judging from the number of one cover and seven illustrations, it is roughly equivalent to Munk's recollection. Efuming once had this account:
Munch's Old Dreams uses woodcut covers and illustrations created for him by Ma Desheng, and was carefully crafted by Ma Desheng, Yan Li and Munch for several days... The "Seal of the Editorial Department collection today" (the seal engraving of Wang Kepingzhi's seal of the Star Painting Society) on the back cover of the poem collection was later stamped. [32]
The cover of Old Dreams is a black motif on a white background, consisting of nine patterns of various sizes that resemble "pages" or "letterhead", with "Old Dreams" printed on the lower middle and "Munch" below it. This is the first time that the poet's name appears in a poetry collection, in the different covers of "Heart Matter" and "Sunflowers in the Sun", the poet's name has not appeared on the cover or the inner page in a printed manner, and at the same time, the title page of "Old Dream" is marked with "Woodcut Author: Ma Desheng", the author believes that the omission of the poet's name reflects the "absolute" relationship between the poet and his poetry collection. The illustrations and covers of Old Dreams self-containedly form an artistic cohort, and the eight works present the moment when a "capitalized" person gazes at each other with the sun, the starry night, and the universe. Woodcuts juxtaposed with Munch's rare group of "sentimental" works, interpreting and approaching each other.
(iii)
Sunflowers in the Sun: A collection of poems as "originals"
The nights when the door was viewed in the communication room of The Renaissance Hospital was not thrown, and the text of Sunflowers in the Sun was opened here. Munch's third self-printed collection of poems, printed in 1983, is 16 pages long and 32 pages long, mimeographed, containing 30 short poems such as "Sunshine". Unlike the previous two collections of poems, none of the works in Sunflowers in the Sun indicate the time of writing, but according to Munch' recollection, the thirty poems were all written between 1982 and 1983 and printed in about 100 copies. E Fuming wrote in the article:
I remember that the print run for each type was reduced to 300 copies, while the number of beautifully illustrated copies was less than 100, and the cycle of history brought Today back to its original state. [34]
Yan Li (left), Ma Desheng (center), and Munch (right) print illustrations for Munch's mimeographed poems Old Dreams at Yan Li's home
The illustrations in "Sunflowers in the Sunshine" were all created by Ma Desheng, and the version I saw was collected by Mr. Liu Fuchun, a new poetic historian, and the eight illustrations were "particularly wonderful" ones that Munch had specially selected from many books. After interviewing Munch about the printing of the poems, he recalled the specific "labor" process at that time:
"Sunflowers in the Sun" was also made by Ma Desheng, Yan Li and me in 1983. Because I wrote more than 30 poems at that time, I said that I would mimeograph another book of poems. This is even more difficult, because there are about seven or eight illustrations in each book of poems, and each one is an original work, made and drawn by Ma Desheng one by one using his original abstract method, and none of them are the same.
Sunflowers in the Sun was printed in almost 100 copies. Illustrations and Yan Li couldn't help either, we were just bound together, gluing these diagrams into the poem. You think, so many poetry collections, but each one is different, and I don't know who still has it in their hands, "Sunflowers in the Sunshine" is really interesting. In the upper right corner of the white cover of the collection of poems, there is a red seal engraved with "Sunflowers in the Sun", which was also engraved by Mader. When the poems were bound, we stamped the cover with this seal. I kept this seal before, but I couldn't find it because I moved in the old house.
The idea of the cover and the design of the poems were all maedder's ideas. I was also present when he was painting, and he was basically the kind of illustration that splashed ink more abstractly, and the effect was more interesting, and there were many unexpected effects, all kinds of colors. The old horse symbolically made us a few pictures in Yan Li's house, because it is also quite laborious to make this thing, it is different in each color, most of it is made by himself at home, he said, "Tomorrow I will hand over the painting to you and it will be finished", the next day he brought the painting to Yan Li's house, we bound it together, and the old horse brought a batch every day, which is what he did.
The old horse officer was very serious, and he made hundreds of pictures there alone, the paintings were not large, one by one was very exquisite, and it was quite wonderful, and we were all very satisfied. Well, he has that ability. At that time, we didn't ask him in detail how to operate it, so we watched him do it. At that time, because I didn't paint, I didn't ask too much about it, as long as he showed me well. [35]
The illustrations are pasted in black boxes outlined in straight lines on the inner pages of the collection, not perfectly fitted to the pages, each of which can be lifted, and they are both attached to the collection and almost independent. The version I saw was deliberately selected by Munch that year, and it is precisely because of the exquisite paintings in it. Each of the eight illustrations has a dominant color: dark green, burgundy, dark blue, etc., which are solidified in the flow and herald a richer change from within. From "Heart Matter" and "Old Dream" to "Sunflowers in the Sunshine", the "interest" and "chance" of Munch's self-printed poetry collection lasted for five or six years, from the initial hand-engraved wax paper mimeograph to typograph mimeograph, from the interest of "competition" to the "ambition" of making a personal poetry collection with artistic beauty, the gradual appearance of these three poetry collections not only partially retained Munch's early "ashes" text, prompting him to start writing poetry again, but also became a memorial to his youthful labor with his friends. Interestingly, these three poetry collections have become the travel companions of Today magazine from its birth to the end.
The cover and inner page of Munch's poetry collection Sunflowers in the Sun, the picture is derived from today's website
Mimeographed Poems and Today
Three
The printing of "Heart Matters" gave Kitajima, Munch, and Huang Rui the opportunity to get together to "work", and after this book was printed, the three of them gathered in the courtyard of Huang Rui's family "chatting and talking about when it was time for us to run a literary magazine." This idea was first proposed by Zhen Kai (Kitajima)." [36] The birth of The Heart gave birth to today magazine, and in addition to the desire to "publish the works of our generation publicly",[37] friendship and trust became the original reasons for the formation of literary small groups. Subsequently, in addition to the normal publication and distribution of "Today", "Heart Matter" was also reprinted 1,000 copies as one of the "Today" series, and it was replaced by the cover of the magazine, and the readership also expanded from poet friends to "Today". "Old Dream" was created after the suspension of "Today", and the sentiment expressed in the poem cannot be said to have nothing to do with the time of being forced to say goodbye to "Today", but it is more noteworthy that Munch completed a brief "departure" from the past writing with "Old Dream", and the melancholy and sad tone in the group poems is an outlier in his early poems.
In the process of founding "Today", Kitajima, Munk and others carried out specific editing work on the one hand, and on the other hand, they really worked, they promoted ink rollers, bound by hand, pulled out the spines of the book by hand, and cut the jagged edges of the pages... After nine issues of magazines and four books, they were trained to be "skilled workers" by concrete and detailed labor, and even "poet" was secondary in the ink-scented newsroom. In fact, most of the "literary and artistic youth" who were active in "Today" at that time still had "worker" status: Kitajima was a construction worker of Beijing Construction Sixth Company from 1969 to 1980; from the end of 1976 to March 1979, Munch was a worker in the First Paper Factory in Beijing; Ma Desheng was a drawing worker at the Commercial Machinery Research Institute; E Fuming was even more good at various mechanical repairs, and manual labor was a daily familiar to them. In "Today", in a small enclave of literature and art that they built, they play youth with the wandering of thought and the labor of the body.
The spiritual inspiration left by "Today" magazine to future generations continues to release energy, but for the editorial staff at that time, in the face of "Today", we must first face tedious and specific manual labor. Equipment is updated, craftsmanship is improved, and while working, the artistic interest of "workers" is also cultivated. The beginning of "Today" coincided with China's "reform and opening up", but "marketization" has not yet landed in all aspects of social production and life, and it is necessary to appeal to both hands more generally to promote work. "Today" magazine has gathered literary and artistic youth in two squares of poetry and fine arts since its inception, when poetry appeals more to introversion, fine arts requires its creators to take action to complete the arrival of art with "handwork", and the beauty of architecture and handicraft on paper, the "one-off" of art and the "repetition" of labor constitute subtle tension and intertextuality.
The presentation of Munch's last two mimeographed poems is indeed related to the fact that the members of "Today" approached "art" more freely from their "labor" training, because they were more skilled in how to do "beauty" in a journal, Sunflowers in the Sun, which contributed a unique poetry collection version of contemporary Chinese poetry. It subverts the rough and unavoidable imagination of "mimeographs" with delicacy and ingenuity, and it stands on the opposite side of the crude, because art creates hundreds of "one-off" superpositions, hundreds of poetry collections are injected with the "original" aura, it confirms the possibility of how people with artistic impulses and ideals can create the uniqueness of art under limited conditions, thus reaching beauty. It differs from the conventional operation of the formal publication process in the form of an assembly line, but instead creates abundance and overflow in relative scarcity, and it gives shape to the poet's ideal state of poetry from appearance to realization.
There are officially published poetry collections are relatively late, I don't remember these things much, some of my earliest officially published books, not necessarily through me, are through friends, do not know how they contact, handed over to the publishing house, has nothing to do with me. [38]
With little external "censorship", these mimeographed poems, born in the hands of the poet, move from text to presentation, close to Munch's imagination of the ideal poetry collection. In order to make paper building on "things", "mimeograph" first requires the participation of labor, but it is not a consumptive effort, especially the mimeograph of its own poetry collection, labor itself will give the laborer an immediate sense of creativity and achievement. When the spirit of art is implemented in concrete "things" through action, it can be said that such "labor" is close to artistic creation. Benjamin believed that the difference between the "original" and the "reproduction" was whether it retained the spirit halo, and the mimeographed poetry collection carried the body temperature and mood of the laborer because of manual labor, which was not found in the batch printed poetry collections in the era of large machine production.
Young people who indulge in the literary world are criticized for their lack of mobility, as if the dreams in their minds would reversely weaken their interest and ability to enter the real world. Painting, sculpture and other art disciplines mobilize the participation of the body to varying degrees, in comparison, poetry writing is far from manual labor, but the actions of poets, artist groups and poets' self-printed poems concluded by Today magazine let us see that they want to write and paint, but also act based on artistic creation.
As a printing method that has faded from the present, "mimeographing" has almost become a legacy. The mimeographed poems not only make the specific text and its historical context inscribed, but all the "labor" attached to the "mimeograph" also constitutes a testimony to the ideals and friendships of the creators. The existence of "things" makes it possible for the occurrence of history to be reduced to a process, "mimeograph" as a specific way of action of a piece of history, it is related to the times, but also related to the way of life of individuals in the times, the creators of mimeographed poems advocate freedom, exuding the temperament of Benjamin's "bohemians". Ah Cheng once described a person's novel this way: "Full, full of vitality, a stream of simplicity and gentleness of a young man, is one of the miracles of this era." "What he wrote was exactly Munch.
This paper is a phased research result of the national social science foundation key project "'New Poetry Tide' Scattered Literature Collation and Research" (project number: 19AZW016).
He Jiayu
exegesis:
[1] Wolf Reva.Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997:35-36.
[2] For details of the accounts and interviews of relevant witnesses, please refer to the first series of "Baiyangdian Poetry Community Research Materials". Liu Fuchun and He Jiayu: "Research Materials on Baiyangdian Poetry Community", Chinese Society of Literature and Historical Materials, International Writing Center of Beijing Normal University, published internally in 2014.
[3] Mongke's real name is Jiang Shiwei, "Monkey" is his friends' nickname for him, and when he joined baiyangdian, his fellow villagers also called him that. As for why I was called "Monkey", Munch explained: "It was my nickname, I have been in middle school, and I am usually called by more familiar friends, when I was thin and flexible haha. The author interviewed Munch Records on WeChat on November 25, 2020.
[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [13] [14] [17] [18] [19] [24] [27] [36] [37] Munch, "The Past and Today," INK Printing Literary Life Magazine Publishing Co., Ltd., 2018, pp. 18-19, 75, 9, 20, 21, 47, 40, 8, 75, 75, 77, 80, 147, 80, 80, 80.
[11] Helmut Opletal's interview with Ma Desheng. https://pekinger-fruehling.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=189363&L=27.2020-4-12.
[12] Ma Desheng's profile, see https://pekinger-fruehling.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=189363&L=27.2020-4-15.
[15] The author interviewed Munch on WeChat on January 13, 2020.
[16] See Efuming, "Remembering Yifan", Today, No. 4, 2014. https://www.today1978.com/today/templates/today/images/os/2014-4.pdf.2014／2019-3-5.
[20] [21] [22] [23] [25] [30] [35] [38] This writer interviewed Munch on WeChat on December 22, 2019.
[26] [32] [34] Efuming, "Memories of the Affairs of the Early 'Today'", Kitajima, Efuming, eds., Forty Years today, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 324, 324, 324.
[28] In an interview with this author, Munch had the statement that "this collection of poems was printed in 1981", but according to the time before and after the writing of this poem and the relevant photos provided by Yan Li, the author tends to think that "Old Dreams" was printed in 1982.
[29] Yan Li sent me a photograph of the scene, but the name of the photograph stated that it was "1982".
[31] See https://www.jintian.net/today/?action-viewnews-itemid-18441.2019-12-23.
[33] In order: "Sunshine", "Dusk", "Night in the Snow", "Spring", "April", "A Fallen Tree", "Today's Day", "Lover", "To a Ruin", "Sunflowers in the Sunshine", "Before the Thunderstorm", "Return", "A Dead Day", "Neighbor", "Old House", "Lamp", "After a Night", "Sunshine, Full of Tiny Teeth", "Early Morning, Just Rained", "Children in the Park", "To the Children", "Yesterday and Today", "Situation", "Close Your Eyes", "In the Wheat Field", "In the Wheat Field", "After a Night", "Early Morning, Just Rained", "Children in the Park", "To the Children", "Yesterday and Today", "Situation", "Close Your Eyes", "In the Wheat Field", "In the Wheat Field", " The Wind from the Water", "The Field After Autumn", "Another Year", "This Is on the Blue Snow", "Old Age".
Catalogue for Issue 6, 2021
Yangtze River Literary Review
Everybody read everybody
Li Qingxi | absurdity and discipline— a comparison between the text of the novel "The Visitor" and the movie "Away from the Traces"
Cai Tianxin | prisoner of the years, but he taught free men to learn to praise - in memory of W. H. Auden
Critic Research Chen Sihe
Chen Sihe zhou mingquan | forty years of contemporary literary criticism - dialogue with Chen Sihe
Chen Sihe | prologue to "My Own Bookshelf"
Xie Youshun | become a creator—Chen Sihe as I understand him
"Zhongyuan" review series
Wang Chunlin| Dialect Requisition and the "Ritual Collapse and Happiness" of Rural Morality and Ethics: On Yan Lianke's Novel "Zhongyuan"
Zhao Dikai [Meaning] Mo Ran | The Redemption of Taohuayuan: On the Human Situation of Yan Lianke's "Zhongyuan"
New quick review
Xia Kejun | the Wang family's new writing journey: the reverse wandering of modern Chinese poetry
New Poetry Studies
He Jiayu | "Handmade" of Friendship, Action and Poetry: An Observation of Munch's Mimeographed Poems
Zhang Deming | comprehensive poetry and harmonious aesthetics- Wang Xuexin's poetry theory
Hu Qinghua | Language Experiment, Publicity and Another Kind of Everyday Life: On the Spiritual Dimension and Artistic Differences of the Creation of Mainland "Scholar-Type Poets" in the 21st Century
Trends and phenomena
Shi Long | metaphorical re-description: the textual structure and ironic mechanism of self-media writing
Zhang Yidan | the path to solve the dilemma of "Jiang Lang"--a discussion centered on the construction of the "talent" of the creative subject
Writer's Work Theory
Lu Jianhua | briefly discussed the emergence, development and impact of Wang Zengqi's "position theory."
Zhang Wen | Introduction to Zhang Wei's Poetics- Starting from the Book of Non-Fulfillment
Wang Yimei | the lost era, or the preservation of memory: On "Hello, Anna" and "Open Love Letters"
Bi Wenjun | young people who broke into art - Feng Jicai's "Artists" and youth images