"Zhao Yi regards literature as the cause of his own soul, always trying to use his own life experience to understand and listen to the life of writers' works, and to care about their concerns, so as to explore the life conditions and inner faces of writers' works, and analyze the complex and hidden literary feelings in them." "She is sensitive, only sensitive, and there is a precious tension in her gaze, like the fluttering of strings." "Contemporary literature, as she understands it, is both a concrete writer's work and a spiritual undercurrent that is secretly circulating, and she is also alert in her dialogue with it." "Her criticism, which is true to the line without losing its agility, allows me to see the growth of a generation of young people." ...... Recently, after the young critic Zhao Yi's literary criticism collection "Looking for Color: The Dimension and Identity of Literature" was launched, Qiu Huadong, Li Jingze, Xie Youshun, Liu Daxian and many other critics praised it.
So, what are the qualities of good literary criticism? Where did her tendency toward literature come from? What is her reading habit preference? What does she think of the "post-90s critic" label? And what's the story behind her first publication? To this end, the reader daily reporter conducted an exclusive interview with Zhao Yi.
▲ Zhao Yi
"When I saw the cover title of Zhao Yiwen's criticism collection "Looking for Color", I would first smile. Let's start with the naming, why there is such a suitable humor. For Zhao Yi's profession, she was previously a teacher at the Lu Xun Academy of Literature, and now she is an excellent editor of the important literary magazine "Chinese Writers", it can be said that after graduating from the famous university Chinese Min University, she has been serving the outstanding talents and excellent works of contemporary Chinese literature. In the preface to "Looking for Color", writer and critic Qiu Huadong said.
"Looking for Color" contains literary reviews created by Zhao Yi in the past decade. Among them, some are typical literary criticism writing methods, such as meticulous comments on the works of writers such as Ah Lai, Luo Weizhang, Lin Sen, and "Blossoms", as well as the practice and reflection on youth writing and related literary phenomena. In the words of Qiu Huadong, "It is not only the building context of the knowledge system, the ancient and modern Chinese and foreign novels and poems that touch the bypass, but also the carrier of literary life and youth memory, and the younger generation has established a practical flesh-and-blood connection between literature and reality, and this is the 'words and emotions' that belong to Zhao Yi and their vivid young lives." Because of this, the significance of this collection of reviews cannot be ignored, because it, like the author, is a writer and witness of the contemporary spirit, a personal witness of a flexible literary life, it manifests itself as rich reading and multi-angle observation, it is transmitted through a variety of discourses, it provides a stylized study mode related to knowledge production and material examination, it highlights the literary horizons that belong to young people and dares to express their opinions, and always looks forward to better literature while interpreting literature, as well as the rich life that the literary world provides. Abundant emotions and abundant wisdom.
Literary criticism is a whole new horizon and ability
Reader's Daily: Literary criticism is actually a second creation, in your opinion, what elements should a good review have? Where is its value?
Zhao Yi: As your question suggests, theoretical criticism is indeed a "suggestion" based on the writer's work, but it is probably inconvenient and should not be called a second creation, but it is a more important creation of the first nature. This is evident by looking at the huge total amount of literary works produced in the past year.
There is no need to mention the theoretical necessity of construction or deconstruction, a good review article is at least a "light" and a "gaze", a concrete guidance, discovery, intervention and analysis, and its search and acquisition arrive through the writer's work, and it leads to a new vision and ability. It is precisely because of this, and only because of this, that theoretical criticism can use its deep affection for literature to realize the value of literature, which is particularly important in today's modern communication pattern.
Reader's Daily: Literary criticism has a certain subjectivity, but it has the value of enlightenment for readers, how do you balance the two?
Zhao Yi: The meaning of subjectivity is very rich, and I think what you are referring to here is mostly the critic's personal academic vision, reading interest, aesthetic preference, discriminating ability, critical courage, and even life experience and speaking style and scale. When you use the word "subjectivity", you still prepend the word "certain", and I think the answer is self-evident. The subjectivity of theoretical criticism is ultimately limited subjectivity, its background must be academic objectivity and independence, is the free spirit of criticism, is a historical trek from classical literature to modern and contemporary literary traditions, so "certain subjectivity" as a specific face of a critical article, providing an expression, it may be amiable, may also be cold and severe, may be stunning, may also be mediocre, it naturally appears, may not be indispensable, but it can not affect nor enough to change the nature and power of time, And unconsciously, there is a delicate but not absolute balance with time.
◆ The trend toward literature comes from the nourishment of classical literature
Reader's Daily: In the object of your comment, it can be said that all genres are included, which of course requires a lot of knowledge and a wide reading horizon. However, there is still a certain gap between poetry and fiction and prose, how do you solve this gap? In the meantime, what role does the infiltration of classical literature play?
Zhao Yi: To a large extent, my tendency toward literature comes from the nourishment of classical literature, which gives me fundamental things, which are like the "mysterious enlightenment" I prompted when I wrote Yan Yu's "Canglang Poems", which is a kind of real existence of "antelope hanging horns" and "no trace".
Different genres of literature, in my opinion, is a problem of bibliography, but also related to the "Taoism" issue, from the establishment process of the "Thirteen Classics", from the formation and evolution of the "Collection", we can touch the cultural bloodline of the Chinese nation in the history of thousands of years of civilization, and the stylistic flow belongs to one of the examples, from "poetry to words, literature to carry the Tao" to "to literature as poetry", and then to "poetry as literature", starting from classical literature, our understanding of literature is not too different from different genres and has some distinctions or restrictions. Naturally, there is no gap.
Reader: It is often said that what matters to a person is not age, but experience. But as a post-90s generation, you do make many people wonder: why are you such a young critic, for example? Can such a young man talk about something profound? Wait a minute. What do you think about that?
Zhao Yi: First of all, I'm sorry, I was born in November 1989, and the phrase "post-90s" probably stems from the media's kindness in publicizing it without shying away, and this is also used as a clarification. Words such as "young", "young" and "post-90s" were originally extremely objective descriptions, and there were clear divisions on biology and identity cards. But I don't know when these words have suddenly taken off a different value in modern society, so whether the word "young" needs to be used to associate a "deep" is still debatable. I can't say whether I can still be called young now, but I hope to live to learn (with a deep smile).
◆ The first published work originated from housework
Reader: What kind of opportunity has it taken you from a specific literary creator to a critic who is now labeled by many people? What do you think of this critic's hashtag?
Zhao Yi: Probably because of the effort plus the diligence of the pen, this also creates the thickness of nearly 400 pages of the book "Looking for Color", and there is still a part of the manuscript in my hand, more than 100,000 words, maybe. I am also a specific literary creator now, and I wish I had always been so specific.
Reader: You yourself have made great achievements in areas such as novels, so would you go back and comment on your own creations?
Zhao Yi: Let's leave it to readers to criticize.
Reader: Do you remember your first published work?
Zhao Yi: Remember, I was very impressed. When I was in elementary school, I wrote an essay called "Washing Red Scarves" when I was assigned a weekly notebook for Chinese homework. This is based on the housework scene that I was able to do at that time, and thank my mother, who was struggling to know what to write at the time, and she said you washed the red scarf, just write this. After writing in the weekly notebook, I copied the article neatly onto the manuscript paper, and then sent it to a newspaper, and then i wrote a letter, a letter envelope, a stamp, and a letter to the mailbox, all for the first time, very excited, but after I threw it out, I didn't think about it, and gradually forgot about it. Then one day, I actually received a sample newspaper, the article was published, and it was accompanied by an illustration, printmaking style, the children wore red scarves, and there was a twenty-dollar bill of contributions. It was 1998, I was in the third grade of elementary school, and when the school organized a flood donation, I donated the money, and then Wrote a weekly journal called "The First Manuscript Fee".
◆ Re-reading the classics is very interesting work
Reader's Daily: You wrote an article titled "How to Open Up Post-90s Writing?" So, as far as you are concerned, how do you open up?
Zhao Yi: Ha, although I am not a "post-90s" in the strict sense, I am willing to precipitate in a down-to-earth manner in keen insight, or to surpass both upward and downward. Then embrace the future and the world with kindness, and the literary possibilities inherent in them. It is particularly critical to listen to all voices and to interact with peers.
Reader:What is your reading habit preference? What book have you been reading recently? What attracts you to it?
Zhao Yi: I am particularly willing to re-read the classics and read new works. For example, after re-reading Joyce's classic short story "The Dead", I made a narrative comb to explore the inadequacy of the important moments that Joyce insisted on describing, to observe the literary epitome of Joyce's creation for the complex landscape of Ireland at that time, and to think about the obscuration and inspiration of modern novel techniques for reading and writing at the moment. After intensively reading Mr. Lu Xun, I made an outline of ideas about the lack of Lu Xun's literary spirit in youth writing, paying attention to the uncertainty of Lu Xun's literary spirit in the imagination of young writers, and exploring how writing in subculture and postmodern context continues Lu Xun's literary spirit.
Rereading the classics is interesting work, and the classics are open and inexhaustible. For example, reading Cao Zhi's letters, it is natural to have a dialogue with the ancients, to think about how to write daily life, talk about daily life, what daily life itself is, and pay attention to the sense of language and aesthetic realm of classical literature; for example, each work refuses to repeat its own Alai, from "Dust Settled" to "Record of clouds" to the latest "Looking for Gold", which is often read and can give me a lot of things; for example, reading Zhou Kai's two books, "Moss" and "The Future Book of Detective Novelists", I would think about the two writing styles of heterogeneity that unify with a young writer, and the phenomenon and the causes behind it.
◆ Sichuan is a place where I always look back and gain strength
Reader's Daily: You mentioned the dish "Cold Mix Folded Ear Root" in "Miss Y's Notes", do you usually cook in your leisure time at home?
Yi Zhao: The novel presents the experience of directness, so you paid attention to the dish that is very hard in this novel. But critics will look at the expressions behind this fiction, such as urban nostalgia, growing pains, and the fragmented everyday life and the symbols of "grass and trees", which will not be a benchmark for the real life of the writer. Thank you for inspiring me to review my novel (a deep laugh again).
Reader's Daily: Not only is it "cold mix folding ear roots", there are many articles related to Sichuan in "Looking for Color", and your writing has also used Sichuan as a background many times. How does the Sichuan element affect you?
Zhao Yi: Sichuan has a Sichuan literary tradition, and this is where I set out, and it is also a place where I always look back and gain strength. The regionality of the works of Sichuan writers discussed in "Looking for Color" is one of their identities, such as the naturalism and local history of Alai originating in Aba, Sichuan, such as the transformation of civilization and urban development that Luo Weizhang tried to depict based on the local Sichuan, such as Zhou Kai's dialect slang writing... Regionality often resorts to dialects, folklore, customs and other local traditional cultural factors, to construct the public's imagination of local uniqueness, Ke Wen once pointed out in the analysis of modern Chinese history research, in the face of a difficult to understand China, china can be spatially decomposed into smaller, easier to grasp the unit, with the region, province or place as the center, explore the differences between different places, can better grasp China. Li Yi also pointed out that the place is not just a part of China, it is actually one irreplaceable China after another, and it is China itself. Therefore, Sichuan is both a geographical space and a literary space, in the history of modern and contemporary literature, the "Sichuan Writers Group" was once a literary group with wide influence, and the Sichuan literature and art created by the Sichuan Writers Group at that time was not local literature and art, but a certain universal nostalgia hidden in local nostalgia, with a community-wide writing and realism style to Sichuan as a whole literary space, showing the connection between "place" and "China". This is not only the reason why writers such as Ah Lai and Luo Weizhang have gone to the whole country, but also my expectations for Sichuan literature. The same is true of the iconic significance of Ban Yu's "Qu Chao" suggested in "Looking for Color", and the attention and discussion aroused by the new generation of Northeast writers is not only the change of Northeast literature and art and its industrial narrative, but the transformation of literature and art from the northeast, deconstructing the shackles of locality and industrial themes, so as to achieve universal empathy. (Readers' Daily All-Media Reporter He Jian)
Editor: Wang Xin Responsible Editor: Dong Xiaoyue Review: Zhou Hua