What is innovation and what is innovation?

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his important speech at the opening ceremony of the Eleventh National Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Tenth National Congress of the China Writers Association, "I hope that the vast number of literary and art workers will adhere to the principle of integrity and innovation, and use the fine works that keep up with the times to open up a new realm of literature and art." To measure the literary and artistic achievements of an era, we must ultimately look at the works, and to measure the value of the lives of writers and artists, we must also look at the works. The vast number of literary and art workers must strive for excellence, have the courage to make innovations, and strive to create outstanding works worthy of our great nation and great era. ”

"Innovation" is a well-known word in the literary and art circles, but because it is too familiar, many people may not be aware of its deep meaning, "innovation" literally means "creating or creating a new", or referring to "first" creation. "Innovation" in the field of literature and art mainly refers to the creation of new content, new forms, and new techniques that are different from their predecessors, which is a very high requirement and a comprehensive test of the creator's ideological, artistic, and skill-related abilities. Many people may not be able to innovate in their lifetime, and those who can really innovate must have a unique understanding and superiority of art. Therefore, innovation is extremely difficult, and we cannot think of it as easy because we often say it. But innovation is extremely valuable, innovation can open up new ideological art space for us, can let us get new ways of expression, can allow us to re-understand and think about the world, art and self on a new coordinate system. Innovation is in line with the law of art's own development, and an art history is the history of human innovation in all aspects of art.

One of the prerequisites of "innovation" is that there are new words to say, new emotions to express, and new stories to tell. "Nothing new under the sun" and "Every day the sun is new" are dialectical unity, many people may not be able to feel the subtle changes in life, but sensitive artists should grasp the pulse of the times and history. A special situation in contemporary China is that in our society, there are both long-standing traditional farming civilizations, as well as a complete, independent and complete modern industrial system, and more rapid development and even in some fields leading the world in information technology and industry, agricultural civilization, industrial civilization and information civilization that have appeared in different historical stages in the West, which have been greatly compressed into a specific time and space, coexisting and coexisting with each other, and our lives have both traditional civilization and modern civilization conflict. There is also the contradiction between industrial civilization and post-industrial civilization, which contains unlimited richness, complexity and possibilities. From the perspective of world literature, our time is not only facing the crushing and idyllic disappearance of industrial civilization lamented and lamented by Hardy, Lawrence and others in the 19th century (some writers extend to the 20th century), nor is it just the story of the countrymen entering the city and the various people spawned by capital as depicted by Balzac, Dreiser and others, nor is it just the spiritual suffering and soul pain brought about by the collapse of the traditional value of "God is dead" written by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others. It is not even just the profound experience and writing of revolution and modernity by Gorky, Sartre, Camus, Pasternak and others in the 20th century, but a richer and more complex and more diversified picture of the times, a new form of contradictions and conflicts of different historical stages and different civilization systems mixed and mixed together. In the face of such a rich and complicated experience of the times, our writers and artists can only fully transform the experience of life into artistic texts if they continue to innovate.

The second premise of "innovation" is to be familiar with existing art forms, but also have a deep understanding of their limitations, write freely with rich life experience in creation, let the mind break through the cage of form, and naturally form a new art form. Du Fu was a poet of the great form, who actively absorbed all the poetic skills before him, and poets after him learned techniques from his poetry. "Dream of the Red Chamber" breaks through the creative mode of the novel of the talented woman, "just because of the realism, it turns into freshness". Mr. Lu Xun's "Weeds" is both prose and poetry, but it is not just prose, poetry or prose poetry, and its huge ideological capacity and euphemistic and tortuous expression make it a unique style that cannot be imitated. This is true not only in China, but also in the history of world literature. The two-line narrative of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was initially not accepted by the European literary community, but eventually became a world classic that could not be ignored. Márquez's invention of "The Present, the Past, the Future, and the Future" in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Borges's Copernican Revolution in the Novel Narrative, are both a transcendence and an innovation in the existing art form.

The third premise of "innovation" is to adapt to new technological and media conditions and to the new environment of literary production, dissemination and reception. At a time when newspapers and magazines were emerging as new media, many writers' works were created in response to the needs of new media. Mr. Lu Xun said in the preface to "Scream" that many of his novels were urged by Qian Xuantong, the editor of "New Youth", and "The True Biography of Ah Q" was first serialized in newspapers. In the history of world literature, many of the classics of Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky and others were first serialized in the press, and new mediums also produced some characteristics of their works. In the current literary environment, the Internet, mobile network, electronic and digital constitute a new media environment, and also profoundly affect the production, dissemination and reception of literature. Writers and artists of our time should also adapt to and make full use of the characteristics of new media, and internalize and integrate them into artistic creation to form new artistic exploration and innovation. At present, the development of online literature is in the ascendant, and there have been breakthroughs in many genres, but how traditional literature adapts to new media and how to create a new "literary nature" that transcends the boundaries between online literature and traditional literature still requires more bold attempts and innovations in online literature and traditional literature.

"Innovation is the life of literature and art." Innovation is both the method and the goal. Without innovation, literature and art will have no vitality and vitality, only a pool of stagnant water, and only innovation can make people refreshed, bright-eyed, and open their minds. But we can not innovate for the sake of innovation, can not because of innovation and show off, can not be because of innovation and go to the narrow road of deviation, strange, chaotic, we must "keep the right innovation", innovation is to better express, better condense our lives and emotions, only by continuous innovation, can we adapt to the new media environment, can create new art forms, can fully express the life experience and era experience of the Chinese of our time.

(The author is the deputy editor-in-chief of Selected Novels)