Chen Ming's oil paintings
Art is about activating the flow of life from existence and resisting the existence of mediocrity with pure force. Poets are unworldly loners, they hate the evil voices of the world, they reject external vanity, and the sea of spirits always surges and rises to the light of warmth. Since Qu Yuan, this has been the case, and the creations of Du Fu, Su Shi, and Gong Zizhen also illustrate this point. It's just that I learned about it too late, leaving a long trail on the wrong path.
——Sun Yu
Teenage poetry god
Wen 丨 Sun Yu
One year, I went to Nankai University for a meeting, and I accidentally saw the statue of Mu Dan on the campus, and I was excited for a while. Mu Dan was like in the back of a conference building, and the surrounding space was not large, as if he was hiding from everyone, thinking about something alone. I think it's also very similar to what he looked like before he was born, with deep thoughts in the shadows. So I thought, this is the living soul of Nankai, many once prominent beings have disappeared one by one, but he is a person who will always be missed by future generations.
Mudan's name has been buried in my heart for a long time, and it may be said that he was the leader of my juvenile literature. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, I fell in love with literature because I secretly read his translations. Before I read his translations, my understanding of art was simple. In retrospect, there weren't many people in our town, and if it weren't for the fact that there were two schools, it would have been really wild. By the third grade of primary school, the school was completely closed, and after that, it was a long revolutionary era, and reading had become a rare thing. During the Cultural Revolution, the family's books were copied, and almost no literary books could be read. Her mother was a teacher at the middle school, and the North Courtyard of the County No. 2 Middle School where she worked was on the site of the Hengshan Academy in the Qing Dynasty, and the old courtyard and the old-style school were well maintained, the house layout was quaint, and the cloister also had a trace of culture. On the east side of the main hall of the college is the school library, which contains various types of books. Curiously, the Red Guards "rebelled" and did not burn the books, and I met several books in this abandoned library. In addition to the works of Lu Xun, Ai Qing, and Wang Jingzhi, what attracted me was Mu Dan's translation of Pushkin's "Poltava", "Bronze Knight", "Prisoner of the Caucasus", "Fountain of Bachisara", "Pushkin Lyric Poems", these poems all gave me an electric impact, the world in the poem is completely strange and novel, as if the legend in a foreign country, filled with a charming atmosphere.
Mudan statue
Lu Xun's works are shrouded in darkness, not very easy to understand, and I have not yet reached the age to understand him. Ai Qing's works slowly came to fruition, and for him, there was a process of gradual familiarity. But this is not the case with Pushkin's poetry collection, which, although it is a Russian tone, does not have any sense of separation. Pushkin's works do not have the feeling of sinking in Chinese literature, his expression is noble and simple, from the taste of his own life, flying out of the spiritual thoughts, often directly expressing the chest, the suffering of worldly disturbances fades, and the light of the gods descends. Many words have a strong magnetic nature, and unrelated spiritual thoughts are connected together, which is completely different from the realm of ancient Chinese poetry. St. Petersburg, Kiev, the Caucasus, Siberia, these places that are unfamiliar to me are like oil paintings in his pen, containing rushing cyclones and rolling uneasiness. Tired thoughts swing around, and behind them is an indescribable divine realm. How different these are from the life around me, it turns out that there is still such a existence in the world, and young people can still live like this! What surprised me about his text was that most of the unspeakable topics of the time, such as love, freedom, and divine will, completely frightened me. Works of praise for women, as well as words to the Decembrists, have the surge of heat in the dark night, and the unrestrained emotions rush out of the net, and the reading also flies.
The initial pleasure in the browsing made me have a strong curiosity about the poetry of foreign countries. What makes Pushkin extraordinary is that he was able to learn how to express himself freely in times of repression. And the spirit is so brilliant and bright, the fluttering spirit is above the dark clouds, and there is no gloomy shadow. That bold monologue, facing the gaze of existence, leaves the obscurity and darkness behind, and the sun in the heart shines on everything, flying north, south, east and west. All the unfortunate, innocent, and suffering people in the world are comforted, as if they are long-lost friends, and gently talk to you. It can be said that he created a labyrinth, and the spiritual form acquired various possibilities. In the great spiritual tide, we, the frustrated readers, have the refreshment of baptism. At that time, it was the most cruel period of the "Cultural Revolution", and I did not know how to be good, so I had a spiritual refuge. The inspiration from reading poetry every day sometimes even forgets all unhappiness.
Portrait of Pushkin
Pushkin's work has an extraordinary atmosphere, and the gorgeous scenery in "Memories of the Imperial Village" is surrounded by rose-colored longing. His perception of the city and the countryside is purely thoughtful, and he embraces the existence of the world with his love. But also love and hate, not a meticulous and boring inker, can dance in the bitter thought, dead trees in the spring is no longer a dream. His narrative poems have many legendary colors, like the love between Maria and Marseille Pu in "Poltava", which is completely incredible, the fireworks in the poignant beauty, the misfortune of war, but the author writes the deep river of human nature in the evil of history, quietly flowing, flooding the waves. "Bronze Knight" looks at the feelings of the world, the deep words have a fire-like light penetrating the door of time, the open world is boundless, and there is a green spread in the vision. Many years later, when I arrived in St. Petersburg and stopped at the banks of the Neva River, I realized the magic of the poet's background, a great city and a great poet are so compatible, Pushkin should be born here.
I didn't notice the role of translators in the early seventies when I was obsessed with these wonderful verses, when Mudan was suffering, the previous writing and translation could not continue, and everything was curbed. When I knew how the translator switched the words and created new styles, I had a lot of respect for him. Mudan's writing was my first literary enlightenment, not so much thanks to Pushkin as a tribute to Mudan, who transformed foreign literature into exquisite Chinese. He may not know that the poems he translated were soothing the lonely heart of a child at that time. The rise and fall of the verses is melodic, and there is no popular tune during the "Cultural Revolution". The thoughts of the world can still be expressed in this way, which is an incredible thing for me. I don't know why such a beautiful word was born in the hands of Mudan, but from the moment I read his translation, I influenced the path of my later writing.
Scenery of the banks of the Neva River
It was also at that time that I looked around for Pushkin's work. Once, I met a copy of "Eugen Onegin" in a classmate and really loved it. It was his father's collection of books, and I wanted to borrow them, but I didn't answer them. I remember that his father was a cadre of the judicial department of the county town and never smiled. So many books were banned during the Cultural Revolution, and he still kept them, which is an incredible thing in our town. I pleaded with him many times, and the father of the classmate seemed to find it strange and a little desperate, and said sternly, can not lend you, do not come again.
For the first time, I couldn't get out of it because I couldn't ask for a book, and I felt lost. The entanglement in the regrets between teenagers belongs to this time. My classmate's father didn't know how I liked Pushkin, thinking it was a curiosity about poetry outside the realm, and at that time, it was inappropriate to read it. In fact, for the artworks under the sky, teenage children can slowly enter, and even get their magic. Not every adult is aware of this. When I later reached the age of my classmate's father, all the young people who asked me to borrow books could do as much as they could, because the setback in my youth finally made me feel that the hungry and thirsty seedlings were pitiful, and it was only when the rain and dew were sent in time. In years when there are no books to read, we miss too much spirit.
By chance, I also met Pushkin fans, and at that time, it was an unexpected joy for me. I remember that one spring festival to Dalian Grandma's New Year, my cousin's classmate Xiao Liang came to the house as a guest. Knowing that I had read Pushkin's work, I read "To the Sea" aloud in front of us. He wears a jacket, his hair is long, and his temperament is a little Russian. Brother Liang was newly cured of his illness, his mood was a little low, and he read to me the poems he wrote, which was completely Mu Dan's poetic style, lingering, delicate, and bitterly told that there was a hot wind blowing. I was amazed at his frankness and boldness, and how elegant the words were. I know that in the age of poetry, the lust of many young people surged between heaven and earth. At that time, people who secretly liked Russian literature received foreign aid for expression. It's just that they're underground, and they belong to people who talk to themselves in a different way.
Mudan translated two versions of Eugen Onegin
Somehow, I also began to quietly write the verses in the translated form of Mudan. Just can't be made public, smeared in a small book. The feeling of adolescence flows through the translation. Because of the fear of being discovered, the topics are very obscure, in the clouds, around the riddle-like sentences, I feel happy and free. But soon after I was seen by my classmates, the teacher keenly noticed my signs and talked to me:
Whose poems have you read?
Pushkin, Lermontov, Byron...
They are all bourgeois poets, and it should be noted that the tendency of this poem is unhealthy.
……
I knew that the teacher also meant to protect me, and he was afraid that I would be seen as a heretic. At this time, I realized that my favorite text turned out to be poisonous. After that, he no longer dared to talk to anyone about foreign poets. In the later period of the "Cultural Revolution", slogan poetry became popular, and there was also the Xiaojin Zhuang poetry movement, and schools also followed suit and engaged in poetry competitions. The teacher approached me to write a popular revolutionary poem and change the style of writing. I found the newspaper and looked at it, full of arrogant words, there is no such type in ancient poems, I think slogan poems are the best to write, so I wrote a number of folk songs. These works do not require painstaking effort and can be interpreted according to popular concepts. Generally speaking, it is necessary to rhyme roughly, sonorous and powerful, and the drum power is advocated during the period, slogan poems are very popular. And my text, for the first time on the blackboard newspaper, the students cast an appreciative look. I also gained a little self-esteem because of the words.
Xiao Jin Zhuang's library
But this inadvertent vanity made me quickly slide into the narrow road, feeling that I could get the approval of the world. Therefore, at that time, what I liked in my heart was the words of Lu Xun, Mu Dan, and Ai Qing, but the scene catered to the tone of the newspaper, and the words were exaggerated and inflated. The expression in the diary is one kind of text, and the text submitted is another style. However, because of the influence of translated literature, the sentences are somewhat Westernized, and there is still some gap with the style at that time. When I went to the countryside to join the team, I began to publish works in the tabloids of the county cultural center, and some people said that it was not enough to wear a foreign accent. I tried my best to restrain my translation, but I still couldn't remove the traces. Soon I deeply felt that writing in popular language was the only choice for all writers, which made me have to give up the state of consciousness I had in my heart and move closer to the newspaper body. In the 1970s, only Haoran became popular, and poetry was popular with works such as Li Xue'ao and Zhang Yongmei. When I write poetry, I can't use the style of Mu Dan and Ai Qing, nor do I like Li Xue'ao and others, so I have to imitate Guo Xiaochuan's works. At that time, I also saw He Jingzhi's poetry collection and felt that in terms of courage, I could learn from it. Therefore, the style of writing inevitably has more shadows of Guo Xiaochuan and He Jingzhi. Slowly, compromised with the surrounding context. I didn't realize that it would be difficult to come back, to sacrifice my previous preferences in order to publish my work, and even to suppress my original enthusiasm, so that I was far away from the god of art.
The poems I first published in the journal were all sketches of the occasion, illustrating politics, moving away from the heart, and even kneeling. I knew it was a kind of performance, and it was instinctive in the process. This shows that the mind has been assimilated by the times. What is thought and written is not a natural outpouring of the self's spirit, but a simple reproduction of the ideas of others. At that time, the editor also changed my words at random, adding empty slogans, and my face did not look like myself. But I gladly accepted this, and even felt that it was a kind of glory. These works are also like stepping stones, which have had a slight impact on my work. For example, you can get off work to do a little writing work, or go out to study. These were all hard-to-get opportunities for the intellectuals at that time.
By the time I'm sneaking up on my own cleverness, times are slowly changing. At the end of the 1970s, the college entrance examination was resumed, Ai Qing and Mu Dan were mentioned again, and Byron and Pushkin could be discussed in college classes. Soon obscure poems began to appear, and gradually read the poems of Kitajima and Shu Ting. I suddenly found that they had started their poetic journey along the tradition of Republican poetry, with almost no shadow of the words "Cultural Revolution". These newly emerging verses flowed from the heart, through the black hole of time, and with a proud gaze, ignited the wildfires of the gray land. Those forgotten ways of emotion and love stimulate our hearts, and thus we feel a picture that we have not encountered before. At this time, I realized that the feelings they had, they had, but they had long been buried in the depths of their hearts. What a writer should cling to is his own feelings, faithful to everything in his heart. But I was assimilated into the mainstream of the times early on, and the poems that tracked fashion had paled in color.
In 1977, the college entrance examination was resumed
Everything is quietly changing, and in China in the 1980s, there was room for thought to expand, and many active poets appeared. Soon I read some foreign poetic theories, and many unfamiliar theories excited me. So he began to think about certain problems in poetics, and slowly realized the profound influence of Mudan's generation on the writers of obscure poetry. Mu Dan had a dream of translating foreign poetry, that is, to transform the means of writing in Chinese and explore the possibilities of the spirit. Reminiscent of Mu Dan's own poetry writing, soaring and tumbling, never catering to stereotyped expression, has been walking on the road of nowhere. In terms of the courage to explore, he and Lu Xun have some closeness.
Returning to Mudan gives me a chance to recognize my spirits. It is also known that many of the authors of obscure poetry are in line with the traditions since Ai Qing and Mu Dan. Ai Qing's poems have the luster of Impressionist painting, but they are everywhere with realistic observation. Mu Dan's poems do not have the transparency and remoteness of Ai Qing, but Lu Xun's inner torture is always visible. His writing is immersed in his own dark memories, but he ignores the shadow and self-pity, and often looks at the scenery outside the window. But those landscapes are not paradises, but full of long roads in the wilderness, dead trees in the wind, strangers, old and barren people. He searched for the traces of the morning light with mournful eyes, and retained the faint light. This belongs to the feeling of modern poetry, and it can be felt that he later turned to the works of Eliot and Auden and translated their masterpieces, because of the internal communication. This is the conscious choice of modern poets. Unfortunately, when I was a teenager, I only passed by these elves, but I didn't keep those fires. Naturally, social education resists the display of inner freedom, and we learn to give up on the inside, choosing ways of expression on an external scale. This is not only inferior to the poets of the Republic of China, but also greatly degraded compared with the aesthetic consciousness of the literati since the Six Dynasties.
Manuscript of Mudan's poem "Natural Dreams"
When the enlightenment of the 1980s swept in, I really felt what I should face and what to give up. After I went to Shenyang to study, I did not dare to write for a while, and a lot of reading and make-up lessons were constantly impacted. In browsing and thinking, I learned that there are so many spiritual legacies in the world, and what our generation knows is so rare, as if ants are walking in deep ravines, not knowing the sky, difficult to understand, and it is a poor family. Mudan is the one who found the valley in the dull, his self-confidence in not being afraid of suffering, very close to Byron and Pushkin, and his own writing is not without their shadow. From the experience of poets from outside the region, he found that aesthetics is a spiritual gaze beyond morality, and poets can face the world and can completely release their spiritual thoughts without regard to the quotations of Taoists, so that they can open the spiritual door and fly in the free space. After translating Eugen Onegin, he lamented affectionately:
Pushkin did not describe Onegin in the manner of a Taoist, nor did he ask him for political or social issues. In the first chapter, Onegin's life is only the life of youth, and he has not yet entered the stage of moral life and the main story. Pushkin here sings only the hymn of youth simply and prominently, and this hymn, whatever its characteristics (and limitations) of the times, still deeply touches our hearts and arouses our joyful feelings to this day. I believe that it will, as Marx praised, the art of ancient Greece, forever "exhibit an eternal charm" in the coming epochs.
I think most of the authors of obscure poems have experienced similar feelings. This point is well expressed in Xu Jingya's "Rising Poetry Group". Until many years later, when visiting Shu Ting on Gulangyu Island in Xiamen, he confessed to her that because he saw her poems with Kitajima, he knew where the writer should go, and he rarely wrote poetry since then, and because he had had a painful experience. A few decades later, at the award ceremony of the "Chinese Literature and Media Award", I met Mr. Xu Jingya, when chatting, I mentioned the past, deeply thanked him for the hints given to me by his words of that year, and his poetic theoretical declaration, which I can still recite in large paragraphs. To me, he was one of the critics who first awakened and walked out of the Eight Strands of Language.
Xu Jingya's old photo
Because of this experience, the search for a lost existence is a destined choice for me. When I was a college teacher and talked to students about writing, I always used the example of my own failures when I was young. Looking back at that gray history, the way of the article is the trace of the path of the mind, the sea of spirit is wide and wide, and people are sometimes far from summoning those silent beings. Art is about activating the flow of life from existence and resisting the existence of mediocrity with pure force. Poets are unworldly loners, they hate the evil voices of the world, they reject external vanity, and the sea of spirits always surges and rises to the light of warmth. Since Qu Yuan, this has been the case, and the creations of Du Fu, Su Shi, and Gong Zizhen also illustrate this point. It's just that I appreciated it too late, leaving a long trail on the wrong path, which is the misfortune of youth. I had hoped that the younger generation would not repeat its past, and if it missed the opportunity to choose a path, it would be difficult to return to the same path. When sliding in the illusion of distortion, the body's posture is deformed. This is a negative asset left by our generation to future generations, but unfortunately, we have not cleaned it up well, and whenever we think about it, it is really a pity.
About the author
Sun Yu, real name Sun Yi, is a native of Dalian, Liaoning. In 1988, he graduated from the department of Chinese of Shenyang Normal University (now Shenyang Normal University) with a master's degree in literature. He is a member of the Ninth National Committee of the China Writers Association, the president of the China Lu Xun Research Association, a distinguished professor, and a librarian and journalist who has served as a young intellectual, a librarian of the Cultural Center, and a journalist. In 2002, he presided over the work of Lu Xun Museum and served as the director of Lu Xun Museum in Beijing. Since 2009, he has been the Dean of the Faculty of Letters at Chinese Min University. He began to create literature in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, he has turned to literary criticism and research, and has long been engaged in the study of Lu Xun and modern and contemporary literature. Editor-in-Chief of Lu Xun Research Monthly and Associate Editor of Modern Chinese Literature Research Series. His major works include "Scholars and Doctors in the Revolutionary Era - The Idle Record of Wang Zengqi", "Lu Xun's Memoirs of Worry", "Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren" and so on.
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"Mu Dan Translation Collection" 丨 People's Literature Publishing House
Mu Dan, formerly known as Zha Liangzheng, whose ancestral home is Haining, Zhejiang, is a famous modern poet and translator. During his lifetime, he wrote many popular poems and translated a large number of Western literary masterpieces. This collection of translations includes all of Mr. Mudan's major translations, which are divided into eight volumes: Volume I Don Juan (Part I), Volume II Don Juan (Part II), Volume III Selected Poems of Byron Selected Poems of Keats, Volume IV Selected Poems of Shelley Lyrics Selected Poems of Black Selected Poems of Modern English Poetry, Volume V Selected Narrative Poems of Eugen Onegin Pushkin, Volume VI Selected Lyric Poems of Pushkin (Part I), Volume VII Selected Lyric Poems of Pushkin (Part II), Volume VIII Selected Poems of Chutchev Longfellow Selected Poems of Robin Hood The Legend of Robin Hood. These translations were originally published by several domestic publishing houses. According to the opinions of the translator's family, the publication of the translation collection did not deliberately pursue the unity of the translated name at that time with the current translation name, and retained the translator's original translation method as much as possible. Some translations did not have a preface when they were published that year, some only had a postscript, and the translation collection basically retained its original appearance, without adding a frontier or afterword. The republishment of this collection of translations is the republishment of fifteen years later.
"MuDan Poetry Collection" 丨 People's Literature Publishing House
This collection of poems is based on the "Mudan Poetry Collection" (1939-1945) and is originally produced. The MuDan Poetry Collection (1937-1945) is a volume of poems published by Mu Dan at his own expense in Shenyang in May 1947. It contains 58 poems, accompanied by Mr. Wang Zuoliang's commentary "A Chinese Poet".
Mu Dan was deeply influenced by Shelley and Byron, and his poetry was rich in emotion, and his verses were condensed and concise, and he was praised by the research community as "the first person in modern poetry".
Hope, disillusionment, hope, live again
In the submergence of endless waves,
Who knew the heavy groan of time was about to fall upon it
Formed in a curse
Daylight shines on the shore;
Children, look at how we are conceiving in the dark of night
Difficult to give birth to holy feelings
- Mudan, "Live"
"Mu Dan Poetry Anthology" 丨 People's Literature Publishing House
This book contains original texts such as poems, essays, letters, and diaries that exist in Mudan in addition to his translated works, and is accompanied by memories and commentaries written by relatives, friends, and scholars, as well as the editor's Chronology of Mudan.
The MuDan Poetry Collection (Revised Edition), authorized and assisted by Mu Dan's family and edited by Mr. Li Fang, is a comprehensive and rigorous version of Mu Dan's poetry works in China. This update mainly adds the newly discovered letters and poems written by Mu Dan to his first love girlfriend. In addition, through checking with the first edition, the words in some poems were revised. On the occasion of the centenary of Mudan's birth, I would like to commemorate this book.