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Source | Phoenix Network Reading
In 1927, Mu Xinyu was born in Wuzhen. He was a painter, poet, and writer who was imprisoned three times in his life, experienced wars, and claimed that "my self-help depends on reading." In 1982, the 55-year-old Mu Xin gave up everything to go to New York to make a living by repairing antiques for others, but the years and experiences have broadened and deepened his creations, he said: "I believe in time, I am more patient than everyone." "I want to overcome the whole era in me, and I can't waste my life in the cliché."
At the end of the 80s, at the request of a group of young artists in New York, he began to talk about the "history of world literature". There is no organization, no remuneration, voluntary preaching, voluntary listening, sitting around and learning. In the "Literary Memoirs" that were later collected, It records Mu Xin's casual but cohesive preaching in class: "Literature is lovely. Life is fun. Art comes at a sacrifice. "What does a man come into the world to do?" Love the cutest, the best, the best, the best. ”......
The following is an excerpt from Mu Xin's "Literary Memoirs" and his essay collection, excerpting different contents of Mu Xin's talk about literature, life, art, and life, as well as a group of Haiku sentences of Mu Xin. For a deceased writer, there is no better memory than to read him.
1 | Talk about literature: Literature will help you love and help you hate
——Excerpt from Literary Memoirs
"Literature is lovely."
Don't say that literature is sublime and great. Literature is lovely. Don't give up literature after class. Literature is anthropology. At the very least, read a book every day. When I cook, eat, and take a bath, I read a book. Tang Xianzu, the chicken shed also hung a book, temporary sentences, write down.
Watch as little TV as possible.
Westerners call television an idiot lantern. The most cultured people, there is no TV at home. Show it to small children at most. The TV screen is getting bigger and bigger, and the brain is getting smaller and smaller.
To understand things, you can't take one meaning to the extreme: I also watch TV. Nietzsche, masturbating uncontrollably: so he is Nietzsche.
Opium, wine, all good. Don't be an opium or an alcoholic. Don't make a fuss about anything, don't push it to extremes.
Reading books begins with a choice. Later, it is beneficial to unwind. In the beginning, it is often good to be ambitious. Huang Qiuhong called and said that she was watching Elder Zhuang and watching "Wenxin Carved Dragon". I listened and was terrified. A small child, who had not yet teethed, bit down on the walnut.
Start reading, be shallow. Shallow enough to be condescending at the beginning.
As soon as you come up to the Brahms First Symphony, you'll drown. At the beginning, I listened to "Ode to the Virgin" and "Army March", which was good. I listened to this when I was a child, and then I went to Hangzhou to listen to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", and I didn't understand it at all.
For the West, we started with Christianity. Start with a book that you can fully understand. There has to be a choice. At least after the age of sixty, you can pull up any book to read, because it touches you to think, sharpen your discernment, establish your own systematic (non-systematic), and you are not yet in this state.
Seriously, you are not yet a reader. Don't believe it, you take a book, I'll ask, how? To be able to read the pertinent evaluation, to evaluate its own family, to evaluate the listener's eyebrows flying, this is the reader.
Wood Heart's Literature Class
Take Russia as an example. It could be first Gorky, then Chekhov, then Tolstoy, then Dostoevsky. I sometimes mischievously think that the total amount of reading in a day for seven or eight of you is not as good as the number of books I read in a day.
I say this to stir up your enthusiasm for reading.
There is also a saying: we are painting, painting is not good, where is the time to read? That's right —people don't read enough, so they go and paint.
The new literati paintings on the mainland, the literati paintings of illiterate paintings, got goosebumps when they looked at them. Writers who do not have much literacy will applaud. Chinese literati paintings all conceal the cultivation of literature. Li Taibai's calligraphy is very good. Su Dongpo drew a few strokes, which was great.
I am not selling literature, but for the sake of life's essential weapons and medicines. Everybody has to have a pistol, and you have to have a ginseng — preferably a pistol brand ginseng, a ginseng brand pistol.
I am humble, humble in my heart.
In this way, it can become a big instrument - a medium instrument, a small instrument, and it must also be completed. In the past five years, there have been many benefits. These good words are reserved for the graduation ceremony. I give each of my classmates a gift – everyone has flaws, and the best way to overcome them is to build on them. Carry forward the advantages, and the disadvantages all disintegrate - not a step by step, like a dog walking on the snow. The dog also has four feet, many footprints.
For five years, our classes have been ridiculed a lot. I know. One thing, some people laugh at, some people appreciate, it's like the same thing, otherwise it's too cold - as long as someone is studying one thing, I agree, even if it is studying mahjong - if you study a topic for five consecutive years, without fame, without profit, and not a fool, it must be worthy of respect and admiration. After five years of research, I can wish everyone a late success.
Do things seriously, and you should never oppose them. Laughing at our lectures is not a matter of cultural standards, but of quality. Quality people don't laugh and scold.
Literature is anthropology. After studying for three years and five years, I still don't know human nature and can't talk about loving people.
Literature, in addition to reading, is best written. Journals, notes, correspondence, are all exercises. But it is better to write poetry and write articles. Because the first draft of the poem was changed in the second draft, who changed his diary to change it? Lu Xun wrote - drink soy milk, eight cents - then of course eight cents, what is there to change.
I'm a little sarcastic about saying that. They write these trivia, a bit of a "floating life six notes" flavor.
A diary is a letter written to oneself, and a letter is a diary written to someone else.
Behind literature, there are two genes: love and hate. To give you an example, is my most recent haiku:
"I seek my friends like an enemy."
This sums up my life's behavior. Have you ever seen such a strong sentence? Speaking of which, it is a word kung fu, fifteen words, in fact, there is only love and hate, from childhood, now there is, love to the end, hate to the end.
You all have love and hate, suffering from not using it, not using it. Rely on literature, please. Literature will help you love and help you hate until you become a writer.
2 | Talk about life: Life is a process before death
"Life is fun".
André Gide's book, which I recommend to everyone, is very good to read. Mentor. He succeeded Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and was an intermediary. I still remember the benefits of Gide. I couldn't turn around at Romain Rowland's house when I heard someone knocking at the window, it was Kidd, saying, "Come on, come on!" Took me out and I am forever grateful.
Ji De has a book called "Ground Grain" (to find a translation of Sheng Chenghua). He said, "Man should always harbor a mortal earnestness. (I don't remember exactly what I said.) I repeat this sentence in a self-righteous way), can you understand it?
I can explain, if you can understand, listen to whether my explanations are consistent.
People don't think of dying in ordinary times, as if they can live for thousands of years. This state of mind is like the Buddhist saying of "greed, anger, and delusion" - "anger", the old strange people's homes, always reproachful; if you want this and that, it is called "greed"; and the behavior of the whole day is called "delusion". In short, I always want to possess things outside of my body, buy houses, buy land, buy jewelry, buy them, it is "mine", and I have to pass it on to my children and grandchildren when I run out. Looking at all sentient beings, without exception, they want to make money and want to shop.
Xuelin had a relative, who worked three jobs, and his heart and lungs were illuminated, all red, and then he died. Psychologically, this is a workaholic, but in fact, he still wants to possess.
He felt a sense of joy in his heart when he counted the money. Working hard to make money, exhausting to death, this is not happiness. Those billionaire billionaires are not happy. A person cannot wear two pairs of shoes at the same time, nor can he wear eight pieces of clothing.
When I was a child, my family was also a family property, which I didn't like, and there was no fun at all.
Pushed to the extreme, the emperor and empress are finally fine, right? You ask him, and if they look up to you, they'll complain.
Therefore, the way of being a man, the first thought, is to understand: man is going to die.
What is life? Life is a process before death. With this, with this thought, religion, philosophy, culture, art arise. But religion, philosophy, culture, art, are going to die —the sun will cool, and before the solar system is destroyed, there will be an ice age, and human beings will not be able to survive. But the end of the world seems to be far away, churches, museums, art galleries, libraries, solemnity, the past and the present and the eternal appearance - in fact, they are all landscapes before destruction.
I look at things with sad eyes that I don't know sadness.
Zhang Ailing is very good at this. No matter how good the book is, you take it, don't cling to it. At this point, she has nobility.
But don't come and borrow books from me—it's weird. As soon as I get there and don't spend a penny, the book will flow. When I was a child, school was closed because of the war, and all the books came to my house. Now I have more books. Various books.
Not even emotion, love, doesn't care. Love or not, good or bad for me, the price has been paid. Only in this way can we be happy and treat the world as a ball and play.
You still want to buy this ball, at least part of it, but you can't play it.
Mozart will play. He was occasionally sad. His sadness is the sadness between two joys. In terms of the purity of pleasure, I am inferior to Mozart. He is full of hedonism. I am three seven open, seven points happy, and three sharing musicism.
I advise you: Except for disasters and illnesses, be happy at all times. Especially the pleasure of the eyes. To see all that is happy. The ears cannot hear happiness, the eyes can. You go to the countryside, the wind is blowing, the water is flowing, that is happiness.
What is life like? Like going to the street to buy shoes, two pairs of shoes of the same price, the wise choose the good one, the fool chooses the ugly one. What is life like? In the evening at the bar, the wise man chose a delicious wine, and the fool bought rotten wine and got drunk.
So, happiness comes from wisdom and nourishes wisdom.
Life doesn't sound strange, everyone is eating, drinking and having fun. Life that is not enjoyed is not life. Elevating the changes in physiological physics to the height of art is the monism of life and art.
Life, vulgar, artistic, superb – not so cheap.
Wooden desk
3 | Talk about art: Art is the best dream
In 1950, when I was twenty-three years old, I was officially cast under Flaubert. Before, having read all his novels, it was not enough to call himself his student—it is not easy to be called a teacher, and it is not easy to be called a student—the difficulty of being a novelist is that his thoughts and speeches cannot be expressed in novels. I came into contact with Flaubert until I read his letters, li jianwu wrote the "Flaubert Commentary", thank him, he quoted a lot of information - I felt Flaubert's education. I'm very religious to the teacher, unlike you guys who giggle at me.
That year, I returned the letter of appointment for teachers in Hangzhou (at that time it was still the letter of appointment system) and went to Moganshan. This is listening to Flaubert, who says:
"If you decide your life with art, you can't live like an ordinary person."
At that time, I was teaching at the Provincial Hangzhou No. 1 High School, the treatment was quite good, the room for free was very large, and the back door was open to the swimming pool. The students loved me, and the elites among them were sincerely enthusiastic. It is very good that the first liberation can get this position, but this is the "life of ordinary people", warm, stable, rich, harmful to my art, I do not want, in exchange for a miserable, lonely, monotonous life. I hired someone to pick up books, a record player, and drawing tools, and walked up Moganshan Mountain. There were no buses going up the hill at that time.
The first few days were still fresh, and then I closed up to read and write books. On the desk was a note that Flaubert had said:
"Art is vast enough to possess one person."
Written for a long time, many of the current views were formed at that time.
Wood-heart paintings
Monasticism, long-term monasticism. Dan Qing's studio in Times Square is his monastery, where he goes to monasticism every day.
Let your art educate you.
Good for children, good in the heart, do not talk more. I'm good to my friends and don't talk about it. In the future, when you mature, I will evaluate, as long as it is good, I will evaluate. Comments, to evaluate the author himself does not know the good, that is the author instinctively doing, evaluation from the concept of evaluation.
In flaubert's words, it means: I am willing to possess art, without objection. Looking back on these past events, it means that artists must bear some sacrifices. How much have you undertaken? How much more are you willing to bear? What else to sacrifice?
What is not worth sacrificing is called waste.
Religion knows very well: if you want to enter the church, you have to sacrifice. Vegetarian, not married, not speaking serene. But the sacrifice that religion wants is to kill lives, which is stupid. But to kill without dying, the monastery did many things.
Flaubert did not marry. He said to his lover: You love me, and I have only a few ideas. Do you love those ideas?
The sacrifice of the artist, completely voluntary.
When I point out this wish, you nod, then, I make it clear what you shouldn't do—it's vanity, that thing is out of tune—you listen to it, you can't stand it. But these things make people unwilling to leave the lives of ordinary people.
You may say: "Don't be vague, although you say, we can change what we can change, and we can't change it slowly and cumulatively." "No, I won't say it explicitly.
In ancient times, people did not know what they were doing, and in modern times, all mistakes were made knowingly. The wisdom of modern people is that they are not in a state of "momentary confusion", but they have the criminal courage of "although tens of millions of people are going to me". Among modern people, I am afraid that only idiots and neurotics may be simple and generous. Most normal people are elves and eccentric, guarding and stealing.
This is the modern man. We were born in modern times, and it is too difficult to return to the basics.
In the eleven and a half years since I came to the United States, I have watched many people fall—that is, they will not sacrifice worldly vanity and the practical interests of life. It is both vanity into the bone, but also a habit of profit, and the abacus is too fine: elegant and vulgar, and art and life are both harvested. I applauded, cheered.
Life is not so cheap.
When I was young in Shanghai, I got a new friend who had a good character and intelligence. One day, when talking about the boredom of Shanghainese, a little thing attracted a bunch of passers-by to watch. Just saying, across the road suddenly gathered more than a dozen people to discuss something, the friend hurried to see the end, I was cold on the side of the road, waiting, this is really called loneliness, and embarrassed to go away, stayed for a long time, he returned happy. It's still the case, I've been thrown on the side of the road—this road, called the art road—and I'm old, really good friends, and I can wait until he comes back excited from the other shore. Ordinary friends, don't wait, go. Scolding me for not being righteous and slipping away alone? Such concerns do not seem necessary. The new situation is that people who run to see the bustle disappear into the bustle and do not come back, so the need to wait is greatly reduced.
You may ask: Why do artists have to sacrifice?
This questioner is probably not willing to sacrifice, because he has not yet figured out what art is, afraid of sacrificing in vain - I can say completely: art is originally only a dream, but it is more beautiful and more lasting than the dream of power, the dream of wealth, the dream of lust, art, is the best dream.
We have shared psychological appeals. When you finish a proud painting, the first thought is who to show it to. Man must be like this. Power, wealth, only show off, can not share, once shared, it is opposed, half of the wealth power to you. Lust is a matter of two people, and there can be no third party. Art can be shared. Beautiful by nature, highly talented, can be placed on politics, business, love, but will fail, miscalculate, have been – put on art is the best.
There are so many benefits to making you artists, can you sacrifice a little?
Since we can distinguish between the customs and the customs, we must be jealous as a vendetta, and love the elegance as fate. I buy mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and when I get home, I throw away the mooncake box. Such a cheesy design can not be placed at home.
Resolutely no longer interact, do not mess with people who are inconsistent, and listen to lessons for several years, this point of discernment must be necessary. The squirrel that ran through the house, looking good, I fed it to eat, ugly, go and go.
What's so bad about vanity? There is no glorious share. Two "Rong", which one do you want? To restrain vanity, is it a sacrifice? You try it.
If you can really be possessed by art, you have time to fool around with others, otherwise life will not be fun. Because you are still on the edge of art, even outside the edge, art does not possess you, you do not possess art. So your life won't be very happy, even annoying. What to do?
Easy to do, and then go back to what we said earlier, when people live, they must always have the earnestness to die, and when they die, why is all this? Well, when I'm alive, I know what to do.
So the earnestness to die at all times refers to this meaning.
4 | Talking about life: The two mysteries of life - desire and boredom
——Excerpt from "Joan Mecca Capriccio"
「Ruyi」
Life is as it pleases and is abundant— a phrase that does not express what I think and wish; what I wish for is:
Concentrate on one purpose and make all kinds of happy changes.
Or say:
Many kinds of changing happiness are concentrated in one purpose.
Faced with a strong wind, gray sand blew into Caesar's eyelids and the beggar's eyelids. If the ash in the beggar's eyelids first melted, or was first brought out by tears, he watched refreshedly as Caesar rubbed his eyelids in distress and wiped away the tears.
Before, after, and not counting, at this moment alone, the beggar is more than Caesar.
There are many people in the world who are less than beggars than Caesar, and in the days when there is no gray sand in the eyelids, there are always bits and pieces of ruyi, but it is difficult to constitute happiness.
So I chose a faint "purpose" that concentrated many kinds of faint pleasures and kept changing.
"Consummation"
The two great mysteries of life: desire and boredom.
Whenever desire comes, people will have a strange force of greed, hunger, stubbornness, and stubbornness. After the completion of the fait accompli, what follows is ripe, rotten, greasy, annoying, to be abandoned, not to cut, but to have nothing.
The wise seek detachment, and the wise men of old have understood that the root of misfortune lies in the precursor of weariness, which is desire. To be detached, unless you die, or unless you live like death.
Using "death" to answer "life" – what is that? It is the wrong question, the question is not right.
The wise men of modern times have exhorted: "The best way to detach from desire is not to satisfy desire." ”
I don't know where this has gone, but I can only obey, I can only yield.
Asking Yu Heshi, Gur forgot to speak.
The flowers are full of spring, and the moon is full in Tianxin. ”
This is indeed a good thing, but it cannot be completed in three days, let alone the eternal perfection.
5 | Talk about beauty: Beauty is an expression
——Excerpt from Reflections of Colombia
《Inside》
Beauty is an expression.
Other expressions wait for a reaction, such as sorrow waiting for pity, majesty waiting for deterrence, funny waiting for laughter. The idea that the beauty is inactive and aimless, so that people have no specific obligation to react, they are involuntarily attracted, in fact, they are moved.
In fact, the meaning of the expression of beauty is love.
This meaning is both implicit and frankly present at any time.
People who have beauty don't mean that, and beauty means that.
When the beautiful reject the love of others, their beauty still means this: love - so it is difficult for the beautiful person to reject the love of others. Often suffer.
It is particularly easy to use the a priori basic expression of beauty and then change it to another expression (so the actor is always selected for the beautiful one). In daily life, it is also the beauty of the dominant), that change out of the other expression, both clear meaning, but also strengthen the beauty. It can be seen that the function of this basic expression is great and the affirmation of transcendentality. Why is the various acquired self-expressions of beautiful people so easily touching? Because the beginning has been touched by the basic expression of the a priori, followed by a sharp deepening of the degree, or a smooth change of angle.
Beautiful people fall asleep, the day after tomorrow's expression all stop, and beauty is not sleeping, beauty does not need to rest; but because of the removal of additional expressions, pure beauty is only a kind of expression, it is particularly touching, so it is called: sleeping beauty.
People are old, their beauty is decaying, and it is this expression that is finally tired. The old man's makeup and plastic surgery are "forced" to insist on not being tired, and sometimes they appear tired. The old man fell asleep, and saw the older, because the other additional expressions faded away, leaving only the decaying beauty of this kind of miserable appearance, glorious rest, the ruins of beauty are not as good as the ruins of stones, the Roman sunset is for people to hang, and the beautiful mess cannot bear to see.
Wooden hearts often wear hats, bags that they often carry, and leather shoes that they often wear
"Outer Chapters"
On the face, take over the beauty, and then glorify, is this possible? Yes – wisdom.
It's hard, it's hard, and only extremely high wisdom is enough to replace beauty. Thus it has rewarded some philosophers, scientists, and artists who were not very good in their youth, and when they are old, decent, and their style is up, they can be said to look good--in the end it is a painful thing.
Those geniuses, who had quarreled with God at that time, wanted to be beautiful! God does not give, why not give, do not give is not to give (this is God's privacy, God has the greatest right to privacy - to dismantle is also simple, beauty is for stupid and lazy people), to fight with sweat and hoarse (so geniuses are often bald, the voice is not very good), only to drag a bag of geniuses down.
"If you live any longer, you won't be able to look good."
Byron argued, "So has the genius been used up?" ”
God said, "To fulfill you and to make a bright impression on the world." Don't go to the bath and wash away the Greek dust and Turkish dust! ”
Byron hung his head and squinted, God was so old that he was so wordy, "beautiful." In fact, God teased him and saw him wearing the commander's uniform and wrapping up a colorful turban, which was extremely handsome!
He lazily splashed water under the fig tree. God turned into a canary and stopped at the branch, and it's no wonder That God has been lonely lately.
Byron sighed, "Alas, in the underworld and heavens, as long as the cripple is beautiful, it is still worth peeking!" ”
The canary in the tree flew away with a snort.
END