At the end of the year, coinciding with the occasion of retiring the old and welcoming the new, the famous writer Ye Zhaoyan shared his decades of reading and writing with many netizens online. As the debut of the whole network live broadcast, Ye Zhaoyan also brought readers his new work "The Road to Father". This is a literary journey of father-son relationship exploration that he has experienced in more than 60 years of life, and it is also the book of his first direct face, tribute and reflection on the life of his fathers with his novel style.
The Road to Fatherhood
Ye Zhaoyan
Yilin Publishing House
"This is a book I've always wanted to write.
I want to write about some Chinese fathers and sons. ”
The Road to Father tells the story of a father and son.
Shortly after the birth of the protagonist Zhang Zuo, his parents were separated due to emotional discord, his mother remarried his father and married another, he was raised by his grandfather Wei Ren and his grandmother since childhood, and his beautiful calligraphy and temperament with the encounter also came from the cultivation of his grandfather. His father, Zhang Xiyi, was a proud disciple of his grandfather Wei Ren, who studied oracle bones from Wei Ren, and although the two were not related by blood but had similar interests, they could be called spiritual father and son.
Zhang Xiyi and Zhang Zuo, because they did not live together, were emotionally estranged, and the three days of solitude in the cadre school were a rare intimate time in their lives.
Wei Ren, Zhang Xiyi, and Zhang Zuo were three generations of father and son or master and apprentice, with benevolent relatives, as well as clutch and alienation.
With the passage of time, Zhang Xiyi became famous in his later years, becoming a master of traditional Chinese studies and a giant in the academic circles, and the father and son also became closely related. But "the road to his father was too long, and Zhang Zuo found that he had never really approached Zhang Xiyi, and sometimes the closer he went, the farther he felt."
What exactly happened to us on the road to our father?
The Road to Fatherhood explores such a universal question.
Nobel laureate in literature García Márquez once said that the reason a man knows he is old is that he is beginning to look like his father.
The American social philosopher Mumford believes that each generation always rebels against its fathers, but makes friends with its grandfathers.
In Ye Zhaoyan's view, everyone wants to get close to their father, but the result of approaching his father is nothing more than two, one is to become a person like his father. He admitted that this work is "want to write some Chinese father and son", the protagonist Zhang Zuo wants to get close to his father, but the closer he wants to get, the closer he goes, the more unbearable he is, and this kind of unbearable is also the unbearable of culture.
"Lu Xun talked about Mr. Zhang Taiyan, my grandfather (Ye Shengtao)'s generation talked about Mr. Lu Xun, my father talked about his grandfather's generation, and then it was me, talking about my father and his friends. In a word, we have all become the descendants of Mrs. Jiujin, history seems to have been written long ago, doomed to a generation is not as good as a generation, we who are not xiao descendants, it seems that it is impossible to surpass our fathers. ”
By extension, this literary journey exploring the relationship between father and son is more mixed with rich cultural reflection.
The Road to Father,
It is the inheritance of the spiritual bloodline
In the history of Chinese and foreign literature, the relationship between father and son has long become an eternal literary motif.
Starting from the father-killing complex of ancient Greek Oedipus, compared with the mother-child relationship of calm love and warm pulse, the father-son relationship is more vast, complex and profound, and "The Road to the Father" also explores this proposition on this basis, which can be seen from the special character relationships in this book.
For example, Wei Ren studied paleography from Zhang Xiyi's grandfather Zhang Jitian, and Zhang Xiyi learned oracle bones from Wei Ren, and they were spiritually connected and like-minded, which was better than the general father-son relationship.
Although Zhang Xiyi and Zhang Zuo are father and son, they are mentally estranged and lack communication and emotional foundation.
In addition, in the process of raising Zhang Zuo, Grandpa Wei Ren actually undertook the parenting work of the role of father, which can be called Zhang Zuo's "spiritual father".
From a more profound and grand category, the road to the father is actually not limited to the connection of the flesh's blood, but also the identification and inheritance of the spiritual bloodline.
The inheritance of this spiritual bloodline can also be supported by an important cultural symbol "brush character" that runs through the novel. The brush is a carrier representing the inheritance of Chinese culture and an extremely important part of the family education of traditional knowledge elements. "Grandpa likes to teach people to write, and he has nowhere to play with his good hands, so he urges Zhang Zuo, who is still a primary school student, to practice writing, so that he must write Yan Zhenqing's "Many Pagodas" every day." Zhang Xiyi also praised in person that "it is the daily continuation of this cultural gene carrier that makes the spiritual bloodline passed down from generation to generation in a subtle way."
The teenager Ye Zhaoyan (front middle) and grandfather Ye Shengtao (front right), father Ye Zhicheng (back right), mother Yao Cheng (front left) and cousin
Ye Zhaoyan's attention to the inheritance of the spiritual bloodline has actually been around for a long time.
Ye Zhaoyan, who came from a cultural family, is a dazzling star in the history of modern literature and is a frequent visitor to his family, and the special experiences of his grandparents and fathers have had a profound impact on his life. From the cracks of history, Ye Zhaoyan revealed their origins and destinations, and cast a lasting observation and reflection on the spiritual fate of generations of Chinese intellectuals in the 20th century.
"I can't help but think of the naïve idea when I was just preparing to write a novel, planning to write a long volume like "War and Peace", aimed at several generations of Chinese intellectuals, starting from Zhang Taiyan's generation, and then transitioning to our generation, about five generations of cultural people. This ambition did not materialize, and at best I found a little clue in my later series of prose essays. ”
Ye Zhaoyan's non-fiction collection, published by Yilin Publishing House
This series of prose essays is Ye Zhaoyan's most classic set of non-fiction essays, including "Old Characters", "Old Things", "Miscellaneous Peanut Trees", "Warblers Flying Wildly", and "Sincerely Knowing That Everyone Has This Hate", a total of five. In this set of books, he reshaped the figures of modern history with literary and historical brushwork; laughed and scolded, and told interesting anecdotes about modern literature; looked back on the past and recalled the fate of three generations of the family; ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, talking about the spiritual inheritance of intellectuals.
This set of books is actually a big book, recording the spiritual journey of five generations of Chinese intellectuals from Zhang Taiyan, Lu Xun to Ye Shengtao, etc. It has a beginning, but it has not yet ended. The unfinished part, Ye Zhaoyan wrote in "The Road to Father", "This is a book I have always wanted to write", it is about this childish idea and unfulfilled ambition.
Lifting heavy weights,
Deal with 400,000 words of subject matter with 40,000 words
"The Road to Father" is a novella of more than 40,000 words, but it is full of lingering sounds and long memories. This is not only because the subject matter of the work is grand — writing the memories of the times of three generations of intellectuals in a family, but also related to the author's techniques and techniques in dealing with the subject matter. This book continues Ye Zhaoyan's consistent narrative style, not pretentious, not pretentious, not mixed with too many subjective emotions, but plain and objective, like gossip, not hurried, slowly.
Whether it is the scarred nanjing city in the "Biography of Nanjing", the six times the destruction of the city and six rebirths, the adherence to the civilian writing position, or the vernacular ridicule and ridicule of the nanjing people's kindness in "Nanjing people", or the painting of the old characters in the classic prose series "Old Characters" and "Old Things", Ye Zhaoyan practices relying on the power of the text itself to quietly impress the reader.
Live broadcast "into the study of writer Ye Zhaoyan" scene. From left to right: Jiang Xingchao, Ye Zhaoyan, Yu Bin.
Professor Wu Jun of Nanjing University read the book and sighed, "It is very painful, and it will eventually be calm." Restraint comes from goodwill", aptly. "The Road to the Father" deals with a subject of 400,000 words in 40,000 words, which alone can be the volume of a long novel, because it involves a series of grand propositions: the relationship between the family and the times, the discussion of the relationship between father and son who is close or alienated, the change of the spiritual destiny of intellectuals, and so on.
How to select materials in the vast sea of historical memory, how to cut the appropriate theme in the huge and complex materials, greatly tests the author's writing skills.
Ye Zhaoyan intercepted several key pieces of auspicious light and feathers, and selected important events or key moments related to his grandfather or father in Zhang Zuo's life, for example, his grandfather taught Zhang Zuo to practice brush writing, Zhang Xiyi and Aunt Wu took Zhang Zuo and Su Su to climb the Zhongshan Mausoleum, Zhang Zuo went to the "Five-Seven Cadre School" to visit Zhang Xiyi, the father and son both herded cattle to learn characters together, Zhang Xiyi intersected more and more with Zhang Zuo in his later years, and so on, from the beginning of Zhang Zuo's birth to the end of the flower armor year, more than half a century of growth experience was highly condensed, the writer was restrained and calm, Zhang was relaxed, and the complexity was simplified , targeted, like clouds and flowing water, a large number of blank spaces give the work great tension.
The vivid storyline, rooted in real life, adds to the work's sense of the times, readability and interest. According to the author Ye Zhaoyan, the plot of Zhang Xiyi's cattle breeding in the work is transplanted from the experience of raising cattle at his uncle Ye Zhishan Gan School, "This paragraph is actually a story between my uncle and our grandfather (referring to Mr. Ye Shengtao). My uncle, like the father I wrote in my novel, raised cattle at a cadre school, and he proudly got up every night to pee for the cows, and my grandfather went around the bookstore to find books for him to raise cattle. They mentioned this in their correspondence a lot, how good the cattle were, and how they were doing in the cattle pen. "In real life, my uncle and my grandfather wrote a very thick book just by correspondence, all about how to raise cattle." This steaming experience from life lengthens the internal space of the work and gives the novel a more realistic and perceptible texture.
Illustration in the book The Road to Fatherhood
It is particularly worth mentioning that this book invites the daughter of translators Zhao Ruihong and Mr. Yang Yuan, and the well-known literary painter Ms. Zhao Yun to draw illustrations and create high value-added hardcover illustrations. Zhao Yun has created illustrations for literary classics such as "The Legend of Hulan River". The bookish origin close to the author, the similar growth years, and the craftsman spirit of excellence make Zhao Yu naturally grasp the emotional atmosphere of the book and accurately restore the scene of the times. For example: the illustration of "Climbing the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum", the number of stone steps of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum are all real and measurable; the illustration of "Postman Sending Letters", what kind of clothes the postman wore in the 1960s and 1970s, how many buttons were on the clothes, and the era mark of "Serving the People" on the envelope were all properly presented. The text and illustrations complement each other perfectly, making this book a pleasant opening and suitable for hiding and reading.
The title of "The Road to the Father" is taken from a poem by Dodo, "The Road to the Father", "... We are on our right / kneeling on a gloomy planet / wearing iron shoes looking for signs of birth / and then digging – the way to our fathers". Ye Zhaoyan and Duoduo as contemporaries, novels and poems reflect each other with similar titles, echoing each other, and the artistic conception is long. The image of the father is vague, and the road to the father is too long. If the father is a mountain, crossing the past, not only needs understanding and respect, but also needs to be not afraid of the dark clouds on the mountain, the confusion of the path.