Liao Yuan: That means deeply... Deep... Deeply... - Chang Yao's appreciation of Halakutu

Photography: Liao Yuan

Liao Yuan: Contemporary poetry critic, professor at Weihai Vocational College. He is the author of many collections of commentaries and essays, such as "Haizi Commentary", "Changyao Commentary", and the poetry collection "Tall Continent". He has won the "3rd Taishan Literary and Art Award, Literary Creation Award", "2016 Star Poetry Critic of the Year Award", "The 6th Yangtze River Poetics Award" and other awards.

That means deeply... Deep... Deep...

——Chang Yao's appreciation of Halakuthu

Burn the plains

At the end of August 1989, Chang Yao, who was caught in the urban gray survival dilemma and spiritual dilemma, after more than a year of planning, devised a way for himself to liberate himself - in the title of one of his previous long poems, it was "Listening to the Call: Hurrying". The specific approach is to pedal bicycles and roam across provinces and regions. As a warm-up preparation for this plan, his first action was to ride to The Sun Moon Township under the Sun Moon Mountain, about 100 kilometers west of Xining. This was his first penal colony, the hometown of his father-in-law. Chang Yao spent more than 10 days at the foot of Sun Moon Mountain. Not only did he visit his hometown in the way of taking turns living in the homes of the surrounding villagers, but he also went to the village of Halakutu, where he used to smelt steel, and climbed the ancient castle of Halakutu near the village.

In October 1989, a month after returning from Sun Moon Mountain, Chang Yao wrote another great poem of his life, "Halakutu". Together with Cihang, completed in 1980, this poem became a monument to changyao's poet's career. Of the numerous reviews of Chang Yao's poetry to date, I have not found a single article devoted to the poem, which is in keeping with the fact that all great works have their own secrets, and although it does not refuse to be interpreted, it is absolutely difficult to interpret easily.

Compared with the more than 500 lines of Cihang, "Halakutu" has only 180 lines. But its information load is the capacity of a novel, and in its overall character, it conjures up the immortal "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by García Márquez in the High Lands of South America.

Halakultu Castle is a castle built on the hilly highlands, a border fortification built by the Tang Dynasty on the tang military traffic. He changed hands several times during the large-scale military conflicts between Tang and Bo.

But in earlier times, it was a place where the Han and Tibetan common people flourished. In peacetime, when the war was relaxed, the area became a free trade area where merchants gathered. In such exchanges, Han farmers and Tibetan herders not only accept each other's diets, clothing, and other customs, but even each other's languages, and even intermarry... As a result, the special cultural and psychological customs of the people in this area have been formed.

The village of Halakuttu is named after Harakutu Castle. Chang Yaozhi's association with the village of Halakuthu was in 1958. Although he had become a regulated rightist at that time, a poet who lived in the border pass, what remained in his memory was the Halakutu who smelted steel in "the fire shines on the heavens and the earth, and the red stars are chaotic and purple smoke"; it is Halakutu who is excited by the whole mountain village in his poem "The Harakutus and the Steel" (1959), echoing Lolo's snail number, the wedding news of The Happy Lady, and the expectation of "flying iron eagles" in front of the blast furnace. At the same time, it is also a Harakulu of the construction of aqueduct project on the mountainside in the red flag of the wind exhibition. It was a mountain village that played a collectivist carnival in the utopian fantasies of the times.

And at this moment in 1989, when Chang Yao returned to Halakutul, what he saw was the same as the withering after a cholera .

In the village lane at the bottom of the slope, an old man who was leaning on the wall to bask in the sun was already a thin mountain, and the wrinkled "face seemed to have some kind of transcendental slime"; although the glorious Halakutu Castle was still there, it was like "a furnace of ore sintered by time", broken and trivial, and left in the wild grass of the crazy "wolf tongue" on the slope. The Panshan water canal dug by the villagers in the past is still in the old place, but this water canal has never "walked the water", and at this time it is even more "decaying like an old maid who can never have children".

And what about the beauty of the village of Halakutu? What about the beauty who is full of youthful drunkenness, whose dark and shiny braids are like a plate of untied cables, and who emit the smell of sulfur from the golden sun? When she carried the flowers of her youth to the wedding bed, she entered the magic circle that generations could not get out of: first her eldest son fell ill, the younger son became a mute after taking medicine, and then her lame husband was swept down by the flash flood, and his arm was mutilated from then on. And she herself, with her, often suffered from epilepsy biting her tongue.

Next, it was noon when he walked alone in the village alley, and he accidentally met the hearse that was funeral for a young woman, and the elderly drummer leaned out of the door and window of the hearse cab and played a poignant and mournful song. He himself followed the hearse to the cemetery, "the tip of his heart dripping blood darkly all the way."

This is the village of Halakutu in front of Chang Yao's eyes: the old are old, the crippled are crippled, and the dead are dead.

And in the distant and not-so-distant historical background of this village, there are incredible cultural intelligent images of the ancestors:

Think of the living Buddha stationed in Tin, the witch blessed the gods, and walked thousands of miles in the empty and desolate land.

Think of the prince and the people of the people with bows and horses to build a pier by inserting a tent in the mausoleum.

Think of that golden drum flute pipe simple board wood fish cloth ancestor king Bagua book children recite the "I Ching • Heaven and Earth Positioning Chapter".

Think of that Golden Gai Hat Gentry Emperor.

In addition, there are more of their stretched and bold life and tenacious and strong vitality:

At that time, the ancients praised the bravery of the skill and the people who destroyed the front were all good men.

At that time, the drunkards who praised the invincibility of the masses and the drunken hugh were all heroes.

But what is that intoxicating thing now?

Everything is so lonely,

Did there really ever be a sky that was roasted red by flames?

Have you ever had a sleepless night fighting for steel?

Have you really had a happy lady like a flower?

Did there really ever have been the Eagle of Halakutu?

Is there really a poet who has lived in the border?

It's such a lonely ah lonely ah lonely ah...

So, what kind of hand is it that is manipulating all this? What vibrates and trembles under the manipulation of this hand, and what dwells in it?

The answer we can find in this poem is that it is the invisible hand of time that controls all this; in this hand it is human life and ambition that tremble and shake; and in it dwells in it the super-living matter represented by the sun.

"O time, / You are in charge!" (Snow. The Song of the Tubert Woman and Her Man and Three Children, 1982) – although this invisible hand of time was seen by Chang Yao as early as 1982. But the interpretation is very different. This earlier time was a time in the eyes of the victors after the sinking unjust case was cleared. It stands for justice and endurance. And this time at this time is a time in the eyes of a person who has experienced a deep sense of failure. What it represents is the power of dissolution and destruction. Chang Yao here, almost with a cruel pleasure, is telling a fact that has been repeatedly exaggerated by naïve optimists: human beings have only failed in the confrontation with time. Time will not only destroy any human life—no dead warrior is not a dwarf in an instant"; it will also begin to erode and disintegrate the ambitions and ambitions of the human elite after they have passed their heyday. Isn't it? On this end line, the talented Li Shutong walked to Master Hongyi in the green lantern and yellow scroll; the great materialist Newton went to the God in the heart of the idealist; countless genius poets and artists paid tribute to time with the sudden suicide of the brilliant peak of life.

Moreover, Chang Yao also recognized the sense of futility and illusion of life again in such a beautiful picture as the poem.

It was a rainy and moonlit night, sitting on the soil kang of the farmhouse in the village, while chatting with the landlord, the landlord propped open the carved window ledge of the hut and pointed to a white horse under the distant mountain:

Above the saddle of the horse, a crescent moon is rising

After the rain, the sky is rising a crescent moon,

Reflecting the disillusioned shell of the ancient city building.

The white horse cuts its tail wings all the time.

This is how the host himself sat cross-legged on the kangtou and drank tea

While watching the white horses striding in the distance

Step on a concentric circle forever,

Forever hissing into the air.

Such a white horse that longs to gallop, although it has the ambition to gallop for thousands of miles, is firmly controlled by the reins and the fatalistic sleigh of the concentric core, no matter how strong it is, it roars to the sky, but it can only make a futile circular movement in the radius length given by the reins, and cannot cross the "thunder pool" for half a step. There is no doubt that in Chang Yao's eyes, this is the definite number of life.

All of this is depressing enough, but it is the truth and secret of life that a poet who has gone deep into the hinterland of time has seen. But when he pulls himself out of it and returns to this world again, what he sees on the other side of the many calamities is the unceasing inner vitality of life in the succession:

Ah, you were kneaded by the homeland

There was another one whimpering

The story of the Pier.

Is only your mound an immortal cause?

Ah, singer, why is she called a pier?

You replied that it was something that no one could tell,

As for the pier... That means deeply...

The meaning of the pier is deep... Deep... Deep...

What did Chang Yao see in this almost somewhat mentally retarded "singer" (the person who wrote and sang the song himself)? He discovered another great secret of life, which was the bluntness and joy of the lives of ordinary people. You can understand it as a numbness to suffering, and you can think of it as a great wisdom and foolishness that turns a blind eye to suffering. This is reminiscent of the old trumpeter who "can play a poignant and mournful song card" when he went out to the funeral for the young woman earlier, and the kind of unique performance that ignored the grief of the young woman's new funeral but focused on the whistle and whistle - this dislocation of emotional attention can be said to be the same as the psychological characteristics of the "singer". They can be indifferent to suffering and disaster, but they will never give up the sense of happiness, satisfaction, and even "fulfillment" in life.

This is the inner spiritual mechanism of the lives of ordinary people, and it is also the support point and reason for them to live and live in the midst of suffering.

Now, the poet's deep sense of disaster and illusion in life, and the dull and honest joyful spirit of the common people, these two completely opposite worldviews, are presented in front of Chang Yao at the same time. Both are equally true, and from the epistemology of life and the methodology of survival, they also reach the essence. Therefore, they not only cease to conflict in the spiritual world of Changyao, but also form a synergy—this is the reaction of a great poet at this moment; a poet who is experiencing the pain, illusion, and other complex emotions of life must now integrate these two forms: to infiltrate and supplement the former with the latter's method of survival. To find a reason for the profound futility of life, and even a reference for happy survival—that is, the joyful spirit of life.

Autumn, autumn, autumn...

The flickering angle of the alpine ice had revealed the breath of slaughter

……

Who is jing who screams in the midst of the great desolation to resist fate?

The convoys of wooden wheels selling kiln goods have become more and more numerous.

The torrent of the journey of human life is undoubtedly heavy, but this turbid torrent of suffering still has to flow forward. What, then, is the instinctive, and at the same time the most intelligent, reaction to this heaviness and suffering? We will see in Chang Yao's later poems and his life deeds: it was this integration of the spirit of folk joy that reinforced the humor and stubbornness inherent in his character, making the tragic poet sometimes shine with comedic brilliance.

And even in this poem, this brilliance is enough to make people feel relieved. What I'm talking about is the earlier description of the "pier." In the Qinghai dialect, "尕墩" is similar to "Jia Meat" and "Meat Meat", referring to the kind of young woman who is thick, pure and innocent. It is generally the nickname of young men for their sweethearts. So, what kind of mound can such a "singer" have, so that he often blows pottery to tell? The real fact is that the "singer" is not just to tell the story of the humble dun, but to use this kind of narration itself as his own stunt, to attract the attention or ridicule of the villagers, so that he can get the satisfaction of being valued. This is undoubtedly the psychological motivation of a person who is often overlooked due to an intelligence defect.

Therefore, whenever he used Tao Xi's blowing as the opening gong to gather everyone to listen to him tell this story, the villagers ridiculed and said: How do you always tell such a story, do you only tell such a story? Is it only the mound you are talking about that is "the great cause of immortality"? Even so, then tell me: Why do you call her a mound? That said, what's the funny story between the two of you?

The "singer" could not speak, but he was not embarrassed at all, and even the face was unpredictable: the reason for this, "that is something that no one can say clearly", "The pier is as far as the pier is"--"The singer" stirred his tongue with his mouth in this way, while racking his brains to find words, he suddenly had a clever move: "The meaning is deep... Deep... Deeply..." So, it's not that I don't understand, it's that I say you don't understand.

This answer is really clever, and this "singer" with an intellectual barrier does have an incredible great wisdom of Halakultu.

And every time I read this "deep ... Deep... When I go deeper...", I can't help but be amazed, because this is a dialect spoken form often used in the Qinghai countryside, to express the depth of something, so that I can't say it clearly. Similarly, there are things like "Far away... Far away... Far away..." and so on, but they are generally limited to the communication of the villagers and are not noticed by outsiders. When Chang Yao suddenly used it as a literary resource to highlight itself in such a special language environment, the cunning wit of the people in Qinghai Mountain Township was immediately conveyed mysteriously.

But don't ask me how wonderful it is, it's not that I don't understand, but I say you don't understand, anyway, the meaning is deep... Deep... Deep...

At this moment, I can't help but assume this scenario for García Márquez:

Q: The first sentence of the opening chapter of "One Hundred Years of Solitude": "Many years later, Colonel Aureliano, in front of the firing squad, will remember the distant afternoon when his father took him to visit the ice." And what does this visit to "ice cubes" mean?

Márquez, who felt that three or five sentences were not clear, suddenly had a clever move: Ice cubes As for this ice cube, that means deeply... Deep... Deep...

Thus, this question, which is not easy to say clearly, has the most profound and convenient answer.

Next, I would like to emphasize that Chang Yao himself attaches great importance to his own work, and he wrote in a letter to Lei Ting, the editor of the Poetry Journal, in 1990: "Halakutu" "belongs to the crystallization of my decades of life, I don't know how others have read it, but I feel that the painstaking efforts that have dissolved into it (in terms of lifelong pursuit, not specifically referring to creation) are wrapped around like what is seen in chicken blood stones, and the traces of blood are still very fresh..."

When Chang Yao's spiritual world revealed this element of halakutu's joyful intelligence, his tight life trajectory became spacious at many moments. Just nine months later, in July 1990, we saw him begin his "city-to-city visit in a beanie" with a proud look. That would be the beginning of another time in his life and another story.

2007.5.20

Originally published in Appreciation of Masterpieces and Literary Appreciation, No. 12, 2007

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