Reading | the epic poem of the soul of the "locust tree" people - a brief analysis of the aesthetic meaning of Xi Xingquan's "Ancestral Village"

"Ancestral Village"

Xi Xingquan sighed

Published by Chongqing Publishing House

After receiving Xi Xingquan's new "Ancestral Village", I was quite surprised after reading it for the first time: it combines ghost legends, ancient sacrifices, mysterious witch doctors, heavy labor, and the literary dreams of young people, and writes a profound reflection on real life. It comprehensively presents the customs and customs, historical experiences, anecdotes and vicissitudes of the author's hometown of locust trees, and carefully outlines the spiritual picture of the locust trees.

This is a legendary "interesting" book. The three parts of the ghost legend, ancient sacrifice and mysterious witch doctor are the most attractive. The first chapter, Wandering in the Present Locust Tree, writes that Uncle Ma appeared in the old house of the leather fox spirit, the second master inexplicably moved away, the third master Liu Zhishu bizarrely hanged; The Village North Field in the Distant View, writing about the infinite scenery of the, the old second drunk ghost made the god chase the farm car on foot, and was crushed to death by the car; the vicious wife Er nizi encountered the ghost of the black grunt, the Taoist exorcised the ghosts, and after recovery, he became a stupid person who would not laugh; The Village where people, gods, and ghosts live together Outlining the atmosphere of tension and fear set off by the hanging ghost, as well as the gloves lost and recovered in the cemetery; "The Phantom on the Gatehouse" writes about the official hats that "I" saw on the wall of the gatehouse, and the story of further education and falling off the list... This series of bizarre and inexplicable phenomena creates a defamiliarization effect, stimulates the reader's psychological resonance and emotional resonance, and is fascinating and thought-provoking to read. In the eighth chapter, "The Aunt", the author said: "There are many things in nature and human society that human beings cannot understand and explain at present, and human beings have not exhausted all the mysteries of nature. And the ancients sensed certain mysteries and followed them... People still can't explain, can't understand. The easiest way to do this is to declare them superstitions. "It shows that the author has a high writing foundation, is familiar with the reader's psychological and aesthetic reading expectations, and realizes the value of the text that the author and the reader have completed together."

This is also a "meaningful" text. "Auntie" lashs out at the use of the elderly as a tool for work and the behavior of speaking out, and raises the social problem of the lack of filial piety ethics in rural areas; it reveals that young people in rural areas have gone out to work and ignored social problems such as the emotional comfort and psychological feelings of the elderly left behind. "Sweet, Salty and Other Things in the Countryside" reviews the richness and variety of his childhood life, pointing out that the current children are addicted to mobile phones, not close to nature, the extracurricular life is monotonous, losing the wings of imagination, reminding the society to attach great importance to it. And so on, compared with those windy and snowy prose, Xi Xingquan's words with critical colors have more cultural background and are more valuable.

It is not difficult for readers to find that "Ancestral Village" has created a rich and profound regional cultural atmosphere, revealing a deep nostalgia for the farming pastoral culture. The book repeatedly writes about the door plaque of "cultivating and reading heirlooms", and the tradition of reading has always been passed down in the family. In the article "Ancient Roads, Temples: Ruins and Customs of that Year", the author has a handy grasp of historical allusions, showing the erudition of experts and scholars. It is written that the aunt, as the inheritor of the ancient witchcraft (not the witch), with half treatment and half song and ritual, relieved the villagers of many diseases, but the witch doctor's art was facing the situation of being lost. "In front of the gate, under the locust tree" writes that the author's mother's girlfriend Cao Mama said that the naked teenager "I" was "playing a lantern", which triggered the author's original shame, and this shame was replaced by burning desire after maturity and sophistication; many years later, the author went to visit Cao Mama, who was more than ninety years old, and found that she still maintained this sense of shame. The scene of visiting Grandma Cao and mother and son, the two of them shaking hands and examining each other, is simply exquisite.

In this collection of essays, we can also read many warm scenes: "Inspiration sprouting in phenology" is about the author's good memories of writing couplets, "Reading Aloud in the Grass House" writes wonderful and charming stories in class, and "Ancestral Hall, Peach Blossoms and Poems" writes about the quiet and elegant Mr. and Mrs. Su. "The Heart Keeps Beating, Always Jumping" tells the story of "I" accidentally broke the rubber of the pump, nervously waiting for the teacher to punish, but waiting for "I" to read his excellent composition in the hall; "Lonely Afternoon, There Are Women Visiting" wrote that "I" as a literary youth to the county theater troupe to revise the manuscript, met with strange beautiful actresses, the actress's sincere and implicit confession touched the heartstrings...

When writers write about family affection, they tend to be emotionally moved. "Fathers Become Ancestors: A Diary of a Father in His Later Years" Is a relatively long family essay about the writer's relationship with his sick father. In this article, his father, who has integrity and character, can speak oratorical novels, and has a talent for writing, missed the opportunity to adjust to the newspaper and change his destiny because of his bad birth. The article depicts the frustration and helplessness of the elderly father who is ill, and the article overflows his guilt between the lines by recalling the scene where "I" partnered with my mother to "bully" my father, and the scene of the fierce quarrel with "I" in my dream after my father's death. The fate of his cousin Xi Mingqing was both absurd and thought-provoking: at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Ming and Qing responded to the call and transferred from the Northeast Technical School to Chongqing to study at the Electric Power College for four years, but the birth was not timely, and when he graduated, he encountered the state to reduce urban personnel, because of the bad composition, he could only return to the locust tree to live a wandering and embarrassing life. The book writes that during the wanderings of the Ming and Qing uncles, "knocking on the widow's door in the middle of the night and being chased and beaten" and "the kiln owner suspected that he had an unclear relationship with the kiln owner's wife and tried to kill him in the middle of the night", two scandals read with black humor and irony. My cousin was rehabilitated in his fifties and returned to work, but he was still an old bachelor, and it was very heart-wrenching to read.

All in all, "Ancestral Village" multi-dimensionally shows the author's diligent pursuit in the field of prose creation in the past forty years, integrating prose, autobiography, documentary, folklore and historical inquiry, and successfully drawing on novel character writing, film and television montages and other techniques, providing us with a successful sample of cross-genre writing, reflecting the author's painstaking and unique aesthetic pursuit, inadvertently completing the eclectic aesthetic concepts of "interesting" and "meaningful" writing concepts, creating a simple, vast, The majestic artistic conception presents the historical changes and spiritual totems of the locust tree in the past decades, which can be described as a lyrical "epic of the soul of the locust tree".

Author: Cai Xianjin

Editor: Jiang Chuting

Editor-in-Charge: Zhu Zifen