Yan Lianke| I often write in some kind of contradiction and paradox

This article is excerpted from "Gratitude" by Yan Lianke

I often write in some kind of contradiction and paradox. Because of the fear and avoidance of death, we have to write, and in writing we write death repeatedly and repeatedly.

Life and time

Life and time are the most entangled things in life, just like the entanglement of vines and trees, it is always difficult to distinguish the confusion between the trunk and the vine. Of course, after the arrival of autumn, the leaves drift to zero, dryness and death report one after another, and we can easily recognize the cover of the branches of the tree and the entanglement of the vines. I have reached this age of autumn and autumn, and without thinking, I can see the failure and withering of life from the once flourishing branches and leaves. I even thought that it was a kind of cold life for me to let me write something about writers and death, and about time. But I want to write because of the respect I have for her and writing. Another reason is that my friend Tahara returned from Japan and told me a gentle and shocking message, saying that Mr. Shuntaro Tanigawa recently said of life and age: "Life is for me, and the rest of the time is to laugh and wait for death to come." ”

Tahara, a vigorous and talented poet and translator, always brings me some gifts when he comes back every year. I thought the message he was sending this time was the most worthy of my collection of all his gifts. In Japanese Asian literature, or world literature, Kenzaburo Oe, Shuntaro Tanigawa, and Haruki Murakami are probably the most striking chains. Among the three of them, the poet Shuntaro Tanigawa is the oldest and can say the above words, first because of his age, secondly because of his work, and third, because of his introspection and confidence in the life of his works. From this I thought that for a writer, about time, about death, about life, can be said from three aspects: one is his natural life time, the second is the life time of his works, and the third is the imaginary life time in his works.

Natural life time, everyone has, nothing more than the length. Because of the different lengths, some people can walk on the streets when they are 100 years old, and some people die early, like shooting stars. This makes the vast majority of people living in the middle see the injustice of God's helplessness to human life, and the greatest corruption of human life instincts that breed is nothing more than the greed and thirst for life, so that the boundless desire to live and the inexplicable panic of death are inflated and produced.

I belong to the most typical of the vast majority. In Beijing, I am most afraid to go in the direction of Babaoshan Mountain. Back home, I was most afraid of seeing the elderly and sick people sitting paralyzed in the sun at the entrance of the village. More than ten years ago, my classmate died of a brain tumor, and almost all of my classmates in Beijing went to Babaoshan to send him off, but I did not dare to go there and meet him for the last time. But as a result, everyone went, after the sadness, still work and live as usual, and I felt a faint headache every day, serious as tearing, so I suspected that I also had a brain tumor, for half a year, did not write, did not go to work, specially entrusted relatives and friends, went to the hospital, found experts, and looked at the brain nerves, cerebral blood vessels and various parts related to the brain. Single pieces of various CT and MRI films were shot one inch thick. Hospitals and experts, also at your expense, see the grass said it may be a poisonous tree, constantly leading you from the daily cold to look at the future of cancer, until finally in Beijing Hospital to meet an 80-year-old brain tumor expert, he watched a variety of films in the comparison, asked me lightly: "Do you see a doctor at your own expense or reimbursement?" I said, "It's all at your own expense." He smiled at me and said that your headache is still caused by cervical spondylosis, go home and massage it according to cervical spondylosis.

To be honest, I am often trapped by death, and I do not want to think about the way in which man's natural life exists in reality. Avoiding this problem is like Stetson's obsession that he must think clearly about it. For example, writing, at first, was to enter the city through writing, to be able to escape the land, to make their lives better, and to make their life process different from those of their parents. Later, after entering the city through writing, I wanted to become famous and start a family, so that my life process was different from the people around me. But after middle age, we find that these pursuits of desire, compared with death, are so worthless, just as we have to use the crystal of a drop of water and the dryness of the sea to compare the truth.

To be honest, to this day, I can't go beyond the panic of death, and whenever I think of the word "death", there is a kind of gray pain in my heart. There is a kind of panic that the brain does not supply enough blood. It was two or three years ago, Mr. Lin Jinlan, an old writer of the Beijing Writers Association, died of illness, and I couldn't find a reason not to go to Babaoshan to send him off, and after I came back, I had insomnia and troubles for 3 consecutive nights, and I regretted that I shouldn't go to the place where the words "sacrifice" and "dian" were everywhere, the word "dian" and black and white flowers. Now, unable to understand why I should continue to write, I say to people, "I write to prove that I am alive and healthy." I don't know how much humor there is in this sentence, how much accuracy there is, but I just feel very willing to say it that way. Because I can't say, "I write to escape and resist death." "That would feel too serious, and there would be a lot of shows." But when I relate death to writing, to one's natural life to literature, I really can't find a certain argument that makes me and others feel more appropriate, more accurate, and credible.

I often write in some kind of contradiction and paradox. Because of the fear and avoidance of death, we have to write, and in writing we write death repeatedly and repeatedly. When I say that "Daylight Flowing Year" is written to fight death, it can actually be said that it is a long sigh due to the fear of death. There is a large paragraph of simple discussion of death in "My Father and Father", which is actually his own pretentious cry for fear of death. I don't know when or when I can surpass the fear of death, but Mr. Shuntaro Tanigawa, who I am familiar with, said at the age of nearly 80, "Life is in me, and the rest of the time is just laughing and waiting for death to come," which made me feel a warm shock.

This sentimental remark about natural life and future death, I hope it will be like a firework or a candle, in the days to come, illuminate the darkest parts and corners of my life and death, so that I dare to face death, such as facing the withering glory of a tree in front of my window.

If man's natural life is regarded as a river that begins to flow one day and is bound to disappear one day, another river will be derived from this river for writers, poets, painters, artists, and so on. That's when you're alive and you're making a work. Cao Xueqin lived to be about 40 years old, and "Dream of the Red Chamber" was written for nearly 250 years, and it seems that today it has just entered the peak of life. No one can make Cao Xueqin come back to life and be reborn from rotten bones, but no one has the ability to make "Dream of the Red Chamber" disappear and die, becoming the ashes of waste paper. Kafka's life disappeared at the age of 41, but "The Castle" and "Metamorphosis" spread endlessly and lasted for a long time.

They did not know that their works would last long when they were alive, just as Tolstoy did not have confidence in his writing and works when he was alive. A painter's belief that his work can live for a long time does not mean that he does not idealize his work for a long time. The reason why a writer wants to continue to write is that in addition to the need to survive, from the root, he still believes, or is lucky that he can write good and even great works. If I am not afraid of inviting insults, I will be frank that I always have such a reckless wish of luck. But I also know that things often backfire and are fruitless, like a growing athlete, until you die behind everyone else. Your sprint just proves that your feet still have strength, that you are left behind in a long run but have no choice to give up and quit. That's it, at best, the "last runner" that Lu Xun praises.

Among Chinese writers, I am not the one who writes the most, nor the least; not the best, nor the worst. I was one of those who crammed onto the runway without stopping. Running to the front, after he is old, he can stand calmly on a high place, facing the sunset, calmly and slowly saying to himself: "Life is for me, and the rest of the time is to laugh and wait for death to come." "Because they have confirmed and seen their works spreading in time, and what I have confirmed and seen in these things is impossible for a future." Besides, this is no longer an era of reading. Moreover, some people have already asserted the proclamation: "The novel is dead!" "For me, I don't have the luxury of expecting how long my work will have, I only hope that the previous one can bring the power of writing to the next one, so that when I am alive, I feel that writing can increase the meaning of existence in natural life."

Today, it is not the era of literature and reading, let alone the era of poetry, but Tanigawa Shuntaro's poems in Japan can be printed in more than 30,000 copies per part, and a poetry anthology can be printed in more than 50 editions, more than 800,000 copies, and from the age of 20 to 79, for 60 years, he has been selling freely. In this way, we can no longer say anything about the poet, that is, Neruda and Ai Qing are still alive, and today's Japanese people are obsessed with reading a poet, and they can only be silently admired. The poet can too "smile and wait for death to come" to face the future. And our lifelong dedication to writing may only be exchanged for the famous words of Paul Kochakin: When he looks back on the past, he does not regret wasting his years. Such a fat and bold statement is also a kind of helplessness in writing.

The existence of works can only explain the way we live. Hoping to write a masterpiece is really a kind of fat effort, such as hoping to use the bricks and tiles of the air to build the future building. But despite this, I wanted to let myself fight like Don Quixote, to write, as a way of proving the existence of my natural life. "I definitely don't want to write a masterpiece. All efforts, just hope that the next part of the writing will not bring discouraged harm. "This is my only treaty today on writing, for the life of my own work.

Trying to be a runner who doesn't quit is a humble writing hope I have before overcoming the fear of death.

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