Theme: Laughter and tears at the intersection of literature, philosophy and history
When: January 23, 2022 at 2:00 p.m
Venue: Douban × WeWork City Parlor
Guest: Liu Zhenyun Writer
Zhao Dongmei is a professor in the Department of History at Peking University
Moderator: Shi Hang, screenwriter and planner
Organizers: Yangtze River New Century, Douban
On December 21, 2021, the famous writer Liu Zhenyun's 2021 new work "One Day and Three Autumns" was selected into the Douban annual Chinese literature list and became the "Good Book of the Year".
On January 23, the last of the Douban annual reading list series of dialogue activities ended, Liu Zhenyun, author of "One Day and Three Autumns", Zhao Dongmei, professor of the History Department of Peking University and cultural scholar, and Shi Hang, a famous screenwriter, planner and film critic, shared the stage with readers to chat about the laughter and tears at the intersection of literature, philosophy and history. Literature and history, literature and philosophy, Song Dynasty and contemporary, fate and people's hearts, these topics travel through ancient and modern times, but they become concrete and perceptible in the dialogues of the three guests.
Really write well, everyone can understand
Shi Hang: Ask Teacher Liu Zhenyun, what is the purpose of writing the book "One Day and Three Autumns"? Or what is the origin?
Liu Zhenyun: "One Day, Three Autumns" is to write a joke and a person, a group of people, a nation, a region, time, space and quantum entanglement. Why do we need jokes in life, because sometimes we live ourselves as jokes in life. Chen Changjie in the book used his life to prove that life can be a joke.
On the second level, there is a fairy flower in the book, who went to Yanjin for three thousand years to find jokes in people's dreams, to find jokes from those who have made their own lives into jokes. The joke is well told, Hua Er Niang awarded you a red stick; said badly, Hua Er Niang is not annoyed, saying "You carry me to drink a bowl of peppery soup." In the past three thousand years, Hua Erniang has become a mountain, who can afford to carry a mountain? Man was crushed to death by the mountains. It's being crushed to death by jokes, you can't speak to prove that you're serious, and at the same time you're being crushed to death by seriousness.
On the third level, Hua Erniang never knows, in fact, the biggest joke is herself. She came to Yanjin to find her lover Hanajiro, and she hadn't looked for her for more than three thousand years, and she waited for someone who could never wait, because that person was stuck by a joke. At that time, he was eating fish in a restaurant, but he didn't expect that the people in his hometown told a joke, and as soon as he laughed, he was stuck by the fish thorn. The owner of the restaurant is a Native of Henan and is also very humorous, saying "Brother, I will take you to see Langzhong". On his back, he went out, walked to the Yellow River, said, "Since you were stuck by the joke, you take advantage of the enthusiasm of this joke to go to a place with more jokes, that is, Elysium", and threw him in the Yellow River.
The fourth level is the relationship between the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. Hua Jilang was washed from the Yellow River to the East China Sea. Another protagonist, Cherry, was originally a drama actor, playing the white lady, because of a handful of leeks, but also because of a joke, she did not tell the joke to Hua Erniang, and finally hanged herself. Cherry then went to the Yangtze River, from the east of the Yangtze River, to the Jiujiang River when the fish people beat up, and then returned to the Song Dynasty, where she finally found her own joke, the joke itself gave her a new life.
This is the quadruple structure of this joke. Everyone can really write well.
Shi Hang: Saying that these big words of Wen Shizhe are similar to Confucianism, in fact, the main point of "One Day and Three Autumns" is that it is very kind. Starting from "A Place of Chicken Feathers", the first sentence of Zhen Yun's novel is the entrance that is. Listen to how Teacher Dongmei felt after tasting this book?
Zhao Dongmei: I would like to ask Teacher Liu, is there really such a folklore? I read it as a parable. Under the big structure of this fable is real life, there are small pieces of ordinary people's lives, entanglements, and under the big absurd structure there is a very solid life.
Where life stopped, literature emerged
Liu Zhenyun: Teacher Dongmei asked a very professional question - whether the characters and stories in the work are real. This is where fiction differs very much from historical writings. Where life stopped, literature emerged.
There is actually no river in Yanjin County, but Yanjin in "One Sentence Top 10,000 Sentences" has a magnificent river like Paris, Lyon, and London. When the Lantern Festival is in flames, there is a sea of people, gongs and drums are noisy, and there are endless lights on both sides of the river. The next morning you will find the ground full of debris and shoes and socks that people have been stepped on. Later, someone went to Yanjin, walked from South Street to North Street, from east to west, and asked me, what about the river? I also wrote two novels in the early days— Tower Shop and Recruit Company. Tapu is a township in Yanjin, the novel is written in the tone of "I", "I" and a girl named Li Ailian had a very pure love before the college entrance examination, someone asked Li Ailian which street the family lived in.
"One Day, Three Autumns" was written for uncle Six's paintings, which is the relationship between novels and paintings. Uncle Six's painting also has this response: Yanjin was not originally near the Yellow River, but in Uncle Six's painting, the Yellow River is rough, the river is against the mountain, and there is snow on the mountain for many years. Including the name of the work, the name of my work often has the word "one", and many people ask me if I did it intentionally. I didn't think about it so much when I named it, it's like a goose flying in a row. But when I say this, people don't believe it, and if you don't believe it, you don't believe it. In any case, the name of a work is not a big deal.
The biggest difference between literature and life is that the thinking, epistemology, scientificity, philosophy, and rationality of the characters in literature are greater than those in life. People in life are too hurried to think so deeply about the ins and outs of an event, with tears and laughter, as well as blood. Life is a rough thing, and literature is much more nuanced than life. This is the necessity of literary existence. Kobayashi, written in "A Place of Chicken Feathers", is a small civil servant, and now "a place of chicken feathers" has become an idiom. The small civil servants in life are by no means the same as Kobayashi, and the small civil servants in life must feel that the Eight-Nation Summit is important, but the Kobayashi in the novel thinks that a pound of tofu at home is more important.
I can learn history well, I can learn philosophy and mathematics well, and my kung fu is outside of poetry. One of Archimedes' major contributions was buoyancy theory, and another was the fulcrum theory. Literature must also have a fulcrum, that is, ideological and philosophical, and it is also the fulcrum of history.
Traditional historiography is storytelling, and there are people
Shi Hang: In Teacher Liu's novel, The second lady of The Flower is that Teacher Liu invited foreign aid, and invited Gods and Ghosts. When a work in which both the man and the non-person become characters, the work grows at a speed visible to the naked eye. Therefore, compared with "One Day and Three Autumns" and "One Sentence top ten thousand sentences", it is not more people, but more levels. It is not a three-point line, but a body, from a circle to a ball.
Teacher Zhenyun's universe of hundreds of family names, like Teacher Dongmei's "Fireworks in the World", is like setting off firecrackers, "banging" a sound, seeing fireworks, and then seeing firecracker chips on the ground. You're not with the author at the computer, at the desk, so the light of that moment is what the author sees for himself. But do you lose? You don't lose. You see broken firecrackers, smell the sulfur smell in the air, whether this book was bought last year or this year, the sulfur smell in the air is still there, the firecracker crumbs on the ground have not been swept clean, you will remember when you were a child, the smell of firecrackers, you feel something related to you in the scene, just like the second lady of the flower came.
I would like to ask Teacher Dongmei what you write about the Song Dynasty, the starting point, what standards and angles do you think will be written, and what state and realm do you hope to achieve when writing a book?
Zhao Dongmei: Let me first add about firecrackers. The Song Dynasty had firecrackers filled with gunpowder, but in the south it was mainly firecrackers - burning red bamboo, a very strong person picked it up, to a very hard place like a step, and when it fell, it was the sound of firecrackers. You can hear the sound at the scene, you can also see the sparks, and the bamboo charcoal can be thrown under the bed after the bamboo is exploded. It doesn't just work on the spot, the bamboo charcoal you put under the bed still has the effect of keeping peace.
Speaking of words, I feel that words exist independently once they leave the author. I often use this to teach students that you must write clearly, otherwise you will not be able to give things to others, and others will not understand and ask you what you have written. No. Teacher Liu said that the writing of history must be based on historical materials. I want to restore another layer of tradition in historiography — that traditional history is storytelling, that there are people. Now historical research can probably see the structured population, see the times, but can't see the people in the structure, the people in the times, and I hope to give a relatively multi-meaning text through my writing.
"One Day, Three Autumns" is also multi-meaning, legendary, realistic, and gender-specific, tradition and modernity, and between people and times, which are multi-faceted. Life itself is complex and rich, and I hope that the texts I give are historically well-founded but rich. What I don't want to give you is clear one,two, three, four, then of course I can do it, but I underestimate the reader's ability to do so. Through historical data, we still can't reach objectivity — we can only approach objectivity from different angles, but you can never reach it. So, I hope you can still know when reading, this is my subjective creation that pursues objectivity as much as possible, and you try to approach that objectivity through me when reading.
On the other hand, in terms of the subject matter of writing, in order to pursue immortality, I want to try to pick thick legs. To have a relationship with a great soul. For example, more people may want to understand Wang Anshi, but if I have a relationship with Sima Guang, and if I want to have a relationship with Su Shi, I will be close to immortality. There is a great advantage to write the history of the Song Dynasty, those great souls, the deeper you understand them, you will not have dislike, on the contrary, you will appreciate them more.
In the Song Dynasty, our village was the outskirts of the capital
Shi Hang: Man's pursuit of immortality is to pursue stranger strangers. I also know Mr. Zhenyun in this way, from the beginning of the work, I copied the beginning and end of his work. The cherry fell into the river, and the shore was the Jiujiang River in Jiangxi, which was space, time up to the Song Dynasty. Why would a girl who played the Legend of the White Snake return to the Song Dynasty? Do you like the Song Dynasty, or do you like Henan?
Liu Zhenyun: Because it is more convenient for my characters to return to the Song Dynasty. Because our village is more than 40 kilometers away from The Seal, put into the Song Dynasty, our village is the suburb of the capital. From Emperor Yingzong to Emperor Zhezong to Emperor Shenzong, and Master Li, the accents are similar to ours. The words of our village are the same as those of Kaifeng. On the other hand, the same motif question, why do you write Aboututsu as soon as you write a work? Is it like Faulkner to draw a stamp? I said that I don't draw stamps, the people in the works always have to live in one place, always have to have human fireworks, eat and sleep and fall in love. The people of Yanjin smiled, walked, worried, and the dust in the wrinkles, I knew it very well. Like "One Sentence Top Ten Thousand Sentences", "Tower Shop", and "Recruit Company" all write Yanjin, mainly for convenience.
I once wrote "Hometown Noodles and Flowers", and the people in it also kept returning to the Song Dynasty. The cherries in "One Day and Three Autumns" go down the river and come out of the Song Dynasty. Teacher Dongmei's "Fireworks in the World" said that the Song Dynasty was rich in human fireworks and literature was attractive, in two aspects: on the one hand, "everyone has a destiny, and everyone has nothing in their hearts." Teacher Dongmei said about Su Shi, there were two poets in the Song Dynasty who wrote very well, Su Shi and Li Qingzhao. Eight of Li Qingzhao's ten poems are writing sorrow, "only to raise an eyebrow, but to the heart", the sorrow in the heart is spiritual, and the fireworks are much bigger than the sorrow on the head. Everyone has it in their lives and nothing in their hearts, which is epistemological, and literature has a particularly great value.
Another is the fun that makes literature last forever. The Song Dynasty had a peaceful period of 100 years without civil strife, which played a strong role in material development. Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Dream Record", although our village is a suburb, we can see how prosperous the capital is, three steps a restaurant, five steps a tea shop, ten steps a nightclub. Next time, I will write a "I am Master Li" to see how far away she is from our village. The fireworks of the world are next to my hometown, and the prosperity of the world has aroused the nostalgia in my blood. How can a Song Dynasty poet who can't speak Henan dialect write such a good word? Su Shi's words are not pronounced in Henan dialect and Beijing dialect. Su Shi's talent and talent are important, and his insight is more important. Why insightful? Because he was in the capital, the capital was near our village.
The Song Dynasty was an era of human nature and creativity
Zhao Dongmei: Teacher Liu is my senior, can I make a joke? The Song Dynasty had a poem attached to the horse - "Once the sea was shipwrecked as water, except for the good fortune is always the village", that is, except for Kaifeng, it is a rural area. I came into contact with some local cultural people, chatting, I feel very surprised, you will resonate, when they talk about Kaifeng, there is a kind of pride of the old capital - Kaifeng now has a dog fighting place, there is a chrysanthemum festival, there are dancers who make ink are calligraphers, the writing is very good, that time I was also given a very good writing.
Kaifeng fell in 1127, and this place in Kaifeng is not the same as Hangzhou. After Hangzhou is not the capital, it is still a relatively important city. Kaifeng, on the other hand, was built by canals, and when the capital was in Chang'an and Luoyang, the economic center of gravity shifted south, and the grain from the south was transported to the north and then to the west to the capital, which was to pass through Kaifeng. The prosperity of Kaifeng has a lot to do with the canal. In the Song Dynasty, the prosperity of Kaifeng had a lot to do with politics, it was the capital of a centralized empire, so the elites of people and things from all over the world would converge on this place, such as Su Shi, who was a native of Meizhou, Sichuan, and Ouyang Xiu, a native of Jiangxi. But when Kaifeng was not the capital, it was forgotten.
It has not been the capital for so many years, but the people of Kaifeng will still have a very strong pride in the old capital. Luoyang and Kaifeng feel different, Luoyang's urban development is obviously better than Kaifeng, but Kaifeng people will be proud of "our current situation", "our city", streets and alleys, so persistent, love. I think I am a person who studies the history of the Song Dynasty and love Kaifeng, but I love Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi's Kaifeng. The place is this place, the space is still there, but 1000 years have passed.
In Teacher Liu's statement, Yanjin left Feng 40 kilometers, and I was very touched by his pride. Teacher Liu lets the protagonist return to the Song Dynasty, which is a different era than before and after, and some cultures are unprecedented. As far as the economy is concerned, it is certain that after it is endless, the economy has its law of development, there are twists and turns, but it is moving forward. But politics and culture did not necessarily move forward, and there was a retrogression after the Song Dynasty.
When we look back at the Northern Song Dynasty, it is indeed a unique star in the starry sky of Chinese history. Teacher Liu is willing to let cherry return to the Song Dynasty, which is the most humane and creative era. Mr. Chen Yinke said: "The Six Dynasties and the Tianshui Dynasty have the most free thinking. "All are free, but the direction of walking is different—the freedom of the Six Dynasties is used to destroy and break the rigidity; the freedom of the Tianshui Dynasty is used to create, such as The Buddhist culture came in for 1,000 years and re-created in the Chinese culture with Confucianism as the core." I agree with Mr. Chen that cherries are worth going back to as villagers 40 kilometers away from Kaifeng.
Why are Henan people so humorous? Because there are so many disasters that have been experienced
Reader: In the 1980s, the concept of "new realistic fiction" appeared in academia. Literature is about life, how does Teacher Liu view the ordinary and trivial life and the noble life?
Liu Zhenyun: New realism, avant-garde, and magical reality are all right, but the debate between right and wrong in the world accounts for only 0.01%, and people quarrel and quarrel with each other whether they are all right or small. Different angles, such as whether the elephant is a rope or a wall, are all right. Wittgenstein's "I speak or speak for me" relationship. When I write works, I don't say that literature reflects life, literature is the art of language, this is not the beginning and end of my writing. My writing is the epiphany of thought, which is more important than thought and plot.
Director Shi Hang and Mu Sen adapted "One Sentence Top Ten Thousand Sentences" into a drama and changed it very well. Many people say that you always write a thing, I only write about what happened to the Yanjin people in Yanjin, it is just a vernacular novel, which is too far from my ideological realm. Writing about Yanjin and Yanjin people is important, and more important than this is the intervener -- the people who come to Yanjin. The quantum entanglement between the intervener and the Yanjin people sees Yanjin from the perspective of the world, the world from the perspective of Yanjin, and then the perspective of Yanjin from the perspective of Yanjin.
Reader: I am also from Henan, and Henan has experienced great tragedies in the past. Teacher Liu said that "tragedy is a little bit of comedy extension", how did you think about this problem when you wrote "Three Autumns in One Day"?
Liu Zhenyun: If one just thinks of comedy as comedy, it is very comedic in itself. The background of comedy must be tragedy; the background of tragedy must be comedy. If it reaches a certain level of cultivation. In "One Day, Three Autumns", Hua Erniang, your joke is a comedy, and if you say it is not good, it will immediately evolve into a tragedy. And this tragedy itself is quite a big comedy.
There was a man who made sheep soup inside, and Hua Erniang fell into a dream, and he was crushed to death in the blink of an eye. In the ghost, Wu Dazui became a person with a slippery tongue, and Yan Wangye also hated people with slippery tongues, and suddenly a senior person suggested: "Out of the New Deal, if you say 50 jokes in a row and laugh at me, you can be reborn." That's why Wu Dazui practiced jokes hard. There are so many works that write tragedies in terms of tragedy, and some people do find that there is a huge comedy hidden in the tragedy. In "Wen Gu 1942", Lao Zhang is going to die, remembering that Old Li starved to death three days ago, "I have lived three more days than Old Li, I am worth it." Why are Henan people so humorous? Because they have experienced so many disasters. If you treat harshness with seriousness, harshness becomes a piece of iron; if you treat harshness with humor, harshness becomes a piece of ice, and the ice melts into the sea.
Reader: Recently watched the variety show "Shooting" that you participated in, many of the characters in your book are transformed from the paintings, do you want to convert the characters into film and television works?
Liu Zhenyun: Many people have misunderstood me, thinking that I am familiar with people in the film and television circles, but in fact, the person I am most familiar with is Shi Hang. I have changed my work to film and television and indeed have a few more, and I am ashamed. But it's basically the director. The director called me and said he wanted to adapt it into a movie, and I said yes, and then I didn't close it with me. Film and fiction are two art forms. Novels are written on computers without spending money, but every word in the movie is stacked with money, often tens of millions of billions. Many people always ask me, "Why do you adapt so many works?" I can only tell the truth: "Well written." "Directors and producers are not stupid.
Reader: One of my boyfriends often said, "Du Fu is from our village, and Bai Juyi is from the village next door to me." "I want to express my love for you. Would you like to ask you whether the painting of Uncle Six in the novel is fictional?
Liu Zhenyun: If Li Shangyin is from your village, I am quite proud of your village. He has a poem - "The return date of the king is not in date, and the rain in Bashan is rising in the autumn pool." When it is time to cut the candles in the west window, but when it rains at night on Mount Daoba." When you are asked when you will come back, he said he did not know, it was raining in this place, the autumn rain was long, and he was also looking forward to cutting the west window candle with others, and then I would tell you about today's bashan night rain. The problem was that the person who asked him was his wife, who had passed away. Bai Juyi is also close to your village? He also has two poems that are particularly good- "Poor man with a single shirt, worried and cold." Including "Pipa Xing" - "Who wept the most in the seat, Sima Qingyi of Jiangzhou was wet".
Uncle Six's painting was written last, and I put it behind when I wrote it, thinking that I wouldn't want it, but I was afraid. As Teacher Shi Hang said, the opening should be immediately dissolved, the reader should feel that you are kind, and the beginning is very important. I thought the band's finalist was a violinist, and later I learned it was bass. Uncle Six's painting is the definitive tone of the novel. "Dream of the Red Chamber" is also like this, the Great Desolate Mountain, Qinggeng Peak.
Reader: The Legend of the White Snake is an important clue in the book. Why did you choose The Legend of the White Snake?
Liu Zhenyun: The three protagonists who appear are actors who act together in a play. "The Legend of the White Snake" is very unusual, not a person and another person in love, is a person and a snake in love, especially imaginative, is a structural relationship. In the play, Cherry plays the white lady, and the one who plays Fahai is her husband in life, and her life is misplaced with the role. The line they both love to sing is "Why bother, why do it", which is actually not in "The Legend of the White Snake", but it is immediate for Chinese readers. Finishing/Rain Station