Not long ago, I read the scholar Xu Zhiqiang's new book "Part of Poetics and Ordinary Readers", which was very amazing. This is a collection of foreign literary criticisms about Wittgenstein, Borges, Brodsky, Naipaul, Bolaño... Precise and profound, calm, and a rare light playfulness due to physical fitness. On Douban, there is a self-proclaimed "scum who always thinks of skipping class" said: "At night, I can't sleep and go to WeChat to find Teacher Xu's article to read, which is really enjoyable." Enjoyed listening to his lectures, enjoying reading his articles, and enjoying everything he said. "What makes me happy is that such a talented scholar of foreign literature intersects with me at one point: we are all lovers of Mu Xin's works. Earlier this year, the Wooden Heart Manuscript was published in a remarkable way, so I interviewed him and asked him to talk about a few new topics of concern to me.
Manuscript of the Wooden Heart
Zheng Song (hereinafter referred to as Zheng): Recently, three volumes of the Wooden Heart Manuscript were published. You are one of Mu Xin's most in-depth researchers, and you have consulted his published works, how do you feel about these manuscripts?
Xu Zhiqiang (hereinafter referred to as Xu): During the winter vacation, I spent the New Year in other places, and I read with this set of books, and I gained a lot. On the whole, the manuscript was helpful for me to get to know him as a person and his writing. For example, he emphasized that he was "the last pastoral poet." This statement is worth playing. There are many similar examples that have not been noticed before and have not been seriously considered. We need to keep reading him, collecting what he left behind from different levels, from different sides, from different corners. I thought I knew more about it, but obviously not yet. I think I have a high opinion of him, but it may not be enough. He was a writer who grew up after his death. I'm not a researcher, I'm just a reader. To me, his meaning continues to happen. For example, this kind of reading is like a walk, he speaks sideways, nods, or walks silently, and the walk has not ended.
Zheng: Do you think this meaning of his is clear and has an overall tone?
Hs: There is no doubt that there is a clear tone, because it is a definite wooden heart style, a wooden heart language. But in fact, I read the manuscript piecemeal, wandering, not in order, seeing a sentence that I particularly liked, and stayed and playfully pondered. There are also arguments, albeit one-sided. When I read "Literary Memoirs", I realized that he did not agree with Li He, and this time it was confirmed by the paragraphs commenting on Du Mu in the posthumous manuscript. I highly recommend Li He the most. I disagree with him on this.
Zheng: As a clear tone, as a whole wooden heart language, do you have a specific definition of this?
HSU: Well, well, I'll think about it. I privately gave the three-volume manuscript a title called "Parade of the Ruins." Mu Xin didn't talk much about Joyce, and he didn't seem to accept his style and writing very well. The late wooden hearts reminded me more and more of Joyce, who were all gazers of ruins. In their eyes, the world retains the very vivid charm of everyday forms, visual appearances and landscapes, but the structure of the world has collapsed, and there is no longer a traditional structure of ontology and teleology, that is, it is a cultural ruin, and the writer is the one who patrols the ruins. Not only the manuscript, but I think mu xin's late works have given me this impression.
Wooden Heart (1927-2011)
Zheng: Do you think they are all self-centered writers? That is to say, finally the "self" is regarded as an ontology?
HSU: Yes, that's right.
Zheng: Like his previous essays and essays, the manuscript talks about many European and American writers, do you think he is showing his literary genealogy, or does it mean something else?
Hs: I think he's showing his literary genealogy. His writing has this characteristic. He always lived with a group of deceased writers, not only European and American, but also Chinese classical and modern writers.
Zheng: Does this explain what you mean by "ruins"? Mentally, he has to turn to the support of his past values?
HS: I think there should be such a connection. However, Mu Xin's undead summoning has other motives, not just out of dissatisfaction with the cultural decay. He has some concerns that I think are important and that we usually overlook. Some of his themes were overlooked in the wooden comments I read, so that we wouldn't position him properly.
Zheng: Can you expand on that?
HSU: For example, genius. This is at the heart of his values. I don't know if the reader notices an interesting phenomenon, Mu Xin has been holding on to Rimbaud, he specially wrote Rimbaud's commemorative article, the essay also talked about him, the posthumous manuscript talked about him again, and talked about it over and over again. I think it's hard to really understand Mu Xin if we can't appreciate the subtext of this kind of talk. The poet is a worldly person, the poet hears that others have won awards, published a new book, and will certainly have the same envy and jealousy as ordinary people, it cannot be detached, but the real poet must not care about this, but about spiritual phenomena and spiritual levels, and his lifelong attention and concern is the meaning of other constellations in the starry sky where he is located.
Zheng: That means that he uses them as frames of reference all the time?
HS: Right. Without understanding this, we can't read his subtext. There is a passage in the posthumous manuscript where he calls himself "Ren Rui", with witty words, which is worth playing. There is self-deprecation in this, this kind of self-deprecation can even be very harsh, and it is ironic that any genius has lived past the age of eighty, and Rimbaud, Mayakovsky, and Yesenin have become "renrui"? We see that his view of genius was deeply rooted in Romanticism and Symbolism, and perhaps he occasionally found solace in Goethe, but mainly Romanticism. This set has long been popular in the United States, so I don't think he will be comfortable in the United States. When I read the Manuscript, I wondered if Mu Xin would be interested in the articles of Martha Nusbaum, Rawls, and Sandel. I don't think he should be interested. His spirit is European, rooted in the vein of Nietzsche and Gide.
Zheng: In the Manuscript, Mu Xin talks about his last collection of poems, the Pseudo-Book of Solomon. I noticed the article "Mu Xin's Journey to Chinese Europa" that you wrote last year to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his death, and you spoke highly of this collection of poems in the article.
Mu Xin The Pseudo-Book of Solomon
Xu: My evaluation should be more restrained and more reclusive (laughs). There is a process of my understanding. Now I think it's the one that interests me the most in his writing.
Zheng: You talked about the way this collection of poems was written in the article, calling it "parasitic lyricism", do you think that this kind of writing, called "text regeneration", should have a clear boundary?
HSU: Yes, there should be a definition. There are different sayings and definitions – citation writing, text regeneration, intertextuality, and so on. Different labels have different boundary effects. At present, I don't quite agree with these three labels.
Zheng: Do you think all three are accurate?
HSU: Quotation writing is a kind of fragmented mosaic writing, Benjamin, Bila-Matas and others have done so, quotations have a source, there are quotation marks, to show their source and comparison, the same is true of the so-called intertextual writing. You've hidden all the metatexts, so what else is there to talk about? Intertextus usually involves parody, and the line "hair" in Oripides' orestes laughs at the time, knowing that it is a parody of the previous text of Orestes, and this connection is the life of intertextual writing. I think Mu Xin's writing is not a parody at all. Neither citation writing nor intertextual writing.
Zheng: Is the phrase "text regeneration" inappropriate?
Hsu: The English word for regeneration is reinforcement, which can also be translated as "reproduction." Mu Xin injected his own ideas in the process of rewriting other people's texts. Objectively speaking, the pseudo-Solomon is the style of the wooden heart, the language and tonality of the wooden heart, so it is still not appropriate to use the definition of the word "copy". We filter out all the language magic in our creation, then the most important thing is gone, and all that is left is "copying" or "regenerating", which is not true.
Zheng: How do you think it is more appropriate to define?
H: I will use the concept of "post-production", which is postproduction in English, which is a kind of appropriation and adaptation of ready-made products by artists, a very popular practice in the West, mainly used in the field of installation art and video production, and is widely used in the tertiary industry.
Zheng: You mean Duchamp, his work "Fountain"?
HSU: Including Duchamp. Let's take Duchamp as a starting point, and the creation of "post-production" has gradually become popular. Since the early 1990s, more and more artists have worked by translating, reproducing, re-exhibiting, and exploiting other people's works(even some cultural products). As an artist, Mu Xin is very sensitive to methodology. He introduced the concept of "post-production" into literature, at least in his personal creation, with the meaning of a methodological transformation. I think it's an interesting attempt.
Zheng: So how do you look at the difference between original and non-original?
Xu: In the "Testament", he has a paragraph about this issue, which should be more clear. Originality is a concept that has always been regarded as a high standard, but you can't always call everything you write about yourself "original", right? If so, there is still a distinction: originality can be valuable or cheap. The rewrite is unoriginal, it may be cheap, but it is also entirely possible to be unique and creative. I don't think every "after-product" of Mu Xin is successful, but there is no denying that his skill as a Master of chinese Language is particularly outstanding in the production of this series, he has a bit of fun in iron, he is a person with a lot of fun. The poem in "Dogwood Farm" is "Almost metaphysical", and writers with general language ability cannot write such sentences, so they add a word "up" after "shang", which is very wooden and very mysterious. We often say that in this era, poets need to return to language and self. But for Mu Xin, language is his original self, his original self is equivalent to the subtle use of language, he is the spirit of the language world.
Zheng: Limited to space, I will ask one more question at the end. You say that the point iron into gold, that wooden heart uses Zhou Zuoren's text, is also pointing iron into gold?
Xu: Zhou Zuo's style is superb, and his good sentences are repeated, and his metaphor alone is worth studying carefully. When did Komu Xin's rewriting use a good metaphor from Zhitang? I still use some of the more minor segments. The principle of the wooden heart is probably to point out non-poetic things into poetry, and this is what interests me.
About the interlocutor
Xu Zhiqiang, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of World Literature and Comparative Literature of Zhejiang University, has written "Macondo Myth and Magic Realism", "Bulgakov's Magical Narrative Analysis", "Resistance to Criticism", "Partial Poetics and Ordinary Readers", etc., and has translated works such as "Culture and Value (Revised Translation)", "Plague Age", "Under the Gaze of the West", "Interview with García Márquez", etc. Recently, he has been engaged in the compilation of Zhu Shenghao's chronology and other topics.
Xu Zhiqiang, "Part of Poetics and Ordinary Readers"
(Editor-in-charge: Li Jing)