YeMi
Two years ago, when COVID-19 hit, I couldn't go out and walk around, I had to stay at home. In this way, there is a lot of time for leisure, and at night, I often look up at the stars.
There are countless animals in Chinese idioms, and studying the behavior of animals in idioms can explore Chinese view of the world. Among these idiom animals, my favorite is a frog, which is the frog in the idiom "sitting in a well and watching the sky". My life is full of well after well, and many times, I sit in the well like a frog and watch the sky, imagining a small piece of sky I see.
Because of the reduction of human activity during the epidemic, the sky suddenly became incomparably clear, and when you look up at night, you can see the stars in the sky. Compared with the starry sky when I was a child, there are not so many stars now, so bright, but I can finally see a lot of stars.
Seeing the clear faces of the stars is like seeing the truth - this is a poem I wrote for the stars, it means nothing, it is joy.
Then, out of a curiosity from my childhood, I began to understand the universe and human exploration of outer space.
During that time, my mind was filled with astronomical terms: black holes, dark matter, cosmic rays, cosmic cracks, "Fibonacci sequences", "Riemann conjecture"...
I learned some basic knowledge of the universe: modern cosmology is based on Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is derived from the "Riemann hypothesis"... Rayner confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, and the atomic bomb proved the great power of Einstein's theory into practice... Hawking argued that particles can escape black holes, so black holes may eventually collapse... Cosmic rays can be used to obtain the mass of a neutron star... There could be a ninth planet at the edge of the solar system...
My mind was empty for a moment and I looked down at the vegetables I had grown. The leaves of the radish are mothed by insects in a network, and the leeks grow weak and weak. A packet of fennel seeds was sprinkled in the field, and only three or four fennel trees grew. Later, a green leafy vegetable called "Cantonese cuisine" was replanted, which was similar to a small cabbage, but more than a small cabbage, and it was long horizontally under the four sides, holding a field full. Three or four plush fennel trees protrude from the crevices of "Cantonese cuisine". There is also a second stubble of hydrangeas that grew out of it, which bloomed in October, and now the flowers have fallen, but they are still lush. Spinach, cabbage, green vegetables, Zhuge vegetables... Zhuge Cai blooms lilac flowers in early spring and February, which is called "February Orchid"... "February Orchid" reminds me of Xie Fang's appearance in "Early Spring and February", wearing a blue Yin DanShilin cloth cheongsam, wearing a big braid, and her cheeks are blown into a lilac by the cold wind of early spring...
The stars looked all cool, either blue or white, sometimes a little lilac, but never warm, like the yellow wild chrysanthemums that had grown up by my fence, or like the kumquats, oranges, oranges, and red grapefruit I had planted, which were now ripe and took on a warm, warm hue.
As the saying goes, seeing is believing, but this phrase doesn't apply to scientists or to things in the universe. For example, a cosmologist says triumphantly that we can be sure that dark matter exists, but we cannot yet determine exactly what it is. Scientists are working to determine the identity of dark matter.
That is to say, there is one thing that no one has ever seen, but it is there.
By the time I, the so-called writer, were stunned, scientists were already studying whether dark matter was attracted to each other or passed directly through when dark matter met.
- Put into the novel, it is equivalent to a fertilized egg describing to the womb what its future child will look like.
At least my novels have never had that wild texture. Scientists are really wild.
For example, another cosmologist poetically said that the universe would eventually be destroyed. We can't know the name of the last star, but we do know that the last star must have been a red dwarf. After the death of this last red dwarf, the universe will fall into darkness. No light, no life, no meaning...
A cold, white star could be an object burning with a red fire.
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"Grow Like a Break" / Ye Mi
Henan Literature and Art Publishing House / 2021
Looking up at the stars and exploring the mysteries of the universe made me feel incredibly frustrated. The frustrating thing is that just as writers are looking for the origin of a sentence, a word, a word, and seeking rationality and logic, scientists have already crossed this hurdle and imagined it. That is to say, when the writer is still describing whether the fertilized egg is the product of male and female love, scientists are already showing what the fertilized egg will look like in the future, and what the child's child will look like... Moreover, scientists may announce at some point in the future that all human children no longer need to be conceived in the womb, as long as both men and women make a report to the relevant units, and put sperm and eggs in a vessel in the family to conceive a baby, or even a piece of nail on both sides of the couple. Love belongs to love, and pregnancy is conceived, and the shackles of human life are completely liberated.
As a woman, I think I would welcome this new, liberating way of conceiving women.
As a writer, when I write about the love between men and women, where should I focus? How is their love different from what it is now? When I think about it, the difference may not be a ring, but a beautiful vessel. Modern couples go to choose a ring together with affection, while future couples go together to choose a baby bottle with affection. The meaning of these two things is the same.
Today's writers write about the relationship between man and man, man and nature, and future writers may focus on the relationship between man and man. For example, the nursery bottle in the home carries the expectations of the male and female owners for the future. The bottle is so important that science gives it human emotions —yes, it's actually a little robot, something that has the characteristics of human behavior, but it's non-human.
Writer, hey, writer. Are you ready?
I have to admit that science is constantly evolving compared to literature. The important reason for this is that science, in addition to constantly proving it correctly, can prove its error. For example, the "geocentric theory" was once popular, but later scientifically proved it wrong. For example, the great Ptolemy, who built a model of the universe, was later proved wrong. Even if it is wrong, do not hide its greatness. This is the peculiarity of science.
Literature does not. Literature has no falsehood, only obsolescence. Nor does literature have a uniform standard by which to measure its correctness. So literature is a human activity that cannot be verified to be right or wrong. This feature causes the threshold of literature to be very low, as long as you are literate, you can "engage in literature".
"Engaging in literature" will be done to the end, it will make it look like a high-level appearance, to prove the rationality, correctness, logic, mirror image of a certain sentence, a certain word, a certain word... Wait a minute. Science has become a super rabbit, and literature is still a slow old turtle to prove that every step it takes is normative and logical. Because it has nothing to prove.
The super rabbit ran wildly, walking a road that didn't look like a road, but everywhere it went, it all became a road. This is thanks to mathematics, where scientists use mathematical formulas to get the truth or are approaching it. There are six thousand languages in the world, but there is only one kind of mathematics. Mathematics is the closest thing to the truth.
Ye Mi | in Suzhou in 1996
What about literature? What does literature rely on to get closer to the truth? Our literature today still relies on the traditional way, with practice as the basis of literature, to be grounded, to experience life. Only literature that is close to life can be infinitely close to the truth.
But the voices of the future are telling us that approaching the truth is not necessarily the only way to be close to life. We may have another way: imagination.
Imagination is the most valuable part of literature, and from the past literary experience, those advanced imaginations will have a positive impact on human life. So today, is it possible for those advanced imaginations in literature to participate in the construction of the future world of mankind?
Man changes the world by logic, and logic produces all the things that change the world. But before logic, it is the boundless imagination of human beings who are vast and vast. When human beings entered the outer space age, whether the position of literature was before logic or after logic, or literature, like those sciences, constantly argued the rationality of the literary imagination and opened up the gap between the present and the future.
Of course, scientists are opening up physical properties. It is still human nature that writers have opened up.
So, what exactly is the truth that literature demands? It's emotion. The truth of human emotions. When science explores the limits of the universe, literature must explore the limits of human emotion.
Science has proven that the universe will eventually be destroyed, and literature can never prove that emotions will disappear. Instead, literature broadens the boundaries of human emotion. At the very least, it is recording and witnessing the increasingly complex and diverse emotional world of earthlings. This is the modernity of the novel, and it is also its ultimate meaning.
Boolean logic gave rise to computers, and from then on all human scientific creations were attributed to mathematics. Thankfully, there is no fixed way in which human emotions are made. In this way, literature will always have vitality. If literature can be calculated, generalized, and predicted mathematically, then literature will really come to an end.
Beyond Your World / Ye Mi
Cultural Development Press / 2020
This raises the question: Is the existing logic of human beings really important to literature?
Also, can literature produce computing power? This question does not seem to be modern logical. But the logic is not all reliable. Perhaps one day literature will also have the power of computing, it will be able to dataize human emotions. On this day, how will those of us who write novels behave in the world? Are we left with only language?
When the mad rabbit of science ran without a trace, crossed a certain horizon, ran through the Kuiper Belt, ran beyond the Milky Way, and entered the scene of entropy and gravitational life-and-death struggles... Where is the imagination of our writers? How do we approach the truth with our imagination? The scientific imagination depends on mathematical calculations, and the literary imagination depends on what?
Or do you live by it? Think of it another way – maybe it depends on science.
Wouldn't it be better to equip the literary imagination with science?
yes. For example, dark matter, this thing no one has seen its true face, but scientists have used mathematical calculations, laboratories to demonstrate its real existence, then why not go with the wind to admit it? This kind of recognition has great benefits for literature, from ancient times to the present, there are not a few people who write ghosts and gods in literary works, but they are only written and written, similar to the folk saying "talking about ghosts" and "ghost stories". The people who wrote it lacked confidence, and the people who watched it laughed. Nowadays, with the blessing of the doctrine of "dark matter", the "ghost stories" in literature have a scientific basis. Ghosts may be a dark substance that people become after death. Then, the "ghosts" in literature no longer have to be unjustified, and they no longer have to twist and shy. We can generously insert the wings of science and fly freely in the vast world of imagination. The people who write it are full of confidence, and the people who watch it are in awe.
When I say this, is it a bit underwhelmed? Has literature really reached the point where it needs to rely on other disciplines to survive? yes. But you can use another word, instead of "relying on" but "cross-border". "Cross-border" is a word that has become popular in the literary world in recent years, which is a future-oriented word. Those people of insight in the literary world listened to the voice of the future and resolutely proposed to "cross the border." In fact, the fantasy of science has surpassed literature, and the romance of science has surpassed literature. Even the spirit of entertainment in science surpassed that of literature.
But literature has been brilliant and magnanimous. This brilliance and magnanimity are deeply imprinted in the hearts of every writer. Let's talk about "Journey to the West", Sun Dasheng entered the heavens and the earth in the sixteenth century. Chao Xiaoli said that Sun Dasheng brought happiness and strength to people in real life. Asahiri said that Sun Dasheng definitely inspired mankind to build the future.
If today's writers want to write a Journey to the West, will the scriptures be taken in outer space?
Once, I saw a scientist on TV standing on a cliff facing the vast sea, and said with great enthusiasm that the earth would one day be destroyed. But here have been the birth of great human beings, there have been science, literature, art...
Behind science is literature. I'm proud of literature, even if it's a slow-moving old turtle. I'm proud of me, even though I'm a frog at the bottom of a well. I, the frog at the bottom of the well, always wonder: What is the meaning of literature? How much influence will literature have on the future? Does the novel's existing writing process and concept of writing have the characteristics of the road to the future?
Science develops not for destruction, but to explore the secrets of the universe. The universe will eventually be destroyed, and science represents the wisdom that human beings have had. Literature, I think literature should represent the values and temperatures that human beings have had.
One day the earth was destroyed, and it once had a dweller, a middle-aged female writer, pondering the meaning of writing. This kind of thinking, which was both vast and small, made her feel the meaning of being human. Or, simply anxiety about the future. All anxiety, once related to the future, is also meaningful.
The above is an immature small article, only a creative talk. It only proves that I have thought, not that I am correct.
Completed on December 21, 2021 in Puzhuang, Suzhou
At the 8th Congress of the China Writers Association in 2011, Ye Mi and Lin Bai, Wei Wei, Qiu Shanshan, Xu Kun, He Shaojun, Zhang Mei, etc
Yangtze River Literary Review, No. 1, 2022
directory
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Yan Lianke | Sister-in-law and construction law
Chen Zhonghui | The meaning of Mo Yan - a tribute to Mr. Lin Jianfa
Chen Sihe | Bile liver to take care of the real brother - Lin Jianfa and his editorial style
Wang Yao | A personal imprint of a magazine
Zhang Xuexin | Brother Jianfa's "Heart"
Xie Youshun | I often think of Teacher Lin Jianfa
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Ye Mi | Look up
Chi Zijian | Miya Yemi
Li Denan | Mental Traces and Psychology in the Transition Period - Ye Mi Theory
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Zhang Fugui | The Historical Evolution and Classical Understanding of New Chinese Poetry
Jingwen Dong | Apocalypse from Dust Settled
Chen Jun | On the subject field of chinese contemporary drama acceptance
Young Critics Forum
Fang Wei | The "excess" of language and the "supergram" of transformation anxiety- Reappraisal of "The Happy Life of poor Zhang Damin" also discusses the secularization of the 1990s
Wang Dongdong | The concept of yuan poetry in modern Chinese poetics
Writer's Work Theory
Liu Jun | Darkness, Local History, Realism/Symbolism: On Li Zishu's "Flowing Place"
West crossing | Intellectual Imagination in Gomeck's Poetry - One of Gomeck's Poetic Methodologies
Zang Qing | The Legacy of the Pioneers and the Cultivation of Style: On Bi Feiyu's Novel Creation
Literary scene
Li Jingze, Ah Lai and other | Ecology: Methods as Literature - Selected Speeches of the Forum on Ecological Literature and Natural Poetry
List of "20 Books/Departments of Literature in the Twentieth Decade of the New Century"
Yangtze River Literary Review