Editor's Note
Creation and criticism, such as the wings of a bird, the axle of a car. The development of literary creation is inseparable from the prosperity of literary criticism and the efforts of generations of literary critics. In 1998, the Southern Literary Circle launched the "Critics Today" column, which has introduced more than 100 critics so far. Critics of different personalities speak "my view of criticism" with their sharpness, talent, and agility, and hundreds of articles have accumulated to form a sensitive, vivid, and full of vitality and talent.
Now the China Writers Network has re-launched these articles to share with you, so stay tuned.
Critics of the day
Guo Yan (Filmed in 2012)
A native of Shucheng, Anhui Province, he is a doctor of literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a writer and critic. Director of the Teaching and Research Department of Lu Xun College of Literature, member of the Chinese Writers Association, and member of the 10th Plenary Committee of the Federation of Literature and Literature. Published monographs such as "Light as a Bird, Not Feathers: Post-80s Youth Writing and Intergenerational Investigation", "Frontier Imagination and Regional Speech", "Words present", and the novel "Little Neon Dress" and "Bronze Rat Man".
My view of criticism
A look that stretches from behind the curtains
Guo Yan
As a girl, I had great sympathy for Jane Eyre, who was trembling behind the curtains, and I had recited that famous monologue in my heart countless times; Jane Austen showed me the cultivation of an arrogant gentleman and the grace of a prejudiced lady; the moment When Scarlett knelt on the ground and wept, it was undoubtedly a ceremony of coming of age; Holmes's English rigorous and sophisticated logic showed figurative scientific rationality; John Christophe's powerful spirituality projected onto the young mind and produced lasting resonance... These words, with warmth and strength, are incomparably soft and sharply embedded in my soul. A series of classics have given me the courage and strength to see the world, touching my mind while sowing the seeds of warmth, light, reason and intellect.
So I had the courage to pull away my blindfolded hand and watch the modern, postmodern smearing of the world's gray and dark tones, the deconstruction of spiritual integrity. Hiding behind a curtain to see the world is a typical female perspective, timidly and curiously looking at a world that is different from herself. Literary criticism and writing for me are undoubtedly an extension and continuation of this kind of scrutiny.
The female perspective is somehow my way of entering the literary scene of the moment. The female body and soul are discovered and are also played and exhibited in this materialistic era, so they begin to look for the meaning of women's self-expression. In this search, he gradually entered the literary scene, and constantly stepped out of the female perspective itself, close to the cognition and understanding of literature itself. I don't know from what day onwards, literature is no longer a variety of theoretical terms that have been painstakingly read for more than ten years, and the norms of the academy no longer press me with castle-like majesty. Literature is the choking of every time we think of the desert river, the lonely smoke sunset and the short Matsuoka of the bright moon night, and begin to understand us who are waiting for Godot, knowing that even if we are formed into gray beetles by the modern survival illusion, we still have the distant imagination of small bridges and water and pond spring grass. In modern castles, we experience a life of judgment and alienation like purgatory, but it is clearer than ever before that human life and universe are infinitely extended by wisdom. The genes of human life are revealed layer by layer, but we cannot penetrate the ultimate laws of human civilization, so we still firmly believe in the unity of heaven and man, and in the world of one sand and one sand, calm and calm. After passing through the dirt and grime of colonial and post-colonial culture, we look forward to entering the meaning of Tang poetry and Song poetry again, we will still meander at the edge of the Lanting Pavilion, engraving the times and people's hearts with an ancient and new square text.
In the age of multimedia, human suffering and human gluttony greed strike our eyeballs more brutally than any other era, and how literature confronts reality becomes a question that is constantly being questioned. "Sympathetic understanding" is a gesture to face the present and history, as Qian Mu said: there is a warmth and respect for the past history, and the country has the hope of further development. And as Harold Bloom puts it: The literary canon is a testament to our cultural anxieties and to give them form and coherence. The analysis and construction of the genealogy of the spirit of the times is still the meaning of the current literary criticism. No matter what kind of ideological trend and genre of literary criticism, when facing different modern countries, nationalities, languages, religions, and cultures, it is bound to have very different interpretations and interpretations. In the current era of homogeneous survival, flat ideas and networked carnivals, literature continues to provide literary nostalgia that is heterogeneous to modern survival, and to resist the inevitable death, killing and destruction of human destiny. Literary criticism undoubtedly uses reason to sort out the nostalgia and anxiety of the textual world, and gives this weak and scattered nostalgia a certain name, highlights the poetry and spirituality of literary nostalgia in the process of naming, and gives literature true transcendence and eternity in the ultimate sense.
The article was published in Southern Literature, No. 4, 2012
Critic Impressions
Literary History, Literary Criticism, Fiction
——Guo Yanqi ren qiwen
Wang Damin
One
Guo Yan, a scholar of Anhui nationality in Beijing and a young critic, is both managing and teaching at the Lu Xun Literature Institute of the China Writers Association. Man is one, and there are two names. To govern the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and contemporary literary criticism, all articles published show their real name Guo Yan, and when they enter fiction, they use the pen name "Jian Ai", which makes people involuntarily think of the heroine of the novel "Jane Eyre" that has swept the world for more than 160 years.
In 1997, he first met Guo Yan. That year, I recruited four graduate students, three women and one man, and Guo Yan was one of them. Those two girls, a beautiful spring breeze, a clever elf, extremely high expectations, attracted many boys' hearts and minds, and they were ashamed and discouraged. Another girl from the ancient city of Pingyao, the north of the south, fashion as the wind, the day of the re-examination, very artistic dress, like a proud princess. People are simple, their words and deeds are unrestrained, and they have no heart and no lungs. She was so quick and had a great memory that she had taught two classes to undergraduates, and she recited the lecture from beginning to end. Speaking very quickly, as soon as she opened her mouth, she did not give others a gap to speak. Thinking very fast, imagining romance, this personality has inserted wings for her to learn, but it has also added a lot of trouble to her life. Often whimsical, think of a play is a play, mostly instantaneous. Looking at it with traditional ideas is a small confusion and Ma Daha who does not do things in a straight face; with modern concepts, it is the nature of freedom. After graduation, she kept tossing and turning, first abandoning Hefei and Shanghai to develop in Shenzhen, quickly getting married and having children; wanting to have two children, but did not dare to violate the family planning system, and when she was pregnant with her second child, she intended to go abroad to produce. She did it when she thought about it, and it was her style, so she went to Canada to give birth to a child, and then she brought her husband to Canada. In order to survive better, she once again made the choice to abandon literature to study law and prepare to become a lawyer. No one was in her eyes, she said, I will serve Guo Yan.
Guo Yan is intellectually pure, extremely intelligent, loves to read, and is good at thinking. At that time, the method of teaching was almost up to the tutor himself. As far as I know, most of the instructors in my Chinese department prefer to teach in a chat-based manner. This method of teaching, which is almost extinct today, is often better in terms of effect than a serious teaching. Three or five people sat around, a pot of clear tea, fruit one or two, dim sum one or two, around one or two topics, the sea and the sky chatted. Because everyone is prepared in advance, it seems that the random ramblings are always out of the center. Chat is dialogue, dialogue is interpretation, into the peak state of the chat, always in each other to inspire, each other in the click of new insights, the place of understanding is often inadvertent. In this state, the tutor is not always smarter than the student, but more "transformed into a more enlightened person". Some of my articles, especially those on Yu Hua, have benefited me a lot from them. Guo Yan is gentle and quiet, this is the appearance, as soon as she enters the state of dialogue, her ability to think well and argue bursts out. She is characterized by being prepared, first find the main point of the problem shallow into the topic, at first glance there is nothing special, talking, you will find that everyone's thinking gradually into her way. For other people's opinions, she does not take the way of interception, does not seek to compete with each other for right and wrong, but "treats herself with stupidity", continues to induce, goes deep into the problem, and waits until the end of the chat conversation, under normal circumstances, she gets the most. Read with your heart, think with your heart, and write with your heart, and your studies will be improved. After remembering two articles, her research talent and writing talent were revealed. In the three years of graduate school, she published more than ten articles, and also co-authored and published a book with her classmates, "Balzac and His Works", of which "Liu Ke's Novel Theory", "The History of Discourse Disassembly - Commenting on the Historical Novel "Tianzi Jiaoke"" and "Self-Confirmation in the Watch - Zhang Wei's Novel Theory", read it again ten years later, and is still a good article of "learning in literature" and "learning in literature". After the publication of the writer Yan Hairui's two long historical novels "Tianzi Jiaoke" and "Return to Xi", critics, including many famous artists in Beijing, wrote dozens of articles, and Yan Hairui often said on different occasions that Guo Yan was the best of these articles. I felt the same way, but if I said it from my mouth, the taste changed.
The most important thing about doing learning is to activate people's talents and talents, open their eyes and minds, and then nourish them with "learning" and protect them with "work". In 2001, Guo Yan went north to study for a doctorate, studying under the famous scholar Yang Yi. What makes me secretly happy is that the articles she wrote during her doctoral studies, including the one that was rated as an excellent doctoral dissertation at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, "The Pursuit of Modernity in Beijing, Hai and Left Literature -- A Study of the Modernity of the Texts of Beijing School, Hai School and Left Wing Literary Fiction in the 1927-1937 Period", and "The History of Discourse Disassembly" and "Self-Confirmation in watchfulness" have the same evolution of blood relations, and it can be seen that their academic genetic code was determined at the beginning of the study.
Two
In the study of contemporary Chinese literature, the distinction between the Academy and the Literary Association is remarkable. The former emphasizes the academic study of literary history, literary phenomena and writers' works, and the theoretical depth is its pursuit; the latter emphasizes the current literary criticism, and what it reads and thinks is not informal, as long as it is felt and developed, it is a good article to fly. The ultimate of the two models is actually the difference between two ways of learning, two rules, and even two kinds of life. For twenty or thirty years, the two worlds have been attacking each other, you accuse him of playing esoteric and crazy, he despises you for being shallow and unleaved, to put it bluntly, or the narrow view of the literati's discourse, each keeping its own way, and not being inclusive of each other. Keeping each other is the root of the disease that modern academic stratification accidentally falls, in fact, there is nothing wrong with clinging to professional adherence, and the work is extreme, and what is created is a fine product. If we can open up the two realms and understand each other, it will be a blessing for literature.
This brings us to Guo Yan again. At the master's and doctoral stages, her literary research followed the norms of the college, governing the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, and after graduating from her doctorate and working at the Lu Xun Academy of Literature, her identity changed, and the form of her literary activities was bound to change. The change of role and the change of shuxue seem to be achieved overnight in her body, without the adjustment of great ups and downs, nor the fission of rebirth. She really likes literature, on this plate of dishes, how to do it is not to do, is it difficult to score male and female? According to my experience in stepping into the two worlds of literature, it is not easy to make contemporary literary criticism outstanding! It requires better learning, wisdom, thinking, acumen and talent. Thanks to the foundation of the academy's skill, Guo Yan's talent for commenting on contemporary literature was quickly revealed. In recent years, based on the teaching and discussion of the advanced research class of Lu Xun Literature Institute, she has paid attention to the current situation of Chinese youth writing and contemporary literature, grasped the current literary dynamics, and formed a series of unique critical concepts of the current situation of writing. Its main meanings include: proposing the relationship between Lu Xun Academy of Literature and contemporary Chinese literature, the relationship between post-80s youth writing and subculture, the intergenerational and fracture characteristics of current Chinese youth writing, women's self-expression and meaning construction, and so on. She wrote the most about the recent situation and recent works of young writers, with a total of 50 or 60 articles, including Li Hao, Wei Wei, Ai Wei, Pan Xiangli, Zhu Wenying, Ning Ken, Qiu Huadong, Sheng Ke, Ala dan, Cai Xiaoling, Yang Laohei, Gu Jian, Chen Paper, Wang Yongying, Yang Yifang, Zhao Yu, Patch, An Changhe, Wang Yanding, Li Donghua, Guo Minghui, Han Han, Guo Jingming, Yan Ge, Zhang Yueran, Shui Ge, Di An, Li Silly, Zhou Jianning, Bu Feiyan, Chun Shu, Ma Xiaotao, Jiang Feng, Zhao Jianyun, etc. Frankly, half of the writers here are the first time I've heard of them.
Guo Yan's intellect is developed, and he always uses poetic connotations to moisturize, which naturally has an invisible influence from the novel's flexible and smooth temperament, so when the article directly takes the essence of the object of comment, it opens up the hard theory and goes straight to the path of sexual spiritual poetry. Even if the theory is applied, "all of them are driven by talent, and they are not specifically filled in" ("Poetry with the Garden"), which is why there is such a beautiful pen and ink:
Under Wei Wei's pen, all the characters, scenes, emotions and thoughts carry the sadness of the past, gently tugging at the heartstrings of a generation that is no longer sensitive. This gossamer string, which involves the traditions and emotions of the past, has been tightening until a soft sigh is issued, and the sigh is scattered into tears in the trance of sorrow, and in the tears, the sad girls emit a faint light in the old photos, once again awakening our sleeping girlhood. (Wei Wei's Novel Creation: An Era of Precocious People)
I haven't read such a beautiful review article in a long time. This is not nothing, when I read a long review of more than 10,000 words, "Sharp and Real Pain Experience- Commenting on the Yugur Female Writer Aladan Naoer", I really realized what it was to be full of literary thoughts and talents. The whole article is full of comments like this:
This feeling comes from the religious ceremony, The Mother's insistence on religious rituals, the shepherd girl's experience of religious rituals from form to spirit, the white Mani (Mani) stone, the snow-white sheep, the blood-red sunset, the shepherd girl who chants (recites) the sutra, the loud and sad ode (chanting) of the sutra, and finally through the perception of religious compassion, the shepherd girl begins to recognize, comb and chant the Nomadic culture, nomadic character and nomadic epic of the Yugur people from the border of the fusion of philosophy and life. Once there is this religious sentiment of compassion, the artistic conception of Aladan's prose expands beyond women and their destiny.
Reading such an article, I believe that most readers, like me, will sincerely express their admiration. Guo Yan's such review articles are not wonderful, and it is inevitable that there will be works of suitable situation and human feelings when getting along with the writers of the advanced study class day and night. My concern is that she keeps writing so many comments, does she still have time to do in-depth research? Can you still write novels? Although the Writers' Association needs her to be such a close writer and close to the creation of a critic, I hope that she will have greater development in the creation of novels, and she already has the talent that a novelist should have.
Three
I knew she was quietly writing novels, and I actually read her novels nearly a few months ago. At the end of November last year, I went to Beijing to attend the Eighth National Congress of the China Writers Association, and Guo Yan also came to the meeting with the writers from the advanced study class of Lu Xun Literature Institute. She gave me a copy of the novel "Little Neon Dress" published that month, and after reading it, she felt that the comments of the two famous artists at the back cover should be the most important comments. What is rare is that the feeling of the novel is very good, the emotion is direct, and the language that can best see the writer's personality and literary true kung fu is obviously victorious. I am sure that novels that can write such sentences as "a boy's heart is hollowed out, and the thought of a flower is left"; "The bland meals of three meals a day pass the time and also send off the feelings"; "Women study philosophy, either to learn philosophy badly or to learn themselves badly"; "a woman's doctorate is a process from grape to raisin"; and so on, and so on, and will become a good writer.
Immediately after that, she published short stories "Emperor Yi Gui Mei", "Archway Sunshine" and the novella "Green Clothes and Yellow Li" to read. I would like to talk in particular about "Emperor Yi Gui Mei", a historical novel that rewrites the previous text of "Emperor Yi Gui Mei", interpreting a historical story of marrying relatives to quell the war into a love story and heroic legend of "heroes and beautiful women". This brings to mind the Trojan War in Greek mythology, which is said to have lasted for ten years to fight for the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, and the two are intertextual and can be interpreted. Judging from the perspective that I have practiced in the annual ranking of Chinese novels over the years, "Emperor Yi Gui Mei" is an excellent work that can be shortlisted for the annual list of novels that year, unfortunately, the judges, including me, have not found it.
It doesn't matter, to borrow an old saying, the road is still long! Guo Yan's strength is what she does, no matter what she does, she reads it and has both heart and effort, so she has made good gains in literary history, literary criticism, and novels. For Guo Yan, the three are definitely not the best choice, and I subjectively assert that just because she has read so many books, written so many splendid articles, and published so many novels that are good at understanding the hearts of the world, if she is concerned about the way, she will have great achievements.
(Wang Damin, real name Wang Daming, Anhui University)
Read more
Impressions of a Critic
Zhang Yanling, Zhang Ping, editor-in-chief
Writers And Publishers September 2019
My View of Criticism
Guangxi Normal University Press, January 2016
Editor: Liu Ya
Second instance: Wang Yang
Third instance: Chen Tao