Mr. Feng Jicai's message to the readers of the Evening News
Dear Readers of Beijing Evening News,
Writers embrace readers with books, and I embrace you with my new books. I know that if you want to hold tight, there are only good books, and I will work hard for you.
Feng Jicai
2022.3.11
Mr. Feng Jicai often says that he has four carriages: literature, painting, cultural heritage protection and education.
For the protection of cultural heritage and education, Feng Jicai rushed day and night, and even interrupted his writing for a while. Of course, interruption is not abandonment, Feng Jicai will put a small book with him and any place where he may stay, and he will record his inspiration casually. After a lot of busy work, he finally completed the collection of novels "Danube Gorge" and the collection of essays "A Hole in the Studio", which were published at the end of February this year, with dates close to his birthday. Feng Jicai was born on the ninth day of the second lunar month in 1942, and according to his habit of celebrating lunar birthdays, this year's birthday is March 11.
On October 12, 2021, he finished writing the short story collection "Danube Gorge"
If it is said that the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" is a gift that Feng Jicai gave to the country, these two books are Feng Jicai's gifts to himself at the age of 80, and they are also his gifts to the vast number of readers.
So far, Mr. Feng Jicai has published more than 100 books of literary works and 20 or 30 foreign translations.
Inspiration is a special entry point
"Danube Canyon" is about the fate of a young couple. The girl is a slender and beautiful dancer, and the young man is a young and promising dentist. The young man went abroad to do media work with the help of the girl's family, but lost contact while the girl was waiting for a reunion abroad, and there were obvious traces of a new relationship, and the girl was extremely angry. Later, the girl covered up the wounds of the good heart and married someone else. The reversal of the story appears many years later, and the girl's family finally learns the shocking truth of the boy's year... Just this truth, is it necessary to let the happy mother who has become two children know?
It is true that lies make people sad, but the truth is even more desperate.
Danube Gorge
Feng Jicai said that the inspiration for this story came from the emotional tragedy of a couple he knew, which made him feel the fragility and unknowability of life. Feng Jicai said: "The so-called inspiration is a special entry point encountered by the writer, it is not necessarily a story, it may be a character, it may be an event, it may be a certain plot, a certain emotion touched me, triggered my imagination of the novel at the beginning, and then gradually enriched at this point, and finally formed a novel." ”
Feng Jicai's words reminded reporters of a work he made many years ago, "The Tall Woman and Her Short Husband." The story is about a tall woman who works as a laboratory inspector and the short husband of an engineer, and is maliciously speculated by neighbors that the woman is the result of coveting wealth. But in the special period, the short husband was locked up in the cowshed and lost everything, the family was surrounded by walls, and the cold eyes were met, but the woman still waited for him silently. When she finally returned, she fell ill, and he took care of her without abandonment, but he did not keep her already fragile life. The short husband returned to normal treatment, but did not remarry, and even maintained the posture of giving an umbrella to the taller woman when it rained.
The inspiration for this story began when Feng Jicai saw a couple of tall and short women on the street, which aroused his curiosity and felt that it was a bit out of the ordinary. This kind of touch has a special relationship with the special era at that time, and if you don't follow the rules, you will be criticized. Later, there were countless special, artistic, aesthetic pictures and details that touched me, and the story was enriched in my heart. But I still haven't written, and I always feel that there is something left. Until one day, when I saw a short man giving an umbrella to a tall man, my heart lit up and I felt that I could write. Of course, in the process of forming and writing, novels will also produce new inspirations. In this way, inspiration and writing interact to become this touching and profoundly influential "The Tall Woman and Her Short Husband."
After years of creation, Feng Jicai still has new stories coming out, he said: "I have never lacked inspiration. ”
We need responsible inspiration
"The Tall Woman and Her Short Husband" was published in 1982, and once it came out, it triggered multi-dimensional and multi-angle thinking in philosophy, literature, era and so on, and Feng Jicai became one of the representative writers of "scar literature".
Feng Jicai began to enter the field of writing from painting in 1974, writing works of various genres, genres, lengths and eras, from the novels "Carved Pipe", "Divine Whip", "Tall Woman and Her Short Husband" that won many literary awards to "Danube Canyon" newly published this year, from the essay "Pearl Bird" selected for primary school textbooks to "A Hole in the Studio". No matter what kind of work, Feng Jicai always adheres to the sense of responsibility, "writing for me, more is the way of responsibility to society", after reading it, he gives readers to think.
With a passion for literature, in the 1980s, Feng Jicai wrote a series of novels, essays, essays, essays, etc. such as "Divine Whip", "Three Inches of Golden Lotus", "Ten Years of a Hundred People", etc., which caused a sensation as soon as these works concerned with the fate of ordinary small people were published.
Feng Jicai said: "At that time, I saw that the country entered the era of reform and opening up from a closed and relatively difficult era, and I was full of creative passion. I actually wrote hundreds of thousands of words a year, but I couldn't bear it, and suddenly fell seriously ill. On my hospital bed, I received a letter from Mr. Yan Wenjing, who was also a teacher and friend at the time and the president of the People's Literature Publishing House, and there was a passage that affected me to this day, to the effect that: Feng Jicai, you must live long, only when you live a long time, your understanding of life will be deeper. Because at different ages, the understanding of life, fate, self, and many things is different. Only if you live a long time, look at all aspects of life, your own fate experience more, you and many of the fates around you, including your contemporaries, will be different, the feeling of life and life will be different, it may be richer, it may also be deeper, so that you can write weighty works. ”
For so many years, Feng Ji has never forgotten the sense of responsibility in his works, which is the sense of responsibility injected from the beginning of inspiration. In the story of the new work "Danube Gorge", Feng Jicai used the unfortunate fate of the couple to ask about life and sigh what kind of life can withstand the questioning. This work has triggered readers' thinking about long-distance love, going abroad fever, and international disputes, and Feng Jicai also specially let the reporter tell readers that there is no evil person in this novel, the male protagonist and the female protagonist are two people with good conduct and gentle temperament, the female protagonist's brother, the friend who helped the male protagonist go abroad, and even the male protagonist's later gossip girlfriend, are all good people, and it is the complicated era that has changed their life trajectory. They themselves are helpless, if one of the links changes, it will be a different ending, it may be a reunion ending, it may be another tragedy, which is the fragility of life, emotions, and destiny.
For the sense of responsibility of literature, Feng Ji explained it this way: "I think literature bears more of the responsibility of society, the thinking of life, and the understanding of life with readers, which is also my pursuit of literature." ”
Almost every article of Feng Jicai bears a sense of social responsibility, including relatively short prose. Feng Jicai said: "An essay may not have too much connotation, it is different from a novel, always have to write something spiritual, such as the "Pearl Bird" that everyone likes. I want to convey through the article that trust can create a state of beauty, and that it can understand and be associated with life. Whether we can use this way to create a beautiful realm among classmates and friends, if we can, it is more important than memorizing an article. ”
The reporter also conveyed to Feng Jicai a little confusion of readers: such as some best-selling books, the story is very exciting, but after reading it, it gives people the temptation to get rich and rob the tomb. In this regard, Feng Jicai said: This kind of work belongs to popular literature, which satisfies the functions of mass entertainment and curiosity, and is also necessary. Popular literature and pure literary works that focus on revelation do not need to be compared together, the key is to look at the reader's reading choice.
Sweet back and forth between study studios
Feng Jicai said in his new work "A Cave in the Studio" that the study and the studio are two spaces formed by the different divisions of labor of the mind.
"A Cave in the Studio"
Curiously, how do these two spaces allocate time, and have there ever been any conflicts? For example, when painting, suddenly this inspiration is more suitable for writing, or when writing, suddenly find that this inspiration ignites a small flame of painting?
Feng Jicai said: "I don't think I need to allocate time specifically or in advance, when I have literary ideas, when I have the impulse to create literary creations, I must go to my study to bury my head in writing; when I have a feeling of painting, I think that painting can be expressed, then I will go to the studio."
From a geospatial point of view, my bedroom is downstairs, and the studio and study are at both ends of the upstairs porch, and which end to go depends on my thoughts. If I feel like painting when I write, and I have a strong desire to express it, I will get up and go to the studio at the other end of the porch. Vice versa is also possible. It was a sweet round trip and it felt blissful. ”
In fact, not only is there no conflict, but there is still a lot of integration between the two spaces. Feng Jicai wrote in the preface to "A Cave in the Studio" that he entered the studio from the study and faced the painting self with his literary self.
When "A Hole in the Studio" was finished
Feng Jicai said: "Literature has influenced my paintings, for example, the pursuit of literature, the pursuit of poetry, the pursuit of artistic conception in painting, which is also the tradition of Chinese painting, especially the tradition of literati painting. On the other hand, painting has also influenced my literature, because painting has something in common with literature, which must produce a visual image, to evoke an image imagination of the reader. Writing is also to create a visible space for readers, visible characters, a visible scene, and the more vivid and concise the better. So when I'm writing novels, I can see my characters, and I even see a lot of faces and details of the characters. Although I may not write it all down, it is very important to me, because having this image in my heart is not the same as writing without this image in my heart. ”
The protection of "intangible cultural heritage" begins with talent
The sense of responsibility has made Feng Jicai's creation thicker, and it has also made his life thicker and thicker.
Since the 1990s, Feng Ji has been involved in the protection of the mainland's intangible cultural heritage. In order to raise funds, he sold almost all his paintings bitterly, when he returned to the empty studio, there was a tragic tragedy with a big heart and a family wall; when he flew back from Paris to prevent the demolition of the old street in Tianjin, but only saw the ruins, he cried like Liang Sicheng weeping about the ancient city wall...
Visit Yang Luoshu, an outstanding inheritor of Yangjiabu New Year paintings in Shandong
Before Feng Jicai never sold paintings, he said that painters do not paint for money, writers write books not for red, and real artists do it to express their hearts. However, in order to "make an intangible cultural heritage", he had to abandon his principles.
However, in the process of saving the "intangible cultural heritage", Feng Jicai understood that the efforts of a small number of people were far from the role of the huge project of protecting the mainland's "intangible cultural heritage". "At present, there are about 100,000 items of 'intangible cultural heritage' on the mainland, and about 6,800 traditional villages have been identified." The protection of cultural heritage is not only a lack of money, but also a scientific, systematic and standard method, and the large number of talents required to implement these is even more lacking.
In February 2001, the Feng Jicai Institute of Literature and Art of Tianjin University was established, and Feng Jicai, as the dean, led the academic team to devote himself to the census, collation, academic research and scientific protection of cultural heritage, forming a large number of academic research achievements and theoretical achievements, and cultivating a group of urgently needed professionals for the national cultural heritage protection cause.
Braving the rain and stepping on the mud, I went into the village to rescue the New Year paintings
However, the number of talents is still far from meeting the demand, and Feng Jicai began to call for the integration of "intangible cultural heritage" into the national education system, "opening 'intangible cultural heritage' classes in primary and secondary schools, and cultivating 'intangible cultural heritage' talents from universities." ”
On October 26, 2021, the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council issued a notice approving the 2020 degree authorization unit to add a list of degree authorization points, and the country's first interdisciplinary master's degree authorization point in intangible cultural heritage was settled in Tianjin University. In this regard, Feng Jicai is particularly pleased and welcomes undergraduate students majoring in humanities, history, architecture and other majors to apply for the examination. At present, the College is preparing for an expert meeting and will soon start the preparation of teaching materials. (Editor-in-charge: Chen Mengxi)