"Outside the Words of flowers" is a collection of essays recently launched by scholar and writer Liu Qiong, which includes twelve prose works such as "Lansheng Valley No One Knows", "Falling Plum Horizontal Flute Has Three Changes", "Spring into the Plains Of Cauliflower", "But the Begonia Is Still The Same", "Purple Cherry Ripe Wheat Wind and Cool", "Seeing the Durian Flowers Out of the Short Wall", "July Hibiscus Raw Green Water", "Busy Stepping on the Locust Flowers into Dreams", "Last Year's Rock Osmanthus Flowers Fragrant", "Picking Chrysanthemums Under the East Fence", "Lilac Empty Rain Sorrow", "Not Being a Heavenly Immortal as a Daffodil", etc. Using "flowers" as a medium, the author connects real life and classical poetry, and explores the internal aesthetic methods that have influenced the Chinese people for thousands of years in Chinese culture.
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Interviewee: Liu Qiong
Interview: Li Xuguang
Liu Qiong, scholar, writer, doctor of arts. Deputy Director of the Literature and Art Department of people's daily. He has won the "Rain Flower" Literary Award, the Newspaperman Prose Award, the "New Criticism Award" of the Literary Newspaper, and the "Contemporary Writers Review" Criticism Award. He is the author of "Outside the Words of the Flower", "Nie Er: Hurry but Eternity", "The Road to Chaji" and other monographs.
Li Xuguang, a cultural and entertainment critic and event planner, has been in the field of culture and media for many years, and his works have been scattered in People's Daily, China Education News, Beijing Evening News, Beijing News, etc.
"Outside the Words of flowers" is an attempt by me to write outside the fixed pattern
Q
What kind of opportunity did you start writing this interesting column? How was the title of "Outside the Words of flowers" conceived?
Liu Qiong: At the end of 2019, Zhu Hui, the editor-in-chief of "Rain Flower", asked me to write a column, because "Rain Flower" is a monthly magazine, I just want to do it, write a flower every month for twelve months, and the timing is matched, probably qi let the flower have a certain correspondence with the festival.
Why did you think of writing flowers?
In recent years, there have been many atlas books on plants in the publishing industry, such as books such as the Poetry Classics and Grass and Wood Diagrams, and even published Lu Xun's plant atlases. I'm certainly not writing a book in the full botanical sense, botany is science, there are a lot of scientists and botanists writing, explaining, and the expertise of these books is rich enough. I'm writing a different kind of plant-related book.
Opened in the "Rain Flower" magazine is a prose column, prose is creative writing, therefore, when I write about plants and flowers, I mainly write about the relationship between flowers and people, and how flowers enter the poetry created by people and are sung, appreciated and disseminated by people. In my column, each article has a word and sentence from the flower as the title, such as the first orchid, the title is "Lansheng Valley No One Knows". Why choose orchids for the first article? Orchids bloom in March, heralding the arrival of spring, so I chose orchids for the first article. I compiled this book in the order corresponding to the traditional Chinese solar terms.
In fact, when writing the column, the first article was written about chrysanthemums, using Tao Yuanming's "Picking Chrysanthemums Under the Eastern Fence" into the title. When this book was compiled, "Picking Chrysanthemums Under the Eastern Fence" was placed in the tenth article, allowing it to enter the autumn. This is a change from column to book.
As for how the title of the book was conceived?
From the beginning of our ancestors, flowers have entered poetry, and when flowers and words are written, they must write about the relationship between plants and people. Flowers and words are two clear categories, and the relationship between flowers, words and people is an open aspect. In the long-term practice of life, we have formed a collective consciousness, a collective memory, such as daily life habits, aesthetic habits, and the story of people and the fate of people that occur under this large background or coordinate system. Through my perspective, in the form of prose, the collective memory of words related to flowers is connected with the memory of the individual "I". So, this is a big tree, this tree has two main branches, one is a flower, the other is a word, the branches and leaves are connected, and the connection between them is particularly important and interesting.
Only when the branches and leaves are connected will a three-dimensional space with an area, a volume and a story be formed. The title of the book is "Outside the Words of the Flower", which is actually the first name that came to my mind. At first, I was a little worried, afraid of being misunderstood as writing "flower words". "Huajian Word School" and "Huajian Collection" are proper nouns and are widely circulated, and "Huajian Ziwai" has nothing to do with them in terms of content.
"Outside the Words Between Flowers" really writes about the relationship between flowers and words. Therefore, many people ask me the title of the book "Outside the Words Between the Flowers", is the structure of "Flowers + Words Outside" or "Flowers + Words + Outside"? I said, it is the flower + word + outside, there are three keywords inside. I think the title of "Outside the Words of flowers" is still relatively accurate to express the content of the book. Thanks to the title, because of the "outside" plot, my pen was free when I wrote. It just so happens that I also want to write this set of articles to express some of my thoughts on prose writing.
Prose writing should be creative, whether it is content or style, we must be able to get rid of stereotypical writing. "Outside the Words of flowers" is neither a standard set of poetry appreciation articles -- there is appreciation but not all, nor is it entirely botanical cultivation articles - although it writes about some botanical common sense, it is not exactly an essay insight, and there is a lot of scholarship and knowledge into it. I gave myself the freedom to move.
Read people and history from the words of ancient poems and flowers
The more I read this book, the more interesting it is, and you are free to go in and out of many fields, that is, poetry, seasons, solar terms, as well as personal experiences, as well as some canonical and wild history. The series between them is particularly natural, what are your unique experiences in writing?
Liu Qiong: When I write, I have a habit of writing late. When I write a column, I usually start writing three or four days before the deadline. Although I haven't written, I will always be "brewing". Unlike writing reviews, this "brewing" is not concrete thinking. After the publication of this book, many people said that it felt interesting to read and loved to read, and I think an important reason is that it is different from the review article, full of unexpected, emotional and jumping sparks.
This is creative writing, and there is no theme first when writing. For example, writing chrysanthemums, before writing will always think, September, according to the solar terms, chrysanthemums bloom, about chrysanthemums, the poem about chrysanthemums, which sentence impressed me the most? This poem is not necessarily the most famous, but it must be the most touching to me. The key is how poetry is chosen, including my tastes and standards for poetry appreciation, as well as ethical and moral considerations. Whether there is a story behind this poem is also a potential criterion for selection. In addition to writing chrysanthemum poems, who are the poets who like to write chrysanthemums and tell chrysanthemum stories?
Of course, everyone will think of Tao Yuanming's "Picking Chrysanthemums Under the Eastern Fence", and I will naturally think of this sentence, so when I sit in front of the computer to write this article, there is no basic structure, such as what to write in the first paragraph, who to write, what to write in the second paragraph, who to write, and which words and sentences of which poets must be used. That way, in my opinion, it's well-designed writing, stereotyped. My writing habit is to read and digest a lot of information before writing, and when I open the computer and start writing, I basically don't put any books next to it, so that I can write down without any worries. I think writing is the awakening of memory, the awakening of knowledge. For example, when I started to write the five words "Under the Eastern Fence of Picking Chrysanthemums", my brain immediately thought of Tao Yuanming, Mr. Wuliu and "Don't bend for wudou rice", thinking of Sang Luozhou. So, I started writing from Sang Luozhou. When Tao Yuanming wrote "Picking Chrysanthemums Under the Eastern Fence", what kind of state of mind was it? Why was he able to write such a poem? In the past, I read a lot of appreciations about this poem, and these appreciation words will be stored in my memory and become knowledge points. Once the fuse is lit, it rushes out impatiently, crackling and becoming a flashpoint.
After so many years of accumulation, I will have my own thinking and judgment on these knowledge points. I would think that we have always looked at Tao Yuanming as a hermit, and this poem also expresses the interest of the hermit. But the latter sentence "leisurely see the South Mountain" attracted me even more. There are also many kinds of "hidden", such as "big hidden in the city", hidden in the bustling, is also a kind of hidden. There is also a kind of retreat, Tao Yuanming is to return to the countryside, back to Sangluozhou. This "hidden" is both a choice of values and a choice of lifestyle. Located at the junction of Hubei, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces, Sangluozhou was a military stronghold during the Wei and Jin dynasties. It is conceivable that its natural environment is sparsely populated and rich in various vegetation. Nanshan mountain is Lushan Mountain. Therefore, I naturally wrote about Sangluozhou, about Wang Xizhi, who practiced calligraphy in Sangluozhou, and about poetry and personnel related to chrysanthemums.
Writing so miscellaneously may have something to do with my love of reading miscellaneous books. My reading is so cluttered that I don't just read books for my major, but I spend a lot of time reading historical and scientific books. This kind of reading will help me. I was interested in non-fiction writing for a long time, and it was also due to this reading habit. The knowledge in the main history, the anecdotes in the wild history, will be selectively remembered. These memories are covered layer by layer somewhere in the cerebral cortex, and once you start writing, such as when you write about the keyword "Mulberry Continent", a fuze explodes, and those memories are all burned up, and there will naturally be various creative associations. This fuse is the soul of writing.
For example, chrysanthemums are related to hermit culture, so you can also think of more similar plants, such as the "Four Gentlemen". Chinese regarded plum blossoms, orchids, bamboo, and chrysanthemums as the four gentlemen, painted them as paintings, and hung them in the most important positions in their homes. How did plants become gentlemen?
It is a long-standing name. The plant itself, according to scientific interpretation, is a living objective object, and the name we give it the title of "gentleman" is actually an emotional projection of it as an aesthetic subject. Who is this "we"? Yes Chinese. So what is this long-standing naming? Traced back to the process of circulation, poetry plays an important role. Our ancestors, starting from the pre-Qin Dynasty, in the Tang and Song dynasties, there will be a "gentleman" chant in the poetry culture. We are also a big country of poetry, and everyone learns poetry by chanting poetry, so that gentleman culture becomes a collective cognition. Gentleman culture has naturally been passed down to this day, submerged in the blood, and even become a value pursuit. In the process, many people have participated in this circulation, constantly adding content and giving information. When I wrote, although I didn't think about who I had to write about, as the words flowed, those people naturally appeared in the pen. I would like to especially thank the editors for their tolerance of me, they did not propose any specifications for me, so I was able to have such an experimental way of writing.
My favorite article to write about Xin Abandoned Disease, "Spring into the Plains Cauliflower", not only has the style of other articles, but also can read a heroic atmosphere, the loneliness that Xin Abandoning Disease has not encountered, and the characteristics of the cabbage are skillfully combined, and the angle is very novel.
Liu Qiong: What is more interesting is that when the new book conference was launched, Teacher Li Jingze said that he found a lot of poems in it that he had not read in the past. This is also the hallmark of the book. Of course, the "foundation of foothold" is poetry, and I use my vision to propose some poems that people usually do not pay much attention to. For example, there are so many words of Xin Abandoned Disease, we have all read it in the past, but "spring into the plains of cauliflower", everyone may not pay attention to a lot. And he wrote about cabbage, and there was more than this one. There are contrasts, there are associations.
Some people have also told me that this is a book that can be recommended for primary and secondary school students, because there are many ancient poems in it, like reference books. In this book, many poems are rediscovered. These poems have touched me, infected me, and have aesthetic and circulation values. For example, poems about plum blossoms, famous or circulating words, I basically searched again.
A lot of the angles are very clever.
Liu Qiong: Yes, on the one hand, we must innovate, and you can't talk about what everyone is tired of talking about. You can talk about "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence", but you have to tell something different. This series of articles is different from ordinary appreciation articles. Appreciative articles are only textual. But this series of articles, in addition to appreciation, also has writing that goes beyond the scope of appreciation. For example, "Under the Eastern Fence of Picking Chrysanthemums" jumps from words to culture, and writes the origin of aesthetic temperament from the perspective of culture.
Speaking of innovation, one is a new discovery of the poetry itself. For example, "last year's rock osmanthus flowers fragrant", the "rock gui" was salvaged out. Another example is "Spring into the Plains cauliflower", which excavates some poems of famous poets that are not often mentioned, but it is not deliberately curious.
The other is a new discovery of plants. The cauliflower itself impressed us. Everyone knows cauliflower. On the plains, in the fields and by the river, you can see the white cauliflower, crouch down to take a look, you will find that the cauliflower is like the moss flower, very small. People with a little plant knowledge know that the flowers cannot be eaten, they are old, so when you go to the field to pick the cabbage, you can't pick the cabbage that has already flowered. We often say that the flower season girl, the flower represents a person's most lustrous era, is a beautiful period full of vitality, and even has the meaning of "youth" in it. But when the cabbage blooms, it is already middle age. This is exactly what the middle-aged Xin abandons in the poem.
In history, Xin Zhiyi was a man of both culture and martial arts, he led the army to fight without any problems, and the greatest wish in his life was to recover the lost land. Since the Jin soldiers went south and crossed the Yellow River, the Southern Song Dynasty court could only take a corner of the country, and Xin Abandoned Disease also settled in Jiangxi and was snubbed by the imperial court. In fact, his heart has always been eager to lead soldiers to fight and serve the country, but there is no chance. His poems are also full of ambition and unrewarded sorrow.
He later basically lived in Jiangxi, and of course wrote in the pastoral style of "the most favorite child is a rogue, the xitou lies on the lotus", but these two poems are by no means accidental. In the spring, wild cauliflower blooms all over the place, including in the fields and by the river, which are inspired by life and use the Bixing method. When we talk about "poetry and speech", poetry is used for lyrical expression, and poets like Xin Shuyi must actually have deep emotions when writing. The interval between these two poems about cauliflower is not long, but a careful analysis will find that the author's state of mind has changed.
Writing about people, writing about the relationship between words and people, writing about people's fate, the "outside" of these "flowers outside the words" is where my pen and ink are forceful.
Take "Last Year's Rock Osmanthus Fragrance", we all like osmanthus flowers, and when the city is full of osmanthus flowers, everyone is willing to go to the south. In classical Chinese poetry, there are many poems about osmanthus flowers, and one thing that everyone may not notice is that the "yan gui" used at that time is not the same thing as the "osmanthus flower" we usually say. I noticed that. Therefore, in this article, botany is also one of the key points. When it comes to plant changes, when it comes to late osmanthus flowers, it is a kind of "lattice".
In this lattice, we must also learn to discern. For example, why did we ancients write so many poems about osmanthus flowers? Are the osmanthus flowers they write about the same kind of osmanthus flowers? Why do you like osmanthus flowers, there is also a tradition habit. Is it the same kind, how to judge? What do I think?
Yes, Osmanthus is particularly popular.
Liu Qiong: When it comes to the types of osmanthus flowers, when it comes to late osmanthus flowers, it is inevitable to hook up with a short story by Yu Dafu, "Chi Guihua". From this, it can be written from ancient times to modern times, and written to today. The story of "Chi Guihua" takes place in the city of Hangzhou. The things involved in the article are strung together by an invisible thread.
Learning ancient poetry requires practicing child skills
The play of freedom is certainly inseparable from a particularly deep accumulation, and it can be seen from this book that your training in classical poetry from childhood should be very strict and very deep.
Liu Qiong: We all have such training. Just said, China is a big country in poetry and has been advocating poetry since ancient times. Confucius said, "If you don't read poetry, you can't speak", so from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when Confucius and his disciples compiled the Book of Poetry, poetry has been integrated into people's lives. Later, in the Tang Dynasty, Li Bai was able to recite poetry at the age of five or six, and he could write poetry when he was seven or eight years old and in his teens, and he wrote very well. For example, when I was in school, during the Enlightenment period, that is, when I was five or six years old, adults would consciously let me memorize "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty", "Three Hundred Poems of Song Ci", "Thousand Family Poems" and so on. At that time, it was done as a kind of homework, and I didn't know what it meant to memorize it, but I gradually developed the habit of reading ancient poems every morning.
I remember at that time, we lived in a courtyard with four or five families. There was an old gentleman opposite our house who got up early every morning. At about six o'clock in the morning, when I sat in the courtyard with a chair and recited it aloud, the old gentleman at the door nodded his head in particular appreciation each time. He praised my parents that this child would have a future appearance. Five- or six-year-old children don't understand, but just pick those fun, easy-to-understand poems to memorize first, and put difficult poems behind. I was a little vain, and the old gentleman on the other side was more motivated when he praised it. Slowly, the habit of memorization will develop. This habit of reading and memorizing poems that I developed since I was a child had a great influence on me.
I've always advocated morning reading. When I was a teenager, I moved, and my new home was in a compound, next to the dormitory building and the office building, and I climbed to the top of the office building—it was a particularly large platform—and read aloud. Because it was early in the morning, the sound would wear far, so the parents in our compound all took me as a role model to learn from. At that time, I didn't realize that I would disturb other people's lives, and I didn't know shame (laughs).
Your experience of learning ancient poetry is quite special, and most of them are probably like me who follow the language textbook to learn poetry.
Liu Qiong: Yes, I am indeed more special, and I may have something to do with the family environment. My grandfather had a particularly strict private school education, and he had a great influence on me. For example, I am more interested in history, and I have something to do with him. There are also "Hundred Family Names" and "Thousand Character Text", all of which he taught me. When I didn't know any words, I began to have a strong interest in "Journey to the West", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", especially "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and the look back in it was clearly remembered at that time. Because many of the stories in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" happened in my hometown. When grandfathers tell stories, we can easily relate to the reality of life. Therefore, when I was very young, I was already familiar with Sun Wu and Liu Bei's story. Of course, the story north of the Yellow River, the story of Cao Cao, is not too interested.
I have a hero complex, a natural love for masculine things. Including when writing About Li Qingzhao, I will also talk about the change in her later style of words from soft to rigid. I just don't like the words of the Flower Word School so much, but I prefer the style of xin abandoned words and like the poems of the side plugs. I joked that I was going to write a set of poems to read later. This is the taste, and this taste may be related to the background of life.
My grandfather was from an old revolutionary background, and he was a soldier, fought a Japanese devil, and fought a war of liberation, so when he told stories, he told the details of how to lead soldiers to fight. Talk about the "Sui and Tang Dynasties", talk about how Li Yuanba defeated Yuwen Chengdu. Talk about how the Yang family will fight. When I didn't know how to read, my grandfather's narration was a language training that had a great impact on me.
Then there is the fact that my grandfather's family is a generation of readers, and the biggest influence on me is my uncle, and the few classical poems I have in my hand are still given to me by him. The eldest uncle has been abroad for many years and is an old overseas Chinese. Unlike now there is a mobile phone, you can send WeChat, in the past it was all letters to contact. The eldest uncle wrote letters and loved to quote Lao Du's poems. When I was a child, he asked me if I liked Li Bai or Du Fu. At first, I liked Li Bai because Li Bai was full of imagination, and Du Fu's poems involved more politics and economy. The eldest uncle was an old Du fan, I didn't quite understand it at the time, but later I could understand it, because he left the motherland and lived outside for many years, and that kind of homesickness could resonate with many of Du Fu's poems. Some of the songs I listened to in my early years were almost all sent to me by him at that time, like Taiwanese Cai Qin's "Out of the Plug", singing is homesick, so good to listen, I listen to it over and over again. In ancient times, transportation was inconvenient, the information was not smart, and the poet left his homeland, whether it was going to Beijing to catch the examination, or going out to fight a war, for a long time, he was homesick. The song reflects that such a person is on the road, and must be able to impress many people, including me.
Interest still has to be guided.
Liu Qiong: Yes, interest should be guided. In fact, I later became more and more fond of Du Fu's poems. During your time of study, you are easily influenced by people older than you.
Ancient poetry not only inherits history but also communicates the future
There is a view that classical poetry seems to have little meaning to life now, what does poetry mean for people today?
Liu Qiong: I'm not so pessimistic, this is a matter of opinion, it depends on how you look at it. Take internet literature, in the past twenty years, many people have begun to write online literature, there have been some good works, the impact is also very large, I read some very good online novels, some of the poems used in them, let me be very surprised, some of them are very well written Zhou Zheng, I think the text kung fu is very deep, the author must love poetry. This widely disseminated online writing is of great help in inheriting classical culture.
Some people may ask, we are all speaking vernacular today, why should we learn classical poetry? This is precisely a misunderstanding.
From the perspective of language itself, it also needs to be constantly enriched and developed. This process of enrichment and development has mutations, such as from the vernacular to the vernacular. After the vernacular language completes the mutation, it needs a variety of nutrients to continuously make it more abundant. Among the various nutrients, classical poetry, which has been passed down for thousands of years, has proved its strong vitality more and more. The many "Renaissance" movements experienced in the history of China and the West have all been through learning from the ancestors, eliminating the shortcomings of the times, and making culture and literature go further. Moreover, just from the perspective of education, the subtle, rich and beautiful connotation of classical poetry makes our language more expressive, as Confucius said, "If you don't read poetry, you can't say anything."
For a while, Ye Shengtao's Chinese textbooks that they had compiled were widely sought after, and when I went to Taipei, I also bought Taiwanese language textbooks. The great river of culture cannot be broken, language is one of the important tributaries, and the river of language has a deep cultural background in it. Therefore, to learn classical poetry, at least one can train one's language itself, and train the elegance, relevance and expression of language.
Learning classical poetry does not mean that every day we must "know the people", but a kind of thinking training, training a person's way of thinking to understand the world and understand things. We often regret that many beautiful traditions have been broken. Reconnecting cultural traditions and illuminating the Chinese aesthetic spirit. For thousands of years, the various customs, habits, techniques, and cognitions accumulated by the ancestors through life practice and production practice have been contained in them by internal laws. This law has been proved by time to be interesting, meaningful, valuable, and well-known. Learning classical poetry is also the understanding and study of this law.
Now the popular short videos are all simple and straightforward forms, a video time is very short, a stroke is new, the pursuit of instant satisfaction. This may also have influenced the public perception of classical culture.
Liu Qiong: I sometimes watch short videos, watch online live broadcasts, and some small advertisements keep saying with that kind of mandatory, exclamation point, simple and straightforward words, which will make people have a strong sense of rejection. Language is a bridge between communication and communication, and practical application should pay attention to rhetoric and skills, and only when it is conveyed can it stimulate people's resonance and sympathy.
The history of human development shows that after solving the basic problem of survival, the demand for beauty of such a high-level creature as man cannot be stimulated, and even becomes one of the most important needs.
In various archaeological excavations, pottery, iron or bronze will be liked, not only because they come from 10,000 years ago, but because the shape of these vessels is surprisingly perfect, more curvy, symmetrical, with a variety of patterns, meticulous, rich, wonderful, is the ancestors of the rich artistic imagination and expressive confirmation. One year I went to the Temple of Athenaeum in Greece, and the exhibits in the museum particularly shocked me, and the level of craftsmanship, especially the aesthetic level, of the ancestors reached its peak. Many of today's creations are still inspired by them. Visiting the Majiayao Museum in Gansu, I joked that the pattern on the clay pot is almost the same as LV and Hermès, is the designer influenced by Majiayao? You see that human aesthetics have a high degree of consistency. The pattern on the Majiayao clay pot may have appeared in other early civilizations on the mainland. Why? I think that the highest art is the teaching of nature, and nature is common.
There are still some similarities in aesthetics, everyone is human, and the language may be different, but there are commonalities in some aesthetic evaluations or cognitions.
Liu Qiong: This phenomenon of artistic creation definitely has the influence of objective objects, that is, the influence of the external world. For example, the pottery pattern on the pottery, there are many ripples of the painted water, the water is the same for the East and the West, the sun is sparkling, the water pattern is similar.
Writing personal experience requires jumping out of the "small self" to build a logical and real and powerful "big me"
Your book organically integrates the past life of the individual into the text, how do we deal with personal experience in this era of frequent changes?
Liu Qiong: This is a particularly big topic. How to deal with personal experience in writing is first of all a question of historical view. Because I do supplements, I often have people submit articles to me, why do some people always think that what they write is very touching, but when they submit articles, they are often not accepted? We used to say that everyone has a different relationship with their father and mother, and they all have unique experiences, so is it not possible for everyone to write about a father and mother to impress others? Why can some manuscripts be used and some cannot be used? This involves the way in which writing deals with personal experience.
First, the uniqueness of personal experience. For example, I love my father and mother, this is an emotion that normal people have, if you write about this emotion, write about my mother's illness, my kind of pain, my mother's death, my kind of nostalgia, then everyone will have this situation, maybe you will be painful, will miss, but it is difficult to become a public experience and emotion that moves people in writing.
In the relationship between a person and his father and mother, can the details touch people? Is there an experience in this detail that is different from others, and is this experience enlightening to others? Advanced or not advanced? Once a work is to be published or published, becoming a public reading, it is particularly important whether personal experience is helpful to others. If it is only an extremely private expression, lacking empathy, it may not be recognized by the reader.
Second, whether you can write a sense of history is particularly important. Can personal experience be passed on in this long river of time? Can it be an experience in the coordinates of this time to become a piece of historical life? Can it be integrated into the holistic experience? These are the senses of history. The sense of history is not a list of historical knowledge. Something trivial, or something that I personally feel is particularly important but does not fit into the tide of life, then it is easy to be eliminated in the transmission. Some writers tell me that what he writes is something that really exists and has happened objectively, and that when he writes in a novel or an article, the conflict is fierce and the contradiction is sharp, which makes the reader feel too dramatic. This shows that real things do not necessarily produce a sense of reality. Personal experience does not construct a real and powerful logic, there is no sense of reality, it is difficult to resonate.
What's real isn't necessarily credible. Some things happen with great contingency, or beyond the norm, irregularity. When writing, the most important thing is to make these contingencies a credible experience.
Yes, that is, whether it can be convinced by the public's cognition.
Liu Qiong: Writing deals with personal experience, deals with daily life, like plucking radishes, separating mud and radishes. The breath of life or the smell of earth is needed, but you can't pull up the radish and only see the mud, you can't see the radish, or it is difficult to see the radish.
The real creation must be the radish after processing the soil, which is still fresh. In writing, he has reconstructed his life experience without trace. When I wrote "Outside the Words Between the Flowers", some of my experiences were actually reconstructed. I often use the analogy of looking at the past with a filter, for example, dealing with childhood experience, which has been more than forty years old, and reconstructs childhood experience with a filter of forty years of blessing.
For example, write about orchids. My father, who was at the same table in middle school, used to do espionage work, so he named two daughters, one named Yunyan and the other Hongyan. This is the name he was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution and named his daughter in prison. When I wrote it, I didn't write directly, but used flashbacks, writing that her father planted flowers very well, planted Yingshan red, and planted many other precious flowers, but planted orchids without success. Bringing this story out is the vision of the "other" writing.
When to write in close-ups and when to write in long-ranges, this is a processing technique. Which part to take, which part to give up, can not be chaotic, without trade-offs to pile it up, then the theme will be submerged, the radish will not be seen.
How to effectively continue the "poetic teaching" tradition for thousands of years
For teenagers, how to build an interest in learning ancient poetry?
Liu Qiong: With the popularization of the Internet and the development of science and technology, we have more and more opportunities to use keyboards, and the study of Chinese characters involves two issues, one is the ability to use Chinese characters, and the other is the standardization of Chinese characters. The question of the purity of Chinese characters has been greatly challenged. Now advocating the study of ancient poetry, I think it is very necessary, this kind of traditional culture learning from the system to strengthen, including the importance of language learning, which is very wise.
I don't know what you think of Xuguang, "Those who get the language win the world." Why does the one who has the language win the world? It is not that a high score in the language test will lead to the world. Language learning trains the mind. We study other disciplines that have to do with this kind of thinking, right? The quality of mathematics also has a lot to do with language, for example, the understanding of applied problems needs language to help. The same is true of the study of poetry, which trains creativity, imagination, aesthetic power, but also spirit, thought, and morality. Learning ancient poetry and digging up brain holes is not a nonsense, but a fact.
Poetry is not only a stylistic technique, "the writer, the instrument of the way", there is an element of "tao" in the poem, which is particularly important. This experience of the Tao is conveyed in the form of beauty. For example, there is a word called "wenbinbin", where does bingbin come from? It is only in the long-term cultural study that you can be trained to behave politely and be polite in order to be polite.
The so-called "belly has poetry and bookish self-glorification".
Liu Qiong: Yes. Contemporary education is sometimes in a hurry to make quick gains, and viewing language as a discipline has dwarfed and narrowed the role of language, simplified the study of language and culture, and caused great harm.
Lifestyle habits also need to be learned. Today's adults, in the past, are also children, and many words and deeds are related to the education they received from childhood. For example, someone puts underwear they wear at home on the street, which is indecent, right? Food, clothing, shelter and transportation are also culture, and everyone feels that the literary quality is good, which needs to be learned. Classical poetry is a medium of learning. Learning classical poetry, chanting and chanting is secondary, and the important thing is to gain cultural accomplishment.
You mention poetry in the book, and in "Spring into the Plains and Cauliflowers", it is said that "the tradition of poetry education seems to be broken today." "And it is said that in primary and secondary school poetry classes have become literacy classes, spiritual temperament and aesthetic needs have been seriously ignored, in your opinion, what is the reason?
Liu Qiong: This is the question I want to talk about most today. The most important thing in language education is the problem of language teaching in primary and secondary schools. In our current language teaching, including in the textbooks, the study of poetry has covered up the rich connotation, simplified and rough treatment, and the charm of poetry cannot be fully perceived by students.
The composition of the chinese language teacher corps in primary and secondary schools, especially primary schools, is particularly worrying and should be of concern. A qualified teacher may affect a child's lifelong feelings about poetry. The vividness with which my grandfather spoke classical poetry profoundly influenced me. I found that some front-line language teachers themselves do not understand poetry, nor do they love, so in teaching practice, there is no understanding and understanding of poetry, and there is no way to teach the value of poetry to students without discounting, poetry is greatly hurt in the process of dissemination, children not only do not like, but even get bored with learning, feel that it is a burden, and learning poetry is meaningless. School is not good, back home, many parents are also educated by this language, do not necessarily like poetry, not necessarily understand poetry, can not guide children to read effectively.
Yes, this problem has always existed, and the number of classical poems in the current edition of language textbooks has increased by 40% compared with before, and the problem seems to be more serious.
Liu Qiong: It is definitely good for children to be exposed to ancient poetry more. However, in teaching, I strongly oppose the simple test-taking treatment of poetry, such as analyzing the meaning of words, finding common kanji, summarizing the general idea of paragraphs, and refining the central idea, which of course need to be learned, but it is still "primary school", and it cannot stimulate interest from the aesthetic and thinking level.
Exam-taking things will make children have negative emotions about learning, how to let children experience the beauty of poetry learning? Musical chanting can be advocated. When Lu Xun wrote about the Sanwei Bookstore, he wrote with great interest about how the teacher chanted. The reason why Lu Xun's classical cultural kung fu is so strong is closely related to the fact that he received this kind of education from an early age. Poetry is musical, after the poems the musical things gradually disappeared, the musical sense of words has always existed, if the teachers can recite, the charm of poetry will be greatly increased. Of course, this requirement is a bit high. All in all, the teaching of poetry still needs to be well thought out.
For teenagers, reading more and writing more is very effective
If you were to give teenagers a list of books to learn classical poetry, which books would you recommend?
Liu Qiong: Which books do you say are recommended in the list of books? I suggest that parents should not rush to make quick gains when learning this thing, my own experience is that it is beneficial to open the book.
In the process of growing up, a person must be accompanied by a lot of reading, all kinds of books, including classical poetry, such as Tang poetry, Song Ci, "Book of Poetry" have been circulated for one or two thousand years, are the essence, so we must let children accept these things, have the opportunity to let them feel the magic in poetry. Touch, read, and memorize when children are still very good at remembering.
I am particularly advocating memorization, why? Because the so-called Tong Zi Gong is laid down by a person's best memory period, the things that he memorizes, the things he reads, and the impact on his life are incomparable. We know a lot of great scientists or typical talents in various fields, and classical poetry is very good. As I said, poetry trains the ability to think. Poetry will also make life more interesting, and today there are many people around us who write classical poetry, no matter how well he writes, you will feel that his life is interesting.
I don't dare to open a book list for others, I just said that it is beneficial to open a book, what other book list do you open. If a person has spare strength and is really willing to study it extensively, you must read the original text, such as "Quan Tang Poems" and "Quan Song Ci" as much as possible. If it is not for research, most of us can read a good selection, and publishing institutions such as Zhonghua Bookstore and Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House have produced many such books.
Someone asked me that day if I liked to read the Classic of Mountains and Seas. I said yes, I love to read the Classic of Mountains and Seas. The "Classic of Mountains and Seas" cultivates a person's imagination, although today it seems strange, but in fact it is a record of the living environment of our ancestors at that time, which can be seen as a background for imagining the lives of our ancestors, and there are also many scientific things in it. To read poetry, to read the Book of Poetry, you can find some like Yu Guanying's annotated Book of Poetry to read. There is also "Chu Ci", after many people read "Chu Ci", the language is much richer, and they have experienced the rhythm of Fu Bixing and the gorgeous richness of Chinese.
If you don't have much time to read the Quan Tang Poems, at least read the Three Hundred Tang Poems, the Thousand Family Poems, and the Three Hundred Song Ci. I bought a variety of three hundred books, mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and recently the People's Literature Publishing House published another book called "Qian Zhongshu Selected Tang Poems." I would compare the differences between each anthology, and I would often think that I would choose a "three hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" and what kind of book I would choose.
First of all, we must read the most classic, the best and most recognized anthologies, including annotated and classic authoritative books, which is a basic reading surface. Under such a premise, you can read it according to your own interests. If it is an adult, such as me, I will read Li Shangyin, Xin Qiyi, and Du Fu. You can't take the Quan Tang Poems to read, you can't finish reading, but you can take the other collections you are interested in to read. I just said that learning poetry has nothing to do with our lives, and for a long time I read a naranjand word every night. After reading each poem, you feel that your language is interesting, your lips and teeth are fragrant, it is such a feeling, and it will make the reader cherish many emotions in life. Every capital will make me linger.
There are also many interesting books to read in the contemporary era, and you can choose according to your personal interests. Don't have too many boxes. Just like after I read Ye Jiaying's "Seventeen Lectures on Tang and Song Dynasties", I think she talked about Xin Abandoned Disease very well, but I felt that Li Qingzhao was not satisfied, it was a bit simple, which was why I was prompted to write an article related to Li Qingzhao. The more you read, the more you will naturally feel dissatisfied. For example, Pan Xiangli wrote "Meibian News", I think it is quite interesting, as a female writer, from her aesthetic standards to talk about ancient poetry, there are many new insights.
I don't have a book list, but I think the recognized book must be read, and if there is a language barrier, you can read a little text of the text. Try to read the original text, and the text and white comparison will sometimes affect the reading feeling.
What advice do you have for teenagers writing?
Liu Qiong: The first is reading and imitating. When a person first writes, he should read a lot, and reading famous masterpieces is the most helpful for writing. You have a lot of sentence patterns in your brain, you have a lot of words, you can reconstruct it, this is the second stage, creation. For primary and secondary school students, the first is imitation writing.
Each of us has gone through the stage of writing an essay, and writing an essay can make people collapse, can't it?
The first good essay I wrote when I was in elementary school was to imitate Wu Boxi's "Vegetable Garden Notes" and replace it with my own life, although I had no experience in rural life and no experience in planting, I changed to that tone to write, and the result suddenly had a feeling of literary creation. My teacher thought it was well written and drew a bunch of red circles and posted them on the billboard. I imitated successfully. That is, to learn to write, but not to copy, but to imitate. A few imitations down, you'll know which are good articles, and the next time you'll write in that direction.
I recommend this experience to many people. My little nephew, when he was in junior high school, the worst subject was writing. He asked me what to do? Dad told him, you ask your aunt, your aunt is the best at writing articles. I said that writing articles is the simplest, first, don't you think that writing articles is a particularly difficult thing? Make a list of books for you, and you'll read them all. Later, his father said that the child was addicted to reading, and I said that it didn't matter if he was addicted, in the short term you may feel that reading has an impact on other learning, but over time it will prove to be of great help. Sure enough, he changed from a child who was particularly afraid of writing badly and failing to write well, to a child who loved to write and wrote well. He was going to college this year, and he told me he was going to be a writer. I told him, the first stage you read, you go to imitate, slowly, I told him that there are some things you have to remove like mud and sand, you have to learn to choose, you see which things are classic, where the classic works are good. Slowly he had an idea of his own, and he had a perception of how to tell a material to make it more impressive. In the end he was not afraid to write at all. He has a lot of sentences, a lot of language, and he knows how to describe a person, where to start. Simply put, for primary and secondary school students, you can start by imitating and writing your first article.
(This article was first published in Meiwen, Issue 3, 2022)
Some of the image sources are networked
Editor: Wang Hao