Good book recommendations || Chen Liang's long poem "Peach Garden": A Tribute to the Countryside and the Times
Introduction to long poems
"Peach Garden" is not so much a history of "I" growing, wandering, and looking back, but rather a book of sleepwalking, in which the author seems to rediscover the "divine" state of childhood, he perceives the world from an innate perspective, and the "reality" of the times is blessed by trance, dream, illusion, magic, absurdity, fable, fantasy or myth, strange and reasonable, he creates for us a spiritual realm that is exclusive to him, where reality and illusion are intertwined. "Peach Garden" is Chen Liang's first attempt at the creation of long poems, a total of 81 chapters, which lasted three years intermittently, the long poems as a whole adopt a mirror chain structure, the tone is close to the dream, is a work of washing the heart to pay tribute to the countryside and the vitality of the times.
Poet Profile
Chen Liang, born in 1975, is a native of Jiaozhou, Shandong. Since childhood, he has loved being alone, meditating, dreaming, reading, graffiti, roaming in the fields, and talking to himself. When I was a child, my biggest dream was to herd a flock of sheep and run freely under the sky and in the fields. After dropping out of school at the age of 16, he worked as a boilermaker in a township-run enterprise between farms, and then began to write poetry. He made his debut in 1994. He lived in the countryside until the age of 40 and worked in more than a dozen occupations in order to survive. In 2017, he began to drift to Beijing. He is a member of the 9th and 10th Plenary Committee of the Chinese Writers Association and an editorial board member of Poetry Exploration.
Peach Garden (excerpt from a long poem)
Chen Liang
This poem is dedicated to my hometown of the North Plain, the peach garden that is about to disappear on the North Plain, and to the relatives who have dissipated or gone mad here. In my heart, the peach garden is eternal, and the relatives are eternal.
- Caption
·
1 Annual fire
Peach blossoms start burning from a teenager's dream
In an instant, it spread to the outside of the village
The northern plains of early spring are in flames
People or birds coming from all directions
Stunned, they each had a secret
Meditate on the ground and branches of the peach garden
They were flushed, their mouths and nostrils gasping for hot air
There was steaming overhead
Silly waiting for the old man who sold regret medicine
It is like a glazed clay figurine in a kiln
It is said that the regret medicine can only be used in the spring breeze of that year
The first peach blossoms blown open are introduced, supplemented by the first wisps of the morning
The dew that is illuminated by the sun has a miraculous effect
It is said that his medicine can make people temporary
No longer tormented by regret, it is like returning to the light
And how many years have passed, the old man who sells regret medicine
No one knows where he came from, or whose last name he was
He always paused in his seventies
White hair fluttering, red light, no footprints——
The regret pills he sold, only one pill per person per year
Even the most powerful and the richest
Nor can it be accommodating more
The words he said were always confusing in the clouds
6 Ladders hanging down from the moon
The home is made of yellow mud and covered with black tiles
The doorway faces south to meet the southeast wind
The rear windows were mostly sealed, refusing northwest winds
There was always a ladder in the yard
Sometimes against the wall, sometimes against the branches
Only fathers dare to climb up or dry the fruit
Or light a cigarette with a spark, or do something that only God knows
Sometimes it's just night, and I feel that ladder
It is hanging down from the huge moon
Father seemed to be busy inside the moon
His shadow was cast on the ground by the moonlight
Like a big bird that keeps flapping its wings
It makes me feel unusually new and mysterious
When adults are not at home during the day
I tried to sneak up the ladder to reach the roof
It was the first time I had stood on such a high ground
I saw the whole village and the vast peach garden outside the village
I screamed in excitement and waved my arms
Startle the passing birds
Thought it was a recent encounter with one who had just hatched
Huge baby birds that have not yet grown feathers
But soon, the ladder was taken away by the people on the moon
And they scattered many peach blossom petals
13 hundred miles away from the sea
The sea roared a hundred miles away, peach garden people
Very few people who have been there every summer
After a storm, in the yard of a certain family
Occasionally, a variety of fish fall
And these fish are definitely not species in the Ink River
The elders said that the seaside was a desolate and terrifying existence
No crops and trees
Men fish in the sea bare-buttocked all year round
At night, I slept with the mother fish in my arms—
The child born has a fish tail
One summer, there was a fisherman from the mouth of the sand
Cloaked in fishing nets, the sea breeze is like a salty sound along the street
Hope to use shrimp paste and kids like
Small and delicious conch exchange items with us
Peach Garden has been short of food and clothing for several years, and the days are worrying
Someone came out and said that shrimp paste would make people stink
A child who eats a conch will turn into a snail
The fisherman spent many days in our village
Didn't sell much, even by a mad dog
After biting and biting, he had to limp away in anger
It is said that when he left, he smashed the shrimp paste jar on the entrance of the village
Throw a sack of conch into the pile of children
The stink of those shrimp pastes is stubborn
The smell of the whole village was for many years before it slowly dissipated
The snails in the peach garden have gradually increased since then——
22 burials
Before, I only saw the death of chickens, the death of pigs, and the death of sheep
The death of the tree, the death of the grass - these
The death of animals and plants makes me sad
It was the first time I saw a human death
But I didn't feel afraid, I felt
I am asleep and will wake up tomorrow or the day after tomorrow
Or maybe the death itself is a dream
Mother said that death is like walking alone at night
The heavens and the earth are all black, and there are thousands of people turning
Finding the light, the man awoke
If someone gets lost in the night, the person dies
The second night of death, according to the customs of the peach garden
Is to the village east land temple "send plate entanglement"
Burn a lot of paper money sent by relatives, friends and neighbors
Also burn paper cart paper horses
The Land Temple is a hidden place, and the road is overgrown with weeds
I am an unmarried "husband"
Zhan Yi's mother insisted that I wear filial piety for her
That night was a peach blossom decay day
It was raining, red and muddy
The funeral crowd was stained with peach blossom mud
The deacon's master first asked me to stand on a high stool
Holding the willow stick to the southwest, he shouted:
"Oh you go up to the southwest, the southwest road is wide,
You settle down in the sweet place, and make money in the bitter place—"
After shouting three times in a row, there was a great mourning behind him, and the crying was tremendous
Mother said that the soul of tonight's death will sit on a paper cart paper horse
Pulling the coil away, went to the "southwest"
"What is the Southwest?" Are there peach blossoms? ”
My mother couldn't say it clearly, and I never did
When he wanted to die, he ran to the peach garden and shouted to the southwest
25 Hide and Seek
In the peach garden, I used to be with the ladies
Play an ancient game called "hide-and-seek"
It's often I hide it
Several ladies came to me
Whether I'm attached to the branches of the peach tree
Or buried in the grass as a grasshopper —
They can easily find me
When I found it, I used peach blossom juice to dot rouge on my forehead
Almost every hidden place in the peach garden allowed us to hide
It was tasteless for a moment. Until one evening
Wait until they hide
I just discovered those ordinary hideouts
They can't be found anymore
Only a few of the openings were still steaming in the dark
I used my slingshot to catapult stones inside
I couldn't hear the echo
I suspect they have gone from these holes
Went to another place
I was so frightened that there was a sound in the peach garden
The lonely and anxious cry of a child
- Many years later, when I was thousands of miles away
Surprised to find them
I couldn't understand what they were saying, to Peach Garden
He also ignored me and only smiled faintly
It made me start to doubt that I really recognized the wrong person
32 I became a father of nine children
I often dream in my sleep
Sometimes she would pinch me
Sometimes she would screw my ears
Sometimes I stick out a long tongue in my ignorance
Lick my nose cold
She said that life is my human being and death is my ghost
You want to marry me under a blossoming peach tree
I've never seen a peach tree that tall
The treetops almost touched the moon's window ledge
The branches stretch to the area of several villages
The house under the tree was what I had earlier been by the Ink River
The specifications made with mud
On the first day, we got married, and she made blush with peach blossom juice
The wind kept sprinkling peach blossoms on top of her head
The next day, she broke a peach while eating
Found our first child
On the third day, she watched the eggs in a bird's nest
Found our other child
On the fourth day, she went to the river in front of the door to wash her clothes
Found our third child -
By the tenth day, we had nine children
The children grew older
They built their own house on peach branches
I am getting older and older
Until one day when washing my face, the river screamed and found it
Two wild faces—"
And I woke up to just a sweaty kid
In another world, he became a father of nine children
This made me feel confused and novel
I often cuddle a bunch of toys before going to bed
In the dream, I give it to every child who calls out to my father
48 Reborn
Park will often lead me into a dream -
There's another "peach garden."
The world there seemed to have just woken up
Everything emits a meta-force that is not passively used
There are boundless peach trees, a variety of fragrant plants
Deep lakes, intoxicating fruits
Round moon, smoothly curved plains
Healthy running beasts
Waking canyons, gushing streams
The mysterious sound of the wind, the miracle that keeps happening——
There, my life, our life
It was as if it had been thoroughly illuminated and penetrated by something
Burn a burning flame
Those who are poor, humiliated, inferior, timid, and filthy
- Burned in flames
There, we are like two pieces that are enlightened by God
Got the mud of the ancient heritage
In the chaos, he was re-refined with seven tricks and limbs
Became a mud child, became a pottery
It was attached with a glaze and was blown a fairy breath
Naked, wrapped around, howling
Weeping, he was reborn into the human world
- We are lost and lost, and we are back and obsessed
Our eyes were clear, as if it were the beginning of the flood
In the moonlight, we flew up as we pleased
Changing ancient postures
We really flew up and made the chorus of a phoenix
53 plague
From what time on, the world was full of hungry people, them
Dressed in a bright outfit, with a big belly and a wide waist
But they often feel unusually hungry
Every day, they are desperately looking for food and drink
It was as if the stomach was a bottomless pit
Tiger leopard, falcon, snake scorpion, macaque, tanuki cat, mouse
They didn't let go, but they were still hungry
There was no way, they went to visit the ancient temple again
Kneel down and ask for the elixir of immortality
Even invited wizards to exorcise evil spirits, but it was useless
And hungrier and hungrier
Eventually, they started to get hot
Eyes red, full of hallucinations, gibberish—
Many people say they saw a peach garden before dying
Some say the disease can pass through the bubble through the breeze
Spread through pets through smog through handshakes —
Others say through the eyes, through the telephone line
It can even be spread through dreams—
Suddenly, the epidemic spread across the country
Everyone is at risk, villages are at their own peril, and cities are at their own peril
The streets and alleys were suddenly empty, like ruins
People bring their own masks
Also put a mask on the building and the trees
Some even fantasize about wearing masks for the sun and moon
People cut roads or set up barricades
Out of the corner came a large rusty knife spear
Wearing a motorcycle helmet and armor, he inquired
Strange passers-by. More people shrink into their homes and dream day and night
In times of crisis, "angels" begin to descend
These are people who don't usually have any mana in the crowd
The gods awakened and spread their hidden wings
57 brick game
I suspect park must be in some deep nightmare
Trapped, he began to take a medicine that could dream
In the hope of finally finding her in the dream
I laboriously and entered from a dream
Another dream, shoes worn out and barefoot
Until one day an illusion appeared in front of my eyes
There are a lot of people there, all playing one kind
The game of building blocks, see who builds the blocks will not collapse
The higher the base, the more rewards there are, and the greater the wealth
Some people have become "heroes" because of this.
The applause around was thunderous, which made people feel strange
Those applauses came from the palms of a group of ghosts
So much so that many people are tied to the building blocks
Give all your hard work to the building blocks
Sacrificed his official position and life to play with blocks
Who knows that the building blocks will grow on their own when they reach a certain height
And the people crouching there were unaware
Eventually sent to heaven by the angry building blocks
The wind is blowing, the building blocks are shaking, and the dangers are everywhere
They woke up like a dream, and they were terrified in the heights
Let the evil ghost whitewash with laughter
Let the people looking up below glow with greater enthusiasm
Park was in these vast crowds
Her building blocks grew the fastest and largest, growing to the moon
She was also tied up and dwelt on the moon
So much so that I could barely see her presence
Only on nights when there is a moon
Only then could I smell the fragrance of despair wafting down her body
59 Snowman
One day after midnight, my "noisy" sound
Caused heavy snow, snowflakes from the sky
No, it is clear that it is spiraling down from the moon
After dying me white, I followed the "noise" sound
Quickly covered the entire city
Some people say that this is a heavy snowfall that has not been encountered in many years
All paths, including the path of memory, are paralyzed
I had become one when people found me
A huge snowman blowing "noise"
The snow completely whitened my whole body
Carried to the house, by the fire
How to bake can not be baked, in the mirror
I became a man with a whiskered white hair
It reminds me of the old man who sold regret pills
In a trance, he was in the mirror
Greet me with a smile
But I fell into a deep sleep with a sad face
I was white all winter, all winter
I was in a deep sleep, no dreams
There is only white, boundless and endless white
Those "noisy" sounds also condensed into white ice cones
Clanging dangles hanging from the corners of the eaves around
Those whites did not turn green until the following spring
Only then did it gradually fade, revealing a mess of the body
In the spring, I slowly woke up and opened the mirror
What I saw was a stranger with a chill —
64 Drifting
The elders said that the stupidity of idle eggs stemmed from a great famine
That time, Peach Garden was devastated for years
Food is getting scarcer and rarer
People first put wild vegetables and weeds on the slopes
Ate it all up, and later put the peach tree's
The leaves, the bark, the roots of the tree were eaten
Everything I could eat and couldn't eat was eaten
Still didn't fill them
An increasingly swollen and transparent balloon-like belly
Their bellies grew bigger and bigger like balloons
At the beginning, I can still walk slowly and sleepwalking
Then I couldn't walk at all
At the root of the wall, on the edge of the ditch, in the peach garden
Lying crooked under a stripped-naked peach tree
Staring at his stomach with wide eyes
Balloon-like continuous expansion, expansion —
Then the body began to float up little by little
Some floated to the wall
Some floated to the roof, some floated to
On the branches of the higher trees, some floated to the clouds—
The moment they left the ground, they all suddenly laughed
The face is warm
It was as if I had seen a peach garden full of fruits
Idle eggs are the ones who were scared silly that time
He saw so many people
Including his father, mother, grandfather, grandmother
It all floated in the air, never came down again—
67 largest peach gardens
Red to the east, red to the west, red to the south
The red in the north is expanding dreamily
Soon, the reds were connected
The whole country is red, and it has become the largest peach garden
That year, we were given the land of our dreams
Got my own peach tree
An old single stick in the village woke up and was also assigned
Three large houses of the landlord's family
And made the only peach blossom luck in his life
Ecstatic people tore the red silk of the landlord's house into strips of cloth
Tied to his own peach tree
Some people even sleep with their arms around the peach tree
It was as if the peach tree would run away if it didn't pay attention
Someone pinched his thigh
Doubt is dreaming. Someone else grabbed one
The soil of the peach garden, stuffed like brown sugar in the mouth
People beat gongs and drums and shouted various slogans
People stayed up all night, their throats were bloodshot and their eyes were red
The world began to grow red: the streets were red
There was red on the ground and red on the grain hoard
Red flutters on tables, chairs, cupboards, bowls, and pots
The bicycle ox cart wagon cart flutters red on the cart
Singing red, dreaming red
It is said that these reds are all reds derived from the sun
Peach Garden people will start to work frequently between jobs
Look up at the sun and listen reverently
The red sound of the sun at night when the sun rests
I also look at the sky from time to time
There are very few hunchbacked people in the younger generation
The largest peach garden "red" resembles a century fire
Here, everyone's body and soul are ignited
It all turned red and transparent
Everyone is red-hot every day, as if
Red statues burned and carved by flames—
75 people walking backwards
In recent years, in the peach garden in the spring
You'll see a lot of people with all sorts of accents
An outsider walking backwards
They have the elderly, middle-aged people, as well as youth and children
Some walk skillfully and walk fast
The back of the head seems to have eyes. Some are crooked and twisted
Stumbled over by stones and covered in mud
Some crashed into trees and hedges
Fall into the ditch and river - but like the protective body of King Kong
Roll, get up, and continue walking backwards
They say that for so many years they had to walk backwards
Only to find the peach garden
They say the benefits of walking backwards are endless
The sick will find health, and the elderly will find the young
Middle age returns to adolescence, and adolescence returns to childhood
Will find all the good things that have been thrown away, such as love
He may even become immortals. This method
I don't know where it came from
Many people from afar are convinced of this
Simply camped here and did not leave
Years later, I started asking around about this
People walking backwards, and their whereabouts
Some are caught in the fire, and some are possible
Indeed, he had become an immortal and had gone to a place that no one knew
76 a flock of bird people
In the peach garden, there was a person who specialized in making a living from netting birds
Meet a wide variety of birds. It is said that his net
If you can reach the clouds, you will also use the net to set up a maze
Even the most clever bird could not escape his means
It is said that his net bird is also just a cover for people's ears
His wife and children, everything in his family
He came back with a net
Over the years, the government has strictly ordered that the net birds be stopped
He was also old, and he was stealing a big net in the dark of night
Finally a catastrophe: he was on the night of a full moon
There was a group of bird people in the net, no
Strictly speaking, it should be a group of big birds with human faces
When the net came down, because of the struggle
Their white feathers are sparse and covered in blood
Pouring gas on the ground, much like some injured person
He was terrified and felt like he had killed someone
He quickly reported the crime and turned himself in, and the police arrested him
Say he has committed a grave sin
Although the experts can't tell what kind of bird it is
This flock of white-feathered birds was cared for by the bird doctor
When I got into the ambulance, the corners of my mouth suddenly popped out
"Home! Home—" the syllable that frightened everyone
81 Peach blossoms will still burn in full bloom
Peach Garden, Peach Garden, Peach Garden——
For many years, I seemed to have been wandering in an illusion
When you return, you still fall into your bustling season
It is also a blessed blessed person
The sky was still as clear and vast as before, and the peach blossoms were still there
It was so gorgeous before, but so many people have already
Dissipated dissipation, crazy madness
In the void, I heard the long sigh of the white-bearded old man
I am only here to pour my years of sorrow with a pot of turbid wine
Burn a book of poems on the dirt hills
to dispel the sins I had lost in my early dreams
Use my cracked cries to manifest the great loneliness of the world
When I went out to sleepwalk, I was still a teenager
At the moment of return, the sideburns were spotted and the steps were staggered
Even if there is a beautiful scenery in life, there will always be a moment of dissipation
Bulldozer Bulldozer – I've vaguely heard bulldozers
Dig here from a distance
His rumble, the billowing smoke he stirred up
Hide the ants-like clamor of the crowd
Everything will disappear as if it were a huge bubble
But in another world, I firmly believe
Peach blossoms will still live up to their invitations and bloom once a year
There, it only accepts the guidance of the starry sky
There I will meet all the good people who have passed away
Comments ||
Road also / The Possibility of Magic Realist Poetry
——Interpretation of Chen Liang's long poem "The Peach Garden"
Road also
When I read Chen Liang's long poem called "The Tale of the Peach Garden", I always think of some fictional works in ancient and modern China and abroad from time to time, which is a phenomenon that has not appeared in my past reading history. Chen Liang must have read a lot of novels, especially magic realism novels. He tried to apply such surrealist novel techniques to poetry, so that the quality of the novel was subordinated to the high generalization and sense of space of the poetic form, and the key was to be placed under the domination of the rhythm and tone of poetry, which was a remarkable thing for the development of the boundaries of poetic style. The long poem "Peach Garden" is the master of this aspect, using a lot of exaggerated and grotesque techniques to write a kind of "magical reality". It is not unusual for novelists to write in this way, and it is rare and rare to use it in such a concentrated and large dose in poetry, at least in my reading vision.
I intend to interpret this long poem from eight aspects, mainly to explore what the "Peach Garden" is.
First, the peach garden is the Garden of Eden
In chapters 4 and 5 of the long poem, the meta-question of "where did I come from?" is addressed. The poet has a typical "first-principles thinking" in which he wants to find the beginning and the root cause of all problems, like a human return to its original state, to tell his peach garden. At this time, it is best for a person to look at this problem from the perspective of a child, and this is also the perspective of human childhood.
The children in the peach garden have similar origins, and "I" come from a bird's nest on a branch," "—I was just an egg at that time / Fluttering and swelling slightly / Taking home and putting it in the bed to be warmed by my mother's arms", "Mother said / Where did we come from and where we will go back to-", which laid the groundwork for the later writing of living in a tree nest house when I broke out of the city. "And more children are made of mud", "each child will knead a clay figure similar to himself", of course, he also fabricates his younger siblings, fabricates a miniature version of the peach garden, and lets the clay man who represents him sit in the middle of the garden... This "fabrication" behavior written in the poem is clearly to imitate the process of God's creation of man or Nuwa's creation of man, all of which are modeled on their own image, creating a person with dust on the ground, blowing air into the nostrils, and the person lives, and later in order to speed up the speed, simply use a rattan to cover the mud, waving to let the mud splash on the ground and become a man. The poet clearly wanted to write about his peach garden as the Garden of Eden.
In this way, by tracing the meta-problem, the peach garden is placed as a specimen in the coordinate system of human civilization, so that the place that the poet wants to describe seems to be full of echoes of creation.
Second, the peach garden is the grand view garden
I say that the peach garden is a large view garden, mainly because from the perspective of the poet, the lyrical subject, in his peach garden life, especially in the early peach garden memory, he has almost always been surrounded by a group of beautiful women, so that the peach garden is feminine in his eyes, motherly, and gentle. Of course, this Grand View Garden is not a rich and prosperous version, but a poor version. The poet has a Jia Baoyu-like childhood, in his mind, women are the real owners of the peach garden, can provide shelter for a long time, and at the same time full of inexplicable hostility to the father who represents the male world.
There is a female pedigree in the peach garden. This genealogy is the poet's window into the world in childhood. Chapter 11 writes that the childhood "I" gained the country by crying, and understood the original world through crying, which is often considered to be feminine, and the male poet is not afraid to show his crying nature here, which shows that he does not require men to be ashamed of female characteristics, as male society teaches. The first woman in the peach garden is the mother, and chapter 14 is written about the mother who washes clothes by the ink river, and inadvertently writes about the change in personal destiny brought about by social change. In addition to the mother, there are many female figures that support the world of the peach garden. Chapters 21-22 deal with the "death" married to the fingers—a little pink girl—and her death. Chapters 15-18 write about the sudden arrival and mysterious disappearance of the dumb sister. Chapters 33-37 write about Gan Niang and seven Gan Sisters, especially the Seven Sisters, "The fragrance emitted by each of them is different / The eldest sister is peach wood flavor, the second sister peach flavor / The third sister peach leaf flavor, the fourth sister peach blossom flavor / The fifth sister peach gum flavor, the sixth sister peach kernel flavor / The seventh sister is the peach blossom flavor", which can't help but remind me of Jia Baoyu to Lin Daiyu when she made up the story of "little rat essence fragrant taro" to make her happy, and when she spoke, she smelled a faint fragrance or strange fragrance, which emanated from Daiyu's sleeve, but later found that there was nothing in the sleeves. Presumably it was Daiyu's own body noon, and when Jia Bao and Xue Baochao were close to each other, they only smelled a burst of cool sensen and sweet fragrance, Baochao denied incense to the clothes, it must be the "cold incense" of the cold incense pills she took, and when Jia Baoyu entered Qin Keqing's room, he smelled sweet incense... In the view of the "I" in the poem, these women are the true masters of the peach garden, representing gentleness and light. Chapter 25 is titled "Hide and Seek", writing "I" and the girls in the peach garden hide and seek, "they can easily find me / Found, with peach blossom juice on my forehead to dot rouge", here can not help but remind people of Jia Baoyu has a habit of helping girls with various flowers to mash rouge paste and eat fat rouge, but the result of this hide-and-seek is that one day the girls all disappeared, "they can no longer be found / Only some of the holes are still steaming in the dark", and the hole with cold air has a symbolic meaning here. What have they been swallowed up by? Many years later, when I met these hide-and-seek people thousands of miles away, and the other party turned a deaf ear to the peach garden, I suspected that I had recognized the wrong person. In this way, the poet cleverly wrote about the fate of these girls, which probably evolved from what Baoyu called "flesh and bones made of water" and "pearls" to "dead fish eyes". Life is like a dream, not only things are people and not everything, the little friends who play hide and seek are gone, only the little boy who later became a poet stands in the same place and becomes a sad guest in the world... It was as if after the defeat of the Grand View Garden, the depressed Jia Baoyu met the scattered Shi Xiangyun or the monk Xi Chun on the rivers and lakes.
In chapter 29, the rain made of the colorful feathers of various birds somehow made me feel a bit like Jia Baoyu's Qingwen patch of golden sparrow. Chapter 32, "I became the father of nine children", writes that I dreamed of "dying" and getting married, "breaking a peach during dinner / Found our first child", and then, there are nine children in total... Here there is a bit similar to the details in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "Thumbelina", and it is quite similar to the dream that Jia Baoyu made in the Grand View Garden, and it is a dream related to sex, and the poet's dream in the peach garden is also a dream about reproduction after all. Chapter 70, "Invisibility", is to write that the poet returns to the Peach Garden after the vicissitudes of the great changes, still remembering those lost sisters, which also seems to have a habit of Jia Baoyu's joy and dislike, where those beautiful women have gone, "I can blurt out their names but can't see them / They have been invisible in time / Living a life I don't know in another world / I want to cry, but there are no tears at all."
When the poet Chen Liang shaped this peach garden female genealogy, he clearly praised the motherhood and daughterhood that belonged to the category of human nature and nature, but did not involve the concept of "wifehood" that was forced into the patriarchal cultural ethics, and completely ignored it consciously or unconsciously, and at the same time, he was skeptical of women who were carved in the social furnace and thus damaged their natural nature... This is also similar to Jia Baoyu. The poet Chen Liang and Jia Baoyu have obvious similar tendencies in gender stance, loving women, respecting women and even worshipping women, and presumably nodding to feminists or feminists.
Third, the Peach Garden Is a Book of Zhiyi
There are also many inhumans in the peach garden, and it can be said that in this long poem, in addition to the female genealogy, there is also an inhuman genealogy.
The lyrical protagonist "I" is an alien. Chapters 6-9, "The Moon Hangs Down the Ladder", climbs up the ladder in the house, "I am so excited that I scream and scream, waving my arms / Let the passing birds be shocked", saying that he stutters and follows the pig, cow, sheep and duck to learn to speak, "I want to cry, but my face is smirking / The mouth makes the cheerful sound characteristic of the animals" and emphasizes that the first sound he makes is sheep- and his favorite ewe, "In her gaze, the peach blossoms will suddenly open / The almond tree will 'crackle' and fall the fruit on the high ground", The feeling of the wind is In the peach garden, the wind will often alone and blow a whining sound, I will also identify who this adult is by reflecting the figure on the ground... The poet writes the childhood self quite like the Bangui in Faulkner's novel "Noise and Commotion" or forrest Gump in the movie "Forrest Gump", and in the stupidity and stubbornness may be hidden great wisdom that ordinary people do not have.
For example, the first chapter of the long poem, as soon as it comes up, mentions an old man who sells regret medicine, who also belongs to a stranger, "It is said that the regret medicine can only be used as a guide by the spring breeze / the first peach blossom blown open, supplemented by the first rays of dew in the morning / the dew that is illuminated by the sun" to have a miraculous effect", and there are chapters in the later part of the long poem that echo this. Chapter 10, when I write about myself using shadows to identify people, I wrote the love story of Uncle Wang of the Lazy Man from the perspective of a child, and the strangeness of "we call the diligent people there as lazy people" reminds me of the "Luochahai City" in "Liaozhai Zhiyi", which tells a country outside Of China, the uglier people look, the more they are regarded as beautiful, and calling the night fork a beauty is the same as calling the diligent people lazy people. Chapters 23-24 write about the earth master, the earth master relies on the people in the peach garden to provide for him, the earth master does not marry for life in order to maintain sensitivity, "the earth master generally lives alone at the head of the village / keeps a goatee, walks like a mouse during the day / eyes and ears stare at the ground, when dreaming / the ears are also close to the ground to listen to the movements of the ground", "the earth master is more concerned about the big things that are going to happen underground", it seems that the earth master is rarely used but is indispensable, with the ground master is equivalent to the village has an earthquake bureau, always predicting, in order to ensure safety, there are dangers.
Another example is that chapter 63, "The Lookout Tree," writes about a fool named Idle Egg. In fact, in the Chinese countryside, every village seems to be assigned such a crazy or stupid person, and while contrasting with the so-called shrewd and capable people or the so-called normal people, these fools often play the role of prophets or prophets invisibly. The half-stupid Tian Er in Lu Yao's "Ordinary World" is always repeating the same sentence "The world is going to change" - in fact, there is only the "world is going to change" in this world, which is forever unchanged... And in Chen Liang's peach garden, this idle egg is always repeating the same sentence "coming soon-", in chapter 78, the idle egg "years of looking at it makes its neck much longer than the average person / Eyes only see high and far", when the peach garden encounters a catastrophe and is about to be encroached upon by the real estate industry, this idle egg shouts more vigorously and more intensely "Coming soon-", what is coming? What's coming? Is the last judgment coming, is the death knell ringing, or is Jesus Christ coming for the second time? This sentence, which has no subject or object, is frightening, madness and wisdom. In addition, the phrase "coming soon—" reminds me of the recurring and unnamed phrase in Waiting for Godot, "Godot is coming tomorrow!" "But who is Godot?" What is Godot? I don't know. The dry father who appears in chapter 36 who is always looking up at the sky and recording the things of heaven, and Chen Baye, who climbs the wall and the house written in chapter 69, also belong to this inhuman lineage, of course, this genealogy also includes other people...
In addition to the inhumans, there are some strange things of one kind or another. These details of the story, which are also true and illusory, are dotted in the long poems, adding a magical atmosphere, for example, in chapter 68, how does the sheep village wash away the shame of history and become a stone root village? The specific method is to transport a stone pillar from Mount Tai, plant it there, and water it every day... This detail is full of allegory flavor, and at the same time has the wind of "Search for God", "Narrative of Different Things", and "Taiping Guangji".
Fourth, the peach garden connects the heterogeneous space and the time tunnel
Chapters 15-18, The Dumb Sister Mirror Does Not Leave the Body, And Sign Language with the Person in the Mirror, and Later "The Sister Disappears, but the Mirror Remains / Only a Peach Branch Crack Appears in the Center of the Mirror", "Maybe the Sister / Ran Away from the Mirror... The mirror should be her only exit .../ So the mother would use cotton cloth every day / Wipe the mirror, expecting her sister to float out of it", one day the mirror suddenly shattered, and after the Laoshan Taoist puzzle, the dumb sister had gone to another peach garden... Reading the story about the dumb sister felt too much like reading a chat.
Chapters 23-24, writing about the underground world through the writing of the earth master, according to the theory of the earth master, there are many layers underground and a peach garden has been built, and the well of the earth master's house is said to be a large earpiece that listens to the ground, describing a slight earthquake as a roar of underground creatures. Chapters 25-27, there are some "black holes" and bottomless dark tree holes in the peach garden, "darkness" may imply that the peach garden and nature have both a beautiful side and a dark and terrifying side, and these black holes are also opportunities to another world, perhaps to the real peach garden - how much like "Alice in Wonderland", the girl chased the rabbit and fell into the rabbit hole, thus entering the fairyland, and also met her childhood friends, she actually entered a time tunnel. In contrast to the peach garden on the ground and the peach garden on the ground discussed in the above poem, chapter 36, "Things in Heaven," writes that the peach garden in heaven is written, "sometimes red and lustrous, and the clouds are steaming with clouds / As if there is a peach garden hidden there that we have not seen"—this seems to refer to the kingdom of heaven.
The peach garden on the ground, the peach garden in the sky, the tree hole leads to another world, and man uses a mirror as the entrance exit... The sense of space shown in the poem is undoubtedly not just a three-dimensional space in our real life, but also shows the existence of multi-dimensional space and high-dimensional space, which is an alien dimensional space. The poet seems to have applied modern installation art to poetic expression, through the distortion and deformation of lines, so that the various spaces collide with each other, creating a spatial illusion, allowing the reader to follow him through the dream and reality. The time and space in this long poem are thus transcendent, which distinguishes it from the so-called vernacular poetry of the vast majority of people who crawl on the ground to write about the countryside and write about their hometowns.
Fifth, the Peach Garden Is a Nature Book, a Naturalist, and a Folklore Chronicle
According to the preface of the poem, it can be seen that the peach garden written by the poet is located on the "North Plain". According to Chapters 13-14, the geographical location and natural ecology of Taohuayuan Village can be known. "The sea roars a hundred miles away", showing that it is only about 50 kilometers from the sea, so that in special weather, the rapid wind and rain will blow the sea fish into the courtyards of the villagers. However, in the era of inconvenient transportation, the villagers can only make senseless imaginations about such a close ocean. As for "there is a largest river on the North Plain called the Ink River", the Ink River here is a real river that flows into Jiaozhou Bay, and qingdao's "Jimo" place name should be derived from this river. In chapter 34, there are finally more specific coordinates, written about the Tianzhu Village next to the Peach Garden Village, in fact, it can also be seen as the location of the Peach Garden: the large coordinates are jiaodong peninsula, and the small coordinates are "a guiping county, a guigao county / a guijiao county, known as the place of jiming three counties", let me guess it, Pingxian refers to the pingdu of Qingdao, Gaoxian refers to the high density of Weifang, Jiaoxian refers to the jiaonan of Qingdao, and this specific geographical coordinate is adjacent to the village of Mo Yan's Gaomi Northeast Township. Historically, the administrative divisions of several villages here have changed back and forth between Qingdao and Weifang many times. We have to think that the prototype of this peach garden village in the poem is actually the neighboring village of Mo Yan's family, probably only separated by a river. It is conceivable that Taohuayuan Village is only about 200 kilometers away from Pu Songling's hometown, and Mo Yan's home is close at hand, perhaps, in this way, the ubiquitous magic realism color and atmosphere in this long poem, its origin is better understood.
It makes sense to say that this long poem is a naturalist. Let's just write about birds, chapter 29 "Feathers", mentions all kinds of birds: sparrows, spotted doves, reed geese, crows, magpies, black-bellied sandpipers, upturned-nosed sandpipers, gray-spotted sandpipers, white-waisted sandpipers, oysters, large sandpipers, black-billed gulls... Almost a whole list of birds on the Jiaodong Peninsula came out.
For example, chapter 21 deals with the marriage of the fingers and abdomen; chapter 22 involves funerals; chapter 30 deals with calling the soul; chapter 33 deals with the recognition of dry women; and chapter 45 writes about carving peach core locks as peace locks to ensure peace, involving the folk customs of peach branches to avoid evil. These folk customs are the cultural DNA of the village.
6. The Peach Garden is the seat of the gods
The poet shows a very significant pantheistic color in this long poem.
Chapters 19-20, speaking of "the story of ghosts" and "reverence," the discussion of good and bad ghosts seems to correspond to the distinction between angels and Satan, and the discussion of how good and bad ghosts inhabit people's hearts seems to have risen to the height of moral metaphysical principles, and "there are ghosts on every peach tree / ghosts in every flower / ghosts in every river — embodies theism, polytheism, and animism. In chapter 31, "Psychics in tradition," it is written that "there are said to be five mighty psychics in the peach garden / Wood spirits in the east and gold spirits in the west / Fire spirits in the south, water spirits in the north / Earth spirits in the middle, the most powerful and their leaders", and here we talk about certain human special functions, especially the intercourse between man and the gods.
Verses 34-37 write about the influence of Christianity on the countryside, about the "glowing" house... Long. The spread of foreign religions in rural China has lasted a long and tortuous time, which is an inescapable historical fact. The peach garden village on the peninsula has undoubtedly been an independent and self-contained system for thousands of years, but it is not completely closed, and it has also been opened up – especially since modern times. The poet writes about Tianzhu Village, a neighboring village of Peach Garden Village, the name of the village itself has a symbolic meaning, in the eyes of the poet "because of the existence of the church on the high place / Let me feel that the whole messy village is suddenly in order", here can not help but remind people of Wallace Stevenson's poem "Anecdotes of the Jar", when people put a jar on the top of a hill in Tennessee, what happened? "It makes messy wilderness / lined up around hills ... Thus the wilderness rises toward the jar / lazily crawling around, no longer desolate", where the poet replaces the jar with a church, still emphasizing the establishment of a new order.
Peach Garden Village really has all kinds of gods, both local gods and foreign gods. Native China, in fact, has always been like this, has always had its own religious system and is still pluralistic.
And in the current era of mercantilism, when the peach garden is no longer "peach blossom" nor "garden", there is a new wave of worship of gods and ghosts, and the upsurge seems to come not from awe, but from utilitarianism related to money, "The final flow of the Ink River is the deep blue sea / The Ink River has a largest tributary called the Bigou River / There was a nunnery at the bend of the Bigou River / There was a nunnery / There is a temple: Peach Blossom Temple, there is a nunnery / There is also a temple: Peach Temple"... And these temple sites were revived and flourished, and business was started in the name of faith.
The poet placed the peach garden in such a complex theological system that there is a relationship between man and man, a relationship between man and nature, a relationship between man and self, a relationship between man and history, and a relationship between man and God. In this way, the peach garden has become a multi-faceted and three-dimensional place, and the peach garden is not only in the Jiaodong Peninsula, not only in China, but also in the vast universe.
7. Peach Garden Is a Personal History and a Rural History
It should be said that the long poem "Peach Garden" is documentary and fictional. It is first and foremost a biography of the author, which contains the poet's own history of growth, youth, and struggle. At the same time, it is also a village history of a village called Peach Garden on the Jiaodong Peninsula, of course, it can be expanded and expanded, and the peach garden here has become a representative of the countryside on the land of China, and the history of the peach garden has also become the history of Chinese countryside.
This rural history also involves ancient Chinese history, Modern Chinese history and contemporary Chinese history, and the author focuses on the history of the rapid decline of rural civilization at present, of course, it is also the history of urbanization. In the past, the village remained unchanged for thousands of years, an independent living ecosystem, but suddenly faced the invasion of modern capital and faced disintegration.
The narrator of this rural history is the poet himself, who stands on a personal standpoint, taking personal growth as a clue, witnessing, recalling, hearsay, fantasy, writing about the past, present and future of the countryside.
Chapter 64, "Drifting", borrows the reason why idle eggs have become stupid, to review a very important historical event and node in rural China: three years of natural disasters from 1959 to 1962. The poet uses subjective feelings like balloons "floating" to write that he has not experienced the large-scale historical events of hunger and death, and here the surreal way of expression achieves a shocking effect.
Chapter 65, "The Enemy", related to the idiots in the village, chooses the children's games of the seventies as an entry point, and seems to be writing about the class struggle movement, but also involves the Cold War between the East and the West.
Chapter 66 "Red" and Chapter 67 "The Largest Peach Garden" use deformed and exaggerated techniques to deal with major events in Chinese history more subtly, with the shadow of land reform and the shadow of the contemporary decade-long political movement. The peach garden is extended to all of China, making this peach garden more and more like a microcosm of the entire Chinese countryside, which can't help but remind me of Wei Zhuang in "The True Biography of Ah Q".
Chapter 38, "Someone Is Calling Me," writes that he is ghostly guided by a voice, on a train, to the world beyond the Peach Garden, and the allure of this voice is no less than the song of siren, which can be understood as the traction of material desires, and at the same time can be understood spiritually—perhaps it can also be implied that he has embarked on the path of poetry. Chapters 39-40, after the arrival of the mercantilist society, the Taohuayuan villagers who entered the city in search of better survival opportunities became hidden bird people in the city, full of weightless illusions in the dizzy state of existence, and chapter 76 echoed each other, also mentioning "bird people", which is a metaphor, as a person who lost his home from the countryside to the city and lived in a nest house in a tree, the bird people were far away from the earth and floated in mid-air. Chapters 41-46 write about the loneliness of the modern city, using fantasy techniques to express, writing about the various marquee-like encounters after entering the city, and reading it has the feeling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales and Nils's travels on a goose. Everywhere the poet went, he carried his own "peach garden"—a miniature version of the "peach garden" that had shrunk to resemble a peach charm carved out of a peach pit—and became the patron saint of "me." The fourth and fifth paragraphs of chapter 45 are written about the craft of peach wood carving or the matter of craftsmen—quite suggestive to read, and can be associated with the poet's own specific poetry writing process, as if he is writing fairy tales with a curved pen. Chapters 47-49 seem to be writing about love and carnal desire, from chapters 53 to 59, writing about the legend and absurdity after leaving the land, writing about the chase and competition of desire in the current process of urbanization, and finally writing about the physical and mental imbalance and disillusionment caused by the sinking of desire through the disappearance of the woman "Park", as if "those applause came from the palms of a group of ghosts". Reading this, it is particularly easy to think of T· Some of the depraved scenes and details of everyday life in S. Eliot's The Wasteland, notably chapter 57, uses the image of the "building block game" as a metaphor for the modern metropolis, representing desire, ambition, and success, which has come close to Elliot's "wasteland"—the vast, disembodied city of London. These are some chapters about the experience of the city, but they can also be contrasted with the past and present lives of Peach Garden. Chapters 50-52 lead to the great reality of the decline of the countryside, with the titles "Emptiness", "My Story Accelerates the Disappearance of the Young And Strong Men in the Garden", "They Cross the Black Hole from the Peach Garden to the City... / The Great Peach Garden / Only the Old Man, Women, Children, and Livestock Remains" "The Peach Garden is getting emptyer and emptyer, as if it becomes a / Huge Cicada Or Abandoned Bird's Nest", and in Chapter 60, the poet finally shouts and asks, "Who am I?" Who am I? Where am I from? / Am I in reality or in a dream? At this point, the criticism is already very heavy.
Just as Eliot's solution returns to the religious tradition, what is specifically done is: giving, compassion, restraint. The poet Chen Liang's solution is also similar to this, if put into action, then it is a return, back to the original place, back to the hometown peach garden. Thus, there is chapter 61 "Returning from the Peach Blossom News", where there are people who sell regret medicine, echoing the first appearance of the person who sells regret medicine at the beginning of the long poem, the beginning and end of the circle, in this chapter, it is proposed that the way to solve the race of desire and the loss of human nature is to return to the peach garden, so all kinds of means of transportation have appeared: trains, cars, ships, carriages, winds, clouds into the shape of birds... They all carry people back to the peach garden, expressing the urgency of returning to their original intentions. Chapter 62 continues to deepen this sense of return, writing about the city as a lost mirage, and the village called Peach Garden is both the starting point and the destination, "since the day I left home / I have been on my way home." However, after returning to Xi, the peach garden itself is still unable to resist and unable to resist the surging tide of commodities, the peach garden itself has retreated step by step and is dying, chapters 73-75 write about the wanton development and deformity of seaside real estate, and the excessive plundering of nature by human beings has made the human homeland represented by the peach garden face the biggest crisis in history, "the sea sea has begun to be boiled by the fire of burning desire to be turbulent", and human greed and desire are carrying out human self-destruction.
Chapter 77, "Butterflies, Butterflies," writes of butterflies of the color of ashes, souls that have become unsupported by the loss of faith in pure material existence, like such withered butterflies. This detail reminds me of the withered vision of the bones of the Israelites that Ezekiel had seen on the plains. Chapter 78, the idle egg even more vigorously preached "Coming soon--", the atmosphere became tense, under the guidance of mercantilist values, the huge bulldozer representing human greed drove over, the "giant machine" rumbled towards our peach garden, the last piece of the peach garden was about to topple, and the peach garden was really about to disappear from the earth. In chapter 79, the encroachment and encroachment of the city on the countryside is terrifying, and the root cause is that the good ghosts in the human heart are eliminated, and the bad ghosts have gained full control, which echoes the "theory of good ghosts and bad ghosts" in chapters 19-20 earlier in the long poem, "My ambitions or desires in the human world have been enormous-", and the poet has already complained with tears.
Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Garden" is similar to the "Peach Garden" here, and the people in the Peach Garden here occasionally reveal the leisurely demeanor and ancient style of Tao Yuanming's pen, which is the legacy of thousands of years of civilization, the difference is that Tao Yuanming's people "do not know that there is a Han, regardless of Wei Jin", and the people of this "Peach Garden" live in modern times, and suddenly face a dilemma, need to shuttle back and forth between the gentle and thick traditional farming civilization and the modern civilization with iron walls, struggles and anxieties.
Eighth, the peach garden is an elegy
This long poem is also an elegy, written by the poet for his hometown and for the entire Chinese countryside.
Chapters 80-81, titled "Deep in the Peach Garden" and "The Peach Blossoms Will Still Burn and Bloom," are especially evident when the poem is coming to an end and when the poem reaches its most exciting point. The poet uses nearly 3,000 lines of elegy to mourn people, mourn the past, mourn the disappearance of all good things, but at the end of this elegy, the author does not have the darkness and despair that the usual elegy shows, on the contrary, there is a bright scene, which makes people see a glimmer of hope. Where does this hope come from? From the author's denial of this world, he believes that everything in this world is illusory, in the present life where Satan is in power, the bulldozer can actually destroy all the peach gardens on the earth, and the peach garden of this world on the earth, no matter how beautiful, whether it is preserved or destroyed, is ultimately limited, however, the peach blossom source in the human spirit and soul can never be destroyed, and the peach garden on the other side is eternal, it is infinite, and such a peach garden is the belief in eternity. This ending is meaningful, while singing an elegy of mourning for the peach garden, while firmly believing that in the face of the stars of the universe, the limited peach garden on the ground may not be nothing, and there should be a better infinite peach garden in the universe, so where is this peach blossom garden? The poet gives the answer almost explicitly: "Accept only the guidance of the starry sky".
Faulkner has a short story, "A Rose in Memory of Emily," in which Emily is an allegorical figure—as a symbol of the aristocratic culture of the American South—that hints at the eclipse of an era and a tradition, and the peach garden in Chen Liang's Peach Garden is also an allegorical location that also hints at the eclipse of an era and a tradition. What they all have in common is that they all want to use novels or poems to revive a lost old world, and such elegy or roses are dedicated both to the exit and the passing, and to the author himself.
The above eight parts are my interpretation of this long poem.
The long poem "Peach Garden" exposes Chen Liang's ambitions in poetry writing, crossing the boundaries of style, from a single lyricism to the fusion and integration of a variety of modern and postmodern artistic techniques. In recent years, there have been many people who have written long poems, but to put it mildly, many of them have replaced talents with enthusiasm, and there is no shortage of pure technical talents who have fermented short poems with water and noodles, resulting in a sharp expansion of volume, so that I initially had reservations to enter the reading of Chen Liang's long poems. Fortunately, just after reading the first few chapters, I dispelled all my doubts and applauded while reading. I think that this poem benefits both from the poet's solid reading and writing skills and from a deep understanding of rural civilization, and it is also necessary to point out that the childlike heart that the poet still has has made this long poem, in which the imagination is primitive and peculiar, silly and flying, and amazing--this is not something that can be solved just by reading some magic realism works and learning some techniques.