"Arrow Off the String" is a monograph by scholar Yan Jingming, taking Lu Xun's prose poetry collection "Wild Grass" as the research object, using fluent language to lead readers to Lu Xun's spiritual world, which is widely praised.
Over the years, Lu Xun's research has always been a prominent study in the academic circles, and excellent research works have emerged continuously. Pushing Lu Xun's ideas to the society and the public is also the direction that some scholars have been striving for. So, how to understand Lu Xun? How to spread Lu Xun? In response to these questions, Yan Jingming expressed his views in an interview.
Yan Jingming was born in 1961 in Biaoguan, Shanxi. He is currently the vice chairman of the China Writers Association and the secretary of the Secretariat. He has published more than ten books, "Monologues and Dialogues", "I Wish the Novel to Be As Imposing as a Rainbow", and "Lu Xun Is Still There". Won the second Feng Mu Literature Award.
1. "Ability" is a key to understanding Lu Xun
Yangcheng Evening News: The most intuitive feeling of reading "Arrow off the String" is fluency, changing the difficulty of reading and studying Lu Xun's articles in the past, is this concise language style intentional?
Yan Jingming: This book is actually an essay on prose that enters with an academic attitude, and when I wrote it, I did intend to pursue this style of writing, but I did not specifically consider the reader's reading feelings.
I think a lot of our current research is too similar, too formatted, of course, the research has its own value, but like Lu Xun such a special existence, I think it is particularly necessary for professional researchers to push Lu Xun to the society with their own professional level, academic preparation and ability, so that more public understand the true value and artistic charm of Lu Xun's works, including what Lu Xun is like, I think scholars should have this kind of self-awareness.
Yangcheng Evening News: Generally doing research is to analyze the spiritual connotation of the text, why do you do the opposite, starting from the "skill"?
Yan Jingming: As you said at the beginning, as a prose poem expressing Lu Xun's philosophical views, "Wild Grass" is relatively obscure to many readers. Whether it is reading, interpreting or researching, everyone will pay attention to the deep meaning behind each sentence in the text, what it symbolizes, what it metaphorically holds.
But in my opinion, in fact, "Wild Grass" is not the result of Lu Xun's imagination from his brain. When I researched, I found that most of the chapters in the book actually have a lot of realistic evidence. The study and interpretation of "Weeds" cannot be separated from the real fireworks. They are large and small, an anatomy of life, a concern for reality, a depiction of powerful human commonalities, and a capture of fleeting personal dreams.
Understanding "Weeds" is inseparable from these specific plots, even a book on the shelf, a lamp on the desk. That's what I call Weeds. I started from my ability because I thought that this should be a key to understanding "Weeds", a channel to approach Lu Xun and understand Lu Xun.
If we keep using the work as a symbol, we will ignore a lot of things, and a lot of research will become idling. Reading Lu Xun from these specific situations, you will find that it is not very difficult, and it is more conducive to entering Lu Xun's spiritual world.
On November 23, 2021, Yan Jingming was a guest of Shenzhen Futian District Library to talk about Lu Xun's works
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2, do not "deify", do not vulgarize
Yangcheng Evening News: The research on Lu Xun has been full of sweat, and some people have questioned whether we have overestimated Lu Xun's achievements.
Yan Jingming: After writing this book, I felt more deeply the depth of Lu Xun's thinking, the height of artistic expression, and his sensitivity to life observation, and at the same time, he can integrate the three seamlessly, and after the fusion and collision, it can also produce more complex and multiple connotations. I don't think there is a second person in the history of modern Chinese literature who can compare with him.
Yangcheng Evening News: Why has our research on Lu Xun been flourishing?
Yan Jingming: Because Lu Xun is indeed not only a writer and a writer, he is also a thinker, and he is also a revolutionary who is involved in social work and even social struggles, so I think it is very accurate to summarize Lu Xun in terms of thinkers, revolutionaries, and writers.
What Lu Xun carries is not only the height of literature, it also represents a height reached by Chinese society or modern Chinese culture in a period of time. In this sense, of course, the study of Lu Xun is mainly in the literary world, but I think it should not be limited to the literary world.
Yangcheng Evening News: Do we have a focus or foothold in our research on Lu Xun today?
Yan Jingming: In the past, we said that Lu Xun was "deified", but now we let him return to the human world and become a person like ordinary people, so he also has a taste for life, he also loves to eat and play, which is true.
But as one of the most classic and greatest writers in the history of modern Chinese literature, we still have to study and look for unusual places in him, places that transcend ordinary people, and not "deify" him, but also do not vulgarize him. Only in this way can we form a complete, three-dimensional image of Lu Xun that conforms to historical facts.
"Arrow Off the String" real shot
3. Professional scholars should lay down their bodies to spread Lu Xun
Yangcheng Evening News: With a fashionable word, Lu Xun can also be said to be a big IP and a big Internet celebrity on the Internet, and the reason why he can spread across time and space is closely related to his creative method and the characteristics of his works?
Yan Jingming: Yes, the language of Lu Xun's works itself has an uncertainty, and it is this uncertainty that gives his works a very rich connotation and meaning.
In the same sentence, it is both directly aimed at an object in the present moment and may be borrowed when expressing something else in other ways. Because Lu Xun is always able to surpass that point in describing specific things, but the point of transcendence is very remarkable, which makes his language more fluid and rich.
Now many people on the Internet quote Lu Xun's "golden sentences", some of which are made up by others, and many of which are indeed said by Lu Xun. Why do so many people use it? It is because even in different moods, backgrounds, contexts, and environments, when you read a sentence of his, you can feel a blow to your heart, and different people can make different interpretations, which is the characteristics and charm of Lu Xun's works.
Of course, Lu Xun also said that he hoped that his articles would "decay quickly", in fact, this expressed his urgent feelings about the transformation of national nature, and he felt that if the reality changed, then his articles would be invalid, and if his articles were still valid, it would mean that the phenomenon he criticized still existed. This also reflects that Lu Xun is a writer with a very responsible and responsible responsibility for Chinese society and Chinese history.
Yangcheng Evening News: Now everyone says that where the position of literature and art is, literary and art critics should be. How do you see the spread of Lu Xun and his works on the Internet?
Yan Jingming: I think on the whole, it has played a positive role in spreading Lu Xun. There are also people on the Internet who have adapted Lu Xun's "Wild Grass" into rap, and I think the effect is still very good. Of course, there are some mistakes in the process of network dissemination, but in my opinion, this is the responsibility of Lu Xun researchers. In the face of the misreading generated in the popular discussion, researchers should point it out in time to present a true, objective, accurate and vivid image of Lu Xun as much as possible.
Although there is a limit to what everyone can do, some of the older generation of Lu Xun researchers have begun to do it, and some of them are selected for analysis and correction in response to some of the statements or arguments that appear on the Internet.
There are many high-level scholars in Lu Xun's research community, but I especially hope that those of us scholars can put down our bodies and play a more important and mainstream role in Lu Xun's social communication, but this is also urgent.
(Source of this article: Yangcheng Evening News, Yangcheng Pie)
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Editor: Wu Dan