In the history of the development of contemporary Chinese literature, Professor Hong Zicheng is an important figure that cannot be bypassed.
He participated in the preparation of textbooks at the age of 27, and ten years later, he built the Department of Contemporary Literature, and many of his works are integrated into rigorous and in-depth thinking about the discipline. In the eyes of his student Professor Dai Jinhua, Professor Hong Zicheng has always adhered to the reading of life experience and literary reading, and has always memorized and adhered to his own historical life experience. These two points have also shaped Professor Hong Zicheng's academic style, enabling him to promote the discipline of contemporary literature and find important reasons for grasping the historical way of the 50s and 70s, which has a unique exemplary role.
As a highly respected senior scholar, how does Professor Hung manage his studies, and what life experiences does he share with you? Today, movable type Jun shared with book friends an interview with Professor Hong Zicheng published in the poetry journal "Caotang" "Hong Zicheng VS Hou Shang: "Seventeen Years" and Its Tail Notes".
Hong Zicheng vs Hou Shang: "Seventeen Years" and its tail note
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This article was originally published in Caotang Poetry Journal, vol. 02, 2022
Hong Zicheng graduated from the Department of Chinese of Peking University in 1961. Professor of the Department of Chinese, Peking University. He is mainly engaged in the teaching and research of contemporary Chinese literature and new Chinese poetry. He is the author of "History of Contemporary Chinese Literature", "Problems and Methods", "1956: The Hundred Flowers Era", "My Reading History" and "Materials and Annotations".
Adolescence
"Do what you should do and can do"
▍Houshang: Your hometown is in Jieyang, Guangdong, when you were born, the War of Resistance Against Japan had just begun. What are your earliest memories about? You went to elementary school, middle school, what was the situation in the school at that time?
Hong Zicheng: I was born in June 1939 (April of the lunar calendar), when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression had begun. Due to my age and living environment, I have no personal memory of the War of Resistance Against Japan. As far as I know, the Japanese army occupied the Chaoshan region of Guangdong twice, and both times were not long. The first was in 1939, mainly occupying Shantou and Chao'an. The second time was in 1943 and 1944. My home was in Rongcheng, the county seat of Jieyang County (now Rongcheng District, Jieyang City), and after two occupations, my family took refuge in my grandparents' house in the countryside, but the Japanese army did not enter the village.
It seems that I was born in 1939 when I took refuge in the countryside. When I was born, I was emaciated and sickly, and I was particularly ugly, and adults joked that I had picked it up under a big banyan tree. For a long time, looking ugly was my "psychological shadow". When I was studying at Peking University, I was secretly distressed that no girl was looking at me directly. When I was a child, I was dull, and I had memories of being four or five years old, probably when I went to kindergarten run by a Christian church. I was once able to cross a ditch and fall into the ditch and get soaked. The pastor led me to the pastor's house to change my clothes. There was a fig tree in his yard, and he picked two figs for me to eat. The Bible often refers to figs, and adam and Eve in genesis stole forbidden fruit and knew that they were ashamed, so they took the fig leaves as skirts. This event has nothing to do with the Bible, and it is because the mouth is hungry at that time that I can't forget it. I have said many times that when I was in elementary school, I was not a good student, I did not read any decent books, and all I could say was some "bad deeds". Junior high school is a little better, understand the rules.
In 1965, he joined the Rural Four Clearance Task Force in front of his residence
At that time, the competition for going to school was not as fierce as it is now, learning seemed to be less tense and anxious, life was relatively simple, there were not many temptations, but there were not many choices, and the path everyone had to take was not much different. Naturally, much less was learned in school than it is now. However, it is difficult to say which era is good, and each has a different "way of living".
▍ Later Shang: According to the available information, your enlightenment probably has two sources, Christianity and literary classics. You were born into a Christian family and are deeply influenced by Christianity. You said in an interview, "The main influence of religion on me is that one must always maintain faith in the distinction between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, experience and transcendence, although the standards of beauty and ugliness and so on change in history." "At the same time, you read a lot of literature before you went to college. How did these affect your life and later academic work?
▍ Hong Zicheng: The source of "enlightenment", I really did not think about it. Christian influence is certainly there; but it is mostly achieved through the words and deeds of parents. When I was a child, I prayed with my parents and read and prayed, all of which were required by my parents, and I didn't know much about doctrine. Her mother was a Hakka and had worked for housework all her life. Nine of our siblings, all brought up by my mother, only until the birth of the youngest twin brother, I asked a nanny for two years to help take care of them. "Nanny", the Teochew dialect is called "Xiangfu", a gentle and gentle title. After understanding things, every day I saw my mother get up early in the morning to make a fire to make breakfast, the south always had to wash a large basin of clothes every day, and my mother went to the market to buy vegetables after cooling a bamboo pole to prepare lunch and dinner, day after day. His father was a doctor, but not a formal medical school graduate, he first apprenticed at a relative who was a doctor, starting from sweeping the floor and pouring a spittoon, and later recommended to Chao'an Gospel Hospital for further study, after graduation as a trainee doctor, and then to Shanghai Medical College for a year of training, and got a certificate of completion. Be honest, don't steal and slip, try to do what you should do and can do, don't look down on people with low status, and hate arrogance and lasciviousness... These are mainly from the words and deeds of the family, and they are all the principles of life repeatedly said by the father and mother. Of course, in such a family, under such teaching, there is certainly a lack of revolutionary and pioneering spirit, and the character of being conservative, conformist, and timid and afraid of things is cultivated.
▍ HouShang: At the end of the 1950s, you went to Peking University to study, stayed in school after graduation, and taught writing classes at Peking University. At that time, zong baihua, Wang Yao, Qian Xuexi, Jiang Yinen, Ren Jiyu, Wu Xinghua, etc. also taught at Peking University, and now we most often mention their wind bones. In your impression, what kind of demeanor and cultivation do these professors have? Can they mingle with the college students of the time?
Hong Zicheng: In 1956, I was admitted to Peking University, which has many outstanding scholars and professors. Mr. Zong Baihua and Mr. Ren Jiyu were in the Department of Philosophy at that time; Mr. Zhu Guangqian began in the Department of Spanish Languages and later transferred to the Department of Philosophy; Mr. Wu Xinghua was in the Department of Spanish; Mr. Jiang Yin'en was in the Department of Chinese, but he was majoring in journalism, and in 1958 he left Peking University after merging his journalism major into Renmin University. I don't know any of these famous professors. There are also many famous professors in the department of Chinese of Peking University, such as You Guoen, Wang Li, Lin Geng, Yang Han, Wu Zujian, Wang Yao, Gao Mingkai, Zhu Dexi, Wu Xiaoru, etc. I have taken their classes or listened to their lectures, and naturally I have learned a lot. After graduation, I stayed in the school and was assigned to the writing teaching group, which belonged to the Chinese teaching and research department, and Mr. Zhu Dexi, the deputy director of the teaching and research department, was in charge of our teaching group.
Most of these gentlemen were approachable and had many opportunities to ask them for advice, but during my time at Peking University, until the 1980s and 1990s, I never visited them alone. As I said, this is definitely a loss to my learning, growth, and later research. There are two reasons for this situation, one is that I feel that I do not have the conditions to talk to them and ask for advice in terms of knowledge, and the other is "social phobia", and I do have an innate fear.
"Seventeen Years of Literature"
Continues to "herald the future"
▍Hou Shang: About your life and work in the 1950s and 1960s. Judging from the relevant material, your style and style in the 1960s tended to be restrained and rational. How did this change happen?
▍Hong Zicheng: I can't explain the reason for this change. One possible factor was the situation in the early 1960s. The Great Leap Forward of 1958-1959 failed in the early 1960s, the boom had subsided, and my heart calmed down. From the second half of 1960 to 1962, schools across the country emphasized the formal teaching order, and Peking University also emphasized more reading to teachers and students to make up for the lessons delayed by the Great Leap Forward. In fact, my grade did not really take the "modern literary history" related course, and when I was close to graduation, Mr. Wang Yao took the lead, and several teachers gave us a group of related lectures for the first time. Another reason is that after graduation, I teach writing classes, and when selecting, analyzing and grading students' homework, I realize the importance of expression and style: a meaning, a situation can be expressed in different ways, and the feelings conveyed in different ways will be different, even far away.
Another thing is that the feeling of reading in my period has given birth to a concise and restrained beauty that has not appeared before. Reading during this period, I was talking about "The New Language of the World", "Liaozhai", "Dream of the Red Chamber", Cao Yu's script, Gorky's "Memoirs", "Hunter's Notes", Turgenev's "Memoirs", especially all chekhov's novels and plays translated in Chinese that year. Gorky wrote of his impression of Chekhov in this way, saying that everyone in the presence of Chekhov can not help but have a desire to become simpler, more real, more of himself; to abandon the colorful clothes woven by the words and phrases of the books and the fashionable language... This was also my experience of reading Chekhov's novels and plays at that time. Of course, Chekhov's frustration, which is similar to calm despair, may also be a "poison" to me.
▍ Hou Shang: At the beginning of your literary research, you chose the "contemporary literature" of the 50s and 70s, and provided new horizons and vitality for the literary research of this period. Today, "contemporary" is no longer "contemporary", but in my reading, I found that the "seventeen years of literature" (1949-1966) you discussed is still very vivid, such as Zhou Yang and others in your literary history, and Guo Xiaochuan, Huang Qiuyun (Huang Qiuyun), Yevtushenko (Yevtusenko) and so on. Does this mean that you seem to value individual experience and value more? In the history of literature, how should writers and historical narratives be balanced?
▍Hong Zicheng: It is okay to say "choose", but I have talked about it in another place, and this choice has the meaning of retreat and helplessness. In the "new era" of the late 1970s and early 1980s, what excited me was not history, but the status quo, the new trend of thought that was surging at that time, the phenomenon of new works by new people, and the phenomenon of not being able to give. There are no talented critics and researchers who are not attracted to them and are consciously engaged. Me too. But after I tried to fail and found myself incompetent, I "chose" the contemporary "history". I was more familiar with the literary situation of the first thirty years of the "contemporary", so I followed this old road of saving effort and quiet. At that time, it was not expected that the "contemporary" would become quite lively after more than thirty years, and there would be many scholars to pay attention. The scene at that time, as Dai Jinhua said in his review of my History of Contemporary Chinese Literature, "... The first thirty years, cut off by various ruptures, became a specific forbidden area and an outcast, inflated between various 'borrowings' and 'rhetoric', and hidden between various 'official statements' and silent disdain. Contemporary history has become a period of constant borrowing and bypassing, and is exceptionally silent in the midst of public noise. ”
But it is true that this chapter of history has not been completely turned over, and it is still a real problem. The phenomena of this period, the differences in continuous interpretation, are still fermenting and stretching, and they have become a participating force in the design of political and literary prospects. My aim is to "resist" the powerful tendency to "simplify" this important historical period, to present its complexity and to present, as you say, the different fates of individuals. In order to effectively enter this historical stage and grasp its lifeblood, it is necessary to find special methods and angles. Entering this period of history from the perspective of the system, the way writers exist, the "way of organization" of literary production, and the change of the connotation of conceptual categories is the method and angle that I established at that time. This is a targeted approach, and this method and the formulation and use of certain concepts, such as "integration", are analytical, of course, these methods and concepts can only solve part of the problem. Therefore, the neglect and thinness of some important aspects are difficult to avoid, which requires additional research to bear.
In August 1999, Professor Hong Zicheng's History of Contemporary Chinese Literature was published by Peking University Press, and a revised edition was launched in 2010. So far, this literary history work with the nature of both textbooks and research monographs has been issued in nearly one million copies, which is not only a textbook and reference book commonly used in many colleges and universities across the country, but also one of the most important must-read books for contemporary literary research. In addition, the book has been translated into 9 languages (English, Japanese, Russian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Arabic, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, the first 5 of which have been published), which is one of the most influential works in the history of contemporary Chinese literature at home and abroad.
After the A History of Contemporary Chinese Literature was published in Brill, the Netherlands, Professor Bonnie S. McDougall published a book review in The China Journal, talking about some of its merits and highlighting the problems with this literary history. "Because it is written entirely within the conventions of mainland literary history, the debates about the ideologies of the fifties and sixties in the first few chapters of this book are rather dull to read," she said. These debates are very important for those who lived through that era, or for experts who specialized in partisan relations in that era and were quite interested in it. But after all, that era has become a fading past, and it is out of the ordinary track of history, far from foreshadowing the future direction. Is there anyone other than a few scholars who are interested in the literary phenomenon of this historical period? The answer is very suspicious. In fact, Chinese scholars may have different feelings than Professor Du Boni. This history is not "drifting away", whether you agree or not, it continues to "herald the future", and it is far from being "a few scholars" who are interested in it.
▍ Later Shang: Before the 1980s, the literary and art groups experienced a period of "underground" for a period of time, typical such as the Star Painting Society, the Anonymous Painting Society, the Baiyangdian Poetry Group, etc., most of them were Beijing children, basically working as workers around Beijing. In the course of your research on contemporary literary history, have you had any contact with this group of people? Later, how did you get involved with Today? What is your attitude toward the collective Enlightenment that emerged in the 1980s?
▍Hong Zicheng: In terms of nature, using the concept of "underground" to identify these phenomena you mentioned, some can be, some are not appropriate. Another concept that can be chosen, "folk". These "folk" poetry and artistic activities are important phenomena in contemporary literary/cultural history. Like the private publications you mentioned, such as "Today", they played an important role in the intellectual thinking and artistic changes before and after the "Cultural Revolution", and had important and trend-setting significance for the development of the new period. Many research papers have discussed this in detail, and my books and papers have discussed these phenomena.
Before Professor Hong Zicheng retired in 2002, the Department of Modern and Contemporary and Folk Literature of the Department of Chinese of Peking University was located at Jietai Temple
Indeed, as you said, most of the members of "Today" and the "Star Painting Society" were Beijing middle school students at the time of the "Cultural Revolution", and many came from "famous schools", such as Beijing No. 4 Middle School and Tsinghua Affiliated Middle School, and later went to the countryside to "cut in the queue" or went to the factory as workers, such as Beidao, Huang Rui, Munch, Duoduo, etc. Many of them were the children of high-ranking cadres and high-ranking intellectuals, who had access to cultural resources that were difficult for ordinary people of that era to access, including theoretical works and literary works published internally, as well as paintings and music that were regarded as "fengzi xiu"—their "hereticality" became the "catalyst" for ideological and artistic changes. Their work and experiences are my subjects of study, but I have little contact with them. Kitajima, Shuting, Rivers, Index Finger, etc., I have never met them. Gu Cheng, I have only seen it from afar at a seminar. I know Dodo after his return in 2005. I remember at the end of December 1999, I went to Dalian for a poetry conference, and Zang Di introduced me to Munch at the airport. Zang Di asked Munch, "Have you read Teacher Hong's History of Contemporary New Poetry?" Munch shook his head blankly, "I haven't read it. "My comments on them are based on second-hand sources, and I have never had interviews or oral histories. This is a flaw in research, a deficiency. The good thing is that my judgments, even if they are unreliable, are less interfered with by factors such as human feelings.
▍ Hou Shang: Recently, I interviewed the artist and curator Zheng Shengtian (Zheng Shengtian), who is quite similar to your resume and thoughts. Just as you discovered China from Eastern European writers, he also discovered China from Eastern European art (and Mexican art). He has a saying called "socialist modernism", to the effect that Chinese scholars, writers, and artists have been doing "modernism".
▍Hong Zicheng: It seems that there is such a saying in the contemporary literary world at a certain time. I remember that in the 1990s, some critics included the conceptual and collaged creations of illustrations during the "Cultural Revolution" in the category of avant-garde experiments, and critics also used concepts such as modernism. This statement, on the one hand, tries to summarize the artistic characteristics of these creations, and on the other hand, it also hopes to enhance the value of these creations. My understanding is that it is not impossible to add the title of "modernism", but the structure between the various "isms" of literature and art is not a ladder relationship of evolution and development, not that adding "modernism" can become glorious, there is "universality". There are both excellent masterpieces and inferior cheap goods in various "isms" of various titles.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a great debate on the issue of realism within socialist countries and in the left-wing literary circles of the West, and some left-wing writers believed that when socialist realism encountered a crisis, it was necessary to introduce myths, fables, and dreams, to introduce the "material" of Nietzsche's "hypermaterialization", and to introduce the elements of "modernism" to change socialist realism. Their claims are justified, and they are also reflected in the artistic practice of countries such as Yugoslavia, Poland, and the Czech Republic. But as a prominent critic in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now the capital of Croatia), commented on the exhibition of young Polish paintings held there in 1957: "The boldness of the Poles shocked us." It is regrettable, however, that the Poles replaced Zhdanov-style formulaism with an equally terrible formulaism, that is, 'abstraction'. That is to say, the formulaism of "modernism" is not superior to the formulaism of socialist realism.
From the 1990s to the present,
Writing books, reading, writing books...
▍Hou Shang: Since the 1990s, you have successively edited the "Peiwen Literature And Contemporary History Series", "Literature and Contemporary History Series", "Literature Book Series of the 1990s", and "Chinese Poetry in the 1990s". What is the experience of editing the book series?
▍Hong Zicheng: Why is it rarely mentioned? Probably not worth mentioning. I do research and I'm basically self-employed. I have also participated in a number of collaborative projects, not many, some of which have not been successful. For example, in the 1980s, I participated in the contemporary literary history works edited by Mr. Zhang Jiong, and undertook some of the chapters. Since many people cooperate, the overall framework and personal philosophy are very different, and it is conceivable that it will not be successful. However, some of the large-scale projects that I participated in under the presidency of Mr. Xie Mian should be said to have achieved good results, such as the "Centennial Chinese Literature General Department", of which I undertook the book "1956: The Hundred Flowers Era"; such as the "Centennial New Poetry General Department", in which I undertook the 1960s volume. Mr. Xie Mian advocated that under the basically consistent style, individual scholars should have their own independence, and their views and styles should have individual characteristics, so that the effect of such collective cooperation projects is better. In the 1990s, together with him, I compiled the Selected Historical Materials of Contemporary Chinese Literature and the Selected Works of Contemporary Chinese Literature, which were also successful in taking into account the standards of literary history and literary standards. Selected Works of Contemporary Chinese Literature has a history of thirty years and is still being reprinted. These works of an informative nature are actually the basis of my research and an important work.
In January 1959, he compiled the "Overview of the Development of New Poetry", in front of the dormitory building of the Chinese Writers Association and Hepingli. From left: Yin Jinpei, Liu Denghan, Hong Zicheng, Xie Mian, Sun Yushi, Sun Shaozhen
The "Literature And Books Department of the 1990s" you mentioned was mainly planned by scholars such as He Zhaotian of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and I was named as the chief editor-in-chief, but I actually did not participate much in the specific work. During this period, a very embarrassing thing happened, when the editor-in-chief of the Social Science Literature Publishing House said that the editors-in-chief of each sub-volume (Cai Xiang, Nanfan, Dai Jinhua, Cheng Guangwei, Geng Zhanchun) were all well-known scholars and critics, and they were familiar with it, but the chief editor-in-chief Hong Zicheng had never heard of it. After He Zhaotian and others painstakingly explained, I was able to barely keep the title of "chief editor.".
The series of "Chinese Poetry in the Nineties" series originated from the poetry conference held in Wuyishan, Fujian Province in the summer of 1997. At the meeting, I defended the much-maligned poetry of the 1990s, arguing that compared with the poetry of the 1980s, it has made remarkable progress in the relationship between poetry and reality, poetry, and poet style. With this in mind, Zang Di asked me to be the editor-in-chief of the series of books he was planning, and wrote a preface for him, including the works of six poets, Zang Di, Zhang Shuguang, Xidu, Huang Canran, Sun Wenbo, and Zhang Zao.
In terms of research, I lacked a macro vision, did not have the grandeur, and lacked the prestige and ability necessary to organize collective projects, so I reluctantly led the way to try to do some collective projects, but most of them were not successful. For example, the "Selected New Poems of a Hundred Years" (divided into "Time and Flag" and "Thinking for Beauty" and "Thinking for Beauty" volume) that I proposed, co-edited with Xi Mi, Wu Xiaodong, Jiang Tao, and Leng Shuang, we spent several years preparing to sort out and summarize, but it did not meet expectations. The same is true of the "Literature and Contemporary History" series of books I edited, the "Chinese New Poetry Research Series", and the "Hanyuan New Poetry Criticism Series". There are countless titles in Chinese academia, one of which is called "Discipline Leader". Suppose I have the privilege of obtaining the title of "subject leader", and I do not have the qualifications and ability to play such a role. In retrospect, most of the cooperation projects organized by myself and participated in by others have left regrets and regrets.
▍Hou Shang: In recent years, you have written many papers related to contemporary Chinese literature and world literature. During the "Seventeen Years" period, what were your access to world literature? In a general sense, the contact between Chinese people and world literature has a gradual expansion, deepening, easier and subversive process, is this also the case with your reading?
▍ Hong Zicheng: Writing articles about foreign literature was originally considered from the perspective of "my reading history", focusing on the different feelings of reading a work in different periods. I want to record this trajectory, which shows both the changes in my personal thoughts and emotions, and how the times and various circumstances have affected my personal reading. However, the recent articles on foreign literature are different from the perspective of "My Reading History", and the focus is on the deepening of contemporary literary history research.
Chinese literature in the 20th century was greatly influenced by foreign literature, and Chinese literature consciously regarded foreign literature, especially Russian-Soviet literature and Western European literature, as important ideological and literary resources, which is the consensus of everyone. Ignoring this look, our understanding of contemporary literature is certainly lacking.
In addition, contemporary Chinese literature, like Soviet literature, can be regarded as a kind of "national literature": state-led, designed, and managed literature, which has obvious presuppositions and planning characteristics. Contemporary literature, when designing and constructing itself, when imagining its nature and form, is carried out from the perspective of "world literature", and there is a strong appeal to provide universal experience for world literature. All of the above situations require the study to have the vision of world literature. Although I lacked the conditions to conduct in-depth research in this area, I still wrote a lot of writing without being too shallow, hoping to attract the attention of scholars on this topic.
In the 1950s and 1960s, I read a lot of works by foreign writers, and the relevant reading middle school began. "The Tall Old Man", "The Red and the Black", "Eugen Onegin", "Contemporary Hero", "John Christopher", etc., were all read in high school, and there are many poems and novels that are almost no longer read, the Soviet "Harvest", "The Place Far Away from Moscow", "The Seagull", "The Young Guard", "Day and Night", Antonov's short stories, Isakovsky's poems... The "channel" of reading is, of course, the published Chinese translation.
The pushkin I first read seemed to be a translation of Mr. Ge Baoquan published by the Moscow Foreign Language Publishing Bureau (presumably the Times Pictorial Publishing House). In fact, foreign works from the 1950s, 1960s, the 19th century and before were systematically translated into the Chinese world, such as ancient Greek dramas, epics, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and especially the 19th century realist literature, including high-quality translations. In the late 1950s, under the leadership of Zhou Yang of the Central Propaganda Department (former deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee and former chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles), the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (formerly known as the Institute of Literature of Peking University) and the People's Literature Publishing House established an editorial committee for masterpieces of foreign literature, with Bian Zhilin, Feng Zhi, Zhu Guangqian, Li Jianwu, Ji Xianlin, and Qian Zhongshu as members. The Editorial Board is responsible for compiling and selecting three series of books, "Marxist Literary and Art Theory Series", "Foreign Classical Literary and Art Theory Series" and "Foreign Classical Literature Masterpieces Series" (later changed to "Foreign Literary Masterpieces Series"). The "Series of Masterpieces of Foreign Classical Literature", also known as the "Grid Book", published in 1958, published one hundred and fifty or sixty in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the foreign classics I bought and read in the 1960s were such authoritative "grid books."
Of course, as you said, the contemporary period also adopted a strategy of blocking and blocking the "modernist" literature of the 20th century, as well as the literature of the Russian Soviet Union that was regarded as "heretical". Writers like the "modernist" literature and art of the West and the "Silver Age" writers in Russia did not read it until after the 1980s.
Selected Academic Works of Hong Zicheng (Peking University Press, 2020)
▍ Houshang: In 2021, the "Hong Zicheng Academic Works Collection" was added by Peking University Press to the book "Interviews and Dialogues", and in October 2020, "Selected Academic Works of Hong Zicheng" was also published by Peking University Press. The "Hong Zicheng Academic Portfolio" contains most of the research on your writings, but there seems to be some omissions. I wonder if you have any plans to publish the complete collection?
▍Hong Zicheng: There is no such plan. The publication of the complete collection must have certain qualifications, and there must also be corresponding publication financial support, which I do not have. In 2010, Peking University Press published a "collection of academic works" for me, which also has the meaning of "complete works". The "academic portfolio" does have omissions, but the text that is not included is somewhat irrelevant. I think it's good to take a "portfolio" approach that collects a single book, where each book is priced separately, and readers buy whatever book they find useful, without wasting money and squeezing out storage space. In 2010, the "Academic Works Collection" was included in eight kinds, and later successively joined "My Reading History", "Materials and Notes", "Reading Works", "Interviews and Dialogues". There may be one or two more in the future, such as World Literature in Contemporary Literature.
▍ Later quotient: You often put yourself in a relatively low position, admit your own shortcomings, such a neutral, conservative, stable disposition and way, in the course of life and scholarship, just have the possibility of cross-generational and cross-period. For decades, such a holding has brought you to such a position that may be lonely or graceful. I believe that your holding may have a value that goes far beyond your own. Can you elaborate on the connection between your temperament and your scholarship?
Hong Zicheng: I often feel that I am inadequate, and this is indeed a fact. Don't say that the seniors I know are scholars of the same generation, and even many of my students, there are many gaps between me and them. Realizing this, we have the desire to learn from them, and the consciousness to find ways to create conditions for dialogue and communication. A few years ago, I had a conversation with Teacher Qian Liqun to talk about this issue. My title is "How I Became Qian Liqun's 'Contemporary'". The dialogue was supposed to be included in the 2021 edition of Conversations and Interviews, but for unknown reasons when it was published, it was deleted. I quote the French contemporary poet René Charles, "We borrow only those things that can be doubled back." "It can be "doubled" and "naturally comes mainly from those great writers, scholars, and those classic works." My experience, however, is that if you are open-minded and keen, you can find the same spark of the spirit of thought in even less prominent people.
(Thanks to Zang Di, Jiang Tao, Liu Fusheng, Leng Shuang, Lin Peiyuan, Xu Renhao, and Cheng Yuqi for their revised opinions on the revision of the interview outline.) ）
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