Haizi: A poet in Sun City
Cao who
I. The rivers and mountains of the Son of the Sun
A baby boy croaked to the ground under the midday sun, he saw the world for the first time under the thorn of the sun, and later he said, "My career is to become the life of the sun", this baby boy is Cha Haisheng, later the poet Haizi. Haizi was born at noon on February 21, 1964 (12:30 on March 24, 1964) in Chajiawan Village, Gaohe Town, Huaining County, Anqing City, Anhui Province, and the life of "Prince of Poetry" Haizi began to expand from the coordinates of his own time and space, and slowly established his own "Sun City".
Haizi was born in Huaining County, Huaining County once with Anqing City for a long time, and Anqing has been the capital of Anhui Province in the past, Anqing is above the Yangtze River, under the Anhui Mountains, is the cultural center of Anhui Province, as Haizi said in the poem "To Anqing": "You face the river / Sit down... Ask your uncertain aunt in Anqing City/ Ask about you, talk about you", Haizi slowly grew up in such a river and mountain.
Haizi has a sunny personality since childhood, cheerful, frank, enthusiastic, persistent, and full of heroism like all Aries men. In a letter to his younger brother Cha Shu Ming, he called Cha Wan Village "a pastoral garden where flowers bloomed", he crossed the golden rice fields, fished in the clear ponds, he played games with his friends in his hometown, he went to the hills of his hometown to look into the distance, and he sketched his ambitions and the world in his heart. At that time, China's rural areas were not rich, but Haizi found a cultural inheritance that lasted for thousands of years in such an ancient village.
Haizi has been writing about the wheat field, he was once called the "wheat field poet", in the poem "wheat field" wrote "wheat waves - / the table of heaven / placed on the field", he put the wheat field between heaven and earth, he wrote "we each lead / The Nile, Babylon or the Yellow River / Children", "The poor and the rich / New York and Jerusalem", he wrote that the wheat field is the food of all mankind. However, when we trace the footprints of Haizi and walk to Haizi's hometown, we find that the ancient village can not find the shadow of the wheat field at all, here is the "golden straw yellow with green", from rice to wheat, Haizi originally entered the human world from his own life, wheat originated in Babylon, and later spread to the Nile and the Yellow River, spread to the east and west, the mango thorn of the wheat is like the light emitted by the sun, he is still describing the sun when he writes about the wheat field, in the world of the "emperor of poetry", The sun was the center of his life's praise.
Second, young genius
Haizi is extremely talented, such a light cannot be hidden, and he has reflected the difference from ordinary people at a very young age. Haizi's mother, Cao Caiju, was born in a landlord family, read books for five years, and liked literature and art, she read "Anhui Literature" to him when Haizi was three years old, and Haizi could actually recognize the word "An" at a glance the next day. When Haizi was four years old, his peasant father, Cha Zhenquan, carried him to the village Chairman Mao quotation contest, and the four-year-old Haizi recited forty-eight quotations in one breath, shocking all the villagers present. When Haizi grew up to be seven or eight years old, he became the child king of the village, and his friends liked to listen to stories around him, and Haizi told them the stories of the Three Kingdoms, The Journey to the West, and the Water Margin that he heard from his mother, often making the little friends listen to them silently.
The famous critic Zhang Qinghua commented that Haizi was a genius who "met once in five hundred years" and believed that he would be like Li Bai and Du Fu, influencing future generations for five hundred or even a thousand years. Haizi also uses "genius" as a core image in his poems, he said in "Poetics, an Outline" that "genius is one of the most brilliant phenomena of life", he called a series of geniuses such as Han Bo, Ye Saining, Hölderlin and so on as princes, which is also the original meaning of the prince of poetry, that is, poetic genius. Poetry or literature is the cause of geniuses, and in Haizi's poetry career, it has to be said that all his diligence is for the display of genius.
Thirteen-year-old Haizi graduated from junior high school with honors, and he could have attended Anqing No. 1 Middle School, the best middle school in Anqing, but in order to be close to home, he chose Gaohe Middle School in the town. Haizi initially chose science, and later found himself more interested in liberal arts, perhaps at that time he had a vague plan for his future, two months later he re-chose the liberal arts, the always gentle father was furious about this, took him to the teacher, under the persuasion of the teacher, the father accepted Haizi's decision.
When he was a student at Takakawa Middle School, Haizi was a resident student, and he came home once a week, bringing vegetables and rice from home to the school canteen to steam and eat, which was his meal for the week. Every day at school, he put the rice in an aluminum lunch box and steamed it in the large steamer basket in the canteen, and then solved his own three meals a day with pickles such as soybeans, dried vegetables, and radishes in the enamel cup. Day after day, Haizi ate such white rice pickles every day, and his body began to swell due to lack of nutrition, and he wrote in the poem, "My head is also big, my body is swollen, my stomach is broken" ("Sun Gong"). At that time, it was the cultural revolution period, it was the era of lack of food and clothing, eating became a pain point in Haizi's life, in the later poetry "Sun" series, Haizi would plan to write a trilogy of "killing", "eating" and "playing", combined with the background of that era and Haizi's experience, it is not difficult for us to understand the theme of Haizi's poetry trilogy, but unfortunately the "eating" part was not completed.
Haizi likes to read books on weekdays, and borrowing books from classmates in the town is something he often does. He read tirelessly all kinds of books he could find, he was very wide-ranging, and he read very fast, always reading quickly, returning it quickly, and then borrowing another new book from the other party. Haizi cherished books very much, he did not take any notes on books, this was a habit he had formed over the years, and all his books were as new as new. Haizi wanders in the ocean of knowledge, the knowledge he absorbs is extensive and mixed, some people criticize Haizi poetry as obscure, in fact, the imagery of Haizi poetry condenses a variety of cultural accumulations.
When Haizi was fifteen years old, he was admitted to the law department of Peking University with high scores, which is a first-class institution for thousands of students in China. Knowing that Haizi was admitted to Peking University, Haizi's mother borrowed thirty yuan from people, and his father, who was also a tailor in his spare time, sewed new clothes for Haizi, and Haizi put his luggage into a suitcase specially made for him. From his hometown to Beijing, all the way, Haizi was observing this novel world, and many scenery along the way later entered his poems, including the suitcase, which he also wrote many times in the poem, who could have imagined that after his death, the wooden box would become the last storage place for Haizi's manuscript.
Third, the poetry of youth
Overnight, Haizi moved from the village of Chawan, China's most grassroots village, into the capital, Beijing. Haizi came to the shore of the unnamed lake, took a picture shyly with Boya Tower as a background, and began her studies at Peking University as a souvenir. He loves youth, as he said in The Sun Messiah: "Youth is coming in the face / The world is bound to be broken / Heaven is gathering together and suddenly separated / Cheering in unison Youth Youth / Youth is coming face to face". He said in his diary: "Every day I get up early, I am obsessed with the morning, devote myself to one day after another, that day is not life - that day he is just a dream, a dream of youth." ”
Haizi was originally just a well-behaved student, walking between dormitories, canteens, classrooms, at that time Peking University had the so-called "triangle area", the so-called "triangle area" is the daily life between the canteen and the dormitory, where there are bookstores, shops, barbershops, etc., "triangle area" is the area that Haizi often patronizes. Haizi was the youngest of his classmates, so at that time he had a nickname called "Dongzi", which was from pan Dongzi, the protagonist of the movie "Shining Red Star".
In college, reading was still Haizi's hobby, and Haizi often soaked in the library to read various books. Haizi's undergraduate major is law, and on the premise of learning this professional knowledge, he also dabbles in a wide range of knowledge in other fields, and in his sophomore year, he began to immerse himself in philosophy and read many philosophical books, especially Hegel's philosophical theories. In the discipline of mankind, philosophy is the synthesis of all disciplines, in which Haizi found the "totality" of human civilization, which Liao Yuan introduced in the "Commentary on Haizi" in the special chapters "In the Dark Kingdom of Classical Philosophy" and "Pre-Qin Astrology in the Vast Night Sky". Haizi found a fit in Western classical philosophy and Chinese pre-Qin literature, which prepared him for the "great poetry".
The 1980s were an era of national literature, and there was a saying in Peking University: Throwing out a steamed bun will kill ten poets. At this time, China's poetry circle was vigorously carrying out the obscure poetry movement, and poets such as Beidao, Gucheng, Jianghe, and Yang Lian were rising. In 1982, it was under such a trend that Haizi embarked on the road of poetry and began his seven-year poetry journey, in which he wrote in The Sun Messiah: "1982 / I was just eighteen years old, with a longing in my heart / Carrying a wounded stranger / To find heaven, to find life." ”
In China, campus literature is an important station for young poets to go to the literary world, Peking University has the May Fourth Literary Society, the Chinese Department also founded the journal "Qixing", Haizi's poetry was first published in "Qixing". Although Haizi did not join the literary society at that time, he had close contacts with the poets of the poetry club, and the two poets who had the closest contacts were Luo Yihe and Nishikawa, who were known as the "Three Poets of Peking University". They often go to taverns to drink and talk about poetry, when everyone's alcohol is small, a bottle of wine makes them dizzy, and they criticize the obscure poets who have reached a dead end at the wine table, thinking that they should find their way.
In 1983, Haizi graduated from Peking University, and on the eve of graduation, he mimeographed a collection of more than sixty pages of poetry, "Xiao Station", signed by the original name Cha Haisheng, which contained his early twenty-three poems, from which we can see that Haizi's early poetry carried a strong hazy poetry mark, even so, Haizi's poetry at this time has begun to show its own style, Haizi's generation of poets later called "new generation", precisely because they are a generation that transcends on the basis of obscure poetry.
Fourth, the loneliness of Changping
In the summer of 1983, after graduating from Peking University, Haizi was assigned to the journal of China University of Political Science and Law as an editor. At that time, the China University of Political Science and Law moved to Changping, a suburb of Beijing, changping was like a county town, which could not be compared with Beijing, but he was already satisfied with Haizi at that time, and he finally changed from a rural teenager to a city worker. When Haizi was at the China University of Political Science and Law, his monthly salary was forty-six yuan, and after receiving two months' salary, Haizi sent sixty yuan to his family with the money he had saved, which caused quite a stir in the village. Young Haizi is full of youth and devotes himself to work, writing his own poems after work, and Luo Yihe and Nishikawa occasionally visit him on weekends, so monotonous and repetitive living conditions make Haizi feel lonely. In order to make her life more fulfilling, Haizi also became an adviser to the Stardust Literary Club, but unfortunately, the position of Haizi's consultant was not officially recognized, so she was called "the famous and unknown Haizi" by the editor.
In this period, Haizi completed the only paper in his life "From the theory of mutation to see the role of the state in producing forms and hair", he used the mutation theory in the most advanced "new three theories" in systems science (dissipation structure theory, synergy theory, mutation theory) to talk about the change of the country, the thesis of this paper is novel and unique, after publication caused a good response, the editor-in-chief of the journal "Discussion" Chang Yuan read this paper, took the initiative to contact Haizi, they later became friends, and this person will profoundly affect Haizi's later life, Haizi began practicing Qigong under his influence.
After a year of editing, Haizi was transferred to the Department of Politics and worked in the Philosophy Department, specializing in teaching philosophy courses. Haizi often talked about esoteric and boring philosophy lessons with great interest, he talked about the imagination in aesthetics, "You can imagine that seagulls are God's swimming trunks", the students couldn't help but laugh when they heard it, and the atmosphere of the whole class suddenly became relaxed and pleasant. When Haizi worked in the philosophy department, the closest contact was his colleague Sun Libo, who also wrote a poem to Sun Libo called "Birthday Ode". They often discussed various issues together, and they made this kind of discussion self-deprecating for fun, from the Bachelor's English Bachelor, and at the same time self-deprecating as a bachelor, pun intended.
In 1984, Haizi first published his masterpiece "Asian Copper" under the pseudonym "Haizi", which formed his unique style, and to this day, many people still feel that "Asian Copper" is the best poem he has written. Haizi's feelings for poetry gradually became better, he was like a drinker who gradually tasted the sweet taste of red wine, he began to be obsessed with the state of writing poetry, he felt that everything except writing poetry was a waste of time, this period, he began to write long poems madly, his first long poem "River" was quickly printed, the preface of this poetry collection is "Looking for Contact with the Entity", this preface is his declaration to embark on the road of independent poetry.
In the lonely years when Changping was fighting alone, Haizi spent most of his daily life immersed in poetry writing, and his salary was generally divided into two parts, one part was sent home to subsidize the family, and the other part was used to buy books and enrich himself. In order to buy books, he saves money and cooks cabbage in his bedroom on weekdays to deal with his three meals a day, for which he often borrows money from friends. Haizi at first felt that he was the proud son of heaven and had a rich spiritual world, and after encountering many troubles in the cruel reality, he suddenly found himself to be just an ordinary university teacher, especially after being abandoned by his girlfriend's family, he began to feel the loneliness of life, and later he wrote the poem "Loneliness in Changping", feeling that "loneliness is indescribable", which is probably the local spiritual portrayal of him at that time. Haizi smiled at every sunrise and sunset in Changping, but his heart was always in a state of loneliness, and he felt that he was getting farther and farther away from the city of Beijing, as he wrote in the poem "Tribes at Sunset": "Beijing / Your city gate is open on all sides / The emptiness inside."
Haizi's "Night" can be said to be a summary of his life:
In the night
I have suffered three times: wandering love survival
I have three kinds of happiness: poetry throne, sun
Haizi pursued poetry (pure poetry), sun (great poetry), and throne (poetry) all his life, but he was bound by his own survival, love, and wandering, and the intertwined state of life of "suffering" and "happiness" continued until the eve of his suicide.
Fifth, Haizi's love
Haizi wrote "Four Sisters" before committing suicide, saying: "This stupid four sisters I loved", so who are Haizi's four girlfriends? Haizi once gave poems to four women, namely B, S, P and Y.
Haizi's first love is B, she was born in Inner Mongolia to an intellectual family and was a student of Haizi. As an advisor to the Stardust Poetry Society, Haizi often took the students out to go out to Qingqing, and at the invitation of the students, Haizi began to recite his poetry work "History", "Those lonely flowers / Are the lost lips of spring", what a wonderful verse, the B of the students was deeply moved, as Haizi wrote in the poem "To You": "I believe all this / I believe that we both fell in love at first sight", Haizi's pen name is probably from the Mongolian name for the lake - Haizi. In the winter of 1984, Haizi began a sweet first love life, he and B rode their bicycles together on the country roads, and went to Shanhaiguan together. After the passion of love, they slowly entered reality, B's parents heard that Haizi's parents were farmers, and Haizi was just an ordinary university teacher, so they categorically refused to associate with his daughter, and in the middle they divided and merged, until 1986, when B graduated, he completely broke up, this year he tried to commit suicide for the first time, but later he found himself again. B affected Haizi's life, a person can only love once in his life, Haizi fell in love with B, and after that, he could no longer fall deeply in love with another woman.
Haizi later met S of the Changping Cultural Center, who was a woman of the type of virtuous wife and mother. Haizi wrote in "Dedication poems - to S": "Who flies in the beautiful fire / and gives me unlimited gifts", S's dedication to Haizi must be selfless, S loves Haizi deeply, she takes care of Life for Haizi, she proposes to marry Haizi, but at this time Haizi does not want to be bound by marriage, he decides to move forward to his poetic ideals alone, and the two break up.
Haizi's third girlfriend, P, is an accountant in Daxian County, Sichuan, and P can be said to be a fan of Haizi, she loves Haizi's poetry very much and communicates with Haizi through letters. Haizi once went to Daxian during the winter vacation in 1987, the purpose of going to Daxian is to meet P, they met in the ancient stone laneway of Daxian County, P wants Haizi to stay, live in seclusion in the mountains and forests together, and live a free life together, so that P did not expect that Haizi is like a ship with a clear goal, it is impossible to anchor in the harbor along the way, compared to love, he values his poetry career more. P sends Haizi to the dock, they are sad and separated, Haizi wrote in "The Crown": "Since you can't be my wife / You must become my crown / I will wear it with the great poets of the world", he put P in the depths of his heart.
There is almost no controversy about Haizi's first three girlfriends, but his last girlfriend is full of mystery in front of the world, and we judge from the poem "Wild Pigeon" that Haizi's last girlfriend is the "invisible female poet" Y. Y's hometown is in Delingha, Haizi once met Y on the way to Tibet, and later they met in Beijing, in the last stage of Haizi's life, Y took good care of Haizi, and even after Haizi's mother arrived in Beijing, Y also visited Haizi twice a week to wash the feet of Haizi's mother, Y as a Mandarin-speaking city woman, taking care of Haizi's mother from the countryside, Y's feelings for Haizi can be seen. It is said that love is the best medicine to save the dying heart, why did Y not save Haizi in the end, did they not love enough, or Did Haizi have long been dead to life? It's a mystery.
First love B, Changping S, Daxian P, respectively, the embodiment of Chinese intellectuals' ideals, lives, and retreats, and Haizi and them from love to separation correspond to the entanglement of Chinese intellectuals in that era on ideals, life, and retreat. Mysterious Y was once obsessed with finding out who Haizi's favorite woman was, and in order to explore the truth of Haizi's love, she went to see B, S, P, but she still couldn't interpret Haizi's true state of mind, until finally, she read in Haizi's diary: "Remembering the night train in the winter eight years ago, remembering the warm feeling of women and beauty at the beginning - the night was almost like daytime... She is a foreign land beyond the boundaries of the day, a mountain of a foreign country, a mountain and river of other peoples, and a fruit hanging like a beautiful lamp of heaven... Attracted to my almost narcissistic childhood..." At this time, she finally understood that the person Haizi loved most was not B, S, P, not herself, but the "spiritual girl" in her mind.
Sixth, Haizi's wandering
Whether it is China or Europe, intellectuals have a tradition of study tours, Li Bai and Du Fu traveled all over the country, Byron and Kafka traveled around the European countries, and Haizi traveled many times in his short life. Haizi's most important trip in life was his two trips to Tibet and two trips to Sichuan, and in Haizi's short trip, he had to mention Shanhaiguan and Inner Mongolia, both of which were related to his first love B.
B is a native of Inner Mongolia, she took Haizi to Hohhot, to the nearby Tumut grassland to see the scenery of the grassland, the Mongol Empire once ruled the largest land empire in human history, almost including the major civilizations in Eurasia, Haizi's poetry often writes about the grassland, it is from this time that he saw the order of human civilization in the Mongol Empire, the kingdom he depicted is the scenery of the steppe empire, he wrote a long poem "Sun Daza", Daza is the decree of the Mongol Khan King.
Haizi and B travel together to Shanhaiguan, which is the first time Haizi sees the sea, and they spend their sweet first love time at the seaside. After breaking up with B, Haizi went to Shanhaiguan several times to miss her first love B, Shanhaiguan has too many good memories between the two people, until finally, Haizi's suicide also chose Shanhaiguan, because it was the intertwining of Haizi's pain and sweetness.
In the summer of 1985, Haizi tried his first expedition, walking only to Shaanxi, and on the train he saw a large wheat field along the road, which was exactly the wheat field that he later described in "Wheat Field" as a table in heaven. Haizi's poems about maidi were loved by people and were called "wheat poets", which made him realize that poets needed to travel, and after the first hurried journey, he began to plan his future journeys.
In July 1986, Haizi embarked on the first significant trip of her life, to Tibet, a distant destination that many poets aspired to. Haizi took a train from Beijing to the west, and after arriving in Xining, he took a car over the Sun Moon Mountain, passed through Qinghai Lake, Panhuan Delingha, arrived in Golmud, and then from Golmud over the Kunlun Mountains, into Tibet, to Lhasa. Haizi walked on the streets of Lhasa, looking at the sun overhead, he seemed to see the Sun City, Haizi found the ideal of human beings here, and what he saw and felt this time became a turning point in his writing. Haizi began his return journey after a few days of traveling in Lhasa, and after returning to Golmud from Lhasa, he did not return to Beijing by the same route, but took a detour to Dunhuang, and after traveling to this glorious center of the west, he traveled along the Hexi Corridor into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and traveled all the way back to Beijing.
In January 1987, Haizi embarked on his first trip to Sichuan, arriving in Chengdu by train from Beijing and then from Chengdu to Daxian County, where it was raining lightly and his girlfriend P, who loved Haizi's poetry, came to pick him up with an umbrella. They walked along the river in the county, where he was comforted, but in the face of worldly love and poetic ideals, he followed his heart and resolutely chose to pursue his poetic ideals, he could not stop himself, he wanted to return to the scene in China. After separating from P, he took a boat from Daxian and returned to his hometown along the Yangtze River.
In March 1988, Haizi traveled to Sichuan again, which was his second trip to Sichuan. Haizi came to the land with his newly printed long collection of poems, "Land," which he was ostracized in Beijing, eager to be recognized by the Sichuan poetry scene, the poetry center of southern China. At that time, he had long hair, a full mouth and beard, jeans, and his own poetry collection, and lived in the home of the poet Shang Zhongmin. Haizi and Shang Zhongmin discuss poetry all day long, and he feels that he should create "big poems", but Shang Zhongmin feels that the era of epic poetry has passed. Shang Zhongmin took Haizi to visit various poets in Chengdu, including Yang Li, Wan Xia, Zhai Yongming, Ouyang Jianghe, Song Qu, and Song Wei. In Sichuan, Haizi's poems were not recognized by local poets, but were criticized by most poets, many of whom thought his long poems were longer lyrical and lacked structure, and he returned to Beijing depressed. Haizi met Luo Yihe and told him about his experience on this trip to Sichuan, and he told Luo Yihe that he only felt Shang Zhongmin's friendship in Sichuan, and he wanted to do his best to help him in Beijing, but it wasn't long before he read Shang Zhongmin's article criticizing him in a sarcastic tone, which made him disheartened by the poetry world.
In July 1988, Haizi again packed his bags and went into Tibet, this time he and his companions arrived in Xining first, and while in Xining, they stayed for a few days in the Qinghai Literary Association office, and then arrived in Delingha and entered Tibet from there. In Tibet, they met poets who were holding a "Sun City Poetry Meeting", and It was impossible to be invited to Haizi's reputation at that time, and Haizi wanted to meet H, a female poet who was famous for writing "My Sun" in Lhasa. Haizi was repeatedly frustrated and very disappointed, and he and his companions continued to travel to southern Tibet, where he was finally comforted in the vast embrace of the Himalayas. They arrived at Sakya Monastery, where Haizi found that "there was nothing far away but far away", and on the way back, Haizi put two Buddha statues in his bag from the Mani pile, and later the two Buddha statues were embedded in Haizi's tomb. When they returned to Lhasa, Haizi was depressed, separated from his companions, and returned to Beijing alone. Haizi's "Diary" calls out "Sister, tonight I don't care about humans, I only think of you", some people think it was written for H, I think it is completely impossible, because in Lhasa, he has been categorically rejected by H, he will only miss Y who once met in Delingha, so that he can be comforted.
Haizi in the wandering travel, found the "big poem" he wanted to build, after returning from the trip, Haizi began to enter the last stage of his life, due to the practice of Qigong, at this time he has begun to hallucinate, he always feels that the clock is soft, and a large number of illusions appear in his poetry.
Seventh, the survival of Haizi
Haizi was born in the countryside, he firmly believes that knowledge can change his destiny, after he was admitted to Peking University, he originally thought that he would change from a poor and backward rural person to a glamorous urban person, but the cruelty of reality constantly reminds him that he is just a poor boy struggling in the city, and his behavior is very incompatible with this society. The parents of the first love B are extremely opposed to their interaction, that is, they dislike his origin, in order to make them break off relations as soon as possible, B's parents even interfere through school. In the eyes of B's parents, the university teachers have no chance at all, and the poor poet's future is hopeless, which makes Haizi extremely disappointed in reality. Haizi wrote in the autobiographical Poet Ye SaiNing: "I am a Chinese poet / Son of Rice / Daughter of Camellia ... I was troubled/ destitute / Wandered yesterday / Came to the Persian Tavern".
Haizi's short life has been plagued by material poverty, and he calls himself "the material lover" in "The Motherland or dreams as horses". He is the pride of the villagers, is the object of attention of the villagers, in order to make his image in line with the imagination of the villagers, he cut down on food and clothing, and sent dozens of yuan of living expenses to the family on time every month, so that their families were impressed, but with the development of China's economy, the little money that Haizi sent to the family seemed more and more insignificant. Haizi's life in the city is not rich, he only bought a Xingyu brand TV for his family in the Spring Festival of 1988, or his mother picked it up with a flat shoulder, that year's Spring Festival, the family watched TV around, which became a rare warm moment in Haizi's memory.
In addition to sending living expenses to the family, another expense of Haizi's salary is to buy books, he loves books as much as his life, and he often cannot make ends meet in order to buy books. The "Tibetan Thangka" he bought cost more than 150 yuan, which was his salary for nearly two months at the time, and in order to buy the book, he had to borrow money from people to buy books, so many times that his monthly living expenses were always green and yellow, until his death, Haizi's foreign debt owed for buying books had not been paid off.
Haizi's whole mind is on poetry creation, he hopes to change his life through poetry, he has repeatedly told his family that his poetry collection will soon be published in many publications and will be published, then he can let his family live a good life, there were indeed obscure poets in the literary world who were famous for writing poetry and became like stars, Haizi felt that he could also become that kind of person, but unfortunately his poetry was never recognized by the mainstream poetry community, which was probably the biggest blow to Haizi.
Haizi suffered about three direct blows in the poetry world.
The first was at the Xishan Conference held by the Beijing Writers Association in May 1987, at which some people criticized Haizi for engaging in new romanticism and writing long poems. Haizi was not a member of the association at all, and he was criticized at the meeting, which showed from the side that Haizi had begun to have a certain influence on the literary world at that time. Haizi attached great importance to this, and after the meeting, he also wrote three essays to defend himself, namely "Justification", "Seven Days of God", and "Prince, Son of the Sun God", because Haizi believed that what he wrote was not neo-romanticism at all, and writing long poems was his daily work.
The second time was in March 1988, during a trip to Sichuan, Haizi, as a poet in Beijing, was not officially recognized, and went to Chengdu, one of the three centers of folk poetry (Beijing, Chengdu, and Nanjing), to seek Zhiyin, but what he did not expect was that when he came to Sichuan with his poetry collection "Land", he thought he could find a few zhiyin friends, but he was criticized by everyone, and even Shang Zhongmin, the only one who made him feel good, later ridiculed him in the article.
The third time was in November 1988, the Survivor Poets Club, the Survivor Poets Club is a folk poet organization in Beijing, the members of which are many poets such as Munch, Duoduo, Tang Xiaodu, etc. The club will regularly take turns to hold activities in the members' homes, and the poetry activities held in the Wang family's new home will take turns to discuss Haizi's poetry, Haizi read his own works as usual, and everyone listened to no repercussions, and Duoduo ridiculed: "Haizi, do you mean to make us doze off?" The poets all laughed, but Haizi looked very embarrassed, his face turned red, and Haizi continued to read the poem in his new work, The Sun Messiah, interrupted by a critic: "I don't know what you are doing, I only hear you keep saying: The Mongols fly across the sky on high horses." People were talking about their opinions, and Haizi's poems were said to be useless, and Haizi seemed unhappy all night at that event.
Haizi is trapped in life, has no deeds in the family, is not recognized in the poetry world, under the pressure of the triple, he becomes more and more depressed, he walks into the dead end of life, he can't see his way out, he learns to borrow wine to dispel his sorrows, the original amount of alcohol is very small, he is becoming more and more able to drink. Once, Haizi went to the tavern in Changping to drink, because he had no money to pay for the wine, he stood up and read poetry to the tavern owner, and said to the tavern owner, "I will pay for my wine with my poetry!" The boss scolded him bitterly, and finally said to him contemptuously: "I can ask you to drink, but please shut up!" Haizi couldn't help but fight with his boss, he was drunk, venting his resentment of this society, his glasses were broken, he was beaten to the nose and his face was swollen, and he still finished his poetry.
VIII. Haizi's Poetry (Pure Poetry), Sun (Great Poetry), Throne (Poetic Treatise)
Haizi wrote in her diary: "There are two kinds of poetry: pure poetry (small poems) and only true poems (large poems), and some poetic states. Haizi divides poetry into pure poetry and big poetry, his lyrical short poems belong to pure poetry, his long poems belong to big poetry, and perhaps the six mysterious novels he wrote, "Turtle King", "Wooden Boat", "First Love", "Birth", "Rooster", and "South" belong to the "poetic state". Haizi printed a total of eight poetry collections during his lifetime, namely "Little Station", "River", "Legend", "But Water, Water", "Ruyi", "The Urn of wheat", "Sun • Broken Head", "Sun Poetry Drama", after Haizi's death, his long poems were sorted out by Luo Yihe, short poems were sorted out by Nishikawa, and soon after Luo Yihe died, and finally Haizi's long poems and short poems were compiled and published by Nishikawa into "Haizi Poems", "Haizi Poetry Complete Compilation" is divided into five series of Haizi works, which are short poems (1983-1986), Long poems (1985-1986), short poems (1987-1989), Seven Books of the Sun, Literary Treatise.
Today's mainstream critics feel that Haizi is a first-class lyric poet. Why did Haizi's lyric poetry fascinate the elite and the general public so much? That's because in the imagination of poetry, Haizi found the "entity" of poetry, as he said in the article "Looking for Contact with Substance": "Poetry, in the final analysis, is to find contact with substance." This awareness and feeling of substance is the most basic trait of epic poetry. At present, a small group of young poets are beginning to go to the depths of our nation's soul, unveiling the yellow skin, looking at the ancient heart of the sedimented with running water and dark red blood clots... Poetry is not a statement by a poet. More often than not, the poem is the entity pouring out. "What is the entity, the entity is the core concept in Western philosophy, simply put, it is the essence of all things, as long as you understand the essence of all things, the perception and expression of things can be used freely, so that your writing skills are pure.
Among Haizi's great poems, "The Seven Books of the Sun" can be said to be the practice of Haizi's great poetry concept. Luo Yihe gave a high evaluation of Haizi's sun series, he said in "Haizi's Career": "The imagination space of the "Seven Books" is very vast, which can be summarized as east to the Pacific coast, west to the Two Rivers Valley, with Dunhuang and pyramids as the two pole centers; north to the Mongolian steppe, south to the Indian subcontinent, which is run through the mythological clue 'Kun (South) Peng (North)', the degree of refinement of this epic picture is quite charming, making people feel the beauty of mathematics. On this picture, Haizi established a prototype spectrum that supported imagination and material range, or the main outline of the symbolic system. ”
Which seven of Haizi's Seven Books of the Sun are? These seven books are Haizi's previous plan for his own great poetry, Luo Yihe first explicitly proposed, and later many commentators put forward their own different views, Bian Jiansong in "Haizi Biography: Illusion and Truth" to argue that the seven books are probably not more than seven, but should also include Haizi's unfinished works after his death. Haizi completed seven books: "Sun and Flood", "Sun and Broken Head", "Sun and Land", "Sun equator", "Sun Messiah", "Sun And Prairie", "Sun and Bow", in addition to the fragments and ideas of "Sun Daza", "Sun Desert", "Sun Dark", "Sun Hell", "Sun Language" and so on.
Haizi has written about the "throne" many times, so what is the king in his heart? A careful reading of his poetic writings reveals that the one who realizes the great poetry is the king. Haizi's poetic claims are systematically elaborated in Poetics, an Outline.
In Haizi's poetics, the earliest is the search for "substance". The "element" in his poetics is also the core idea, "I always have to write poetry. Out of some great element calling to me. ...... They appear in this poem with their own rough emotional lives and expressions. The leopard's rough emotional life is a mixture of native desires and degenerated desires. The lion is poetry. ...... Horses are the basic expressions of man, woman, and earth. ...... The eagle is a primitive and vivid poem. A king is a king. Stone is stone. Wine is wine. Homes are still homes... At the turn of this century and the next, in China, there must be a great poetic action and a great poem. This is my dream and desire, a contemporary Chinese poet..."
Haizi has a prophetic critique of the fragmented era we are currently facing: "Great poetry, not sensual poetry, nor lyrical poetry, not fragmentary flow of original material, but the subject human being bursting into its own grandeur at a certain moment - a one-time poetic action of the subject human being in the primitive force... The reckoning of the loss of poetic willpower since Romanticism and the one-time action of poetry ... We must first recognize the two failures to create great poetry in the history of human poetry. The first failure was the failure of some national poets. The second failure is closer to us, and we can divide it into two tendencies to failure: fragmentation and blindness."
Haizi sails in the sea of poetry, and the other shore to be reached is the "great poetry", so what is the great poetry? The title "great poetry" comes from Indian epics, but Haizi's "great poetry" is the poetic ideal of all mankind that transcends the nation, as he said: "My poetic ideal is to achieve a great collective poetry in China, I do not want to become a lyric poet, or a theatrical poet, or even an epic poet, I just want to integrate Chinese actions to achieve a great poetry that combines nation and humanity, poetry and ideals."
Now mainstream critics feel that Haizi's great poetry is a failure, and even Bian Jiansong, who has a very appreciative attitude towards Haizi, evaluates Haizi's great poetry as a "failed big poem". In the later stages of his life, Haizi concentrated all his energy on the creation of large poems, in his view, pure poetry is just a preparation for big poetry, I agree with Haizi's poetic concept, and I do not think that his exploration of big poetry is a failure, but it is not completely completed. Haizi's pursuit of the concept of great poetry, will not be because of the end of his life, and abruptly stopped, good poetry concept will continue to be continued, I and Nishihara, Xidi and other poets advocated the "great poetics" genre has been practicing, respectively, in the humble "Declaration of Great Poeticism", "Great Poetics", "Great Literature" in the systematic elaboration, the core proposition is "the integration of Eastern and Western culture, ancient and modern culture, secular and sacred culture, to achieve a kind of great poetry." ”
Haizi's poetry is a big poem, how to evaluate the big poem? The hardest in the world is diamonds, how to cut diamonds? The answer is: diamonds. Therefore, it is best to evaluate Haizi's poetry with his poetic theory. Haizi's poetic advocacy is all-encompassing, which is a summary of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign poetics, such as the "mother power" and "father power" mentioned in his poetry, which is used in the evaluation of his poetry, that is, his early poetry has a kind of mother's flexibility, and later there is father's violence. Haizi is one of the few poets with the power of action, as Luo Yihe said in "Haizi's Career", "He was the first to show us that people must not only write, but also live as they write." To this day, our understanding of Haizi is far from enough, modern times are an era that transcends nationalities, poetry must integrate all cultures, and the next millennium may have to practice his "big poems".
9. Haizi's Sun City
Haizi returned to her hometown again during the Spring Festival of 1989, and this time he did not have the joy of the past, but as written in "The Tribute to the Night": "The night rises from the earth / The sky that covers the light / The desolate earth after the harvest / The night rises from within you." In order to increase their income, their family opened a tofu shop, the family is busy, only he is still immersed in poetry all day, he also wants to contribute to the family, want to make the family live less hard, for this reason he wants to resign to Hainan to run a newspaper, he just put forward this idea, he was violently scolded by his father, his father thought that he was not doing his job, Haizi was discouraged, this is the second time in his father's life to criticize Haizi. He went to his uncle's house to drink, drunk, he kept criticizing the poetry circle in Beijing, on the way back he fell into the ditch, after entering the house he angrily wanted to smash the TV he bought, he was criticized by his brother Cha Shuming, you can imagine how bad this Spring Festival he had.
Without the faith and passion of life, When Haiko returned to school, she no longer talked about her poetry in class as usual, and his philosophy class became like chewing wax. Haizi's routine became inverted day and day, and he often wrote at night and slept during the day. Under the influence of Chang Yuan, he continued to practice Qigong, and eventually hallucinated, walking alone in a single suit in the winter.
Haizi once had high hopes for his poetry, and he hoped to embark on his own path to success through poetry. At that time, there was a play about the life of Zhiqing, "WM Us", which resonated widely, and critics believed that the play represented the maturity of the "modern non-realism of the nation" theatrical aesthetic. Haizi saw the impact of the play, he began to write poetry, he took the printed "Sun Poetry Drama", and went to the director Wang Gui with his friend Sun Libo, Wang Gui listened to Haizi's narration, while comparing the dramatic actions, seeing that Wang Gui had such a feeling for his poetry, Haizi was extremely excited, he felt that his fate was about to change drastically on the stage, but reality poured a basin of cold water on him, and his poetry began to be criticized by many people, and with Wang Gui's idleness, Haizi's poetry and drama naturally could not be put on the stage again, and Haizi tasted the bitterness of struggle without a door.
Faced with a series of blows, Haizi feels confused, and on March 16, he meets his first love B, who wants her to return to him, but B tells him that he is married in Shenzhen and is preparing to immigrate to the United States with her new husband. Heartbroken, Haizi runs to the tavern to drink, drunk himself, denounces B's approach in gibberish, and when he wakes up, he blames himself for it.
B is like Haizi's ideal, B is now leaving him forever, he feels in his heart that everything is going to disappear, and he feels that "the night has nothing". Haizi, who tried to commit suicide for the first time after breaking up with B in 1986, wrote in his diary: "I have always had a hunch that today is a big difficulty... The toughest and most dangerous moment of your life. I was almost ruined. I almost killed myself... But I survived, I, a stronger man, survived, and for the first time I experienced the dignity, happiness and sacredness of the strong. I live in holiness again. That time Haizi came out, but this time, as B was gone, he decided to leave the world that made him miserable and enter his own Sun City.
Haizi built a huge sun empire through the imagery centered on the sun, each of which is a huge production, and Haizi's most complete "Sun" tells such a story: the king of Babylon and twelve brothers rebelled together, seized the throne, and then killed all eleven brothers, only the youngest brother escaped. Years later, when the king of Babylon was old, he set up a national poetry contest, where the winner could inherit the throne, and the loser had to lose his head, and the little brother who escaped sent three disciples, Beasts, Grass, and Gypsies, to compete for the throne. At the poetry meeting, both the beast and the grass committed suicide in order to win the gypsy. The gypsy finally wins, the priest announces that he will succeed to the throne, the king hands him the sword, but he stabs the king with the sword, the gypsy takes off the king's mask, and then finds that it is the princess Hong, who is pretending to be the king, who is stabbed to death. The last young sword went to avenge, and the king told the sword that his wife, Princess Hong, was his sister and that she was his father, and the king drank poison and let the sword rule the kingdom, but the sword painfully gouge out his eyes and left the kingdom of Babylon.
March 24 is Haizi's birthday, and he finishes his birthday alone without waiting for B's arrival. At night, Haizi sorted out all his poems and put them in a wooden box, which he used to carry his luggage when he was admitted to Peking University, and he had been carrying it with him for so many years. When the door was closed, everything in the house was in order, as neat as a tomb.
On the morning of March 25, Haizi rushed to Shanhaiguan, and on the way to work by countless people, he went against the flow of people to the "opposite direction" of his life. Haizi was at Shanhaiguan, looking at the sea of Beidaihe, remembering his and B's past, he was whispering "Facing the Sea, Spring and Warm Flowers", "Give every river and every mountain a warm name / Stranger, I also bless you / May you have a brilliant future / May you have a lover and eventually become a family / May you get happiness in the world / I only wish to face the sea, spring and warm flowers." That night, he spent a quiet night in a small hotel nearby.
On March 26, Haizi was walking at Shanhaiguan, and he was going to practice his own verse, "My bow and arrow, there are thirteen arrows in the quiver." Twelve branches were given to the heart of the king of the twelve great empires of Eurasia. And one with the quiver and the bow lay sparsely in this splendid freedom with my corpse. Haizi walked to the tracks, he remembered the train he had taken from his hometown to Beijing, remembered the last trace of warmth that B had left in his memory, thought of his former self and his present self, he looked at the rails under the golden sun, like a ladder, and he was chanting "The Sun Messiah":
Sit in paradise
Sit on the ladder
Look at this prairie
Which king belongs
How many horses
How many sheep
How many gold-headed arrow pots
How much can't think of the golden tent of the side
So desolate
Sing my night song
Haizi lay on the railroad tracks, looking at the golden sun overhead, the train galloped by, Haizi stepped on the railroad tracks into his Sun City, "died of the sun and entered the sun", we heard Haizi say in the Sun City: "The sun is me, a laborer who is active in the universe, a poet and a warrior doomed to failure." ”。
Nishikawa wrote in the article "Remembrance": "The death of the poet Haizi will become one of the myths of our time. As the years go by, it will become clearer and clearer what a precious friend we have lost on the evening of March 26, 1989. To lose a true friend means to lose a great inspiration, to lose a dream, to lose a part of our lives, to lose an echo, to whom Haizi is a genius, and to himself he will always be a lonely 'king', a 'materially short-lived lover', a 'rural intellectual'. Haizi lived only 25 years, his literary creation lasted only about 7 years, and in the last two years of his life, he was like a young star, burning like a young star, racing against the clock, and then suddenly exploding. This can be said to be a summary of Haizi's life.
The famous critic Mr. Tan Wuchang wrote the "Theory of Haizi" in that year, which was the earliest monograph dedicated to the study of Haizi, and he believed that Haizi was a figure in the history of The Development of Chinese poetry for thousands of years, "Haizi's writing continued the great tradition of Chinese lyric poetry that began with Qu Yuan, if Qu Yuan created a classic writing paradigm of ancient political lyric poetry with humanistic overtones, then Haizi, as a generation of genius poets who appeared in the 1980s, created a lyrical style of life with pure ontological meaning. Shifting from political ideology to pure life, Haizi's lyrical posture full of life consciousness will have a profound and long-term impact on the pattern of new poetry creation from the 1980s onwards, and if Chinese new poetry can continue for three hundred or three thousand years, I personally think that Haizi's life lyric poetry will affect future poets for three hundred or three thousand years. ”
Haizi has been building his own order in poetry, which is the ideal of human beings beyond all nationalities, this is the future world that integrates all things into poetry, and these are finally fused into the image of the "sun", and he wants to build the "sun city" through the big poem. It is difficult for us to measure Haizi's ideas with ordinary people's ideas, Haizi's poems attack the fragmented disease of the times, in line with the tide of human globalization, today his poetic style has many followers, his poetry is widely spread everywhere, the expectation in "Spring, Ten Haizi" now seems so real, "Spring, ten Haizi are all resurrected / In the bright scenery", Haizi will definitely affect the entire Chinese new poetry writing for thousands of years!
2018.7.23-2018.8.6 in Beijing
(Original title :"Haizi Biography", published in the supplementary volume of "Haizi Selected Poems" (Youth Edition), Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, 2018)
Cao Who Profile:
Cao Who is a poet, novelist, playwright, translator, Master of Arts from Beijing Normal University and a member of the China Democratic League. His original name was Cao Hongbo, the character Ya'ou, the lord of the Tower of Babel. He has participated in the 14th Writers' Advanced Research Class of Lu Xun Academy of Literature, the 9th Screenwriters' Advanced Research Class of the China Federation of Literary and Literary Circles, the 10th Writers' Congress of the China Writers Association, and the 8th Youth Creation Conference. Born in 1983 in Yushe, Shanxi, he traveled to Work in 2008 and returned to Qinghai after several months of travel in Tibet and Xinjiang to start a professional writing career and now lives in Beijing. In 2007, he launched the Great Poetic Movement, in 2017 he advocated the Drama Novel Movement, and in 2018 he launched the Cao Yi Controversy. He is the author of ten collections of poems, including "Epic poems of Eurasia", "Song of the Tower of Babel", "Flower of the Empire", ten novels such as "The Spire of Babel", "The Secret History of Kunlun" (trilogy), "The Prince of the Snow Leopard", three anthologies such as "Coco Xili Animal Kingdom" and "Journey to Xinjiang in Tibet", three translations of "The Song of the Republic" and "Transparent Time", more than 100 collections of film scripts such as "Kunlun Decision", "Bullet Loading", "Kung Fu Little Devil", TV script "Peacock King" and stage script "Snow Leopard Prince". His works have been published in literary magazines such as "People's Literature", "Poetry Journal", "Writers" and have been selected into hundreds of authoritative anthologies. Many novels have been adapted into film and television dramas, radio dramas, stage plays, etc. There are more than 20 languages translated into English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic and other languages, and more than 30 famous poets have written reviews in the international poetry world, and are called by India's outstanding poet Rati Saxena as the representative poet of the "young generation leading the new world". He has won more than 50 literary and art awards at or above the provincial level, including the 1st Chinese Young Poet Award, the "Literary Star" of the 5th Qinghai Youth Literature Award, the 4th Cao Yu Cup Script Award, the 8th Apollo Dionysus Poetry Prize Poetry Award of the 8th Contemporary International Academy of Poetry and Art in Rome, Italy, the 12th Russian Golden Knight Award, and the 5th Top Ten News Figures of Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala. He has participated in many international poetry festivals such as the 30th Medellín International Poetry Festival, the 26th Havana International Poetry Festival, the 14th India Kriyaa International Poetry Festival, and the 4th Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Film Literature Society, a member of the World Poetry Movement, the editor-in-chief of the Great Poetry Journal, the deputy editor-in-chief of World Poetry, and the executive deputy editor-in-chief of World Poets.
Cao who contributed