Literary scene
When you can't "walk a thousand miles," you go to "read ten thousand books." But in the writer Qian Hongli's travel essay collection "River and Mountain Album", we can do it as far as we can go thousands of miles when we read. The natural landscape and humanistic history are all depicted one by one in her pen.
Qian Hongli once said: "Writing is also another kind of monasticism, which requires hard work, self-cultivation, and enlightenment while writing." "Today, we have the honor to invite Teacher Qian Hongli to come to the scene of this issue of literature to talk about her creative life.
Qian Hongli
Qian Hongli, a native of Zongyang, Anhui Province, has published more than 20 works such as "Low Eyebrows", "Reading Paintings", "Poetry and Other Meanings", "A Lifetime of History", "Waiting for Letters to Come", "Plant Records", "In the Name of Love", etc., and now lives in Hefei.
"Rivers and Mountains Album" real picture
Q
You once wrote that "writing non-stop is the dignity that an author should take into account." "Then are you also in a state of constant cultivation?" Can you share with us your creative life?
Qian Hongli: Choosing this path of creation is like putting a rope on yourself at any time, and it has always been in a state of "marching" - either in writing, or in a large number of preliminary reserves for writing. I've been writing for nearly twenty years and publishing more than twenty books, and I still enjoy it, but because I love it.
Creative life is also a state of craftsmanship, only hard and slow. This can not be mass-produced by machine, just like a carpenter beating furniture, even if it is a small stool, must be done with all his heart, and then a little bit of sandpaper polished, painted with clear water, and then hung in the dark room for a while, slowly, the small stool has a pulp.
Sometimes, a manuscript takes years to complete, relying on patience and not giving up, and sometimes it is completely connected with another sense of hard work, such as "River and Mountain Album", which spans more than ten years, accumulating, reserving, and then fully presenting. Hopefully, when it arrives at the reader's desk, it will carry a kind of light, which is also what the carpenter calls the pulp.
River And Mountain Album
Qian Hongli
Published by Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House in January 2022
Your new book, River Mountain Album, is a collection of travel essays, but in the current pandemic environment, it is no longer possible to travel as you please. In this particular case, what do you rely on to nourish your writing inspiration?
Qian Hongli: Of course, rely on reading. Reading is also a kind of nourishment.
Even if you don't write, you have to read. Reading can not only disenchant, but also help us to constantly rebuild ourselves.
Since last autumn, I have been reading Lu Xun, not only his novels, essays, and essays, but I have vowed to go through all the words he left behind in his life, including a large number of letters, diaries, and even Russian and German literature books that he had translated in the early days.
Your words make us feel poetic, Zen, and rich in history. Is this your writing style? What do you think human history can bring to people today? In addition, reading your book will find that you like classical poetry very much, what is the special meaning of poetry for you?
Qian Hongli: An author is unable to summarize his own writing style. But in recent years, I have deliberately turned, from intense to simple, striving to rhetoricalize and move closer to plain nature. For example, before the "River mountain album" was submitted, it had a lot of revisions, and one-third of the content was torn down and rewritten, and it was strived to "white paint".
Humanistic history, as the source of human civilization, is the foundation of the entire ethnic group, but also an endless rich mine, but also a breath of vitality in our hearts. Without these, the individual cannot stand.
Whether it's ancient poetry or modern poetry, I like it. Poetry is the crown of literature and the most advanced literary style. The restraint and restraint of poetry, as well as its inherent tension and sense of rhythm, have great inspiration for my prose writing.
The inner page of the River and Mountain Album is illustrated
We learned that you wrote different short poems specifically for the autograph book to give to people of good fortune. This kind of "pet fan" approach is unique and surprising, what do you think is the ideal relationship between writers and readers?
Qian Hongli: The most ideal relationship between writers and readers should be the relationship of confidants.
Occasionally, I go to Douban to see what kind of feedback readers have about "River Mountain Album". One of the reader friends mentioned the word "mental nature." She believes that it can be seen that the author's writing and mental maturity, richer content and layers, not purely writing travel, but also exploring emotions, love and beauty, self, etc. Another reader in Hunan said that from this book, it can be seen that a writer's hard work and self-cultivation is a kind of height reached after the water is completed. Some commented that the book was simple, calm, determined, and calm...
These comments are the biggest compliments for me and make me feel deeply relieved. In other words, the core of my writing is picked up by readers who don't know each other. My efforts were also duly seen by them. How could I not have a confidant relationship with them?
As I said, whether a book is a bestseller or not is nothing. The unremitting pursuit of the vitality of a book is the ultimate meaning of a writer's life.
I hope that the next book will be a regular selling book, not a gust of bestsellers.
Swipe left and right to view the River And Mountain Album pro-signed image
Reading your article is as if unfolding a map in front of us, let's punch in with you. So, where are the places you've written that leave a lasting impression? What kind of impact do you think a city or a piece of land has on life and writing?
Qian Hongli: The places written in the book have left a deep impression on me. Especially in places with a sense of human history, such as Bozhou, if you stand in the Yunbing Road built by Cao Cao for a while, the entire history of Jian'an literature will come to life for you; for example, Hangzhou, go to the West Lake, the whole Southern Song Dynasty is like a picture scroll will slowly unfold in front of you...
What connects a city or a piece of land is still human history. Whether it is Hangzhou, Suzhou or Bozhou, they all have a sense of frosted age. Where does this sense of age come from? From the cultural heritage of these cities. Cultural heritage is the frost of a city and a landscape, just like a vicissitudes of a person, his origin is his rare connotation.
What we are engaged in writing is to string together these humanistic histories with a mind that is good at observance. These cities or lands are the pearls that carry human civilization, forever shining with treasure.
We write or not, they're all there.
Bozhou Transport Road
"Album of Rivers and Mountains" is a collection of travel essays accumulated by Qian Hongli for many years, swimming in Anhui, going out of Anhui, and traveling all over most of China. The book uses words and photography to record the encounters and self-exploration of travel, and there is no shortage of intuitive and simple descriptions of beautiful things. Readers can borrow her eyes and see a lot of hometown and foreign objects. The scenery written by the author is actually a poetry and book liturgy that has lasted for thousands of years and flowed to the heart, in short- traditional and classical. Qian Hongli uses gentle and affectionate brushstrokes to depict rivers and mountains, and the essays are interspersed into albums of rivers and mountains, with both ingenuity and poetry, showing a unique text texture and way of thinking.
Recommended by famous artists
Reading the "River and Mountain Album", we can borrow the author's eyes and see many foreign customs objects. However, what moved me was that in this book about a foreign land, I read about the hometown with different colors and heterogeneity. In the classical hometown, she wrote about Wang Wei, Li Bai, Sancao, and Tongcheng... From another perspective, to identify the relationship between the ancients, the ancients and the ancients.
- He Dacao
Professor of the Department of Chinese, Sichuan Normal University
"Literature Scene" is a famous interview column created by Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House's self-media platform, which pays attention to the current hot topics of literature and writers' works, and forms a good interaction between writers, editors and readers in the form of writer interviews, writer impressions and in-depth dialogues.
Edit | Lolo, Ayan
Figure | Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House / Picture from the internet