Sun Yu Guo Hongsong painting
As a young man, I was torn between learning and creating.
In the 1980s, like many people, I was hungry for knowledge, read Western poetic theory, read ancient articles, but I couldn't fit in. Because some problem consciousness cannot be presented in those expressions, the lexical logic is limited by what, and the result is that the expression is stiff and the thinking lacks room to stretch.
Later, I went to work at the Lu Xun Museum and entered a special environment, and slowly, my thinking and aesthetics changed.
The museum pays attention to the display of old objects, restores the scene, and reproduces the history. This process naturally has the projection of thought, but because the historical materials are the main body, the spirit is open, and the stories refracted by different relics are different, telling us that there is a wide space. This touched me a lot, and I vaguely realized that thinking and writing from basic information is more meaningful than the expression of dogma. I've spent too much time in concept games before.
There are many books next to the office building where I live, and I am quite interested in the original publications such as "New Youth", "Novel Monthly", "Yusi", "Mangyuan", "New Moon" and so on. The most interesting thing is to see the original manuscript of the writer and smell the breath of the predecessors from between the old papers. When you come into contact with these old periodicals, you will find that the spirit of that era is entangled in various forms, and the intellectuals have gone their own way in the midst of difficulties. There are conflicts between them, there are many dialogues, and important ideas flash, illuminating the many forms of existence. And our literary history and modern history's description of the society at that time is largely missing something.
Occasionally, he also participated in the collection and collection of cultural relics, and saw old objects that had not been touched in the past. For example, I have been in contact with Mr. Lin Chen, read his collection of books, and have been attracted by many editions, and I know what the most basic preparations for learning are. After Mr. Lin died, my friend and I cleaned up the bibliography he donated, looked through some publications that I had never seen before, and naturally had more experience with the cultural deeds of the past. His good articles are related to the understanding of historical documents, and the foundation of ancient literature is beyond the reach of our generation. Mr. Cao Juren praised his thickness, probably referring to the foundation of the literature. I know from his writings that the literary expression of learning must be cultivated in many aspects. To achieve this, it takes a lot of effort.
There is a teacher In the research room, Jiang Xiaohui, the daughter of Lu Xun's friend Mr. Jiang Shaoyuan, who donated a large number of letters to the museum after she retired. Seeing Lu Xun, Cai Yuanpei, Hu Shi, Liu Bannong, Qian Xuan and other people's ink treasures, it seems that I feel the shadows of those people in the past, and I and a few colleagues have sorted out some interesting academic clues from them. The biggest inspiration was that the scholars at that time had different appearances, and in their casualness, they had a traditional literati side. These people are intertwined with old and new, and there is also a beauty of learning and fun. How they have enriched modern scholarship, the clues in between, can also be regarded as a kind of annotation.
What really touched me was the group of essayists I came into contact with in the museum. At that time, I participated in the editing work of "Lu Xun Research Dynamics", the teacher in charge of editing business was probably influenced by the Republic of China magazine, interesting and mixed, not only the papers, but also set up essays, examination evidence and translation sections, you can see the older generation of writers Lou Shiyi, Huang Yuan, Mei Zhi's short articles, many of which are worth chewing repeatedly, and some modern literary research experts' articles, such as Tang Tao's academic essays, Lin Chen's examination short notes, Jiang Deming's books, are very interesting. In my opinion, their writing continues the legacy of Lu Xun's time, and maintains the temperature of the Chinese language when understanding society and analyzing ideas.
Reading these people's articles, in addition to being shocked, I also asked myself, why don't we express it like that? Later, I met Wang Zengqi, Zhang Zhongxing and other predecessors, and then slowly learned the various paths of Chinese.
Starting from the material, thinking about the ins and outs of modern literature is a skill of the museum system and non-academic writers, and the charm of the May Fourth legacy probably includes these.
For many years, the May Fourth generation has attracted me to study the ideas of the new cultural community, which has taken me many years. However, because of the thin foundation and limited experience, there were many obstacles to the understanding of that generation, and in the first few years, they did not dare to write, and the ideas and materials could not form a correspondence.
The main article of this "Pathfinder" is the result of a friend's urging. Once, I met Mr. Wang Zhanjun, who was the editor-in-chief of "October" at the time, and he asked me to open a column to talk about the May Fourth generation. I knew it was trust in me, so I casually agreed. Later, I learned that there were more difficulties to deal with than I imagined, so I wrote it for two years, leaving roughly the old traces of thinking about that year. At that time, I was busy with administrative chores during the day and writing at night, but I didn't feel tired. Facing historical materials in a perceptual way, it is possible to discover the existence of poetry. The May Fourth generation, with the aura of true purity, stopped at those old traces, not only had the baptism of thought, but also suffered the impact of the aura of beauty.
The different paths of that generation have not yet dissipated their influence on those who come after them. I've found that it may be more realistic to see these predecessors as "pathfinders" because they were all trailblazers of different paths. Lu Xun's shadow of resistance, Chen Duxiu's arrogance, Lao She's Beijing flavor sound, and Ba Jin's super-vulgar rhyme tore the clothes of old words, and the ancient Chinese poured out of Sina. The new cultural movement can be said to be the surge of spring water, and everywhere it goes, the green waves are flooded and the fragrance of flowers flutters. In the face of these legacies, sometimes it is impossible to suppress your excitement.
There are different ways to write about the cultural people and social trends of the old and new times, and I hope to be able to express the academic tastes of that time in literature. Mr. Zhang Zhongxing deals with memory in "Negative Trivia", but he is a reflection on the years he has experienced, and has temperature and love and hatred. We trace that history, there is always a diaphragm, if it is not in the deep potential information, close to the text to describe the old shadow, it is always a boot itch. To avoid this limitation, you have to abandon the previous way of writing and adjust the narrative tone. And finding a way of expression of oneself is also a trek to establish one's own way of thinking. We say that writing is not always seen as a game, but there are also factors in this regard.
For example, the one that wrote the unnamed society, I read some materials beforehand. The inscription written by Lu Xun for Wei Suyuan is also in the museum's reference room. Looking at the magazines run by the same people, most of them published translations of Russian literature, from Dostoevsky to Andreev, the text was somewhat bitter, and the ideological part revealed the translator's pursuit. For example, Li Jiye's translation of "Literature and Revolution" was written at the urging of Lu Xun, and several young people were unfortunately imprisoned for it. At that time, the literary activities were not all the product of leisure, and they still had dreams. Our old curator, Mr. Li Helin, is a member of the late stage of the Unnamed Society, and he occasionally talks to people about his youth, on the one hand, revolution, on the other hand, literature, and life is burning. Mr. Li has followed Lu Xun's thought all his life and has always had a distance from shifeng. The old comrades in the museum were greatly influenced, so that the atmosphere of the unit seemed to emit some smell of the unnamed society.
Many of the new intellectuals after May Fourth were spiritual adventurers and leaders. When I describe Barkin, I focus on the holy image of his spiritual taste, and from the pictures and copies of manuscripts obtained from the Barkin Memorial, I can taste his pure side. His dream-seeking journey under the inspiration of Lu Xun is undoubtedly a kind of torture for secular readers, and describing such a writer is also a self-education. Although Barkin's contradictions and flaws affect his depth, the trek that constantly breaks with the darkness is also the courage that secular people lack the most.
In a person's life, there are no more than two ways of walking: one is to walk along the road paved by the predecessors, without thinking, the traditional scholars are like this; the other is to walk in a place where there is no road, or encounter a cluster of burials, or encounter a ravine, which requires the exploration of spirit and perseverance, and many of the intellectuals of the May Fourth generation are in such a state. Looking back at these pathfinders now and describing them, many remnants of the depths of time have only become a few shadows. It is not enough to be satisfied with the capture of the film, and there is also an extraordinary meaning in the slightest. On closer inspection, under those shadows are countless resolute footprints, which tell the origin of what they have come from, and what they have gone to, which is a fascinating spiritual map. Frankly speaking, it is not easy to write through the shadows of the predecessors, and it may take a lifetime to understand them.
(The author is a professor at Chinese Min University)