Frankly speaking, a person's life is limited, and it is not necessary to meet the big times. Equally frankly, the "big era" may have always been conceived from the "small era", and the two are actually difficult to separate. Complaining about the inadequacy of their birth is just the most standard and empty cliché of the slackers.
—— Han Shaogong
A man who can't be the sun
When a firefly may be just in time
Text | Han Shaogong
Source | "Life Suddenly"
Mixing in the writer community for all these years was not my intention.
My Chinese grades in middle school were terrible, but in the first year of junior high school, I taught myself the third grade of mathematics and broke several Soviet versions of interesting math books. Before the national resumption of college admissions examinations, I cut melons and cut vegetables one a day, cut melons and vegetables, and dried up all the high school courses by self-study, and almost got a full score in the examination room (at that time, the two subjects of arts and sciences used the same kind of math test paper) - idle bored, and easily won the only one science student compulsory answers, there was a kind of arrogance that could show off.
I have no doubts about my future scientific career. Like some friends, who have always dreamed of being engineers or inventors, and even once regretted the sky for China's satellites - such a good thing, how can others get ahead?
Blackboard newspapers, mimeograph newspapers, allegro lyrics, small singing, local dramas... Involved in these low-level language activities, purely because they were thrown into the countryside and watched the national universities close down, mathematical, physical and chemical knowledge was useless. In this case, literature is the consolation of fate for me, and it is also the means of making a living for me by accident--at least I can mix in and out of the training class of the county cultural center and eat a few meals with a little more oil and water.
Unfortunately, my foundation was so poor that I scratched my head and scratched my cheeks all day long, so it was easy to understand what "arguments" and "arguments" were with a classmate, and to understand from a rural teacher how the "partial positive" relationship of phrases differed from the "joint" relationship. Without the folk "black books", I would not have woken up like a dream, knowing that there were still Chekhov and Hemingway, and Tolstoy and Hugo, and those interesting literatures that could accompany me through the long night in the countryside under the oil lamp.
Later, I finally had the opportunity to enter the university, and the success of winning even national awards on campus came unexpectedly. Now it seems that those writings are indeed malnourished. Closing my eyes and casually picking out one or two of the new writers at the moment is probably more relaxed, lively, and more mature than when I wrote. The problem was that very few people wrote about it at that time, leaving an empty literary scene. Most of the people in the country still have residual palpitations, and they are still accustomed to collective silence, accustomed to the deference and flattery in literature, accustomed to the fact that men and women in novels are not in love, the people are not tired, the old rich man is always setting fire to poison, and the various fronts are always "singing all the way and laughing all the way"...
At that time, festival literature did not really need much talent. A child who takes the liberty of pointing out that the emperor is not wearing clothes can become an earth-shattering social opinion leader. Compassion is literature, honesty is literature, and bravery is literature. In the Song Dynasty, Lu Fangweng said that "kung fu is outside the poetry", in fact, the social recognition and historical positioning that literature gained at that time must also be outside of literature—just like a specific chess game can make a pawn better than a car and horse cannon.
The "literature of the new period" that thawed and revived is, to some extent, very similar to the continuation of the May Fourth new cultural tide after many years, and it is also a delayed make-up lesson of the European Enlightenment movement in the eastern soil, which is only a beat or two slower. The situation between the two sides is not very different: the main target point of the Europeans is theocracy plus the nobility, the main target of the Chinese is the official power plus the patriarchy; the Europeans have the tools of extraterritorial colonization, but the Chinese but the national peril is worse...
However, the great shocks and great pains of social transformation are familiar, and the mentality of wanting freedom, equality, science, and prosperity and national strength overlaps on a large scale, which is enough to make almost every punctuation mark of Western teachers have a great appetite for Chinese students.
There is no doubt that it was a global "big era"—from the 17th century in Europe to the 20th century in China (known as the "Age of Enlightenment"), when the social changes that people aimed at "modernization" broke through and overturned the earth, not to extend and perfect the existing intellectual "paradigm" (T.S. Kuhn, historian of science), but to create a new paradigm of knowledge, thus releasing extraordinary cultural energy, including redefining literature and redefining life.
Li Hongzhang's statement that "a major change in more than three thousand years" is of course what he meant. In history, perhaps in addition to the almost identical big explosion of civilizations in ancient India, the ancient Middle East, ancient China, ancient Greece and other places (known in history as the "Axial Age"), there is rarely any era that shows such a spiritual span that it can be "big" to such a degree.
However, both the "axis" and the "enlightenment" can be sought, and the great era is not the historical norm, not a festival that never ends. Once the momentum of social transformation weakens, once the clarity of the blueprint for the world's prospects is reduced again, once technological innovation, ideological invention, economic development, social evolution, public opinion requirements and other karmic conditions are lacking, and there is a lack of new sufficient accumulation, the dull and long "small era" may quietly approach - this is exactly how a domestic film self-identified not long ago.
In the eyes of many people, since money has come to the world, the overall situation has been determined, and the general situation is difficult to violate, it is only possible to do these things at the moment: romance, zombies, martial arts, palace fighting, fantasy, small freshness, lower body, mecha fighter... There is also the popular personality image of the "bad boy". The once empty literary world has long become crowded, but carefully tasting, many of the fashion words are nothing more than providing some high-quality young games and cultural toys, with a kind of individualistic writing strategy, so that the audience does not need to grow up mentally, can always refuse to grow up, into the happy and helpless self-hypnosis, away from those "thoughts" and "values" of the heavy words.
As the most serious and realistic expression of petty bourgeoisie, as their gorgeous ideal, flashes the more truthfulness and questioning common in the classic treasury, and is marketing a personal existence plan that withdraws from society and history - this scheme means that there is always money to spend in good days, but there is no need to ask where the money comes from, and there is no need to ask who has no money to spend. Middle-class urban families usually provide payment guarantees for this kind of victory "withdrawal", and also provide a wide range of audience demand space.
What else can literature do? What else should literature do? A friend told me that "poet" has now become an insulting word: "Your whole family is a poet!" This statement is not without exaggeration, but the joke also reveals a bit of cold reality. In the dumping of too many text products, the brilliance of poetry, the brilliance of the soul, is becoming weaker and dimmer, and even often becomes the poison of box office and click-through rate.
Frankly speaking, a person's life is limited, and it is not necessary to meet the big times. Equally frankly, the "big era" may have always been conceived from the "small era", and the two are actually difficult to separate. Complaining about the inadequacy of their birth is just the most standard and empty cliché of the slackers.
Literature is not specially prepared for festivals and festivals, literature in many cases needs to be more patient, need to be kept, need to be no one around, need to be tedious or even tedious needle and thread. Even if the next round of great festivals is still far away, even if the materialized and profitable "small era" is aggressive in reality, even if the writers I have always respected are becoming outdated craftsmen or lonely spiritual keepers... So what?
I remembered a scene I saw in the countryside many years ago: when the sun is still lurking below the horizon, fireflies can also glow, drawing an arc of flickering light and darkness, and its shimmer is exceptionally bright because of the darkness, leading people to warm memories and yearning.
When a man who cannot be the sun, when a firefly may be at the right time.
In other words, the guy who can't produce too much light and heat itself, take advantage of the great opportunity of the new round of the sun has not yet risen in the east, is it not fortunate to do some bits and pieces?
That's fine too.