The "poetic cultural care" mentioned here generally contains these three meanings: first, the narrative method of this work is in the form of poetic culture; second, the historical content of this work is extremely culturally poetic; third, the author holds a culturally poetic position when constructing the content theme of this work. Based on the above points, I call Mr. Cai Yuanfang's "Building Dreams" a poetic cultural narrative. The "cultural care" I am talking about here is actually to emphasize the position, concept and method held by the author of this work when evaluating the object of his writing, that is, the cultural judgment made by the author on many historical events. This should arouse our great attention. Below, I will briefly explain the above points.
Let's first talk about the form of the work. There is no doubt that this work is very distinctive in terms of presentation form. Not only that, the form of this work is also the form of the spirit of China's excellent traditional culture, and the essence of this cultural spirit is poetry. In a sense, this form itself is a poetic culture with great Chinese cultural characteristics. This may involve a bit of stylistics. In traditional Chinese culture, the issue of style is very important, and there have been many incisive expositions.
We do not discuss the wonderful exposition of the style of the huge "Wenxin Carved Dragon", we can see the importance of our ancients to the style of the text from a single article such as "WenFu". Among them, the emphasis on poetry and rhyme is beyond other styles. The use of poetry in the imperial examination should be a clear proof. The education of poetry as an enlightened style also highlights the characteristics of traditional Chinese culture education. For example, reading materials such as the Three Character Classic, disciple rules, and thousand character text, why do these long humanistic books adopt the form of rhymes, that is, poems? According to my understanding, the dissemination of humanistic knowledge and ideas in the form of poetry is probably not only because of the "smooth mouth and easy to remember" that everyone often says, but also because of the cultural influence of this form of poetry. Further from this is the ritual feeling brought by the form of poetry to the writer and reading. Anyone who has a certain experience in writing and reading will generally have such a feeling that the writing and reading of poetry are aesthetic activities that transcend ordinary secular life. In this kind of aesthetic activity, form, as a special cultural environment, always lurks in your thinking process with a unique aesthetic regulation, allowing people to immerse themselves in a certain unique poetic state of mind, to maximize the possibility, to capture the poetry hidden in your aesthetic object, and to make its poetic value appear extremely strong and extremely clear. Perhaps, this is the unique thinking result brought to us by the ritualism of the poetic form, that is, the live experience of the poetic existence of the aesthetic object, and in this way, the author's description object is implied in a certain poetic situation, which is actually the unique aesthetic effect brought about by the ritual existence of the poetic form. This aesthetic effect makes the author's descriptive object sacred and solemn, and makes the author's descriptive object more epic. It is precisely because the form of poetry has the characteristics of ritualism, that the century-old dream-building process described by the author is more poetic and has more epic aesthetic characteristics. In a sense, this choice of poetic form also reveals the author's original enthusiasm for the choice of form. This realization of mine comes from my understanding of the poetic form in the generative sense. At the basic level of cultural anthropology, poetry, in its form, transcends from the beginning the natural form of human behavior, and it is more spiritual but more dependent on the appearance of material forms. For example, it depends more on sound, more on regular sounds that are strongly rhythmic, and more on harmonious sounds that can convey passionate colors. None of this is necessary for our daily natural survival. For our ancestors, these, in a sense, were necessary conditions for their survival. Because only through repeated sound rhythms can this sound be made more powerful, more long-lasting, powerful and long-lasting, which should be the original goal of the trinity of poetry and dance for worshiping the heavens and the earth. The attainment of this goal depends on a special way of expression, which is a way of daily life of our ancestors, that is, the primitive art of the trinity of poetry and dance. With the passage of time, this primitive art has gradually differentiated into a variety of specialized artistic and literary forms, and its original practical functional value has gradually faded, but its original aesthetic and religious meaning has never dissipated, and in the enduring aesthetic creation, this meaning has been transformed into a collective unconscious precipitated in different art forms of poetry and dance, becoming an internal spiritual driving force for our descendants when using this art form. I think that the reason why Mr. Cai Yuanfang chose the poetic form to express the history of modern Chinese dreams in his heart should have a special relationship with this intrinsic cultural spiritual drive. For example, poetry is the spiritual commonality between the aesthetic appeal of this form and the content he expresses, the particularity of the supernatural expression of the form of poetry and the close relationship between the poet's emotions, and so on. In other words, this is related to the author's early recognition of the formal aesthetics of poetry, and also to the poet's special aesthetic feelings about the form of poetry in his long-term reading life. From the author's long poem, I can support this judgment in many places, such as the poet in many places can unconsciously incorporate ancient poetry into his content expression, and so on. From this indwelling, we can perceive the author's familiarity with Chinese poetry and Chinese poetic culture. From a certain point of view, the cultural spirit in Chinese poetry has become the spiritual heritage of the poet Cai Yuanfang as a cultural individual and an aesthetic feature rich in the significance and value of national cultural inheritance.
Here, we naturally shift our focus on this work to the content of the work. We do not make specific interpretations of the specific content presented in the works, because most of these contents are familiar to everyone, and they are all major events that constitute China's modern and contemporary history, and its value is self-evident. What we are more concerned about here is how the author describes these contents, and what state the author's description presents, what meaning and value it has.
So, how did the author construct the content system of his epic? In fact, any reader who has carefully read this work will obviously feel the fact that the author, in constructing this work, has collected a large number of historical documents, and the author has selected his materials from real and reliable historical documents, and constructed the content system of his epic through the recognition of this material. The author's emphasis on historical documents can be felt from the reading of the work, and the seven hundred annotations appended by the author at the end of the main text can be seen more clearly. These documents involve the details of many historical things, various people, etc., as well as many historical events in ancient and modern China and abroad. From this, it can be seen that the author respected the historical truth when creating this epic. Truth is power. From the most basic level, truth is the most solid foundation for epic writing.
From another point of view, truth is only the most basic thing to write a good work. How to look at these real historical facts is an important element of creating an excellent literary work. So, what is the element that makes this work an excellent work with its own artistic characteristics, in addition to the truth of historical documents? I think that should be the author's cultural consciousness and the consciousness of using the cultural spirit to observe history. When describing the history of dream-building in China in the past hundred years, the author of this epic poem not only refers to and cites a large number of historical documents, but also cites a large number of historical allusions and classical poems, and integrates this historical allusion and classical poetry into the narrative of the epic as a historical judgment that observes the current historical events. As a result of this, the work not only highlights the author's political stance and concept, but also makes the history unfolding at present have a long-standing cultural lifeline, makes the rationality of historical events, builds on the excellent and solid cultural tradition of the Chinese nation, and makes accidental historical events inevitable under the impetus of culture. In this regard, we may cite a few poems to illustrate. For example, when the author wrote that the people on the mainland were celebrating the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he naturally used Du Fu's poem: "I overheard that the Wokou presented a book and rushed to tell the whole country; the Yangtze River was celebrated, and the poems and books were full of joy." This kind of use not only enables the joy of the two poets to meet here for thousands of years, but also connects the cultural traditions of the Chinese nation of loving peace and opposing war, so that today's joy not only has today's reasons, but also has a long and long historical basis. Another paragraph: "Jiegong Xikou Cizu Temple, lonely canopy crossing the sea shadow; lamentable dictatorship blows public opinion, and hates the spring water without return." In this paragraph, there are both historical observations from the perspective of typical folk culture, as well as historical and cultural feelings and feelings as a poet. There is the great compassion of culture, and there is also the subtle sentiment of literature. The choice of history is inevitably the helplessness of the individual will, the betrayal of the people's hearts in those years and the comments of today's descendants, all of which are attributed to a river of spring water here, and poetry and philosophy are all presented in this warm folk vision. In my opinion, this is the unique beauty of Chinese culture. This culture has clear judgments of right and wrong, but it also has a deep compassion and sympathy for dissidents, especially those who have failed. Perhaps, this is human nature, the cultural character of the Chinese nation with five thousand years of civilization. When this kind of cultural personality is infiltrated in the author, especially in a cultural scholar such as Cai Yuanfang, it brings him a consistent cultural thinking, and the cultural thinking rooted in the depths of his consciousness not only enables him to recognize the essence of things from the level of the source, but also makes the author have a humanitarian feeling of great love and compassion while recognizing the historical choices of right and wrong. This humanitarian sentiment of the author, in a sense, is also deeply rooted in the basic elements of his cultural consciousness. These are expressed both in the overall construction of this epic, the great love of building dreams for a hundred years, and in the many poetic details he describes. For example, the poem writes about the untimely death of General Songpo of the early Protector Movement of the Republic of China and the love of Xiao Fengxian, and the author expresses it like this: "Fengxian has lost his beloved Lang, and Begonia is still ignorant of the sound; Pingshui's love affair is finally a dream, and the flower floats from zero eyes to self-condensation." "The author tightly twists the pain of history and the sadness of personal destiny, which makes people read with a thousand emotions, which is both the author's historical lament and the infinite sympathy for the individual fate of historical figures.
In the author's grand system, there are still many places that reflect the author's creative wisdom, such as the folk culture position and folk perspective discourse that are everywhere in the work. For example, the democratic reform at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China is described: "Sit on an equal footing and discuss the country, and discuss the charter with your heart and mind." "The equality here is actually the ideal of the relationship between the government and the people that has lasted for thousands of years in Chinese culture." In these lines of poetry, I also saw the broad and plain feelings of a poet, that is, a kind of high ideal and low perspective, which is the third point we said at the beginning of the article, the poetic cultural position held by the author in constructing the content theme of this work. This position is first of all to stand at the height of the nation-state, to look forward to the lofty goal, that is, the direction of the centenary dream and the hope of the second centenary goal. This goal is the rejuvenation and development of the nation, the great cause of the country, and the poetry of Huang Zhong Dalu; this position is again standing on the basis of the people, that is, the base point of the common people, or touching the low place of the lives of sentient beings. This gaze is like a palm full of warmth caressing the expectations in the hearts of ordinary people and the sorrow that lurks in the low places of life. The author's idea of establishing the country and worrying about the people is fully demonstrated in the last dozen chapters of this poem.
It should be said that the author's work is grand and broad, and the author stands at the intersection of poetry and history, and has made a poetic cultural interpretation of China's nearly one hundred years of dream-building history. The whole work is in the layout of the previous history and post-history, broad and thick. The author inherits the fine tradition of Chinese historical writing and literary writing that do not separate families, and uses poems to describe China's magnificent historical situation in the past hundred years and the splendid civilization of thousands of years. The author uses history to show the fierce poetry of the nearly hundred years of dream-building, and uses poetry to express the century-old dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, where poetry and history are closely integrated, giving us a magnificent epic with profound thinking, cultural consciousness and poetry.
Author: Shan Zhansheng, poet and critic.
He is a director of the Chinese New Literature Society; a master tutor of Chinese modern and contemporary literature at Zhengzhou University; and the president of the Henan Contemporary Literature Society.
"Building Dreams" by Cai Yuanfang, a poet from Henan, a scholar, and a member of the Writers Association of Haidian District, Beijing.
Editor-in-charge: Li Yang
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