The first will not repent, and the sixty will not be confused
Read Chen Xiaoping's poetry collection "Jia Zi No Regrets"
Tan Guanghui
Chen Xiaoping's poetry collection "Jia Zi No Regrets" will be published by Unity Publishing House soon. Koshi is sixty years old. Confucius Yun, sixty and obedient. Entering the year of ear obedience, good words and bad words can be listened to, and the opinions of others can be adopted, which is equivalent to summarizing life. Zheng Xuan zhuyun: "Hear its words, but know its subtle purpose." This means that in the year of obedience, the words spoken by others, whether it is the meaning of the words or the sounds outside the words, can be understood, and life has entered the era of great wisdom. Whether one can listen to opinions or understand words, once one reaches sixty, one is bound to enter a new stage. Reaching sixty and "not regretting" means that the first half of life is comfortable, and the second half of life will continue. All kinds of commentaries in the world can be understood and heard, but I am still me, and it will be the same for a hundred years.
In the first half of Chen Xiaoping's life, the themes are clear: poetry, tobacco, tea, wine, friends, women, young sons, and nature. Only these eight kings are willing to give their true feelings. Other than that, life seems to be happy, but it is difficult to get rid of the loneliness of the heart. The lonely crevice is the opportunity for the poetry to gush out. The object of true affection is transformed into the theme of poetry.
The nature of Xiaoping's pen is magical because it is far away. He has a perspective of observing natural things from dreams, showing the worldview of "life is like a dream". "The branches of February emit a maddening laugh" ("February Chronicle"), "The reeds are the hostages of winter" ("Early Spring"), "The Seeds Are Listening to strangers from different springs" ("March"), "The Virgins look at ease / Flirt with passers-by in broad daylight" ("Impressions of April"), "I saw a fish swimming toward the treetops" ("July"), "The wind kept biting at the corners of the corridors" ("Snow") ... The wonderful connection of these images, likened to the unbridled use of techniques, outlines the poet's active road map of thought and the turbulent soul. Because the poet has a sense of loss and dissatisfaction with real life, he wants to find a different kind of happiness in the world of poetry, so he spares no effort. "The man who seeks happiness crosses the mountains" ("The Creek") is the shadow of his lonely search in the world of poetry.
Xiaoping's young son is the wave of his life and the sustenance of happiness. "Hearing my son recite on the morning of the first day / It is the best time of July" ("July")," "The happiest and happiest time of the day/It is to pick up the children from elementary school and go home" ("Diary"). He is willing to spend a lot of time for his younger son, "I want to go back to my son's room / spend all day with him and rehearse him" ("The Child Says"), and the younger son also brings him thoughts and inspiration, "In the past and future that I am close to my son / Something is being smeared" ("Wake Up"). After fifty years of age, he was happy with his son, and his son became a sweet continuation of his life, a gentle regeneration, so that he could continue to stay in his childhood and dream with his son, and be naïve together.
Xiaoping's friends are also friends in his life. Those who know him know that he cherishes, is generous, and values his friends. He wanted every friend to be a poem, a memory, a part of life. He is open, spontaneous, and sincere to his friends. "Years ago I was drinking with friends, guessing boxing/talking about women. They dispersed, leaving no address" (March). Friends when they were young, one by one, gradually grew old, and when they recalled friendship, they would still gain something: "Like a cattle hovering between residual snow and grass / Seemingly unfazed, but regurgitating the years and truth." The feelings brought by friends are diverse and complex, and the important thing is not the happiness of youth, but the memories of old age. Li Shangyinyun: "This situation can be remembered, but at that time, it was already confused." Li Shangyin said what he felt when he was fifty years old, and Chen Xiaoping talked about his understanding at the age of sixty, and the two coincided, telling the feeling of vicissitudes and the philosophy of life. The poet believes in the sincerity and persistence of his friends, and no matter how long the road of life is, they are everywhere: "The train is flying along / Let me see the years that are passing by / My friends, who are beside the road / Patiently waiting for my arrival" (The Journey).
Poetry is the most important element of Chen Xiaoping's life. Fortunately, "a tree of white flowers brought back spring / The end of the exile of poetry" ("Early Spring"), poetry was no longer exiled, and the poet was saved. Although the poet claims that "I am a man who respects loneliness" (July), he is actually more afraid of loneliness. Respect for loneliness because you can't write poetry without loneliness. In search of solitude, poets can stay up all night: "A poet writes poems for the snow festival / Stays up all night / Discards a field of confetti" ("Heavy Snow"). In search of solitude, the poet liked to sit alone by the river or lean alone in front of the window: "In middle age, I still like to sit alone on the reef and look at the future" ("This Afternoon")," "To this day, I still like to lean alone in front of the window" ("Looking at the Clouds"). In search of loneliness, the poet sets out into the distance: "The oncoming mountains block my view / They cannot be like the basin / The loneliness that imprisons me" (The Journey). Having said that, the poet is actually afraid of loneliness. "I am not afraid to spend the rest of my life alone / I am only afraid that love will make me feel lonely" ("When I Say Love"), this contradictory statement reveals the contradictions in the poet's heart. The former sentence is superficial, the latter sentence is the real idea, "loneliness" is not terrible, "feeling lonely" is terrible. The poet loves the outer loneliness and fears the inner loneliness. The search for superficial, external loneliness is to write poetry, and it is fatal to feel lonely in the heart. The poet's way out of loneliness is to write poetry, and the poet falls into the eternal paradox: to find solitude in order not to be lonely. In order to escape the inner loneliness and write poetry, to write poetry, you must take the initiative to find loneliness, poetry has become the intermediary of the poet's "loneliness", lingering magic obstacles, exuding charming charm.
The above points are several themes that Chen Xiaoping focuses on in the collection of poems "Jia Zi No Regrets", corresponding to several elements that he values most in his secular life. However, the poet's thinking did not stop here, after all, stepping into the nails, he had already experienced several important life stages of "Standing", "Not Confused", and "Knowing the Destiny of Heaven", and he must have a deeper observation and understanding of life. One day, he suddenly found that he "did not understand the meaning of existence" and felt "the helplessness of the self" and "the smallness of mankind and the earth, the paleness of thought", and he found that any limitation, the inquiry of the source, the expression of language, had too much uncertainty, "all meaningful actions are meaningless / To define life is to dig its own grave and give up dignity" (Existence and Time). From this point of view, Chen Xiaoping did step into a higher realm of life in the year of Jiazi, and gained insight into a certain fiction and nihilism of human beings.
With this realization, the poet further realizes, "I can't become more nihilistic," and he wants to "return to the dream-clear and bright sky" (Ifs) and to find more meaning and value again. He envisions a return to a state of authenticity, to re-experience and construct the world with life and feeling: "I no longer think about the world, but taste it with a kiss" (Imitation). In the poet's view, the world constructed by language is also unreal: "We never listen to the call of language / Although it constructs the world ... / We do not know its meaning", it is better to return to the state of nature: "We fantasize that grass becomes grass, and stone becomes stone" (Paradox). The poet has this consciousness, he clearly feels a certain absurdity in life and life, and wants to live in the state of his own authenticity as Heidegger said, to construct a place of "poetic dwelling". However, Chen Xiaoping can never be sure how to find and become that true self. The solution to this problem may only be resorted to a certain faith, but faith cannot give us the answer, which is a painful question. "We can choose, but we can't escape / The scars we leave when we kneel on the sacred mountain / When we pick it up, we bleed" (Viewing). This is the summary of the poetry collection, but also the helplessness of the poet.
With dialectical thinking, the poet sees many more profound truths wrapped in superficial phenomena, and he discovers the "trap of sweet words" and asks for "no violence with benevolence" (the Law). He did not want "cheap greetings and praises", and perceived that "courtesy and charity" were "oppression of the king", and "gentleness and domineering were more like violence" (Distance). He found that "love," the "only noble and holy word," could "stab us deeply" ("Opposites") and that "faithful to the heart" was "time will annihilate our bones inch by inch" (The Message). The poet truly feels the deception, absurdity, and nothingness of reality, and exhorts people to "believe in fate" and "reality is so cruel that it is like a past life that has never been seen" (Advice). It turns out that "we have collected all the vows in the dictionary / Put them on the top of each other's heads, and they are broken" in existence", "Blurry scenes are always scratched by the eyes", "I want to leave my love / There, in those distant times" (See). At this point, the problem seems to have become clear. Tearing through the appearance of perception, returning to the reality of feeling, resisting the pain of reality, and moving toward silent resistance, we see the fragile scars in the depths of the soul of an optimistic and open-minded poet who do not want to be easily uncovered.
With this series of realizations, the poet began to repent deeply. He wanted all stories to "begin the way they begin" and "end in the way they end" (Patterns). He wanted to return to a state of freedom, eager for fate to rearrange, "What is there to sustain other than freedom?" / And what can't be put down? "For the sake of freedom, you can give up anything, even life." I have learned to shake hands with death and say, "I don't mind death" ("Abandonment"), "We have reached a reconciliation with emptiness" ("Li Qiu"). The pain of the poet of pain has reached its extreme, "like a homeless tramp / Maybe you can't hear my pain and repentance / But I can stand freely on every tree / Like a bird singing above the birds" (Singing). The poet feels that he is like a trapped by a grain of rice, plunged into deep pain, and finds that sometimes the truth contains evil intentions, so it may be better not to go near the truth. Upon discovering this truth, the poet felt his eyes brighten again, "so much so that he forgot the pressure and sobbed with joy" (Tit).
The poet seems to be telling us a bitter experience, an indescribable pain, an unforgettable realization. He dreams of another "chance", meeting a girl who can "transform herself into a butterfly", a girl opposite whom "good times will come"(Angel). Hope returns to hope, and the poet always has to return to reality, summarize his life, and continue his future life. Even though "I've been living with betrayal and lies for years," I still see things very clearly. Although "I did not lose sight because of eye disease", I still had to "learn to sing to the moon and the stars / Pure joy and pure pain" ("Birthday"). This is because, whether it is joy or pain, it is a precious experience in life, a gift of fate, and a gift from a mother. In the great love of the mother, the poet learns forgiveness, mercy, and forgiveness, "as radiant as your kindness / Let me learn in mercy and forgiveness / Walk upright, and in mockery and contempt / Perceive the end of all things" (Letter to Mother). Just as the mother forgave the remarried father in heaven, the poet felt that there was nothing in the world that could not be forgiven.
Therefore, the last and most important theme of "No Regrets" is forgiveness. "Released", it is also "released". After being relieved, you can place yourself high and far away, and enjoy your past experiences as a landscape. Although the scars are still there, we must learn to repent, cherish, and heal. As a summary of the poems, "Viewing" profoundly expresses this theme: "We learn to forgive in an increasingly distant place" and "Now cherish everything that was before". This is probably a more complete detachment, an understanding of the past. The "wounds along the way" of the past, which should be "carefully picked up", may be surpassed in a devout faith. He felt that these traumas, perhaps a fateful arrangement, although they seemed to be something he could choose, were actually inescapable. In the process of seeking repentance and forgiveness, new scars will be left, never ending. After understanding this, we will understand that the whole process of life is actually a painful process, a fact of "one point, one blood". With this understanding, the essential meaning of life is also clearly understood, and there is nothing that cannot be forgiven. When it comes to the year of Jia Zi'er Shun, looking back at the landscape of his life, what else can he "regret"?
About author:Tan Guanghui, male, born in December 1974 in Nanchong, Sichuan, doctor of literature and postdoctoral fellow of Sichuan University, professor and doctoral supervisor of Sichuan Normal University, vice president of the Culture and Communication Symbols Society of the Chinese and Foreign Literary and Art Theory Society, executive director of the Narrative Science Branch of the Chinese and Foreign Literary and Art Theory Society, mainly researching Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Semiotics, Narrative Science and Emotion.
Edited | Duan Xueying