On World Book Day, the Sanlian Bookstore's Xinzhi Conference focused on the topic of "landscape" of Chinese civilization
On April 23, Sanlian Bookstore, which has been established for 90 years, held the fourth season of the New Knowledge Conference with the theme of "Our China - New Exploration of Civilization". Since it was first held in 2018, the New Knowledge Conference has invited experts from multiple fields to share new knowledge and drive thinking in the form of talks and dialogues. This year, the perspective of the New Knowledge Conference shifted from the perspective of time to Chinese civilization. The first forum, titled "Landscape", invited Qu Jingdong, professor of the Department of Sociology of Peking University, Zhao Tingyang, researcher of the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yin Jinan, professor of the School of Humanities of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Wang Mingming, professor of the Department of Sociology of Peking University, and Wei Bin, professor of the School of History of Wuhan University.
"Shanshui" is an image with rich connotations. Philosophical, humanistic, historical, and anthropological experts' discussions on "landscape" seem to have allowed the audience to experience a round of sublimation of "seeing mountains is mountains, seeing mountains is not mountains, and seeing mountains or mountains".
At the lecture site, from left, Qu Jingdong, Yin Jinan, Zhao Tingyang, and Wang Mingming
The three concepts of landscape and water have coincided with the development of social history
No matter what field you look at landscape from, it is an incremental concept. Wei Bin, a professor at the School of History of Wuhan University, classified the concept of landscape and water. It is believed that landscapes can be divided into natural, social and cultural landscapes. In the first type of landscape, it is the environment, the living space of mountain people and water people. In the meantime, occupations such as farming, fishing, and wood were developed, forming the initial worship of mountain gods and water gods. In the second kind of landscape, it is itself sustenance and faith.
The philosopher Zhao Tingyang, who regarded landscapes as an imagery, supplemented Wei Bin's classification on a timeline. He believes that landscape must have been an economic concept in ancient times. For example, the Book of Poetry does not talk about landscapes, only the economic value of landscapes. The "goodness" of a mountain is reflected in its ability to produce good fruits and good plants. After this, Shanshui turned to the concept of "escaping the world", just like the existence of Peach Blossom Garden. After that, it may not be until the Song and Yuan Ming dynasties that the landscape became a placebo for the literati and a kind of sustenance.
Part of "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map"
For such a change in the concept of landscape, Yin Jinan, a professor at the School of Humanities of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, gave an argument from the perspective of the development of Chinese landscape painting. Yin Jinan believes that the emergence, development and growth of Chinese landscape painting are most directly related to the rise of small and medium-sized landlords. On the one hand, the concept of landscape and water unfolded in the cultural circles of Old Chinese. Landscape painting and calligraphy are unique in the circle of Chinese civilization. On the other hand, landscape painting, as a type of painting, appeared later than figure painting. Historically, the Jin and Tang dynasties were the classical era of figure painting, and the Song and Yuan dynasties entered the classical era of flower, bird, and landscape painting. In the late Tang Dynasty, "green" laid the foundation for landscape painting, and it was not until the Northern Song Dynasty that landscape freehand painting entered an accelerated stage and became the most powerful type of painting.
After the appearance of aristocratic painters and small and medium-sized landlords, landscape painting gradually became the mainstream
In the dialogue, Yin Jinan mentioned an interesting historical phenomenon. He said that in the history books, the image and appearance of the emperor will be described, and the portrait of the emperor has always existed. But for some scholars, there is no portrait in the history books. For example, Fan Zhongyan, Ouyang Xiu, Su Dongpo, these people, the history books only tell their inspirational stories, but there is no face. Yin Jinan believes that this is a common phenomenon in the world, that is, as long as there is a large number of nobles, it can support the existence and development of portraiture.
The aristocrats living in big cities attach importance to blood, cities, and buildings. Such as Hongnong Yang clan, Lang evil Wang clan, Taiyuan Wang clan, Jingzhao Wei clan. The same is true of European countries, and the Louvre is also full of portraits of kings of past generations, and portraits are proof of blood. Living in the big cities, the nobles generally praised the city and the building. Yin Jinan explained, "The first six volumes of the Selected Writings of Zhao Ming are all about the city. In addition, it is the praise of famous buildings, and Du Mu's "A Fang Gong Fu" is to praise high-rise buildings. And many of the poems with the theme of 'looking back at Chang'an' are reluctant to leave the big city. Leaving the capital is not happy, and leaving the capital means being 'in the opposition' and alienated from the center of power. ”
Wang Wei's 42-year-old landscape painting "Farewell to Nanshan" pinned on the meaning of transcending Nanshan
Therefore, the nobility was willing to paint people. The green landscape paintings of the late Tang Dynasty actually carry a strong aristocratic temperament. This is because the green is extremely decorative. This temperament was only retained in the court during the Northern Song Dynasty, but it was rejected by the entire literati world.
European aristocrats have long existed, so their tradition of portraiture has always existed. But in the late Northern Song Dynasty, small and medium-sized landlords arose in China, and Yin Jinan believed that this class itself did not live in the big city, but in the countryside, so the landscape was the scene they were most familiar with. Contrary to the realistic style of the nobility, ink, freehand, and landscape have become the mainstream of culture and art, and it is the rise of this class that has driven a unique aesthetic approach and given high values to landscapes. Since then, landscape painting and landscape poetry have had different tastes.
"Chinese Civilization and the World of Landscape and Water", Edited by Qu Jingdong
Two types of people give natural landscapes the connotation of cultural landscapes
People paint landscapes and raise people with landscapes. Wei Bin, the author of the book "History of the Six Dynasties in the Mountains", elaborated on the emergence of "cultural landscapes" from a more specific perspective. He believes that it is the people who go to the mountains and rivers to write the "landscape", and expand the influence of the landscape through the interpretation of others, thus objectively becoming an important force in the formation of cultural landscapes.
Wei Bin believes that people who go to the landscape can be divided into two categories by purpose. One is the cultural elite. Under the sense of political instability and political oppression, a sense of absurdity in life was generated, so it turned from the height of the temple to the mountains. And in the middle of the mountains, you will find a pleasant, quiet scenery. Or live, or swim between the mountains and rivers.
There is a similar discussion in the book "Chinese Civilization and the World of Landscapes" edited by Qu Jingdong, a professor in the Department of Sociology of Peking University, the host of this dialogue, for example, that "'Ju you' has shaped Wang Wei's status as a model of landscapes". The reason why "you can swim and live" is precious is that it reflects the close relationship between people and landscapes. The "juyu" meaning of Wang Wei's landscape poems had a huge influence on the landscape descriptions of poetry from the Middle Tang Dynasty to the Northern Song Dynasty.
The second type of person who enters the landscape, Wei Bin believes that it is "a person who enters the mountain for the sake of cultivation of faith", and regards the landscape as an instrumental existence with the "Way of Cultivating Songqiao", which is purified in the landscape, forming a certain space of faith and culture, and the concept of non-immortality in the mountain is the Tao.
For the above two kinds of people, Wei Bin believes that they can be summarized in one paragraph, that is, "only far away from the noise, so that the heart is not chaotic." The purpose of those who enter the mountain is to escape from society, so that the spirit can be soothed and freed. In this way, the connotation of cultural landscape is broadened for natural landscapes.
Wei Bin networks to illustrate the landscape as a space for faith and culture
Taohuayuan is not the landscape of the landscape: it holds the imagery of the literati
"History, Landscape, and Fishing Tree" is Zhao Tingyang's latest "Thought Sketch". At the scene of the dialogue, Zhao Tingyang also mentioned the discussion of Peach Blossom Garden in the book. He believes that "Peach Blossom Garden is a boring place that loses meaning and time". The peach blossom source is clear at a glance, it is not worth looking at again, the fisherman can not repeatedly find the peach blossom source, its deep metaphor is: the historyless peach blossom source is already the final answer to its own existence, whether it can be repeated into it makes no difference. If a fishing tree that knows the landscape well must find the forgotten entrance, it is not in terms of intellectual ability, but in value. Measured by the historical view of The Fishing Tree, a hermit society without history is a time specimen that is inversely proportional to history, hidden in the landscape that refuses to be visited, and the landscape in which the Fishing Tree is located can view historical changes, which belongs to two different spatial concepts, and the Fishing Tree does not need that historyless space. For Yuqiao, the relationship between landscape and society is not an incommunicable opposition, but a necessary contrast, and only in comparison can we see the way of history.
Similar to the scene described in the Peach Blossom Origin, it became a tourist spot
In other words, Zhao Tingyang believes that the landscape is more important as an image than as a placebo for escape from the world. Yin Jinan also has the same argument, painting landscapes is richer than real mountains and real waters, and its connotation is much richer, especially in freehand landscapes. The Chinese literati themselves define themselves, not by taking "image unlikeness" as the criterion for judging, but by empathy for the mood, "interesting" as a way of measuring. The poetic mind completes the transcendence of the self, beyond reality.
Qu Jingdong concluded that unlike the Western world, which has a strong emphasis on grasping the objectified world, Chinese civilization "does not intend to summarize, grasp, and use the objectified world, and does not logically grasp the subjective and objective relationship." It is to gouge through the world of non-objects." Literati painting Fuchun Mountain actually expresses their own state of mind, which is related to cultural inheritance and is not related to real mountains and real waters. In such a constant contrasting relationship, the important thing is to wander and live in the world. Man places his ego on where he rests and externalizes why.
Moderator Qu Jingdong
Leaving The Landscape to Understand the Humanistic Landscape: The Nested Self
Jumping out of the interrelationship between landscape and people, the philosopher Zhao Tingyang believes that the landscape should not be simply understood as a landscape on the theory of environmental significance, and escape to cultivate immortals between landscapes and rivers, which may not be a high realm for Zhao Tingyang. It is a higher realm to be able to meditate and cultivate immortals in the downtown area. In other words, it is not to live in the landscape to understand the landscape.
He wrote, "The rise of landscape poetry and landscape painting, which distanced itself from social desires and disputes, added a picturesque and experiential nature to the metaphysical imagery of landscape, so that landscape became an image that contained metaphysical infinity and could be felt by everyone, realizing the metaphysics of the metaphysical path and the metaphysics of experience." ”
Landscapes should also be a methodology. Zhao Tingyang sees landscape as a category of the Chinese way of thinking about imagery. The landscape of the fishing tree is a natural landscape, and it is a place where the fishing tree thinks and lives. Natural landscapes are wilderness and social boundaries. Being able to see the Heavenly Dao on the one hand, and being able to see the mundane world on the other, is where the "almost Tao" vision of the fishing tree lies, which is used to observe the changes in the mundane world. In Zhao Tingyang's view, the literati landscape is used to express the "heart", and its main body is the heart of the literati.
There are four Chinese Civilization series in Sanlian Bookstore
The combination of China's imagery thinking mode and landscape imagery, which is different from the Western rational thinking mode, has achieved an increment of the meaning of landscape from the heart of the literati through mutual mirroring and iterative meaning. It establishes not the inevitability between the messages, but the historicity between the messages.
The so-called mutual mirror, Zhao Tingyang explained that there was a similar saying in ancient China, that is, Bixing. Ratio is attachment, and pleasure is attachment. The iteration of meaning refers to the selection of one meaning for transfer and embedding in another thing, so that another thing can have the same meaning, resulting in a sense increment. Something similar to an allusion and a program has been formed, and it can be pasted across time and space.
Qu Jingdong explained that in Chinese art and civilization, there has never been a separate self. This ego is always nested. It is like a landscape painting, which can not be like a real mountain and real water, but its method must contain a continuation of the ancient tradition.
"History, Landscape, Fishing Tree" by Zhao Tingyang
Revisiting the meaning of landscapes: resetting people into landscapes
Yin Jinan's inference on the rise of landscape painting involves the rise of scholars in the mountains and wilderness. So today, urban people have long been separated from the time and space of the landscape. Wang Mingming, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Peking University, pointed out in "Humanistic Habitat: Civilization, Life and Cosmology" that the most serious problem is to define "society" from a humanistic perspective. Refers to the perception that things outside of man are irrelevant to man— or at least irrelevant.
During the dialogue, Wang Mingming gave evidence of his examples during fieldwork. In one of the villages he studied, every first month of the year, the villagers used a shrine to send the village god back to the top of the mountain where he had become a god, so that the god could recover his vitality by returning to the "ancestral temple" of his god. The annual return of the village god from the mountain down to the mountain to his "Buddha-figure" should be considered a manifestation of the deified faith, but it is also a ritual designed to bring the god back to the natural world that nourishes him. It can be argued that the procedural content of this ritual is to regain the spiritual power of the "god of the society" by returning to the mountain (the so-called "natural world") that is the source of divinity. Therefore, some villagers explained that only after this return procedure, when the village god is welcomed back to the place where he "guarded" (the village community), can it be possible to have spiritual power, divinity and authority to "serve the people". In Wang Mingming's view, this ceremony represents that the connection between the village god and nature has not been broken.
On the other hand, in Wang Mingming's view, in the tradition, human and non-human are superimposed on each other to form a three-dimensional living world, and this three-dimensional living world is regarded as the "conditions" for those who "inhabit" it to obtain their lives. He gives an example of Wang Guowei's "Words on Earth", in which the state of selflessness is also related to people, but it is described without putting yourself into it. He went on to argue that placing people in the wider world to understand is why we revisit landscapes today.
The mountain village that Wang Mingming investigated
In recent years, people living in large cities have been yearning for "poetry and far away". This is exactly in agreement with the landscape mentioned by the ancients. Wei Bin believes that the significance of landscape in modern times lies in a sense of simplicity, a sloppy individual, a sloppy society. However, according to Zhao Tingyang, as an image of Chinese civilization, the connotation of landscape is much broader. But as the experts have discussed, resetting itself in the landscape is a kind of mental realization. In the downtown area, it can be like a landscape.
Author: Tong Yiying
Photos: Part screenshot, part web
Editor: Li Nian
Editor-in-Charge: Li Nian
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.