The famous writer Jia Pingwa's blockbuster new work and long note novel "Qinling Chronicle" was launched by the People's Literature Publishing House on May 10. This is Jia Pingwa's first work named after "Qinling" and his 19th novel.
Returning to the Qinling Mountains, where He was born and raised in Sisi, carrying the traditional cultural genes contained in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "Liaozhai Zhiyi", Jia Pingwo leisurely told the things, personnel and historical events in the Qinling Mountains, and dedicated a history of the Qinling Mountains and Rivers, such as grasses and trees, animals, villages, and characters that have accumulated in his heart for many years.
"Qinling and me in Qinling"
When writing Shanben in 2017, Jia Pingwa said that Qinling was "a dragon vein, standing there, carrying the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, ruling the north and south." In 2021, he wrote "The Record of Qinling" again, but he did not know how to say Qinling: "Decades have passed, I have been writing about Qinling, writing about the glory and suffering of its history, writing about its realistic revitalization and sorrow, writing about its landscapes, plants, trees, birds and animals, writing about its spirit of Confucianism, Taoism and red revolution. First it was to focus on the Shangzhou in the Qinling Mountains, and then to zoom in to the entire Qinling Mountains. If I can sum up in one sentence, it is: Qinling and the me in Qinling. ”
Whether it is novels or essays, the stories written by Jia Pingwa all occur in the sense of literary geography in the north and south of qinling, and most of the important events in China's great history also occur here.
In the past few years, Jia Pingwo has been to the Kunlun Mountains where the Qinling Mountains originated; to the Birds and Mice Tong cave mountain in the Qinling Mountains; to the Taibai Mountains and Huashan Mountains; to the Seventy-two Daoyu between the Taibai Mountains and the Huashan Mountains, as well as the Tianzhu Mountains and Shangshan Mountains in Shangluo, but he deeply feels that it is only a dime. In the Qinling Mountains, Jia Pingwo realized what it was like for a bird to fly into the woods, and what it was like for a grass to grow in a ravine. He regarded the peaks as the knot of tall and heroic spirit, and the ponds as the gathering of cool and moist air, and the woods that appeared on the hillside or in the depression made him look at them the most. Each tree is a building, the various branches and strands of the form that is for balance, the staggered rhythm of the tree and the tree, and their echo with the surrounding environment, let him know the life of the place, but also let him understand the expression of time.
Corresponding to the chaos and majesty of Qinling, the vastness is boundless, in the new book, Jia Ping, who is seventy and does not exceed his heart, breaks through the boundaries of style, consciously inherits the tradition of classical Chinese texts, and has his own style in interesting brushwork. The writing is far away, the writing is majestic, the news of all things is recorded, the sense of heaven and earth is charming, the mountains are high and the waters are long, and the sky is reckless.
"Strive to write every sentence of Chinese characters well"
"Life is sunny on some days, wind and frost, rain and snow on some days..."
"Sometimes there is a place for life, and there is a place for death, but in fact, a breath of gas comes out of the ground, and from where it comes out, and finally where it comes back."
"Whether it is a man or a beast, a flower or a tree, or a crop, he will do a good job for man, he will do a good job for the beast, he will open branches and leaves for the flowers and trees, and the flowers will bloom, and the seedlings will grow strong for the crops, and try to produce long spikes, and the grains will be full."
These insights in "The Book of Qinling" come from the writer's seventy years of life insights. These sentences have no fancy rhetoric, and all the words are as if they grew out of the land, simple and unpretentious and full of sincerity and spirituality.
As Jia Pingwo himself said: "The mountains and rivers of Qinling That I wrote about, people and people, did not dare to slacken off, perfunctory, frivolous and slippery, and strived to write every sentence of Chinese characters well." Although it is a mosquito that falls on the face of the lion, it is a mosquito on the face of the lion, and it is never a crab on the market, and the grass rope that bundles the crab also sells for a good price. ”
Jia Pingwa's works have always been both traditional and modern, both realistic and lofty, with simple and humble language, but the heart is full of waves. "The Record of Qinling" is such a simple and thick text, telling a long and modern story, and it is interesting to read.
Notes on modern writing of novels
Notes on novels have existed since ancient times, and Lu Xun once roughly divided this kind of literature with more complicated content and free writing into two types: "Zhiren" and "Zhiwei". "Qin Ling" has both. The writing seems to be a transcript of the actual visit, and the ability tends to be strange. In the micro-reading room, the traces of the changing circumstances of survival, the filtering and clarification of customs, and the details of life and the taste of life in the depths of the mountains are faintly visible. Shi Zhanjun, editor-in-chief of the "People's Literature" magazine, said this about the stylistic characteristics of "Qinling".
Famous writer Jia Pingwa
Jia Pingwo became famous from the 1980s to 1987, and his first novel, "Shangzhou", was written about the simple life of his hometown Shangzhou in the countryside in the early 1980s. The following year, he released a novel "Impetuous", which won the Mobil Pegasus Literature Award in the United States, and also established his position in the Chinese literary circle.
Since then, he has successively launched "Qin Cavity", "Ancient Furnace", "With Lights", "Lao Sheng", "Yamamoto", "Temporary Sitting" and other masterpieces, which have carried countless reputations in the contemporary literary world.
From Shangzhou to Qinling, Jia Pingwa is constantly walking, and these solid works present the novelty and change of their texts and contents, which can be said that each one is a change of face, and the style is becoming more and more colorful. The publication of "Qinling Chronicle" has brought us a different textual experience - note-taking novels.
When creating this work, Jia Pingwa said that he did not want to write the novels and essays that are now popular, but wanted to break through the boundaries of style and write something different. He believes that novels can borrow prose brushwork, and prose cannot absorb the meaning of novels. Thus the different "Qinling Chronicle" was born.
Jia Pingwa's "Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "Liaozhai Zhiyi"
The "Classic of Mountains and Seas" writes about the landscape of the ancestors and the imagination of the world, is an ancient book that preserves the most ancient Chinese mythological materials, and is also another form of Chinese history, Wang Yanghong is rampant, all-encompassing, covering the geography, astronomy, history, mythology, meteorology, animals, plants, minerals, medicine, religion, etc. of the ancient Chinese period; "Liaozhai Zhiyi" is an ancient book with nearly five hundred short stories, on the basis of inheriting the legends of Wei Jinzhi and the Tang and Song Dynasties, with its colorful character stories and different customs of aesthetic ideas , becoming a treasure of Chinese literary fiction.
Some critics say that Jia Pingwo had already paid tribute to the Classic of Mountains and Seas in his heart when he wrote "Shangzhou", and in many later works, the story telling method of "Liaozhai Zhiyi" can also be vaguely seen. And "The Record of Qinling" is the writer's "One Man's Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "One Man's Chat of Zhai Zhiyi" that the writer has been immersed in for many years and has accumulated half a life.
Indeed, in the Book of Qinling, the reader can see: loyal dogs that can understand people's words; caves where high monks enter and flow out of springs; soap horn trees where people hold and cry, and the leaves shed tears together; fools who can write poetry, small clerks who can enter other people's dreams... These stories lead readers to break through the cramped and narrow reality of chicken feathers, and enter a chaotic and majestic and open situation, so that readers have an interest and imagination in traditional texts, and have the feeling of reading the contemporary "Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "Liaozhai Zhiyi".
As the designer of this book put it: a traditional book full of magic, a long note novel by Jia Pingwa's latest dedication, a chaotic and majestic mountain: three unrelated beings are like heterogeneous isomorphisms in art design, pointing to the same theme - the endless Chinese context. This also determines that the book form of "Qinling Classic" shows people with such a look as it is now: the "Bird", animal, fish and snake in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the chaotic god "Dijiang", which is full of cuteness, is completely incompatible with the spiritual flower of the sword door god and brilliant life painted by the author, and the mountains and rivers of the ancient paintings of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" are combined to form a strange form of "Qinling", and the swaying brushwork of the writer's text also forms a new relationship between text and picture.
Nandu reporter Huang Qian