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Commenting on Yin Jianling and her new work "Sail": soaring in the vast sky

author:China Youth Network

【Readers Say】

Author: Cao Wenxuan (Professor of Chinese Department, Peking University, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award and other honors)

"Sail" is a very different book among the entire works of writer Yin Jianling. Over the years, Yin Jianling has been writing. She may not be the fastest at the moment, but she is one of the most diligent writers. Her spirituality, her agility, the fluidity of her pen, could have created more work, but she didn't. Because she has always had a very simple writing concept, that is: write one is one.

Looking back at her work, we have a very vivid impression: a lush forest, but the trees in the forest are different from the other.

Different subject matter - I think Yin Jianling surpasses most of us writers in terms of subject matter selection. Usually, we all have relatively fixed subject areas, but Yin Jianling does not. In her case, the subject matter knows no boundaries. From the girl who took a detour in "Paper Man", to the orphan in "Wild Mangpo", to the former left-behind teenager who returned from the city to the mountains to feed back to the countryside in "Genting", we see her flying in the vast sky, looking for a level of life that we may never reach. From the day she started creating, she was always looking for subjects that didn't appear in our vision. Some subjects, perhaps we see, but because we don't have the spirit of going deep into the scene that she cultivated in her journalistic career - we are basically people who silently look at the life around us or rely on the memories of past life, and are unlikely to go deep into the scene that has nothing to do with us to understand, search and experience, so we can never write "Wild Mangpo" and "Genting". Depending on the subject matter, the theme is different. She touches on many topics that our work does not address, such as social issues and race. The tone of her narrative is also different from ours, and that tone is at least unique in the field of children's literature. "Sails" is a landscape that has never appeared in her previous works, and this landscape seems to be seen only by her, and then let us see it too.

A writer can always make a different landscape appear in his work, then his or her work has a reason to exist, and there is a reason for us to give it praise. Yin Jianling's professionalism, the spirit of infiltrating into unfamiliar life territory, and probing into the spiritual world of others should at least become a literary act that we admire.

China should have more writers like Yin Jianling, and more writers like Alekseevich of Belarus, the woman who wrote "Zinc Soldier Doll". A few more, it must be a good thing.

The work "Sail" is very challenging for Yin Jianling. Because she has to deal with a large span of time and space in a book with a small number of words. The time span is more than 100 years, the space is from Asia to Oceania, and the story takes place in Kaiping, Shanghai, Xi'an, Guangdong, China, Auckland, Lawrence, Otago, Dunedin, Otago, Omaru... The space is torn apart. This is a large span of time and space that none of her works have dealt with so far. This requires the author to have a good grasp of the scheduling ability of space-time transformation. On the whole, her scheduling is natural, and we can even feel the pleasure of her time and space switch from her calm transformation. The wonder of literature may be here, it can control time and space in the pen, distant past, distant ends of the world, it can suddenly arrive, and then realistically tell, making people feel immersed.

"Sail" also perfectly annotates the special ability of literature to "recall the watery years".

The reason why the characters in this novel have such personalities, mentalities, and lifestyles are all related to time and space. It is this time-space transformation that keeps them constantly reshaped. Their choice of time and space is active, implying the dialectic of the relationship between personality, mentality, lifestyle and time and space. All in all, without such a time-space transition, there would be no characters such as Xilian and Catherine.

Such a span of time and space brings a deep sense to the work, which I also felt when I read "Sail". Watching "Sail" may give us a deeper understanding of the word "vicissitudes".

The novel's structural innovation seems to have endless space. From the classical form of the novel to the modern form of the novel, the structure of the novel has been changing. Modern forms of fiction even take "structural revolution" as one of its logos. However, relative to changes in language, themes, choices of existence, etc., the structural changes of the novel are not as changeable as people think. The change in structure seems very difficult. When the word "revolution" is used to face the new atmosphere of structural innovation, this in itself already shows the difficulty of structural innovation.

The structure of "Sail" is a structure that is different from ordinary novels and different from Yin Jianling's other novels.

It has two sets of stories, one about Hirian and one about Catherine. The two sets of stories do not intersect, let alone intertwined like twists. We can almost separate these two sets of stories into two novellas. But they give people the feeling that they are a whole, they need each other, look after each other, and reflect each other. Of course, there are connections – the main connection is "I", which is much like "I" embracing Xi Lian and Catherine with both arms. Of course, there is also an important connection, and this is the theme - for a common theme - about home, about the theme of "who I really am" and "who I belong".

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is a classic of this structure.

Tolstoy's novel has two clues, one is Anna Karenina and Volynsky, and the other is Levin and Jidi. If the novel is seen as a bridge, then these two sets of relationships are the two arches of the bridge. In most cases, these two arches exist independently. The two clues seem to go their separate ways, never crossing. This is not the same as a novel that has multiple clues, but those clues are not parallel but twisted and entangled. That kind of novel is like a rope, made of several strands. Tolstoy told the story of the two lovers separately.

Strangely, we didn't find this setup unreasonable. According to the theory, everything that exists in a novel must be interconnected, and none of these factors should drift out and become a "wild ghost" that has nothing to do with the other factors. Tolstoy took this into account. He used a log to connect the banks of the river: this is kinship - one of the two groups of characters is related. This connection is fragile, but after all, it turns two groups of unrelated characters into related characters, thus making the novel a community. However, "kinship" alone is clearly not enough. We recognize the combination of the two columns in Anna Karenina because there is also an invisible relationship between them: the relationship of contrast. Tolstoy compared two groups of characters to each other, and this relationship may be a stronger relationship.

Double arch or multiple arch, is not the same as what we usually call the main line and the secondary line. The former does not have the question of who is in charge, they are equal, juxtaposed, and have no subordination. The latter is treated differently from heavy and thick, and the secondary line is often subordinate to or serves the main line.

The beauty of the double arch and multiple arch in form is self-evident. We can say: "Sail" is a double-arch bridge, and the two story lines in the novel do not have the problem of who is the master, they are equal and juxtaposed, similar to the "double-arch bridge", parallel and smooth and natural.

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily