In "Dragon Babu" written by Mr. Jin Yong, Master Zhiguang left the classic "32-character proverb" and passed away after leaving the classic "32-character proverb" in order to ignite the vengeful Qiao Feng. These short four proverbs begin with "All things are the same, all beings are equal." But many times, compared with the great and intelligent human beings, the small and humble insects are somewhat insignificant, and even become the object of human beings "pointing to mulberry and scolding locusts", such as short-sightedness like summer worms, because "summer insects cannot speak ice"; For example, self-determination is like grasshoppers and praying mantises, because "grasshoppers shake trees" and "praying arms are cars"; Another example is that self-destruction is like a spring silkworm, because "cocoon self-binding". Writers such as Zhu Yingchun, Banxia, Pang Yuliang, and Yang Xiaofeng are determined to think outside of such a human mindset and turn to dealing with insects and forming good friends with them.
The eye of the human eye and the eye of the worm
The miraculous creator has given many differences between humans and insects, the most typical of which may be the difference between "human spherical monocular" and "insect compound eye". In childhood, almost everyone had the experience of staring at insects; And as we walk through streets, squares and parks, are we often inspected by insects?
"With Bugs in the Wild"
Half summer
Published by Guangxi Normal University Press
Banxia, a biology major, often mentions the concept of "looking at each other" in her series of books on insects, which is reminiscent of Darwin's praise of Fabre's "unparalleled observer". On the title page of "Misty Insects", Banxia wrote: "My human single eye is aligned with the compound eye of the worm, and I began to look around at the worm." In another book, "With Insects in the Wild," she not only titled her first article "Eye-to-eye with a green-headed fly," but about half of the book is classified as "Human-insect-to-Eye," a story of her and insect looking at each other.
Unlike the "human-insect looking at each other" in the wilderness in Banxia, the "cross-eye coordinates" in Zhu Yingchun's "Next to the Bug" is a fixed area in the university where he teaches. Those large and small insects that live in Zhu Yingchun's studio are all identified by him as "neighbors" who have no difference between heaven and earth. Coincidentally, Yang Xiaofeng's "Following the Insects" also has a special chapter, named "Neighbor with Insects" and "In the Same Room", the former about those "chance encounters" who pass by in life, and the latter introduces the "hermits" who get along day and night under the same roof. For Yang Xiaofeng, many of these insects can be called "neighbors", but some have become "roommates". Humans looking down on insects and insects looking up at humans seem to be the "laws of nature" that need no elaboration, but Zhu Yingchun has leveled these highly sloped non-equal perspectives, in their opinion, who in heaven and earth is not that ordinary creature?
"Next to the Bug"
By Zhu Yingchun
Published by Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House
Zhu Yingchun's "Next to the Bug" is a good presentation of this "undifferentiated gaze". For example, in the face of "I" watching the battle from the sidelines, Tsubaki Elephant, who defeated the strong weakly, turned around and put on "a victorious posture", as if he also regarded "I" as a companion showing off his achievements; For example, in the face of several buckets of water poured into the vegetable garden, the cockroach that was disturbed by his dreams "held up his two buckets and protested to me", as if he was expressing dissatisfaction with some trouble-making partner. At the same time, those emotions that arise between humans have also been poured or given to a variety of insects by Zhu Yingchun, such as the author "pinched the sweat" for a small ant that preyed on centipedes, because two insects that fought for your life and I were "in a dilemma"; Another example is that he imagines an ant returning to the ground full of "frustration", and two watermelon insects snuggled together "as if they will never be separated for the rest of their lives". These universal emotions naturally flow among all living beings, allowing them to complete the connection and integration across vital signs through mutual gaze and mutual understanding.
Communication in human and insect languages
Humans pay attention to language, while insects can only chirp, and it seems that there is no possibility of communication at all. However, just as Erlang's "third eye" can see what others have never seen, Zhu Yingchun seems to have a set of magical tricks that are enough to talk fluently with insects.
The Book of Bugs
Following "Next to the Bug", Zhu Yingchun successively published a series of "heavenly books" such as "The Book of Bugs" and "Walking Birds" that are enough to make people's jaws drop. Calling it a "book from heaven" may seem nonsense, but it is not excessive. For example, looking through every corner of the "Book of Bugs", it is difficult to find any common text except for the engraving, Zhu Yingchun recorded the crawling traces of spiders, snails, earthworms and other insects, and then pieced them together and combined them to "grandly" use the name of "poetry". What is even more bizarre is that in an interview with the media, Zhu Yingchun even carefully imitated the "insect language" and recited these "unfounded" poems, making it difficult to distinguish between true and false. Zhu Yingchun regards insects as "the magic of creation", and also sees those crawling traces as "the words of life", for him, every small insect contains "hidden greatness", the barrier of language is not an absolute obstacle to human-insect communication, human beings should put aside their arrogance and re-recognize them.
At the end of "Next to the Bugs", Zhu Yingchun wrote: "I spent my childhood in the countryside, when I had no toys or books, and I could only be interested in the flowers and plants around me and the insects on the ground. In another interview, Zhu Yingchun added: "At that time, I felt that my childhood was quite gray, and when I was middle-aged to create, I looked back and found that my childhood was colorful." These two words of Zhu Yingchun will definitely make Pang Yuliang, who has the same experience and perception, shout "confidant". Like Zhu Yingchun, Pang Yuliang's "Little Bugs" was also created in the middle of life, recalling the "colorful time" when he was young and accompanied by bugs day and night, and the writer completed a "human-insect dialogue" across time and space.
"Little Bugs"
Pang Yuliang
Published by People's Literature Publishing House
Famous for poetry, then wrote novels and fairy tales, and won the "Lu Xun Literature Award" for his prose, Pang Yuliang's diverse creative experience also makes his "Little Bug" more poetic than other "insect essays", adding a lot of fascinating childlike fun and stories. In Pang Yuliang's writing, the communication between people and insects is no longer limited to external expression, but more extended to the witness and solace of the soul, the writer seems to be writing about insects, but in fact, he is in a third-person omniscient perspective, watching the childhood life closely related to insects. For example, Pang Yuliang wrote the "drill heart" of the cotton bollworm, but it was actually writing about the fight between parents; Writing about the "thorns" of the larvae of the green thorn moth is again writing about the father's words and rudeness; As for the "vigorous" of writing Tianniu, it is to restore the innocence and naughtiness of his childhood. With the passage of time, the memories of poor childhood and painful family affection have faded, but the insects lurking in nature and ready to lean out at any time are like gods with insight into everything, inadvertently always "tearing out the roots of my suffering in the world", as the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk said: "Nature is a higher form of 'self', of which we are an integral part." Without nature, we simply cannot exist completely. ”
The fusion of life and worms
In the Confucian classic "Dai Li Ji" more than 2,000 years ago, the worms of the world were divided into five categories, such as feather worms, caterpillars, beetles, scale insects, and boogies, and humans were also among them, and frogs and earthworms belonged to the same "boogies", and also boasted the title of "His Holiness among the worms". The fact that humans and insects are so naturally compared at least suggests that our old ancestors never separated themselves from the dazzling array of insects.
Banxia's "With Insects in the Wild" excerpts the ancients' narratives of various insects in different chapters. In the "Erya" as early as the Warring States period, there is an interesting description of the cockchafer: "Today's beetle is green, golden and shiny, Jiangnan has it, and women use it as jewelry." It can be seen that 2,500 years ago, the intelligent and delicate Jiangnan people became interested in the beautiful carapace of the cockchafer, and used it together with gold, silver and jade rhinos as an ornament for women to dress up, but compared with the latter, the former may be more daily and more grounded. For cockchafers, the ancients "took them out of love"; For grasshoppers, the ancients "hunted and destroyed because of hate". In "Grasshoppers This Piece of Meat", Banxia quotes the description of burning locusts in the Book of Poetry, Bai Juyi's poems about locusts in the sky, and also describes the folk customs of catching locusts and eating locusts in Yunnan and other places. The war with locusts has covered almost the entire land of China and runs through the entire history of agriculture, it can be said that when locusts decline, agriculture prospers, agriculture can be safe, and "insect life" is related to the "human life" of generations.
"Follow the Insects"
By Yang Xiaofeng
Published by the Commercial Press
Since humans and insects have been loving and killing each other for so long, it is of course reasonable and expected for humans to understand some life principles and get some wisdom enlightenment from insects. Banxia's "Bug Whisperer" mentions bees many times, such as writing that scientists have taken inspiration from the gouging skills of female tree peaks and invented "more efficient surgical probes"; Another example is to quote a thesis falsely called "Einstein said", writing that "if bees disappear from the earth, humans will only survive for another four years", thus proving that the importance of biological systems, including insects, to human survival is self-evident. Compared with the "figuration" of Banxia, Yang Xiaofeng seems a little "abstract", or more divergent. In "Follow the Insect", when the writer sees a pair of horses entangled in trees, he immediately evokes the memory of Rodin's sculpture "Kiss" in his mind, and even Ma Lu's "every angle change" can make him think of "the corresponding angle of sculpture"; And when I saw the "whirlpool-like twisting reincarnation" of trees eroded by moths, I immediately remembered Van Gogh's famous painting "Starry Sky", which seemed to have the same wonder. Nowadays, it is no longer possible to know where the world-famous works of art are enlightened, but it is obviously difficult to deny that the artistic inspiration of Rodin and Van Gogh is subtly related to the ubiquitous "insect teachers" in nature.
"The Bug Whisperer"
Half summer
Published by Morning Light Press
Nabokov, a great novelist known all over the world, was also a great entomologist at the same time. This lepidopteran enthusiast, who claims in his autobiography "Say It, Remember" that "I have been catching butterflies all my life", constructs a unique fictional world with butterfly-like beautiful words and mesmerizing and vivid details. Presumably no critic can deny the merger of Nabokov's identity as a "novelist" and his identity as an "entomologist", and perhaps we should think that it is precisely because of countless eye-to-eye conversations with insects that "writer Nabokov" can gradually emerge from the influence of "entomologist Nabokov".
Author: Think
Editor: Zhou Yiqian