Poet Chen Nianxi: Literature is the carrier of individuals and times|N-TALK Literary Night

Chen Nianxi is a poet and writer. On January 5, 2024, Chen Nianxi participated in Southern Weekly's N-TALK Literary Night in Beijing. Southern Weekly data map

I came from Shaanxi with the chill of the deep winter in the north, but tonight the high temperature of the warm literature melted it, just as the chill of my life was mostly melted by the warmth of literature.

The title of my talk is "Literature as a Carrier of Individuals and Times". This is not a new topic, it can be said to be a cliché, but I think some topics can be repeated countless times, at least, for myself, it is a reminder, and it is also the direction and pursuit that will not change.

It is an indisputable fact that no matter what class you are in, where you live, the successes and failures of life, you will always read and feel literature. There is a saying that China is a country of poetry, and likewise, China is also a country of novels, essays, and operas. In China, there has never been anything immaterial that has been so widespread as literature, which runs through all the lines of a person's life. Time is like a river, reluctant day and night, countless dynasties, glory, countless physical and illusory things have been blown away, and those great languages, the characters, stories, and emotions they record and carry have always been there, and they have been directly and indirectly influencing our hearts and behaviors, and affecting our way and going.

We often say that Tang poetry is great, and I think its greatest thing is that it outlines, restores, and preserves the global picture of a dynasty, from top to bottom, from temples to folk, from macro to details, from the great era to each individual, all of which are recorded one by one by it sensually and intellectually. For most of us, there are no conditions and opportunities to come into contact with the vast resources of Tang history, nor can we read records and studies about it, but when you read 300 Tang poems, the outline and details of such a dynasty come out in front of your eyes, its joys, sorrows, branches, leaves, and even its smell. From Du Fu's poems, we read the flesh and blood of Du Fu, and also read the people's livelihood and the world of an era, those stormy and obscure, and the details of the world.

There is one topic that has been debated a lot, and that is what is the meaning of literature. As a northerner, as a person deeply influenced by the culture of the Yellow River, I always believe that the meaning of literature is to record, and the meaning of recording is to see, so that contemporaries and later generations can see some people and things through the text, and see those silent and obscured parts, so that they can also see themselves. Strangers meet, recognize, ponder, and sigh in the world constructed by words. The work is the testimony of the years, but also the testimony of the human heart, which is the code of the eternal existence of literature.

Tonight is a night of literature, which brings me to another topic, which is the relationship between literature and the night, their relevance. For day, night is eternal, and for life and life, night also occupies an important dimension, countless events, countless emotions, all occur and arise at night. For literature, I am afraid that this is even more so, how many great words and ideas are born in the night. Carefully study each work, there is the light and shadow of the night, the taste of the night, and the world of the night. My habit is also to write at night, and when I am in the mine, I only have time at night because I have to work during the day. Over the years, I have developed a habit of holding a tablet, leaning on the head of the bed, typing words in the dead of night, as if only words can pass away the night and loneliness, as if only the night can give birth and achieve words.

Writing has become less utilitarian

Next, I would like to talk about my own writing and the impact it has had on my life and life.

My writing is divided into two phases. Before 1999, I had written a lot of poems, when I was young, life was light, and full of ethereal passion. At that time, there were two wishes, one was to use writing to change fate, the countryside was too difficult, people used various methods to escape, literature was one of the usual methods at that time. The 1990s were a dynamic era, classes were far less solidified than they are now, and people who changed their fate with writing abounded. Another wish is to become a poet who walks the world with a sword. Of course, writing at that time was a kind of follow-the-trend writing, imitating mainstream writing. Although it was also published, the result did not change his fate and he did not become a poet.

In the winter of 1999, I started working in the mines, and a year later, I became a professional blaster, working in the dust and wind for 16 years. I have experienced too many lives and deaths, and I have seen big rivers and all kinds of winds and waves, and at this time I have almost basically agreed with my fate and don't have too many ideas. Writing became less utilitarian at this time.

The huge asymmetry and contrast between the vast and boundless nature and geography, the small and helpless life, also makes me think about many things. On the banks of the ancient Yarkand River, sometimes I often see a few people, silently carrying a dead person to the foot of the mountain and burying it simply, the world is huge, the time is long, these people seem so small and slow. Such a ceremony, such a life and death, seems to be a special match in the vast and vast world.

A village, with only a dozen households, is besieged by the boundless Gobi, most of them have never left the village from life to death, you think they are very mentally miserable, but they are still very happy, they have invented many musical instruments, they can play and sing, and they can sing and dance. They have their own beliefs and ethics of life and life, and they also have their own laws, and they have formed their own set of logics for living in this world, and these logics have long been systematic. I often think about how great the power of environment and geography is, what kind of environment, what kind of existence, what kind of culture, what kind of civilization, and these survivals, cultures, and civilizations are so self-consistent.

Life in the mines is hopeless, but despair and numbness are not the same. At this time, writing became an inner need for me, and I used writing to find a passage, to get out temporarily, to take a breath, and to become a dual need of the soul and the flesh. I know that I have drifted away from the literary world, no one knows me, let alone the life of our community, and I know that the words I have written have no chance of being published. Looking back now, the writing of the mine period may be the real writing, which is based on life, flesh and blood, and life and the life scene. Life and destiny are one and the same, and their relationship with literature is to discover each other, shape each other, and grow each other, rather than eliminate each other's strengths.

For many years before 2015, on the first and fifteenth days of each month, my boss would give me 100 yuan to buy incense paper cannons and bow down and pray to the cave gods. There are generally three cave gods: Land, Gongming, and Laojun, the land is in charge of the local area, Zhao Gongming is the main wealth, and Laojun was born in alchemy and is responsible for gold output. Of course, the content of the prayer is to ensure that the boss is safe and prosperous, because we are so eager for peace and prosperity that I will change the content to protect me and my co-workers from making a safe fortune every time I pray. Selfishness may be a bad thing, after more than ten years of birth and death, we have no peace, and we have not made a fortune, and it is certain that there are many bosses who have made a fortune. Probably God also knows who paid for the incense and who should be responsible. Under the long-term psychological effect, people like us have kept the bottom line of being a person and doing things, and there are also disadvantages, that is, we seem to never do anything else in this world, and there is no other opportunity in this world.

It sounds like a joke, but it's related to literature, and even it's literature itself. This is a very good literary material, and what is in common is that if you are obsessed with some things, if you worship them like religion, then you will never be able to get out of it, and you will never be able to do anything else, and literature is exactly like this. When you shape literature, literature has already shaped you.

The biggest influence on me in literary writing is my personality, which makes me sensitive and thoughtful, and less blindly obedient and delusional. For example, when I also go to see the scenery, most people see beauty and joy, and in addition to seeing these, I will also see the long growth and struggle behind the glamour. My own experience in writing poetry is that each poem will be placed on the cross coordinates, extending to the vertical and horizontal dimensions, increasing the sense of reality and history of a poem, making it as thin as possible, which is also my way of observing and judging things. I feel that all our knowledge is common sense, all phenomena are phenomena based on common sense, and the magnificence of our eyes is not gorgeous in nature. On the other hand, the harvest of writing has really changed my financial difficulties and brightened my life.

Literature should return to the scene of life

We are now in an era of intelligence, what is literature in such an era? In the era of omnimedia, do we still need literature? My answer is yes, and we need it more, but this need is no longer so ostentatious, nor so ritualistic, or even so singular, it is like a gentle wind and drizzle, and even like life itself. Each of us has a complete set of electronic products, enjoy convenient transportation, we are in the information center every day, often let us have an illusion, as if we are infinitely rich, have unlimited ability, and know all the things in this world clearly, but the fact is that we just change a form of closing our eyes and listening, and you are still in the center of the island. Let's not talk about things that are too far away, your own hometown, those relatives in your hometown, those life dust, those people's hearts, you don't know and understand them better, but more strange and distant. We have countless data and information in our hands, it is only the skin of this world, its skin is fragmentary, with the help of which we cannot go deep and restore a lot of the truth and truth of this world, and only literature has done it, and it has been completed.

When history has gone through decades or hundreds of years, the latecomers have to look at the people and events in the history of our time, those joys and sorrows, those ordinary and thrilling, I think to a large extent we need to use literature, just as we need to understand history now, we need to use classical literature.

On the other hand, language is not just a tool, a symbol, it is a living thing, a life, and an interpreter of ideas. There is a phenomenon that some poems from ten or twenty years ago, when we read them, we felt very obscure, and we felt that they were very avant-garde, and even very difficult to understand. But after ten or twenty years to read it, I feel that it is really simple and to the point, which involves the logic of the language itself, and the language itself is like soil, which will be solidified and lag after a long time, and it will also affect the growth of many things, and it can no longer keep up with the thinking of the times and the rhythm of many things. Literary thinking, literary language, it also plays the role of a brave man who forges ahead on a broad level.

At present, literature is also facing a dilemma, we have too many choices, and too many reasons to distance ourselves from it. Reading no longer seems to be a necessity, but in fact the topic is very complex and difficult to explain in a thousand words. I think the way for literature to go back to the scene of life and paint a picture of the reality of our time. I have also seen this kind of effort in literature, and in recent years, literature has been returning, such as the revival of realism, such as the rise of non-fiction literature, such as the debut of amateur writing. Our literature is embracing readers in every way that is supposed to be their own.

Finally, may the youth of literature be forever, may the readers be young, and may everyone who meets tonight be happy!

(Speech shorthand compiled by Liu Shijun)

Hi Nian

Editor-in-charge: Li Muyan