Xu Jiang: Why the Long River Flows: On Yisha and His Historical Novel Bai Juyi

Why is it a long river?

——On Isha and his historical novel "Bai Juyi"

Text/Xu Jiang

1

Sometimes, for an author, diligence is not necessarily a good thing. This is based on the angle of dissemination of the work, as well as the speed of acceptance by readers. If a writer writes too much, it is inevitable that his works will be obscured from each other. A case in point is Milan Kundera, who died in 2023. How many readers of "The Unbearable Lightness of Life", "A Party for Farewell", and "Funny Love" still discuss his later "Identity" and "Ignorance" as they did in his early years? Even for readers who are more inclined to literature, after "The Art of the Novel" and "The Betrayed Testament", how many people still have the interest and courage to read the modest "Curtain"? The latter book is precisely the most refined of Kundera's literary treatises.

The same phenomenon happened to Haruki Murakami, another writer who was snubbed by the Nobel Prize in Literature. Readers who like to talk about "Norwegian Cabin" (the title of "Norwegian Wood" used in many translations on both sides of the strait is actually a mistranslation of the Beatles' song "Norwegian Cabin") seem to be of little interest to the book's sister book, "Songs to the Wind". And many people who love to talk about "Kafka by the Sea" are not too enthusiastic about "South of the Border, West of the Sun" or "The Clockwork Bird Chronicle". In the same way, when discussing the "world of Murakami's literature", the two groups tend to habitually ignore his best novels, "Dance Dance Dance" and those short stories, and don't forget, as the author of short stories, Haruki Murakami's work is perhaps unrivaled in contemporary times, except for Anne Pru, who wrote "Brokeback Mountain".

In contemporary times, under the rhythm of "volume", no reader will pay full attention to the entire work of a writer, whether you are Coetzee, Benhard Schlink, or Julian Barnes, which is a common situation faced by Chinese and foreign writers. Under the squeeze of transnational capital and the agitation of the information industry, people's interests have been torn apart to unprecedented fragmentation. The focus of attention on a director is focused only on the promotion of his new film and the success or failure of the box office, and the meaning involved in the film is no longer the first priority. As for a writer's work, the novelist depends on whether it has been adapted into a hit TV series, and the poet depends on whether he has a foreign appearance? At this moment, the author has come very close to some kind of "low-paid artist".

The situation of literature is not good. This is due to the fact that there are more literary and artistic varieties that can satisfy the human spirit than there were one or two hundred years ago. Although these literature and art have different grades and realms from each other, it is not so important for the majority of audiences whose aesthetics come from various "assembly lines". The important thing is to fill in the fragmented time, and there are idle topics to talk about as "reaping spiritual food". Well, even if there is such an "audience", it will only be a journey, and don't expect any donor to really follow all the way - the researchers of the academy are not counted, they are usually dissidents who have two minds about the text and the soul.

But for the author, it's another matter. With the superposition of the length of literary history, the difficulty of literature has not become easier, but more difficult. This also considers an author's ability to cut through the complex and simplify in the ocean of information and imagination, and exercise his own essence. And this ability, in addition to talent, will to a large extent be derived from the accumulation of the output of the work. Thus, the contradiction between the writer and the times arises: in the era of unprecedented information expansion, the attraction of any work has the effect of diluting, and it is essentially more welcoming to derivative works—the reproduction of genres and fashionable upgrades to the genre that has previously been of popular interest, and less to the oblique and unheard of temperament (the latter two imply an adventure to the commercial future), while the author must devote himself to originality in order to leave a mark on the history of art.

2

As a cross-genre creator, Isha, the author of the novel "Bai Juyi", the test he faces is undoubtedly twofold, even triple.

The first test comes from the aforementioned general rejection of original works and atypical stylistic temperaments in the age of information expansion. In the past, some people concluded that the most accepted novels in the information age were bestsellers rather than serious novels, and this statement needs to be slightly revised today: the most accepted novels in the information age are novels that have been successfully adapted by film and television, or topical novels that rely on a sensational current event in life and a certain collective complex. Any other novel that has been widely successful is an exception. From this point of view, the division of many genres under the "best-selling novels" of popular culture in the past has become a null and void. After all, people are now in an era where audio-visual and online information fragments feed occupy a dominant position.

As a novel, "Bai Juyi" retells the survival and growth of the great poet Bai Juyi and his great poetry creation in the historical period of the ancient "Middle Tang Dynasty". A historical novel with a poet as the protagonist, whether Chinese or foreign, is destined to be a typical form in the novel. According to the classification of novels in the past, we are accustomed to classifying "Bai Juyi" as a biographical historical novel, but as a novel written by the poet-novelist Isha, "Bai Juyi" surprisingly abandons as much as possible the fictional writing method of "making something out of nothing" on which such novels relied in the past. The novel is closely related to the real life of the protagonist, and sometimes even shows an almost scholarly rigor, even in some of the colorful chapters that readers can easily think of as an imaginative explosion, but still firmly controls the importance of historical materials. In the novel, when Bai Juyi and the young Li Shangyin were friends in the past years, because of their appreciation of Xiao Li's talent, he once said that "I would like to be the son of Li Shangyin in the next life". At first glance, I thought that the novelist was using his imagination, but in fact, there is still a source. Some of the notebooks contain further corroborations of this detail. For example, "Yuyin Conghua" once quoted Cai Juhou's "Cai Kuanfu's Poems" in the Northern Song Dynasty, saying that later Li Shangyin had a son, and the word he gave his son was "Bai Lao". From this, it can be imagined that the daily and private names of the two poets, as well as their feelings for each other, are basically the same as those presented in the novel. Biographical novels should write about the life of the protagonist, but biographical novels are more fictional, which is a norm in Chinese biographical novels in the past, and Isha deliberately abandoned this practice in "Bai Juyi". The writer tries his best to strip away the reader's expectations for the role of "storyteller", and only faithfully tells the Bai Juyi he has seen through the years and documents. The "atypical" nature of "Bai Juyi" to the kind of historical biographical novel that people agree to understand by common name is also evident from this.

The second test comes from the mutual interference effect of "poets" and "novelists". "Bai Juyi" is a long novel, and the protagonist of the novel is the poet Bai Juyi, which is the first "disturbance" from the relationship between "poetry" and "novel" that the text literally encounters; If you put these two "interruptions" together, it sounds very much like a tongue twister. In fact, what is reflected behind this is exactly what I mentioned at the beginning of this article - the self-obscuring phenomenon of the works of the same writer. The name Isha is positioned first as a poet and then as a writer in contemporary literature. This is the pre-established impression of most readers, even though Isa has published ten novels in addition to his poetic writings, as well as several essays and literary criticism. This can be seen as an affirmation of Isha's poetry creation in the past four decades, and at the same time, it is also a "poet Isha", and the reading of "Isha the novelist", "Isha the essayist" and "Isha the literary critic", especially the former one, although there are a considerable number of readers of poetry, and they are not the same people as the readers of novels.

The effect of "mutual interference" is, of course, first and foremost a disturbance to the reader's confirmation of the work and the identity of the author, but it is not entirely negative. Like Isha's previous biographical novel "Li Bai", mutual disturbance is precisely one of the highlights of the novel "Bai Juyi" itself. "How does the contemporary poet Yisha, who is extremely challenging to read, retell the life of Bai Juyi, the most famous poet at home and abroad in the Tang Dynasty?" This apparent sense of dislocation is not only the reader's curiosity, but also the interest of the work.

The difference in perspective thinking between poet novelists and ordinary novelists makes them face different themes and display different narrative brilliance. Although ordinary novelists are closer to the market in terms of description, once they enter the fictional level, they often show a kind of romance under conventional thinking. The difference between the poet and the novelist is that even when it comes to the narrative of everyday plots, his attitude is still critical, emphasizing caution and accuracy. Even if it is like "Li Bai" and "Bai Juyi", two biographical novels with an extra layer of "poetic novel" texture.

Poet-novelists who write poets do not receive the privilege of "nonsense" for this, but automatically receive additional pickiness for professionalism. In the details of "Li Bai", this professionalism is reflected in the elucidation of the relationship between the two famous editions of "Jiang Jin Wine" and "Cherish the Sky". The two versions can be solved in the context of Li Bai's life, and which one will be integrated into the plot will not be picky, and the most afraid thing is that these two different texts will be adopted, because even if there is a local difference, when a novelist advances the plot, it will lead to a "jumper" in reading, and even constitute an accident that cannot be digested during the narrative. At this time, the novelist's experience in poetry creation is particularly precious - the more colloquial "Cherish the Void" is the live version that Li Bai blurted out when he was drinking, and the more familiar and more classic text of "Will Enter the Wine" is the version that Li Bai further revised and polished afterwards. A poem, two editions of the famous different texts, in this way in the novel, has become a display specimen for the author to reveal the secrets of poetry creation.

In "Bai Juyi", Isha made a similar display of the formation process of Bai Juyi's famous work "Pipa Xing": the protagonist Bai Juyi first wrote "The Night Singer", and in the following year, he first wanted to marry his early lover Xiang Ling but couldn't, and was reprimanded and cursed by Xiang Ling's mother (who was a singer in his early years, and later married a merchant woman) The title. This presentation of the relationship between "truth" and "illusion" in creation not only respects the existing historical materials, but also gives a reasonable explanation for the behavior of the characters in the context of the novel.

The third test comes from the reader's past aesthetic preference for historical fiction. Let's put it this way: the emergence of "Dream of the Red Chamber" has created two major preferences for novels among Chinese readers: First, the love of detailed descriptions of the customs and utensils in the novel, from the great "Mirror Flower Yuan" to the modern Zhang Hshui, the modern Gao Yang, Duanmu Yuliang ("Cao Xueqin"), and some super online articles that have been successfully put on the TV screen in recent years, their descriptions all try their best to show the author's ability in this area to meet the reader's recognition. Second, the depiction of the intrigue and intrigue of the characters in the book is relished, whether it is Zhang Ailing's novels, the contemporary works of various reduced versions of the "Zhang Men" private author, or the "masterpiece" that will be passed down for the emperor...... A considerable part of the recognition of novel narratives by contemporary novel readers stems from the above influences. In this context, a novel that strictly follows historical data to reflect the life and creation of a great poet inevitably seems too serious and lacks the "entertainment" of the herd. And this quality of the work, in turn, has a kind of condensed symbolism of literary history, and an astonishing topic has been distilled - what poet in the history of mankind has left a masterpiece through the ages, and whose life trajectory is entertaining?

Contemporary society is a special stage of human beings whose rhythm of life is frantically squeezed by capital and desire to the point that both inside and outside are "rolled", and what the audience is looking for in literature and art at this time is no longer wisdom and intellectuality, but only the filling and filling of fragmented leisure and emptiness. Let everyone live - teach or coax the reader to stay away from the pain and be content to blend in with the noise of the market, as long as this premise is satisfied, no matter what you write it is, the public will accept it, which is the essence of a bestseller. A novel that talks about poetry and tells the life of a poet is, of course, risky.

3

After examining the above challenges of the novel "Bai Juyi", perhaps we can talk about the significance of this novel and the whole sequence of "Heyue Heroic Spirit" to which it belongs.

First of all, "Bai Juyi" continues Yisha's journey of poetry and fiction that began with the book "Li Bai" in the "Heroic Spirits of Heyue" series. Before "Li Bai", all the novels published by Yisha basically followed the traditional classification of novels such as vanguard ("Who Hurts Who Knows"), realism ("Confusion", "Carnival", "Gold in the Sky"), history ("The Death of a Confidant", "Cao Cao"), and growth ("Once Upon a Time in China", "Handsome Boy"). Although they sometimes reveal the author's exploration of the narrative and structure of the novel, they still retain a large resonance with the reader's perception of the composition of contemporary novels. The launch of the "River Heroes" series is different. With "Li Bai" as the precursor and "Bai Juyi" as the successor, the novelist Isha began the journey of consciously "writing a biography for the great poets in the Chinese language", and this kind of genre ambition is unprecedented, beyond the present and the present, which is also the unique significance of "Yisha-style poetry novel".

Among all the great poets, Bai Juyi's life can be said to be the richest and most complete.

Bai Juyi is one of the most extant of all the great poets of the Tang Dynasty, and he personally compiled a collection of essays to pass on.

Bai Juyi is a feudal poet who takes his career as the measure of success in life, and is one of the few great poets who is a high-ranking official (once almost worshipped). He was also one of the people who left a millennium image project (White Causeway) during his tenure as a magistrate. It should be pointed out that in the compilation of anthologies and the Millennium Project, he greatly influenced Su Shi, who was regarded by later generations as "Li Bai of the Song Dynasty".

Bai Juyi was a great poet who was affirmed by the government and the opposition during his lifetime, and the emperor called him a "poet immortal", and also left a famous sentence in the eulogy written for him by himself: "Once Siqing was stunned."

In the middle and late stages of Bai Juyi's eunuch career, the Tang Dynasty officialdom was serious about the notorious eunuch dictatorship and the Niu Li party struggle in history. And Bai Lao was able to survive the danger of party strife......

Bai Juyi is the "standard-bearer of new Yuefu poetry" admired in the history of literature by later generations, but in the hearts of the majority of readers, his greatest work first recommended the long poem "Long Hate Song", and the second recommended long poem "Pipa Xing". Let the great Zhang Ruoxu, known as "a lonely piece of the Tang Dynasty", "Spring River Flower Moonlight Night", is nothing more than a long poem in the Tang Dynasty. What is confusing is that these two great Bai poems, in Bai Juyi's self-evaluation, are placed in the middle of the range.

As the author of "Pipa Xing", Bai Juyi's private song and dance troupe was even fussed by some contemporary scholars in the article a few years ago.

……

The life involved above is naturally the "hard dish" in the novel "Bai Juyi", but it is not all the main dishes.

The theme of the poet's life and poetic growth is not only a tribute to those great names in the history of literature, but also a revelation of the mystery of the generation of those classic poems in Chinese. Just as a novel that is a biography of an emperor must talk about all kinds of intrigues and tricks, a novel that is a biography of a great poet will inevitably talk about various types of poems, how they are inspired by the masterpieces of their predecessors and contemporaries, and how they are awakened and erupted under the respective life circumstances of authors with different personalities. Presenting these things cannot be done by authors who are not poetry connoisseurs. Starting from the novel "Li Bai" and continuing to "Bai Juyi", the poet's poetry during the banquet; the deeds and works of Li Bai and Du Fu revealed in "Bai Juyi" have balanced nourishment for Bai Juyi's lifelong creation; Yuan Zhen cherished himself, compiled and printed his own complete works, and also helped his old friend Bai Juyi also compile and print a copy, which inspired Bai Juyi to take time to edit his complete works at different stages of his career...... In these seemingly everyday details, there are similarities between the life experiences of ancient and modern poets. If you don't understand it, it doesn't matter, you just think it's a realistic portrayal of life. Both reading responses were correct.

As the overall writing of "Li Bai" and "Bai Juyi", the "Heyue Heroic Spirit" concept plan currently involves more than 1,000 years in the history of Chinese poetry from the beginning of the Tang Dynasty to the present. The initial curiosity of "why write Bai Juyi" and "why write Li Bai" may be covered by more questions such as "why don't you write Wang Wei" and "why don't you write ......" in the future.

I tend to regard the sequence of "Heyue Heroic Spirits" (in the book list that has been published so far, in addition to the two books that have been published, there are still books such as "Su Dongpo" and "Lu You") as an alternative "Long River Novel" of Chinese poetry novels. Although the protagonists of each novel are different, all novels tell the same theme - how great Chinese poetry came to the land of Chinese civilization through different Adam's apples and pen ends in those comfortable or turbulent eras!

From "Li Bai" to "Bai Juyi", from "Bai Juyi" to "Su Dongpo" and "Lu You", ...... how long and how wide the world of "Heyue Heroic Spirits" will be unfolded, it is currently unknown. What is clear is that this is the only set of novels born in the era of "useful" philosophy with the general theme of "poetry of uselessness". It will lead us to look back at the golden and silver ages of Chinese civilization, and re-examine the current life and our spiritual ecology through the thousand-year-old majesty of poetry.