Farewell to Li Xiaoyu
Zhu Haiyan
One
In the winter of the First Sino-Japanese War, there was no rain in Beijing, and not even a light rain fell, was it God's intentional arrangement? The rain in the sky did not come, but Li Xiaoyu in the world, a generation of talented women, was robbed of her life by illness. She walked so suddenly and decisively, leaving endless regrets to her bitter poetry and the world.
On the morning of the 29th day of the lunar month, Xiaoyu's body farewell ceremony was held at the Babaoshan Funeral Home. Bidding farewell to Xiaoyu, I walked alone from the railway soldier compound on Yuquan Road, the cold wind was striking, and what flowed out of my heart was a wisp of loneliness and cold loneliness. Xiaoyu, do you know that at this moment, I seem to hold the fiery history of the railway soldiers, as if I have some kind of solemn connection with the railway soldiers and poets of that era. At that time, the mountains and fields were full of eyes, the sound of artillery was full of ears, following the footsteps of the railway soldiers, you and a group of railway soldiers and poets Ye Xiaoshan, Xie Keqiang, Li Wubing, Xu Guotai, Liu Jinzhong, etc., in the difficult environment of splitting mountains and digging roads, encountering water and building bridges, began a tragic poetry road expedition. At that time, although there were some "big words" in your poems, they were not the "poetry and wine literary meeting" of the old and the young, not the ivory tower of empty talk, nor the field of fame and fortune. As military poets, you take poetry as a glorious responsibility and life sustenance, and paint a bright rainbow for the monotonous poetry sky on the poetry altar that withered due to the Cultural Revolution. In 1973, the People's Literature Publishing House published a selection of railway soldiers' poems "The Earth Flying Rainbow" is a powerful proof. At that time, the poets of the railway soldiers cultivated their lives, held high standards and were independent, and whenever they met, they studied the creation and methods of poetry, and broke a successful path in how poetry served real life. You are proud of your arduous struggle, you have the idea of starting a business with Acura, and you have injected tremendous spiritual strength into the troops. From the sheep intestine path that the warriors stepped on, you discovered the poetry of entrepreneurial life connected with real mountains, real rivers and wastelands, together with the primitive wildness and majestic masculine beauty, which has a huge development power for poetry. As a result, there is a majestic and dangerous longing in your heart, an irresistible temptation, and a glorious pursuit of poetry. This kind of pursuit is not a moment, but a lifetime, so that poetry leads life, and bitter love goes to the end of life. For example, such as Keqiang, and Wu Bing all belong to this category. This is the poet. A poet is a person who experiences life in the form of poetry. It is only through the life experience of the poet and the poet's poetic practice that there is real poetry and forever alive poetry in the poetry country.
Xiaoyu, seeing you off today, I feel very lonely. Time flies, the old and old, sick and sick of the railway soldiers, and the change of jobs, are distributed all over the world, and I can no longer see you off with a complete team of military poets, only I, who is indiscriminately listed among the poets and has long ceased to write poetry, has forced myself to squeeze myself into the appearance of a poet to send you a ride. Of course, I can't represent the huge military in history, but what I carry is the memory of literature and poetry of that military class, and the sad hearts of many poets. I calmly said: I represent them.
Xiaoyu poetry is good, and so are people. There are many gray-haired old men who say your final goodbyes, and I don't know them, but they are certainly all active figures in the world of poetry. There are also many students who claim to be Xiaoyu, who put down many matters related to the New Year's goods at hand and rushed to Beijing overnight, begging to see the teacher who put down his poetry pen and went to heaven again. This is the case of the famous poetess Lin Xue, who took an overnight train from Shenyang and rushed back to Shenyang immediately after the farewell ceremony. This Spring Festival, her amorous poetic heart will hit a heavy echo in the canyon where Xiaoyu died.
Xiaoyu's father, Li Ying, came, and I stepped forward to hold his hand and said, "The poet of the railway soldiers asked me to send Xiaoyu on their behalf, please take care of yourself." Li Ying's lips trembled, wanting to say something, but he never said it, he grabbed my hand and pressed it on his thigh a few times, and a few old tears came out of his eyes.
Xiaoyu lay quietly among the flowers and cypresses, with a bright red scarf tied around her neck. She said her final goodbye to her relatives and poetry friends in the image of a red scarf.
Two
Poet Li Xiaoyu
Xiaoyu is a famous contemporary poet, a famous literary editor, former executive deputy editor-in-chief of poetry magazines, vice president and secretary general of the Chinese Poetry Society, died in Beijing at 23:06 on February 11, 2015, at the age of 64.
Xiaoyu has lived in the army with her parents since she was a child, and under the influence of her father Li Ying, she came into contact with poetry at the age of 4. In 1969, he went to Fengrun Zhongmenzhuang Commune in Hebei Province to settle in the queue. Xiaoyu said: "It was an unforgettable memory of youth. She left her youth and sweat on the land of her hometown, and the mountains and rivers of her hometown gave her an endless source of creativity. Later, her creations such as "Long Land", "Sunflowers", "Red Scarf" and "Winter Boat" all recorded this period of youth.
In 1971, Xiaoyu joined the railway army and served as a hygienist in the 74th Regiment Health Team of the 15th Division. In 1972, 21-year-old Xiaoyu published her first set of poems "Collecting Medicine", which has been unstoppable ever since.
Different from her father's writing style of "Jin Ge Iron Horse", Xiaoyu's poems are delicate and gentle, and she likes to use poems full of life to convey the true experience of life in her heart. With her keen intuition and delicate emotions about life, Xiaoyu uses poetry to explore the bits and pieces of ordinary life. She knows that life is the soil for the growth of poetry, and only by maintaining her love and passion for life can she write exciting poems.
Xiaoyu wrote poems about the life of the railway soldiers in his early days, which not only aroused the recognition of the railway soldiers' poets, but also attracted the attention of the leaders of the Ministry of Culture of the railway soldiers. Zhu Zhensheng, former vice minister of the Ministry of Culture of the Railway Corps, once said to me: Light rain, poetry is rare. He has repeatedly suggested that Xiaoyu's unit should take Xiaoyu into account when the battlefield is dry, so that she can become a railway soldier poet permanently. But in the end, she didn't do it, but retired from the army as a war soil.
The poets of the railway soldiers all sighed for Xiaoyu's retirement. However, Xiaoyu's retirement from the army made her board the platform of becoming a famous poet, and she found a place to use. A certain microcosm may not need poets, but our nation needs poets, and the broken cultural bridge needs the welding of poetry to connect history and the future. I don't dare to say whether Xiaoyu is a genius poet or not, but I want to say that after Xiaoyu became the editor of "Poetry Magazine" in July 1976, her poetic capacity and vision are far greater than when she was a soldier in the railway soldiers. On that platform, she was well-informed, and the nourishment of the poetry of the high-end essence of the whole nation made her know how to release the poetry and energy of a poet into the arena, and present an indispensable wonderful beauty in the glorious palace of literature. Although the objective high ground possessed by a poet is not the only condition for his success, it will inevitably play a huge catalytic and influential role in his success.
Xiaoyu was not in vain as a railway soldier, she had a spirit of no danger and no difficulties in front of the railway soldiers. During the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, Xiaoyu, who had just entered the "Poetry Magazine", came to Tangshan 8 days after the earthquake, and on the ruins after the earthquake, she wrote works such as "The Red Flag That Cannot Be Shaken" with tears.
In 1978, Xiaoyu went to the North China Oilfield to experience life, lived in the women's drilling team for a year, and wrote a large number of poems. After becoming the leader of "Poetry Magazine", she organized poets to go to revolutionary holy places and Qinghai-Tibet lines to interview and group drafts many times. Inspired by the fiery life, she wrote many works that are down-to-earth, warm, powerful and tasteful. Her creations have been widely praised by the poetry and literary circles, and she has published 8 poetry collections, including "Song of the Wild Goose", "Rose Valley", "Light of the East" and "Statue of Sound", among which "Red Scarf" won the 3rd National Excellent New Poetry Collection Award, and won the 1st Solemn Literature Award and the 2nd Iron Man Literature Award. "The Last Minute" was included in the fifth grade textbook of the Chinese People's Education Edition. Many of his works have been translated into English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and other languages.
Looking at Xiaoyu's back and brilliant achievements in the field of poetry, many people asked, isn't her struggle due to a whim? Where does the power of her writing come from? Of course, it is not good to give a conclusive answer to this proposition. However, can it be said that her lifelong longing and search for poetry, as well as her persistence in traditional poetry and her enthusiasm for the understanding and exploration of avant-garde and cutting-edge poetry, have transcended the narrow utilitarian purpose, and are embodied in a kind of Lingyun ambition to make blood for new poetry. If we look back along the road of light rain, the life of the railway soldiers in the Quartet, the spirit of courage to open up the road, is still the most primitive background color of her life, because of the resource role of this spiritual mother, she is not afraid of hardship, the courage to explore, the mind is keen, and simple and modest, so that her life is colorful later, and with the artistic pursuit of expanding the road to explore, she has realized the poetic ambition of swallowing mountains and rivers.
Three
I have known Xiaoyu for more than 30 years. In 1976, the "Poetry Magazine" was republished, and I was hired as a "correspondent" by the "Poetry Magazine". At that time, although he knew that Xiaoyu, who was born in the railway army, was working as an editor in the "Poetry Magazine", he always thought that the poems were not written well, so he did not send the "Poetry Magazine" to trouble Xiaoyu. In 1979, Wang Yansheng of the "Poetry Magazine" and Li Wubing, a poet of the Railway Soldiers, went to the Qinghai-Tibet Railway to collect style, and I accompanied them for more than half a month and formed a deep friendship. After that, I was transferred from Qinghai to Beijing to specialize in journalism. Although I no longer write poems, whether the "Poetry Magazine" is in Xiaoxitian or Hufang Bridge, if I have time, I will go to visit Mr. Yan Sheng, and every time I go, Mr. Yan Sheng always calls Xiaoyu to exchange information about the situation and talk about the creation of railway soldiers and cultural people. No matter how shallow it is, no matter how deep it is, there is no generous discussion between poets and students, and there is no worry about the burden of the mission of saving the world, and each other's mood is like a kind of tranquil and leisurely meeting between new and old comrades-in-arms. Sometimes, I invite them to a street shop for a drink, but Xiaoyu always excuses them because they have too much to do. Xiaoyu writes about life with poetry, and her life is as unpretentious as her poems.
Later, I worked as the editor-in-chief of China Railway Construction News for 12 years, and in order to run the supplement well and also to support the façade of this newspaper, I repeatedly asked Wang Yansheng and Li Xiaoyu, who were born in railway soldiers, and Ye Wenfu and Li Huanyi, who were not born in railway soldiers. Every time I called Xiaoyu, she always said, let me think about it. After a few days, she would call and say: "After thinking about it for a long time, poetry can never return to the original point of life, and when I have ideas in the future, I will give you the manuscript." ”
Xiaoyu is a man-made poem, with great ambition and less utilitarian heart; There is a sharp mind, no worldly atmosphere. Her artistic concentration and the strength of her personality make her pursue a high-grade artistic purity in the creation of poetry, and only when something that can be called an artistic feeling quietly penetrates her heart, and when her sincere heart and the poetic goddess embrace each other, she spills out the poems, just like the color blocks that Van Gogh first broke into or Rodin's faintly dancing lines, and only after the inspiration is ignited, will it render a rich and colorful brilliance. Our seriousness can be glimpsed from the creation of "Red Scarf". At that time, Xiaoyu, as an 18-year-old young girl who went to the countryside, "wearing a red scarf" became a long-term dream of hers, and this image became the foothold for the poet who grew up in the turbulent era to "re-enact the past" and "create the future", placing her review and reflection on history and facing reality, symbolizing the lost youth and residual hope. The poem was conceived for 11 years, and in 1980, when the poet was nearly 30 years old, he wrote the poem. This belated "Song of Youth" has a little more rare vicissitudes of this age, which is the mark left by the special era, and it is also the crystallization of her 11 years of spiritual smelting.
Throughout Xiaoyu's creation, she is not a prolific poet, but she is a high-quality poet. If the stress point of objective images could not activate her rich imagination and create the feeling of poetry, she would not write poetry easily. She was always looking for a very personal way of imagining poetry.
Xiaoyu is a generous person, I remember that a few years ago, Wenfu and I were invited to participate in a symposium on poets' works. There is some kind of flaw in the work. Wenfu fired a shot, and I fired a shot, which made the scene very embarrassing. Xiaoyu said to me gently: "You are still the character of a railway soldier playing a wind gun!" Actually, this was a gentle criticism of me. Xiaoyu's humanistic context, which is a person who lives in the world, pays attention to harmony and harmony, and respects others is the understanding of life wisdom and the trend of social fashion. She has lived in the literary circle for a long time and knows how to respond to the heavens and live in harmony. In fact, the evaluation of literature, especially poetry, is that the benevolent and the wise see the wise, and it is never possible to approach accuracy, everything is probability, it is "almost", "okay", how can there be something that meets everyone's taste. Xiaoyu commented on other people's works, although there are "thorns", but more "planting flowers", shining with the light of experienced wisdom.
Four
I often tell my friends that there are three poets who are railway soldiers and should not be forgotten. The first is Wang Yansheng, who is known as the "godfather" of modern new poetry. If Yan Sheng had not insisted on exploring new poetry on the platform of the "Youth Poetry Club" for decades, the current prosperity of the Chinese poetry scene would not have happened. The second is Xiaoyu and Yi Lei, who were born in the railway soldiers, who are the pioneers of the exploration of new poetry and have made outstanding contributions to the development of modern new poetry. In particular, Xiaoyu, a poem entitled "Night", gave birth to the poetic concept of "hazy poetry". On February 22, 1982, "People's Daily" published Xiaoyu's "Hainan Love" group of poems, among which "Night" was criticized because it was hazy and could not be read. Since then, the concept of "hazy poetry" has been born. In fact, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the mainstream ideological discourse of the left disintegrated, poetry faced a crisis of form, many outdated expressions were far from sufficient, metaphor, symbolism, synaesthesia, changing perspectives and perspective relationships provided new prospects for poetry creation. As a result, Xiao Yu, who has an exploratory spirit in the art of poetry, became the first person to eat crabs. But hazy quality is by no means at the heart of her poetry. The most valuable thing in her poems is the intellectual reflection that conveys the essence of her life. As a heavyweight poet of mainstream poetry magazines, the poems highlight a strong sense of modernity and a philosophical perspective on culture, which is precisely an important component of Xiaoyu's construction of her "intellectual space". It's very rare.
Xiaoyu is also an excellent poetry editor. The poetry she has recommended and published is innumerable. She has been responsible for organizing the "Youth Poetry Club" many times and has cultivated a large number of outstanding young poets for the poetry circle. She promoted "Part-time Worker Poetry" earlier and cultivated many excellent part-time poets. I thought that the decades she had been a poetry editor were the "spring rain years" of fulfilling her mission and responsibility, and she turned her hard work and wisdom into endless spring rain, nourishing countless young poets and nourishing the boundless poetry garden.
"Good rain knows the season, when spring happens. Dive into the night with the wind, moisturizing things silently. "Xiaoyu is alive, living on the land, living in spring, and living in poetry.
Introduction of Zhu Haiyan
Zhu Haiyan, a native of Lixin, Anhui Province, enlisted in the army in 1976 and served as a soldier, platoon commander, deputy instructor, and cultural officer of the division's Political Department in the Seventh Division of the Railway Corps.
In 1983, he was transferred to the "Railway Soldier" newspaper, and in February 1984, he was transferred to the "People's Railway" newspaper as a reporter, chief reporter, and chief reporter. In 1998, he served as editor-in-chief, president and editor-in-chief of China Railway Construction News, and a senior reporter. In March 2010, he was transferred to the Engineering Management Center of the Ministry of Railways as the deputy director at the bureau level, specializing in the writing of railway construction reports.
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