Noble for man, messy poetry

Wei Qilin Studies, Edited by Zhong Shihua, Yunnan University Press

【Guangming Shushu】

In the history of contemporary Chinese poetry, the Zhuang poet Wei Qilin is a unique and continuously worthy of attention. In fact, since the mid-1950s, in addition to the interruption of the special era for more than a decade, the research community has maintained its enthusiasm for Wei Qilin's research, and hundreds of different types of papers have expounded on him, and more than 40 contemporary poetry history and literary history works have also set up special chapters to comment on him.

One

Historically, Wei Qilin constitutes a poetic phenomenon that can be explored. This precocious poet, who was a high school student in 1953, published a long poem "The Story of the Rose" in the "New Observation", and since then he has entered the temple of the muse, and has published more than ten collections of various works over the years. His poetry is most widely known is undoubtedly "Hundred Birds Clothes", which is both his famous work and one of his masterpieces, this long narrative poem is based on Zhuang folklore, with moving brushstrokes to interpret the love and struggle story of a pair of young Men and women of the Zhuang nationality, the theme, character image and language, techniques in the poem have distinct national characteristics and profound national cultural heritage. The poem was originally published in the June 1955 issue of Yangtze River Literature and Art, later reprinted in the July 1955 issue of People's Literature, and published in a single edition by China Youth Publishing House in April 1956, with a cumulative circulation of more than 1 million copies in various editions. Soon after the poem was published, a number of monographs on it were published in journals such as Literature and Art Daily, followed by the "Draft History of Contemporary Chinese Literature" (published by Science Press in September 1962) compiled by the department of Chinese of Central China Normal University, and "New Chinese Literature in the Past Ten Years" (published by Writers Publishing House in November 1963) compiled by the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In addition, "Bird Clothes" has been translated into nearly ten languages and published abroad. It can be said that "Hundred Bird Clothes" has become a classic in contemporary Chinese poetry, especially long poems, and it is precisely because it has established Wei Qilin's status in the history of poetry.

As the critic Zhang Yanling pointed out: "Wei Qilin ... Over the past 60 years, it has become a spiritual height of Guangxi literature with its noble personality and rambling poetry. The most important enlightenment brought by Wei Qilin as a poetic phenomenon is that through creative writing, he shows the close connection between contemporary poetry and national culture and folk resources, such as "Bird Clothes", which contains extremely rich national cultural elements, and his other poems such as "Phoenix Song" and "The Death of Mogo" are the same. Many issues arising from this, such as the national and folk nature of contemporary poetry, the position of ethnic minority poetry in contemporary poetry, and the significance of Wei Qilin himself to the current Zhuang and even Guangxi poetry, urgently need to be summarized and explored in materials and scholarship. The just-published "Literature Guijun Research Materials Series and Wei Qilin Research" (Yunnan People's Publishing House, October 2019) compiled by Mr. Zhong Shihua can be said to be at the right time, which just meets the above expectations.

This collection of more than 400,000 words of research treatises, including "Wei Qilin's Short Biography", "Research Review", "Interviews, Self-Statements and Impressions", "Selected Commentaries", "Appendix" and other parts, comprehensively and three-dimensionally shows Wei Qilin's life trajectory of more than 60 years, the creative process and its interaction with contemporary poetry and other minority poetry, as well as the overall pattern and representative results of research around these related topics. If it is said that Wei Qilin's personal role and lasting creation have allowed him and his poetry to participate in and witness the development history of contemporary ethnic minorities to a large extent, and can highlight some characteristics of contemporary minority poetry, then this collection of treatises is a comprehensive grasp and concentrated presentation of these characteristics, which has both documentary value and research value, and lays a solid foundation for further research.

Two

In the included Wei Qilin's self-narrated texts, there are many precious personal memories and worthy of attention to the creative experience, of which the most impressive is still his national identity and the orientation of poetry creation with "national characteristics" as the starting point. He advocated "drawing nourishment from the soil of folk songs" because "in folk songs, the bold and romantic exaggerations, and the rich metaphors, excitement, and repetition, are so vivid, precise, concrete, vivid and just right, giving people the impression of being so strong, fresh, and clear." The overlapping verses resonate as deeply as they do when they are recited repeatedly"; but he objected to certain biased practices in the search for national identity, namely, "to pay special attention to those peculiarities and customs with a curious mentality and attitude, or to the ornamentation of clothing". This shows a dialectical thinking and a broader vision.

The representative papers included in the collection provide a variety of angles and methods for exploring Wei Qilin's poetry, and also reflect the changes and innovations of Wei Qilin's research in the past 60 years, from the thematic science and class analysis in the early years to folklore, mythology, rhetoric, and "archetypal criticism" in recent years, which has gradually diversified Wei Qilin's research. Of course, researchers are most concerned about the creative use and expansion of Wei Qilin's poetry on national culture, such as Fang Enthalpy's "Aesthetic Exploration of the Narrative Long Poem "Hundred Bird Clothes"" article, which believes that the unique significance of "Hundred Bird Clothes" lies in "injecting life weather in the expression of national customs, national spirit, and ethical indoctrination"; Mo Qi's "Rereading the Bird Clothes" article notes the musical aesthetics of Wei Qilin's poetry based on national cultural elements: "It seems that it is not a charming labor scene that alternates in front of our eyes. Rather, it is a moving song of labor that reverberates in our hearts. These overlapping, repetitive verses are like the melody of the strings, and the bursts of excitement we are excited about. "These are all statements that shimmer with insight. Editor Zhong Shihua himself has devoted himself to Wei Qilin's research in recent years, and has published papers such as "National Roots Search and Cultural Guardianship in Zhuang Identity" and "Classic Construction and Influence Anxiety of "Hundred Bird Clothes"", which discuss the "root-seeking of national temperament", "guardianship of regional culture" and "innovation of national forms" of Wei Qilin's poetry, and he also completed the first draft of "Wei Qilin's Long Compilation of Chronology". This collection of treatises, which he has painstakingly compiled, will surely be recognized by the research community.

Cheng Guangwei's "History of Contemporary Chinese Poetry" mentions that in the 1950s, a group of ethnic minority poets attracted attention with a "group" posture, which is a very gratifying phenomenon. At that time, along with Wei Qilin, poets such as Ba Brinbeh (Mongolian), Tieyi Fujiang (Uyghur), Rao Jie Basang (Tibetan), Wang Chengdong (Tujia), Bao Yutang (Mulam) and other poets appeared in the poetry world; their long poems such as "Hundred Bird Clothes", "The Ritual Flower of Life", "Snow Lotus", and "Rainbow" constructed a peculiar landscape of long poetry creation in the history of contemporary poetry with the brilliant spectrum of long poems of ethnic minority narratives. These poets and works are undoubtedly an important part of the history of national poetry, and together they pave the way for the preservation, continuation and development of excellent national cultural traditions: transforming national culture into the driving force and resources for poetry creation, these classic works not only inherit national culture, but also enrich the expression of national language. It is expected that more works of systematic inquiry such as "Wei Qilin's Research" will emerge in this field.

(Author: Zhang Taozhou, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of the Research Center for Chinese Poetry at Capital Normal University)