A friend of mine who was two rounds younger spoke to me on the phone, mentioning that Ye Tingfang died on September 27 this year, and lamented: "His translation of Kafka is a precious cultural nourishment for my adolescence. You know him so well, you should write a nostalgia article! "Yes should be written. But in the past two years, like him, I am a brother and elder, and there are cultural people who have contacts, and there have been one after another, some, such as from Weixi, I immediately wrote a memorial article; some, such as Shao Yanxiang, found the letter he wrote to me the year before, read it again, but for a moment did not want to write rashly; some, such as Shen Changwen, immediately after his death, there were nostalgic articles that appeared in the newspaper, the sound of empathy, has been expressed, involving the matter between the two of us, can be mentioned in the future big memoirs... Ye Tingfang, the closest period of time we had was in the last decade of the last decade of the last century, and there were fewer contacts in the past ten years, but the mutual feelings of concern should be reciprocal.
In the last decade of the last century, we once lived relatively close, all in the Jinsong Community in the southeast of Beijing, but the building where I lived, in the east end, the building where he lived, in the west end, walking back and forth, it was more difficult, visiting each other, all by bicycle.
Brother Tingfang's translation of German literature also nourished me. In fact, his cultivation is not only reflected in literature, he has studied musicians in the German field, and he has studied the architecture of Europe, and his insights and experiences have been presented in prose essays. Both of us were once accommodated by the architectural circles in Beijing, and we were invited to participate in some forums in the architectural circles, and we also made speeches and expressed our views on architectural art.
Because we talk more, and look at each other's publicly published words more, the resonance is not so exciting to us, and when the differences appear, the discussions are discussed, and even the arguments are intense, and the pleasure of recognizing each other as a conversation partner is enhanced.
In a conversation, Brother Ting Fang asked, it was a questioning tone: "Xinwu, your speech, your article, I found a question, for Western classical architecture, you for Romanesque, Gothic, and later Romanticism, and even modernization of complexity and simplification, simplified to simply engage in square boxes of Bauhaus style, do not hesitate to praise words, even, I remember that in your speech, rococo style, that extravagant and cumbersome style, are accommodated, then why do you almost not mention baroque? Hmm, others ignore the past, I can't spare you, what the hell is going on? ”
Yikes! Only the best talking companion can be so excited! I happily told him, "Stimulated! "I told him that when I was in high school, there was a drawing class in the curriculum, I needed to use tools such as a duckbill pen, I used ink lines to draw ovals, somehow, other students seemed to have to draw without any effort, but I couldn't draw anyway, the bell rang after class, the classmates easily handed in their homework, I was angry and tore up the unfinished drawings, the teacher announced on the spot that I was given a 2 point (at that time, the 5-point system was implemented), the shadow of this juvenile era, so that I could not produce beauty for any oval thing. I remember my first trip to Germany in 1984, baroque architecture although the earliest appeared in Italy, but later in the German-speaking areas of the popularity, German sinologist friends took me to admire a typical Baroque building, the façade in the center is a huge oval shape, although the German friend chattered to explain to me the magic of that kind of fine pursuit, I only hope to leave quickly, see more Ofco-style architecture in Cologne Cathedral... Ting Fang listened to Xian haha laughed, and after laughing, he seriously discussed: "Western psychology, there are many studies on how childhood spiritual shadows affect the course of life, and you provide a vivid case." no wonder. Baroque comes from the Spanish and Portuguese barroco, is the meaning of the deformed pearl, the pearl should be a perfect circle, the deformation can not be elliptical, this architectural model, indeed a lot of use of ellipses, diamonds, large curves ... Your aesthetic rebellion in Baroco architecture turned out to be a heart disease! I followed up with the discussion: "To engage in architectural criticism, we should abandon personal privacy, paranoid interests, and be fair." After all, beauty still has objective standards. In fact, when I was a teenager, I still admired two theater buildings in Beijing, one is the Chinese Children's Art Theater near Wangfujing, outside the Donghua Gate, which is still there, although after many reconstructions, the façade is still basically Baroque. The other is in the South City Zhushikou, originally called the Enlightened Theater, once called the Democracy Theater, the façade is also Baroque, and now it has been demolished due to the extension of the road, but there are photos left. Brother Ting Fang bowed his head: "I also have an impression." I also commented: "In fact, in 1915 of the last century, when the Beiyang government commissioned the German RothKegel to rebuild the Zhengyangmen Arrow Tower, adding a cement flat seat guardrail and the curved eaves of the arrow window, adding Western pattern embossed ornaments on the side, completed in 1916, and now rebuilt, it still maintains that appearance, I think that the curved eaves of the arrow window, the embossed ornaments added to the sides, should also have a Baroque charm, look quite pleasing to the eye." Brother Ting Fang smiled: "If Roth Kegel uses an oval shape, do you still feel good to the eye?" ”
In those years, sometimes I would go to his house and ride a bicycle to a seminar in the construction world, and in front of me, he would use only one right arm, wear a suit and tie sharply, and when he went downstairs, he would use only one right arm to drive the car lock, push the cart, cheat the leg to get on the car, and move forward with the handle... He was more handsome than me, really a dancing prince, riding all the way to the event site, he was more popular than me.
Someone asked me privately, "Why didn't Ye Tingfang have that left arm?" You should know, right? "I don't know. I have never asked, nor have I ever had the heart to ask, and when I was with him, I never cast a special eye on his missing arm, and I would not praise him for having a two-arm function. Ting Fangxian went, and I lost another talking companion. In the quiet of the night, after the design plan of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, which is jokingly called "steamed egg", was determined, his wonderful speech at a symposium in the architectural world, his aesthetic attainments, his artistic synaesthesia, his broad mind, his pearl-like words...
October 6, 2021
(Liu Xinwu)