Author | Acacia Book
Source | Confucius old book network dynamics
With the improvement and improvement of diet and medical conditions, people's life expectancy will increase. In recent years, articles on demography or videos of media lectures on health care like to refer to the elderly in the age of 60-70 as "young and elderly". The elderly see experts and scholars add a "young" fixation to their own titles, of course, happy in their hearts! However, when I call Mr. Chen Yuan "young and old", I refer to his mental state or mentality, not to his aging body.
Always curious about new things and affectionate for the lost life are the first characteristics of Mr. Chen Yuan. After the founding of Reading magazine, he insisted on writing the supplementary nature of "In the Jungle of Words", observing and analyzing new words from the perspective of sociolinguistics. Readers only need to read a few of his collections and reflections on street advertisements, newspapers and television, and new words that appear in daily life, and they can feel the full passion of a cultural old man. The radio at the train station, "Passengers to xx", we can hear it when we sit in the train, but no one will pay attention to the subtlety of the broadcast words. Chen Yuan heard it, pondered this wording, and said affirmatively: "The going of two syllables is more able to prompt the listener to pay attention to the place names below than the going or going of single syllables." The sound of the radio on the station entered his ears, and he absorbed the analysis, which is exactly: everywhere you study abroad, you learn. Among the older generation of cultural people, he was the first to use a computer. Chen Hanbo, who presided over the nationwide publishing work, did not know the mystery of the computer, and he excitedly carried his computer to Chen's office to give a live demonstration and introduce explanations to Chen. When I read Chen Yuan, I was touched by a "young and old man" who was curious about the unknown world. In "My Cabin, My Dream", he recalls the story of reading and learning with his classmates and colleagues when he was young, which is the life history of an old predecessor on the cultural front. From his passionate memories, I saw the deeds of his predecessors who put the future of the individual and the future of the country and the nation into one.
Chen Yuan knows many foreign languages. When he presided over the Commercial Press, he insisted on focusing on the publication of chinese translations of world academic masterpieces, insisted on publishing various dictionaries, and in the inheritance of the publishing cause, he took the true scriptures from Zhang Yuanji, Gao Mengdan and Hu Yuzhi. As a publisher and linguist, he participates in international academic conferences, absorbs new information with great enthusiasm, adheres to tradition with a very calm attitude, and spends every day with a tireless spirit of learning. When I was young, I studied Esperanto for a few days, and my interest in Esperanto came from Chen Yuan's tireless enjoyment of this artificial language. For me, Esperanto is just a medium, not much use, but the predecessors who actively promoted Esperanto, their idealistic spirit, is a raging flame, always burning. I am on the side of the spiritual world, and I am on this side. Thirty years ago, I wrote an essay titled "I Remembered < Practice Writing >" to express my opinion on the work of editing and publishing.
"Practicing Pen" is an internal publication of Chen Yuan's business, old-fashioned typography. When the journal was founded, Chen Yuan's hundred-word "Inscription Practice Pen" told his colleagues the idea of running this internal journal: "An editor is like a doctor, he will not only diagnose the diagnosis, he must also be able to use drugs or surgery." The editor not only has to judge the quality of a manuscript, but sometimes he must also pick up a pen to help the author polish or revise. Therefore, editors must practice writing. These big truths are actually the basic requirements for editors, not the highest requirements; running such a simple internal journal is a platform for creating a good atmosphere for cultural enterprises. I value and love this small publication, and pay tribute to her, and I also pay tribute to Mr. Chen Yuan.
Most of the friends who like to read have Chen Yuan's "Walking in the Book Forest". This book, which is widely known in the reading world, has been published in a sequel, and the style is still consistent, which is a reading miscellaneous book he wrote in various periods. Miscellaneous notes are long or short, and there are no stereotypical articles. In these two volumes of The Walk, there is a meditation on life, a thoughtful essay he wrote when he was young. Sensibility and rationality, a serious reflection on life by an intellectual youth, and the tone of music are very contagious. He is not in the literary world, and few people pay attention to his excellent work, so I may as well copy the first few sentences for the reader to enjoy:
"On this day, at twilight, I was liberated from Montaigne's prose and went outside with an inexplicable mood— Montaigne's words tormented me, saying, 'Life is a dream: when we are asleep, we are actually awake; when we are awake, we are actually asleep.'" Thinking about it, where to go? You should take a walk and let your head rest more. This essay was written by Chen Yuan when he was 26 years old. He joined the communist-led ranks of cultural publishing, and also maintained the freedom of thought and thinking about the meaning of life. Montaigne's essay points out that people should live soberly, and sobriety itself is a trouble, and even if it is a disaster to live soberly. Montaigne's words triggered Chen Yuan's contemplation.
Thinking about the meaning of life when you are young, to entering old age, shooting all over the railing, walking through many twists and turns, and experiencing all kinds of hardships and hardships, is there still the passion of youth? In "My Cabin, My Dream", Chen Yuan, a cultural elderly man in his 80s, can also write such essays:
"This hut seems to be a vast and boundless sea of books, I surf in this sea of books day and night, as if reflecting, as if contemplation, all the worldly thoughts and temptations have disappeared, leaving only the old man and the sea, the old man and the book sea - the sky is connected to the sea, the sea is even the sky, a good picture of the flowing style!" The soul is saved, free, and can fly. ”
In the ocean of books, knowledge, Chen Yuan forgot all the worldly desires, surrounded by classical music, read and wrote, not knowing that old age was coming.
When I read Chen Yuan, I never saw his complaints about life, only from the words and lines, I felt his eternally optimistic and positive attitude towards life. Huang Gu said: "Pepsi can be done, but it is not vulgar." Mr. Chen Yuan hid his nobility and elegance in humor and humor, and was willing to be a spiritual rich man in the hut. From his books, I can not see not only his complaints about life, but also the worldly things seem to have disappeared from his mouth and pen. Since then, I have believed that some people, because the inner world is too rich, can no longer tolerate the external "being" pursued by the world. In particular, Mr. Chen Yuan said, he found himself in his hut and regained his lost simple thoughts.
