On May 7, 2021, the Mandarin and Tibetan versions of Hamlet (left) were performed at the Shanghai Opera Experimental Theater, the first public drama directed by Pu Cunxin (right), chairman of the Chinese Dramatists Association, as a distinguished professor of the Shanghai Theater Academy, and the first Tibetan undergraduate class of the 2017 Shanghai Drama Performance Department and the graduation drama of the 2017 Stage Art Department.
After the big holiday in May, I went to Shanghai and watched the drama "Hamlet" directed by Pu Cunxin. Watching two times a day, first in Tibetan and then in Chinese, the line "The whole world is a prison, and Denmark is the worst one" was deeply wedged into my mind. There is also the dialogue: "There is no evil man in Denmark, not a complete villain." "Your Highness, there is no need for a ghost to tell us from the grave," which also haunted my heart, because I found that it came in handy in some aphasiaous situations.
Immediately after that, I threw myself into reading Reed Bank's diary. Because, on May 19th, there was also a commemorative event around the reed bank, which was launched at the SKP Building Bookstore in Beijing. Just as he was committed to writing the twenty-four solar terms before his death, this day of his departure every year seems to have become his solar terms. Friends will naturally talk about him on this day, and this activity, the opportunity is that the essayist Feng Qiuzi carefully sorted out the diary "The Soil is Beside Me" published, three major books, 900,000 words, spanning 1986 to 1999, which is also the most important fourteen years of his life.
Watching plays has nothing to do with reading books, but I found out in Reed Bank's diary that he seems less interested in Shakespeare. Not directly, it was Towon's assessment that was copied. There are many reading transcriptions in Reed Bank's diary, and if you read it all the way, you can feel that it is his heart song. At least the words that were left behind tied him to a point of thought, and let him think about something there. And one of the things that I remembered about Tovon was this: ... Shakespeare did not have the technique of making art outwardly beautiful, and the characters in his work lacked a "natural attitude."
Perhaps because I had just finished watching Shakespeare, I was quite sensitive to this place, so I became inquisitive, and then I wanted to see what Reed Shore had written about the drama. After reading the whole article, I only saw a theater viewing record: in the late nineties, I watched "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" with friends. Halfway through, it came out because "I've felt it all" (1998.4.13 diary, next volume, p. 342). Along this thread, I thought again, the literary and artistic circles he was dealing with, the ant brothers who wanted to unite, indeed there were more poets, essayists, painters, and editors like me who had literary contacts.
"Zhivago's wife, Tonya, talked to him about Lala: 'This person is very good, but she is not a type of person with me. I like to simplify everything and she complicates everything, so I don't like her. (Diary of March 17, 1987, p. 169) When Reed Bank recorded this statement, he had a sentence at the end: My nature is inclined to the former.
If you think of this sentence in his human text, Reed Shore may really not like to plunge into the chaotic human world, and deeper involve in those types of texts that seem to be tolerant and can "hide dirt and dirt" - novels and dramas are like this. Reed Shore writes prose, and its essence is close to poetry. But he also compares great poets like Goethe with this: "The light of his soul is even brighter than That of Goethe." "Regarding Goethe, I found out a biography of the author of "Fear of Life" in my family last year and read it, and found that Schweitzer was full of respect for Goethe. In a later speech about Goethe, Schweitzer even went so far as to call his coming to the city where Goethe was born, calling it "my little dim moon, passing before a great sun today." Schweitzer talked about several spiritual encounters with Goethe in his life and their profound impact, and if Reed had read this speech, would he have thought differently? Reed Shore likes Schweitzer. After more such thoughts, it is a little troublesome, but it is even more nerve-wracking - when I was interacting with Reed Bank, I was too young, my reading was limited, people were ignorant, many questions were too late to think, and when I really wanted to discuss some topics with him, he had left himself forever in the last century, left him in the 39-year-old who now seemed incomparably young, and left his friends in a situation where there was no way to discuss but needed constant self-questioning.
If the passage he wrote on January 14, 1989, also tested me: "The soul of A is often seized by the souls of certain literary masters (Thoreau, Gibran, Tolstoy, Tagore), and A's mind is easily moved by their language, not because A is a passive, receiver, but because A's soul is connected to those souls..." Then, whenever I come back from the theater, I have to find ways to find the lines that touch me in the play to see and think about. What connection does this two ends of the soul connected by the stage show? In connection with this Shakespeare in May, I realized that I was actually staying with the Prince of Denmark at one end of the world of the immense chaos of the twenty-first century, while the reeds stood quietly at the other end.
Some people, like Reed Bank, have long realized the essence of finding the "shortest way to the core of things", simplifying their lives and following the path of their hearts, while I, including some of the friends who have argued with him in my diaries, may need countless detours, analyses, and even the evidence of life experience to approach that core. This may seem like a clear fact, but there is still a question: if he were alive and underwent two centuries of turbulent changes, would his view of the world and his insistence on himself still be so consistently clear?
Reed Shore has said before that he is not suitable for entering the twenty-first century. But in fact, this century is more complicated than he imagined, not only is it not the natural evolution between centuries and centuries, but also the trajectory of things changed by the sudden epidemic: information is infinitely entangled, people's hearts are fragmented in detail, and more and more cognitive differences lead to the dilemma of self-choice...
The body and mind are disturbed by these, and it is invisibly easier to empathize with those complex forms of art. Even Shakespeare, whom Toon does not like, I can also feel that those Tibetan actors who have not yet left the university campus can really perform "Hamlet" on the stage today, and it does not make people feel that young people do not understand the situation of the Danish prince. The sudden insertion of Tibetan elements in some places even made me think that they could find the prototypes of Hamlet and Ophelia in their own Tibetan drama or mythology. And the angelic maiden chanting that appeared on the sidelines with a fierce duel made people deeply realize that this world today also needs such comfort. The so-called "a thousand Hamlets in the hearts of a thousand people", people of every era also have the grim moments that life must hit, and in Hamlet, they see their souls in turmoil, who does not long for friends like Horat. "Blessed are the kind of people who are commensurate with their feelings and intellect, who do not do the flute that fate plays, but sing the tune with her fingers. As long as I see someone who is not a slave to feelings, I will treasure him in my heart. "Isn't the fraternal loyalty of human beings, whom the Danish prince praised, also within the moral realm identified by Reedbank?
It also includes the eternal question of "survival or destruction" repeatedly issued by Shakespeare actors on stage. Over the years, I've really seen different versions of Hamlet and how this line was handled on stage. In this scene in May, Pu Cunxin, as the director, also let the gravedigger finally hold the skull and read out this sentence. On the simple stage, the last scene of the duel turned out to be the brightest moment on the stage in the whole play. A kind of open determination after action, Tibetan children are completely done with body language. The hint of life and death seems to be the skull that is always at the mouth of the stage. But the impression given to me is that death here is not an absolute absurdity, nor is it the end of everything.
These new feelings about Shakespeare want to communicate with Reed Bank, and this is no longer possible.
"One day you will be one living in a distant era
The earth will remember you as it remembers the grass and the forest
……
Remember those winds that came and went in a hurry
Your peace will become as boundless as the sea. ”
This poem recorded in Reed Bank's diary now seems to express our hearts for us. The reed bank was indeed already at the other end, guarding his boundless tranquility. At the commemorative meeting on May 19, the poet Song Di's memories of The Reed Bank began with the wheat field funeral on the Reed Bank. A young girl grabbed the ashes of the reed bank and sprinkled it on the field, saying that the scene shocked him. Soon I was confirmed by another woman who was present at the funeral, and when it came to ashes, she used an adjective: piping hot.
On May 23, 1999, in accordance with The Last Wish of Rei'an (1960-19 May 1999), his ashes were scattered in the wheat field of Beiying Village, Changping, where he was born.
Reed Shore, who treated people incomparably gently before he was born, finally left a memory of his friends to be hot, and what hit his friend's heartstrings was that after Reed Bank suffered from cancer, he seriously discussed with his friends how to die. Reed's diary presents what it was like in his life, he thought, he read, he looked down at the earth, and he looked up at the stars. And the friend's memories have also made up his last scene, a complete life and death, which can be put together.
Now, I'm thinking about it again with the drama on stage. Again I felt different. If "Hamlet" appears on the stage as a huge question mark in the dilemma of life and death, the death and life of Reed Bank actually point to a clear period. "The shortest distance to the core of things", in his diary, actually has a path hint, that is: "I suddenly felt that there should be some kind of life in my room, and my room was a world of books, paintings and music, which often suffocated me." I should be able to see life, change every day, feel the dirt right next to me, and the only thing that can overcome death is dirt. This is what the 28-year-old Reed felt in his diary. His later path has indeed never left the earth and the earth.
Face life directly, face things themselves. His peace is inseparable from the things on which he depends.
Perhaps this still comes from the identification with Toon: "It seems that the evil thoughts in people's minds should disappear in contact with nature, because nature is the most direct embodiment of truth, goodness and beauty." "But I have to say that when you embrace nature with all your heart, you unconsciously correspond to this idea." In recent years, I have found that many friends, like him, have begun to seriously identify plants and acquire knowledge of nature. When it is truly recognized that "man is the end, everything else is the means", many things can also be enlightened beyond language.
Chagall, "Above the Town"
Some of the writers and painters mentioned in Reed's diary were only slowly introduced around 2000, and many of their works were used as publications and were already old and new translations. By now I must have known that there were more measures than the assessments made on the reed bank. But when Reed Says Someone and His Work feel peaceful, warm, and bright, I'm still touched. And he is willing to read his work again, because it is an assessment based on the possibility of self-improvement. Between the French poet Yam and Baudelaire, he leaned toward Yam. Among the many painters, he was particularly fond of Chagall. Although this is not well argued by the thoughtful person, or as he writes an essay, the self-evaluation says that "simplicity sacrifices richness." However, in the ultimate sense of life, in the direction of the search for what can be called the road of life, sometimes some clear and straightforward statements will make people realize a word: "Farr is natural".
It's just that I also don't want to deny those winding paths. For it must be admitted that in any age, we must embrace two types of writers at the same time, one that sneaks into the bottom of our existence for us, and that our situation is as truly revealed as possible. The other, who may also be troubled by reality, is doing the quiet thinking of the mind and trying to grasp the most fundamental connection between life and the world. The connection between the simplest and most primitive things and their character—the earth, the starry sky, the individual goodness, and the cleanliness, simplicity, warmth—can be absorbed by their spirituality and honestly and accurately projected on words and people. Reed Bank's diary has such an atmosphere, reading down word by word, and the original power that has been consumed in reality seems to be able to return to the body little by little.
Author: Sun Xiaoning
Editor: Qian Yutong