In early 2020, the "My Wilderness Feast" was still in the taste, and Zhang Wei published "BanLanzhi", following the life trajectory of Su Dongpo, an image of tenacious resistance and perseverance clearly came out of the dust and smoke of history; and the 50-volume "Zhang Wei Anthology" launched by Lijiang Publishing House allowed readers to more perceive the richness of the writer's thoughts and poetry and the enduring mysteries of creation, and also provided a dense and thick text for the reading and research of Chinese literature.
Writer Mo Yan believes that Zhang Wei is "a diligent laborer, a profound thinker, and a persistent innovator among the writers of our time." From the purity of the early 1980s , like a pool of clear water, like a pure and clean writing like the natural sound of "Sound", slowly developed to as thick as "Ancient Ship", as gorgeous as "September Fable", as sharp as "Hedgehog Song", as wide as the "Plateau Series", Zhang Wei's creative vein is very clear, and his continuous degeneration of thought is commendable.
Nowadays, writing is more and more returning to the original, he feels that a writer has more of an old man's mentality, more sunbathing, more memories and less reporting, sometimes it is a way and direction of work.
The details make history no longer symbolic
"My Feast in the Wilderness" vividly describes more than 360 kinds of animals and plants, both the richness of the natural world and the wild interest of rural life, restoring a forgotten folk history. It is also understood as Zhang Wei's childhood memories.
"Real memories need details, and recalling details is the most important job in remembering the past." Can we give the imagination to the past and make up for it in the record, so that it can be brought to life? For the reproduction of details, for the burning of a precious time, Zhang Wei strives to recall and immerse himself in that period of time. If you do, he says, you'll find sound back, color back, cats crouching in windows, sweet potatoes in pots spewing out a pungent aroma.
"Literature is both a romantic and a simple business. The life of literature should be a life of pursuit of truth and a life of yearning for poetry. Whether it is the novel "Ancient Ship", "Hedgehog Song", "The Solitary Medicine Man", or the children's literature works "The Youth and the Sea", "Looking for the Fish King", or the recent non-fiction works "My Wilderness Feast" and "Book of No Promises", Zhang Wei's nearly fifty years of creative process has indulged in history, reality, nature, human nature, customs, legends, philosophy, religion and other searches, and launched a marathon literary trek.
He has also been focusing on the study and reflection of traditional Chinese culture and history, including Qu Yuan and the pre-Qin Zhuzi, and has published long essays and other related works, including "Notes on Chu Ci", "Also Say Li Bai and Du Fu", "Tao Yuanming's Legacy" and the recent work "Ban Huan Zhi". He felt that the literary classics written by the ancients were the same as those of today: the same state of mind and method, the same difficulties and joys. Throughout the ages, there have always been some outstanding sighs, strange cognitions, and wonderful narratives in life, which enrich our boundless lives. Our writing today is joining them, but it is proceeding very slowly, intermittently, intermittently.
Tao Yuanming has long been symbolized as a symbol of Chinese hermit culture. The reason why Zhang Wei chose "Tao Yuanming" as the object of writing is because he felt that in this period, the image of Tao Yuanming would exist in the soft and hard hearts of intellectuals—his choices, his contradictions and pains, including his joy, or deeply touch the hearts of many people. Tao Yuanming used to be too simplistic and conceptual as a symbol, and sometimes even became a very superficial thing. Therefore, the in-depth interpretation of Tao Yuanming is a major event of the times, and this matter needs more people to participate.
"Just look at him as a chrysanthemum picker, standing there with a smile and groaning, how incomprehensible it is." Choosing Tao Yuanming to interpret is not to advocate modern 'escape' and 'alienation', but on the contrary, it is to emphasize that people must have the courage to face life head-on and emphasize the truth of people. Zhang Wei said that ancient and modern people look very different, in fact, the basic problems they face and some big problems are similar. For example, about human dignity, self-searching, freedom, these are basically the same. The differences in the external environment exaggerate the differences between us and them. Their dilemma, we will probably encounter today. So when we trace the mood of the ancients, we will find that we are not far away from them. They are all people of some big culture, but also some of the big specimens of life, and their values today are self-evident. There are many purely scholarly interpretations of them, but they are still not enough. There are some eternal conflicts that haunt them, and these conflicts need to be confronted by our contemporaries.
In Zhang Wei's exposition, there may be only one poet who really reaches the far side, Tao Yuanming,"who argues that Mr. Wuliu's "distant self-bias" has truly reached a distant place in the ultimate sense. In all of Tao Yuanming's poems, looking up is far less than looking down, he spends a lot of time focusing on the land and the wilderness, and his perspective on the land and the countryside is no different from most of us. Zhang Wei found a kind of solidity from Tao Yuanming's perspective, which contained the self-insistence and unwillingness of the literati, which was extremely rare.
The reason why he could find this solidity was because of the same solid stubbornness in Zhang Wei's heart.
Poetry is at the heart of literature
At a joint middle school on the Jiaodong Peninsula, Zhang Wei spent a life in middle school that he was deeply addicted to and sometimes could not bear to look back. The school is located on the seashore, surrounded by orchards, and in Zhang Wei's memory, "it is a campus that is no better than it", but in the special years of the 1960s and 1970s, it was difficult to find a quiet corner where the desk was placed. Fortunately, the principal of that school was passionate about literature, and set up a well-bound mimeograph literary journal "Mountain Flower" in the school, and what Zhang Wei wrote that year was often published in a prominent position.
Even many years later, he still felt that "Mountain Flower" at that time was as indispensable as air and water, becoming an irreplaceable comfort for his soul. "I'll spend a lot of time with this mimeograph publication in a place where no one is, smelling her scent and pasting her to my face more than once."
Just as he later broke into a tropical forest, full of strange and enchanting landscapes, flowing with the fragrance of blooming, a mysterious suspense can not help but charm people forward, and Ali Baba's incantation is hidden in his long "The Only Medicine Man".
Is this still the Zhang Wei we are familiar with? The language is still poetic, the thought is still profound, the narrative patience is still the same; but it is completely strange. The heterogeneous texts of revolutionary secrets, health essentials, and love history notes, full and energetic narratives, and tightly linked plots bring extraordinary impact to reading.
He used to self-evaluate himself as a stubborn man. On the title page of "The Only Medicine Man", he also solemnly inscribed: "I would like to dedicate this book to those stubborn hearts." He said that there are too many stubborn characters in the book, and their fate, especially sacrifice, is related to this character. He pitied all the stubborn characters of ancient and modern times and was willing to dedicate this painstaking work to them. "Because they're not opportunists at least, they're respectable in that respect."
People who know him well know that he has always emphasized "literary reading ability", and such a natural thing has made many people mistakenly think that he is guiding the "minority". "We sometimes aim our writing goals, consciously or unconsciously, at people who don't have that ability, and think that success is in that area, and that's a ridiculous thing. Writing to people with the ability to read literature is precisely the most basic and simple idea. Zhang Wei said that no matter who it is, as long as they leave this idea, his literature will be corrupted. It turns out that there are still many people with this ability, and they will persist to the end and go far.
In the writing of children's literature, he seems to have returned to his innocent, mischievous, and spiritual youth. Zhang Wei believes that writing so-called children's works, like adult works, requires a childlike heart. The inadequacy of the child's heart is often the old root of many works. The childlike heart is direct and pure, a sincere embrace of the world. The childlike heart is a weapon against vulgarity. He was always worried that young readers had read a lot of bad words.
The Latin American writer Llosa once said that before a writer aspires to do this job, he must think about whether to be a bad writer or a good writer. This may sound puzzling, because we would think that everyone would choose to be a good writer. But in fact, this is not the case at all, because it is enough to look at bookstores and the Internet - to be able to take one's own words harshly and always have a passion for truth is not easy for a writer.
When "You Are in the Plateau" was just published, a poet friend gave Zhang Wei a chic notebook to encourage him to continue writing poetry.
In fact, Zhang Wei never stopped writing poetry. Because in his view, poetry is the core of literature. Poetry disappears, so does literature, and the truth is the same for an era and for a person. In January next year, Zhang Wei's long poem "The Book of Not Fulfilling the Covenant" will be launched by guangxi normal university publishing house. This is a "work of the heart" that he completed this year, he has prepared for these poems for a long time, and in the days of the closed state for half a year, from melancholy to difficulties, from spirit to body, he continues to persist, but only in such a time and space can he feel that he can better enter the depths of this poem. This arduous and painful writing process allowed him to avoid a long and lonely time.
"Some people think that there are too few readers of poetry, and I don't think so. The most readers of poems are reading a variety of poems, including texts that are not branched out in the usual format of the poems. Without poetry, there is no literature, and literature has readers, and poetry has readers. The regular form of poetry appears in writing, which is also natural, but not all. Zhang Wei wrote one large notebook after another, delicately resting on the bookshelf, and these poems made him satisfied and happy. It will make sense to publish them in the future, or to keep them for self-reading. Poetry leads to the depths of the soul. Without the writing of poetry, it withers. True poet friends are best friends, memorable friends, but they don't always do it using the usual format of poetry.
"I think writing is joyful, something to enjoy. Writing that hides one's true disposition must be painful and difficult. If I write hard one day, I must have too much scruples, I have covered up my true disposition, and I am doing extremely unhappy work, then there will be no hope. A poetic heart beats, and the world looks full of life. The sorrow and joy of the poet are natural, not something that can be pretended, still less designed according to need. I want to be such a poet all my life. "Man suffers too much from living, but in this pain he oppresses all innocence, and he becomes more miserable. He imagined that even by the time he was eighty, he would still maintain his innocent nature.
Márquez said that life is just a day we can remember. "If life is just that, how important writing is to a person!" Thanks to writing, it is possible to record the time that has passed. Zhang Wei said that the next thing is to write well. He was going to write many, many poems because it was the best way to remember.
Get out of the nest where the books are piled up
Many people may remember that in 1993, there was a great discussion on the humanistic spirit, in which the dispute between "two zhang and two kings" was quite eye-catching. The so-called "two Zhangs" are Zhang Wei and Zhang Chengzhi, and the "two kings" are Wang Meng and Wang Shuo. This big discussion is related to the social transformation of the 1990s, but it is not only that, it actually reflects the spiritual confusion of a generation. How can people born around the 1950s, raised with an idealistic education, not be confused when faced with a completely different world? Zhang Wei said: "I always feel that if I don't understand this group of people, I won't understand the present and future of this nation. So I always had the urge to write about them. ”
For this generation, Zhang Wei described it as "a remarkable, by no means dispensable generation." He said that he had the strengths and weaknesses common to this group of people. Constantly reflecting and criticizing, the work is written about this process. "I started writing my first strokes in the late eighties (in the twentieth century). If I had known in advance how bumpy the road would end up, I might have been afraid to stop. Zhang Wei said that writing this book is really a grand event. He could never have imagined that it would take the best 20 years for it. The ten-volume "You are in the plateau" later won the 8th Mao Dun Literature Award. Carefully investigated, the protagonist of the work is positioned as a geological worker, probably from zhang Wei's childhood ideals.
"I was born in a forest by the sea. When I was a child, my mother and grandmother were very busy, and I used to play alone in the woods and by the sea. Later, I saw a lot of tents, and it turned out that oil, gold mines, and coal mines were found there, and the geological team came. I was lonely, so I used to go to the tent to play, go to sleep, listen to the geology team members tell stories, watch them work. The life and work of the geological team members are a great temptation for Zhang Wei, and at the same time, they also bury the dreams and complexes of local hostage workers. Zhang Wei, who later enrolled in teacher training, also always paid attention to the affairs of geologists. To this day, his tents and other geological lines are still readily available.
Zhang Wei called the ten books "the handwriting of a geological worker." He traveled through the landscapes and rivers of that area for many years, familiarizing himself with every river and mountain range, and familiarizing himself with most of the plants and animals there. He saw that writing as a protracted battle, not a battle.
Zhang Wei clearly remembers that at the turn of the summer and autumn of 1987, he was interviewing in a forest farm in Luxi, when he suddenly received a notice to return to the city for a meeting. It turned out that he and several writers went to the grassroots to hang up their posts. At first he felt some discomfort with the change of life and the order of creation, but after a while, as his work "Into the Wild" wrote, there was a pleasure of throwing himself into the embrace of nature. As a teenager, he traveled almost all over the mountainous plains of the Jiaodong Peninsula. Returning to his hometown, experiencing the landscape, culture, and folklore here again, hearing the birds of the jungle, feeling the smell of the mountain wind and the sea breeze, he seems to return to the condition of his youth... In "Into the Wild", he wrote fervently: "A person will search as long as he returns, and as long as he searches, he will get his wish." What a strange and simple principle, I bent down and picked it up. Crawling on the dirt like a tree that wants to take root—a desire that has been soiled many times by parrot tonguers. I'm going to go back to it. That need in my soul is as fervent and pure as childhood. ”
At the end of the year, he came to Longkou City, a wealthy area known as "Golden Yellow County" in history. At what should have been the bustle of the Spring Festival, when every household was preparing goods for the Spring Festival, in the southern mountainous area connecting the roof ridge of Jiaodong, he saw the poverty and embarrassment of a peasant family on all four walls: there was only a blue quilt on the kang, which was polished and shiny, and made a metallic sound when it was played; a wooden stick was set up on the roof beam, and a bag of bulging things was hung inside, and inside was seeds, which were hung up because of fear of rats.
Even the "Golden Yellow County" that I am most familiar with has such a strange corner, let alone other areas? Zhang Wei said that this means that we are still far from truly understanding life, and it is not enough to understand life from the media. The advantage of staying in a place is to have enough patience to walk carefully through the surrounding land and break the concept of survival formed in the past.
Wandering around before and after his suspension has enabled him to accumulate rich and solid creative materials. More importantly, he broke the habit of professional writing. "Whether it's a hanging post or something else, as long as you have the opportunity to go out, you can go on an adventure, and you can go fishing." In any case, the writer cannot be locked in a study, but must try to destroy the habit of professional writing. "In his view, professional writing has its own bookish atmosphere and has skillful and fluent writing, but the real sense of creative impulse will be reduced." Go out of the nest of books and reap more rewards. ”
Kant said that the greatest miracle that shook him was the starry sky in the sky and the moral law in our hearts. The writer's "deep life" should be to go deep between heaven and earth and truly feel these two greatest miracles. Zhang Wei believes that if he is essentially a poet, he should have a natural sensitivity, become a child of nature, restore the curiosity and surprise and romantic heart of childhood, and visit his past friends one by one at the first opportunity, these friends may be plants and animals in addition to people.
A good writer must have a personality
As a writer, Zhang Wei can be regarded as a "model worker". In more than 40 years, he has created more than 18 million words of works, writing an average of more than 1,000 words a day, and completely handwriting without the help of computers. His inexhaustible creativity is like a mystery, allowing readers to unconsciously find out where Zhang Wei's confidence and endurance come from.
"Writing is like everyday labor, and it is not surprising to people who work in the fields day after day. This is a natural thing for me. "He has been writing for decades, and although he has a love for literature, he also has a firm and stubborn side of his personality.
Zhang Wei believes that a good writer must have a personality. "If the writer does not stand still in the great current that is surging all the way, if he does not have his own thinking and discovery, he will lose himself." Zhang Wei believes that time is merciless, and after decades, history still has to remember the "big personality", and will not care too much about only a little spirituality, intelligence, love carnival will be naughty, fancy things. People are always condemning fast food culture and fast food works, in fact, many writers are a fast food, understanding problems, expressing ideas, where there is a big vision, basically can not hold their breath. He has such a determination that the group of writers in which he is placed is that without a "small personality" he will not become a writer; without a "big personality", what is excellent, outstanding, and great is not established at all.
Many of Zhang Wei's works are filled with respect for nature and even almost devout worship, while also expressing concerns about the dangers of rapid urbanization. On more than one occasion, he has been outspoken about the consequences of the plunder and rapid expansion of urbanization. "The destruction of nature, which affects the happiness of our contemporary human beings, is an important aspect, but it is deeply linked to the deterioration of human nature. When people's hearts go bad, nature goes bad. This is not simply an environmental issue. The heaviest thing is the human problem, which is also the eternal problem in the writer's heart. He believes that the harm of materialism to man is not a problem of a certain place, but a universal situation. There are problems at every stage of society, and materialism distorts our human existence and causes the greatest trauma.
Starting with "Wooden Car" in 1973, Zhang Wei has been running on the long literary road for 47 years. His entire work adds up to nearly 20 million words, including more than 20 novellas, 11 novellas, more than 130 short stories and more than 3 million words of prose essays, as well as two collections of poems. "Ancient Ship" has been praised overseas as "one of the greatest novels since May Fourth", named "The World's Top 100 Chinese Novels in a Hundred Years" (Asia Weekly), named "The Most Popular Novel by Jinshitang Ballot", and also identified by the French Ministry of Education and the Science Center as a textbook for higher examinations. When The World's largest publisher, Harper Collin, introduced contemporary Chinese literature to the world, Ancient Ships was the only Chinese contemporary work selected. "September Fables" and its author Zhang Wei were named "Ten Most Influential Works of the Ten Most Influential Writers of the 1990s".
Recently, Lijiang Publishing House published a 50-volume Collection of Zhang Wei's Collected Works. He looked at it very indifferently: a writer who has worked for a long time, for example, has a history of nearly 50 years of creation, and wants to bring his own words together. This is an important opportunity for reflection and summarization. Each stage will have some summary, but connecting the different stages together makes it easier to discover your shortcomings. For writers, this way of taking stock, this kind of opportunity, is not a lot, so it will be particularly cherished. "What is realized at this moment is very precious, and it will prompt him to take a good look at himself, make up for his deficiencies, and then turn a new page."
(Original title: Zhang Wei: Writers should be children of nature)
Source: Beijing Daily Author: Lin Jingqing
Process Editor: u018
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