Flaubert, one of Mu Xin's favorite French writers, has repeatedly quoted Flaubert as "presenting art, retiring the artist" to remind readers and creators that they should pursue the artistic mind inside the text, and not be confused by the outward fancy behavior or proposition.
Flaubert (1821-1880)
Wooden Heart (1927-2011)
Gide, a French writer who also admired Flaubert, said: "The discussion about Flaubert will make me gush. He also said that liking Flaubert is a must for lovers of French literature, and the point is that you must know how to criticize your love for Flaubert. Because, creators must not forget the "fear of losing their personality".
Flaubert and Mu Xin were both extremely individual creators, and they both worked tirelessly to write. The ultimate goal of their writing is to let the reader see the story and see the characters without highlighting the creator as a person. The difference is that Flaubert always uses the third person to advance the story, but Mu Xin loves the narrative strategy of the first person.
1. Restraint and spillover of creativity
Recalling the process of making Madame Bovary, Flaubert said: "Nothing here is real, it is a completely fictional story, there is not a single point here that puts in my feelings or my existence... In his work, the artist should be like God, omnipresent and invisible. ”
In the novel, the loneliness and boredom of Madame Bovary's rural life after marriage are all what she sees and feels, and there will be no "spoilers" that fly from the sky. In "Emotional Education", which I personally prefer, in the imagination of the hero looking forward to meeting the dealer's wife several times, the sound of the skirt of the siren and the song of her coaxing the child to sleep in the next room make him (and let the reader me) hold his breath again and again.
The famous story of Flaubert after he wrote Madame Bovary goes like this: He pointed to the manuscript on the table and cried to his visiting friend that Madame Bovary was dead. Friends say, if you're really that sad, don't let her die. Flaubert said helplessly: "Writing here, the logic of life makes her have to die, there is no way!" ”
This is the restraint of creativity, but also the spillover of full creativity.
Mu Xin, who writes poetry and prose and writes novels, is accustomed to using the first person to carry out his creations. His early long essay "Shanghai Fu", which surprised Wang Anyi and others, many of which paid attention to and lived in style, were actually rewritten from several long articles written by earlier authors. Mu Xin famously said, "To write poetry, you must first possess the material." The material mentioned here may have been an article he had read, which later became the basis for his rewriting, translation, and rewriting.
In works such as The Windsor Cemetery Diary, The Evil Guest of Emerson's House, and The Pseudo-Solomon, it's easy to mistakenly assume that the articles were spoken by the British, Americans, and even the ancient Israelites and Greeks. Because, from the use of words to the creation of environmental atmosphere, it brings people a hazy sense of reality.
This is the spillover of creativity, the mastery of the sense of proportion of creativity.
William Yan, a critic of English literature who taught at southwestern United University, pointed out in his classic book of poetry criticism, "Seven Types of Obscurity", that the characteristics and roots of poetry are "hazy". The method is through the selection and arrangement of words and words, and the combination and echo of the order of verses.
Since the beauty of poetry comes from obscurity, poetic fiction and prose can of course also shape obscurity.
The American writer Nabokov, when discussing Madame Bovary in his Literary Lectures, found that "stylistically, the novel assumes the responsibility of poetry in prose. He said that Flaubert used words to lay out actions, images, dialogues, points of view, and angles, creating images and metaphors unique to poetry.
Although Mu Xin said that he is good at writing poetry, I think his best prose and poetry are also "prose that takes on the responsibility of poetry". This, of course, also includes his famous poem "I", which has only one sentence: I am a person who is in the dark and snowy
2. Cultural rumination and multi-vein transmission
Presenting art, retiring the artist – isn't it important to highlight the artist's true self? Mu Xin's answer to this in his later years was to laugh and say: Does the artist really want to retire, he wants you to find him.
Li Jianwu, an early translator of Flaubert's classics, said in his "Flaubert Commentary" that Flaubert, who was born into a family of physicians, grew up surrounded by sad patients. His melancholy personality has its origins, which also creates his habit of carefully observing changes in people, things, things and the environment.
Mu Xin understands that the world is as dual as Flaubert. He received a strict private school education from an early age, and the elders in his family were familiar with poetry and classics: "Ancient Chinese culture gave me a pair of eyes, one is the eyes of a debater, and the other is the eyes of a lover." In the process of reading and creating, Mu Xin has always known how to use two "I' to see the world.
One is the present me, the present, the emotional me. One is the me who has absorbed and passed, who can think critically and rationally. Two I would talk to each other, and at the same time a third "me" would appear at the time of writing: the reader. Mu Xin said that he would always consider that he was writing for a reader who knew more and knew more than he did. The process of his writing will have a lot of revisions, the magnitude and frequency of which is so great that he says that people who see it will think that Mu Xin is a very "nest" person.
Seeing the world with the eyes of lovers and debaters, and demanding one's own writing from a harsh perspective, such ability is based on the habit of "cultural rumination" in Muxin. Mao Dun is Mu Xin's hometown and relative, and he has been able to soak in the Mao Dun family's study with rich new books at home and abroad since he was a child. Coupled with his love and study of Impressionist painting and art, Mu Xin consciously wanted to transform "impressions" into words very early on.
The engraving of "know thyself" in ancient Greek temples always reminds human beings that "man" is a unique existence in the universe. The Renaissance advocated a new understanding of the world, and the Enlightenment required people to "reassess all values." Gombrich's The Story of Art begins by saying, "There is no such thing as art, only artists." "What we need is artists with vision and a high degree of vision.
The relationship between readers and creators is inherently dependent on each other and common prosperity. Much of the reason why Mu Xin's poetry and prose have continued to receive attention after his death is based on the fact that we are increasingly discovering that he is a deep creator. This depth comes from the fact that he is not passed on in one vein, but in the "multi-veined transmission" of East and West, tradition and modernity.
Mu Xin can write the ancient poetic style "ShiJing Performance", which is sung in harmony with the "Book of Poetry", or "Once Upon a Time Slow", which is composed as a popular song, "Only enough to love one person in a lifetime".
Based on Zheng Zhenduo's "Outline of Literature", which he had read several times at the age of thirteen or fourteen, he supplemented and revised the derived "Literary Memoirs" after passing the age of one, so that young people could read lectures on world literature with unique views.
I especially love the book "The Feast of Fish and Beauty" that Mu Xin was interviewed and the self-book learning process, in which he talked about the lifelong nourishment brought to him by his classmates, teachers, Shanghai Meizhuan, and the city of Shanghai... The talent exerted by the article "Late Confession" especially made me like it. Cultural rumination gives Mu Xin's writing depth, and the cultivation of art and the study of music allow Mu Xin to always write poems full of spiritual rhyme. In this regard, I describe it as a "lens sense" of writing, a few strokes can make people feel dynamic pictures in their minds.
However, as the English novelist Maugham said in Flaubert and Madame Bovary, and the French literary critic Jacques Rancière in The Execution of Emma Bovary, the development of art and the progress of the times permeate all aspects of life. However, art and life are not synonymous. If you really think so, it's too dangerous!
3. An artist who writes out the sense of lens
Doesn't art equal life?
Hegel said earlier that there are two kinds of "beauty", the beauty of nature and the beauty of art. The beauty of art is higher than the beauty of nature. Beautiful flowers, beautiful people, cannot be compared with the beauty understood in the soul. The beauty in life is not equal to the beauty of artistic cognition and experience. Readers and viewers may not necessarily know, but creators must firmly remember this iron law.
Mu Xin said that artists must educate themselves in their own way: "Artists can gradually mature their people by virtue of their works. In his own work, the artist can expect himself to mature. So he endorsed Wilde's art for art's sake, but disagreed with his representation of aestheticism. Because this Englishman who wrote "We all live in the gutter, but some people see the stars in the sky" is not simple enough.
He liked the concise phrases of the German philosopher Nietzsche and translated this philosophically intensive brushwork into his own creations. Mu Xin said: "Reading Nietzsche is a process of long bones and calcium. "The creator collects impressions with poetic lenses, and then brings philosophical depth into the text—these qualities allow Mu Xin's best works to withstand the wind and rain of time."
Mu Xin asks the debater to talk to the lover and the reader, and then uses the prose of poetry to present art.
This artist, we haven't forgotten him yet.
(Original title: Flaubert and the Wooden Heart)
Source: Beijing Daily Author: Li Liheng
Process Edit: u063
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