Chapter 50 3. Correspondence with Guo Moruo

The farm is a closed world, eight hundred miles of Dongting isolates us from the outside world, and communication is almost the only way to communicate with the outside world.It is difficult for people who are not in the situation to imagine the mood of the people here looking forward to the letter. Every day, the correspondent retrieves the letter from the regiment headquarters, which has become the most exciting moment of the day.I often stand on the embankment for a long time, staring at the white sails floating towards the sky, thinking of my friends far away.Sometimes this isolated island life drives me crazy.How I hope to receive letters every day, and what I look forward to most is the letter from Guo's family.Because of loneliness and missing Shiying, I couldn't stop writing to them.In the beginning, it was mainly written to Pingying. Those letters were very badly written. The emotions were impulsive and depressing, and they were full of empty words that forced themselves to be uplifting. Now I am ashamed to read them again.In my state of mind at the time, she was the embodiment of all good values, so my feelings inevitably broke through a warning line, and she rationally avoided it.However, receiving a letter from her every few days is, after all, the most charming waiting in my monotonous life.Besides Pingying, I also corresponded with Jianying and Yu Liqun.At that time, Jianying was recuperating at home due to nephritis, and usually only he and the elders were at home. Elder Guo read all the letters I sent him and Yu Liqun, so we also started correspondence.

When I wrote a letter to Jianying once, I copied a few poems I wrote, one of which was enlightened by Li Bai's lines.Jianying wrote back and said: "The letter you wrote is really interesting, and the poem is very well written. Dad read it and said that the letter was written with poetic flavor, saying that you are very talented in poetry, and wrote me a poem by Li Bai." The poem is: "Shovel Junshan is good, flatten the flow of Xiangshui. Baling has unlimited wine, drunk to kill Dongting autumn." Then I asked a question: "Junshan is so good, why do you want to shovel Junshan?" My answer is: Just like "hammering the Yellow Crane Tower" and "pouring down the Yingwu Island", "breaking down the Junshan Mountain" is also Li Bai's rhetoric, which does not necessarily have any purpose.In the next letter, Jianying revealed the answer: "Your answer seems to be wrong, or it may be good. It seems that he flattened Junshan to grow rice, and made rice into wine, so he would 'drunk and killed Dongting autumn'." Later When I read the book "Li Bai and Du Fu", I realized that Mr. Guo was studying Li Bai at that time.In this book, Mr. Guo also wrote my answer to the above riddle and his refutation anonymously.The same book also published for the first time the song "Shui Tiao Ge Tou You Cai Shiji" that he had transcribed for me.

At about the same time, in a letter sent to me by Yu Liqun, Mr. Guo wrote a short passage, signed "Veteran PS".I have never dared to bother Mr. Guo, but with this postscript, I boldly wrote him a letter, and wrote a poem to him entitled "A Message to Veterans".He quickly wrote back to me, dated January 6, 1969, the full text is as follows: "Guoping: I have read your letter and the poem you wrote to me - "A Message to Veterans". I have also read other poems. "I, a veteran, envy you very much. The road you are walking now is the real road. It is a pity that I am 'old' and have become a person whose words and deeds have been inconsistent for a lifetime.

"I was looking at the diary left by Shiying. I just saw two lines written by him on February 12, 1966: 'What is the cleanest thing in the world? Mud!' "I let him come back from the farm. It was like pulling a young shoot out of the soil. I have a deep understanding of what it feels like. You know it. "I hope you are on the real road, stepping forward wholeheartedly. The deeper you take root in the mud, the better, and you will pierce through the earth until you grow old!" "I won't write any more, I'll say it again: I envy you very much!" Later, on June 16 of the same year, Mr. Guo wrote me a letter, which said: "I have read all the poems you sent. They are well written and have life content. I can't write them. You can’t write it if you don’t go to the farm.” Since I once lamented in my letter to them that although I was not born for a long time, it is difficult to reborn, he also wrote: “Seriously, I would I really envy you. In your words, I have been "born from the womb" for too long, so it is almost impossible to reborn. For me, it is really a pity." "Reborn" is Mao Zedong's requirement for intellectuals , which means completely remodeled.

When I read these words at the time, although I also read a kind of sadness from them, I interpreted them more as encouragement to me.It wasn't until the publication of "Li Bai and Du Fu" that I carefully pondered the connotation of this book, and then I felt that I understood the true state of mind when Mr. Guo wrote those words to me. "Li Bai and Du Fu" was first published in 1971, and its writing should have started in 1968.It was after the loss of two sons in a row that he felt unexpressed pain and resentment that he could not speak outright. He needed to find a topic to speak out, and he found Li Bai, who was most similar to his nature.I once analyzed in an article: In this book, Mr. Guo praised Li Bai's naive and refined side, criticized his emphasis on fame and fame, and finally settled down in the book "The Next Way Returns to the Former Residence of Shimen" written by Li Bai when he was dying. "On the interpretation of a poem.He spoke very highly of this poem, which has always been ignored, and regarded it as Li Bai's awakening work and a summary of his life. "Farewell" to the entire philistine society of intrigues and intrigues.Regardless of whether this explanation is far-fetched, or because it is a bit far-fetched, shouldn't we regard it as a kind of awakening and summary of the author himself?Guo used this to express his desperation for the current political situation during the Gang of Four period. This political world of "intrigues and intrigues" is so dark that the only "right way of life" for kind people can only be to stay away from politics and be an authentic farmer. .Looking back at the letter he wrote to me in the same period, it is very clear what he meant by "taking root in the mud" as the "true way", and "piercing through the earth and growing old" is not what it seems on the surface. To say that is a bold statement, but in fact it is an extremely painful exhortation.Similarly, when he quoted the sentence in Shiying’s diary—“What is the cleanest in the world? Mud!”—he must have understood the “cleanness” of mud in the sense that it is opposed to political filth. .Although he himself was completely disgusted with this kind of politics, he was trapped in it and it was impossible to get rid of it. In fact, he would not allow him to get rid of it, so he had to "become a person whose words and deeds were inconsistent all his life."

To a certain extent, the death of Shiying contributed to the awakening of Guo Lao. Shiying was a victim of politics during the Cultural Revolution.Therefore, he had to regret the way he let Shiying come back from the farm.One day after Guo Minying's death, Zhou Enlai and all the important members of the Central Cultural Revolution came to Guo's house to express their condolences. Zhou Enlai said to Shiying, "Shiying is not bad. After working on the farm for a year, I took the initiative to extend it for another year." Chen Boda immediately said: " It would have been better if he hadn’t come back.” Chen’s words may have been a high-pitched revolutionary, but objectively it became an unfortunate and proven prophecy.Two years after Shiying's death, Zhou Enlai also expressed remorse at Guo's house, saying: "Shiying's letter (a letter that was only half a page long and unfinished) is in my pocket. I am very sad if I don't talk about it. I can’t stand it. Blame me for having old ideas, let him go to college, and come back from the farm. We are all responsible for the children’s affairs, and I am even more responsible.” In fact, Shiying himself did want to stay on the farm forever and do What made this decision was his sound instinct, which told him that he must stay away from the politics of the time.Had this decision been implemented, the tragedy would most likely not have happened.Poets and peasants are children of nature, but those little intellectuals who gather to kill heresies are freaks of society.When the poet's soul piously regards the farm as a cleansing place, what he actually yearns for is a refuge where he can rest.