Chapter 15 Six Essays

(one) There was a period in the past when I liked to visit places of interest, but gradually I didn't like it.Probably because I read the county chronicles, there are always ten sceneries wherever there are famous fighters.When I read Xu Luke's travel notes, I felt too deserted and didn't like it.In retrospect, the impressions of the places of interest I have been to before are very light, but the small streets and alleys I often walk have feelings for me. I have swam in the West Lake and seen the Great Wall, but what moved me was the scene at that time, not the local scenery.You Changcheng returned and stayed at the south entrance. At night, he came out alone and stood under the moon and stars, imagining that this was the ancient city beyond the Great Wall, but ended up with nothing.Back in the hotel, a large group of male and female students were making bunks in the lobby to find a place to sleep, chaotic.I also walked among them, and then I felt the truth. Later, in Guilin, I explored Qixingyan, the deep and dangerous cave.As soon as I went in, I was eager to get out.On the way back, I watched the women washing clothes by the moat for a long time.I'm just such a layman.

This is not because people have reached middle age.When I was young, being moved by the scenery was actually trying to move myself. (two) I have a name, but I don't like aliases.The last time Shen Qiwu came, I said to him, "Why did you build a Xianbu nunnery? It's best not to have these." The alias probably originated in the late Han Dynasty and flourished in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. People in the early days did not play this trick.Bajun Bayuan in the late Han Dynasty and Seven Sages in the Bamboo Grove in the Eastern Jin Dynasty are nicknames for a group of people.But scholars are the easiest to break up, and after a long time they will be alone.The alias of a group is to flaunt to others, and the alias of a person is to flaunt to oneself.What casual people, lay Buddhists, museum owners, and haters are all just playing with opinions.When a person has had enough of playing with everything, he plays with himself, playing with another name, which is a kind of playing with himself.Scholars are like this. When they are in a group, if they recite poems, they are some kind of "Begonia Yinshe", if they are involved in politics, they are some kind of "Qingliu", "Donglin party members", "left-wing writers", in fact It is still the same as "Baitang Yinshe", it can be regarded as an alias for a group of people, and having an alias is already very satisfying, expressing what they want to express.

But I like nicknames.Some nicknames in Outlaws of the Marsh are very good.The alias was chosen by myself, but the nickname was given by others.Those with nicknames are mostly scholars, but those with nicknames are mostly people from low-class society.The difference between the two is here.For example, hearing someone call you "Wang Mazi" or "Kanglin Guitou" makes you feel much more at ease when you go to someone's study and see the "Master" note under the glass panel. People in the lower class also have another nickname for their group, which is called "gang".Gangdos are heinous, but not boring.What society is a partnership of scholars, the purpose is only to be a staff member, now it is called a think tank.The rogue gangs often serve as the basis for terrorist political organizations such as the "Fire Cross Regiment".If there is a serious political party in the middle, it must first be separated from the society of these scholars and the gang of hooligans.Especially for scholars, they play politics just to play with their nicknames. When a group of people collectively call themselves left-wing writers, they are no different from individual self-signed masters, lay Buddhists, in terms of complacency.

(three) There are two types of Chinese literature these days: southern and northern.Is this because the atmosphere is different?no.The main reason is that the political climate is different.Some people also divide northern literature and southern literature into two schools.It is believed that there is suspicion of undermining the unity of the domain family.But in the end it was divided into two factions. The center of northern literature is Beiping, and the style of its works is relatively profound and serene, while the southern literature centered on Shanghai is lively and unavoidably superficial.This view of ordinary people is also correct.The superficial can be turned into profound, but quiet is not desirable. Therefore, some people think that the future of Chinese literature lies in the south, while that in the north is in decline.I don't think so.

The proximity of literature and political centers can make literature closely related to the times, but it also makes literature superficial.This superficiality is not simply a matter of technical accomplishment.Politics affects the lives of ordinary people, and this ordinary life is the keynote of literature.Therefore, the influence of politics on literature is rather indirect.But because political dynamics are particularly eye-catching, authors find it novel and often use it as a literary subject, which is prone to failure.They don't know how to describe politics from the perspective of ordinary people's daily life, but describe politics from the perspective of politics, which becomes a kind of political detective novel.Good writers are revolutionary, but not broader.A writer should deal with the subject of politics as he deals with the subject of love, examining and explaining the restraint and liberation of human nature, infected with small things and small actions, that is, the overall mood of people's daily life.

Because the authors in Shanghai are too directly related to politics, they often describe politics too exaggeratedly and ignore life.Such hyperbole, if used to describe love, is the literature of the mandarin duck and butterfly school of gifted scholars and beauties; when used to describe politics, it becomes the reportage of knightly revolutionaries.The shallowness of the works is not just a technical issue. Politics must be filtered through ordinary people's daily lives before they can be written into literary works.Good literature does not come from places at the heart of political turmoil.Good literature is produced a little further from the centers of political turmoil.There will be no good literature when political turmoil is at its climax, but good literature is produced before or after the climax of political turmoil.Because the author must have room to chew on the subject matter.

Since the Northern Expedition, the brutality of Shanghai's literary works was due to being too close to politics.There are also people who reward this kind of brutality, thinking that the new temperament of revolutionary literature should be like this, but revolutionary literature must be literary, and literature does not allow brutality. Even the revolution requires vigor, not brutality.Beiping is farther away from the center of political turmoil, so it is easier to investigate political turmoil. In the future, if there are literary works describing the living atmosphere of an era, I think it will be easier to produce in Peiping than in Shanghai.As far as the current situation is concerned, although the literature in Peking seems to be negative, it is not enough to call it "outdated".After all, its base is better than that of Shanghai. This is not only about the literary heritage, but also about the future of literature.

(Four) When I was young, because I lived in the country all the time, I heard people talk about the sea.For example, "crossing the ocean" and "the sea is white, forget about parents", there is a kind of great joy.There was a Tang Ji who was doing business in Shanghai. Once he came back, I asked him, "Is there a sea in Shanghai?" He said, "Yes." "Can you see the sea?" "I can see it." I was very excited. But he stopped talking, and I didn't know how to ask any more questions. When I grew up, I read poems and articles about the sea.I know more, but the sea seems to be getting smaller.The increasing feelings for the sea are somewhat aggrieved and trivial.

Later, when I took a boat from Tianjin to Shanghai, I saw the sea for the first time.Seeing the real sea, trying to adapt it to the sea described in poems and articles, I suddenly feel that the real sea is not good, and I feel very depressed. Later, I crossed the sea several times.Once, Shanghai fought a war and fled to Hong Kong, and then returned to Shanghai from Hong Kong. Both times, I dragged my children and took care of my daughters, not only secular, but also embarrassed and unpoetic, so I was no longer harsh on the sea.Sometimes just passing by the side of the ship by accident, or looking through the window hole of the cabin, the sea seems to be poured in, overturning everything, even if you don’t think about it, you know that there are people in the sea.The sea is not for people to admire.

(Fives) In the past, when the ministers presented the memorials, the emperor would usually say, "Understood. Thank you!" Now the emperor is gone, but many people are still satisfied with "I understand."When they read an article or a painting, they first ask what school it is, and when they know what school it is, they are immediately satisfied because they already "know it". When the survey arrived, I asked all the names in detail and memorized them one by one.They pay great attention to the explanations of the guides, visit each piece with dignity, and appreciate each piece with elegance.

There was a period ten years ago when Stalin sent batch after batch of writers to mines, factories and collective farms to write reports on the spot.This reportage is actually "knowing" literature.Later, I wanted to expand the scope and write "World Day".There are also people in China who intend to do the same, but it seems that there is no follow-up, probably because it doesn't make much sense to "know" what happened all over the world in one day. Chinese literati have always been indifferent to wheat and wheat. Since the Republic of China, when they suddenly saw women in the world, they wrote works of the school of ducks, mandarins and butterflies. There are poems and novels, and talents match beautiful women.Later, when I suddenly saw the scene of political turmoil, I wrote Pule Literature, which also included poems and novels, with heroes matching the proletariat.Literature without Yanshi Pilichun is "knowing" literature, and literature with Yanshi Pilichun is still "knowing" literature plus Yanshi Pilichun.The former are Mao Dun's works like "Midnight", and the latter are works like Ba Jin's "Home". Mao Dun's "Midnight" has not been read for a long time, and even a revolutionary literary critic can't explain why.People still read Ba Jin's works, just like Zhang Henshui's works.If the idea of ​​Yanshi Pilichun was added to the Legend of Heroes of the Jianghu, there must still be people who read it, but that's all. I read Fei Ming's article on new poetry in the first and second issues of the anthology of literature, talking about the liberation of poetry and the freedom of human nature, which is really good.After reading Wuzhe Xiaolu's article on Bada Shanren's paintings, the artistic conception is also similar.But thinking of Fei Ming's recent enlightenment to Zen, he couldn't help feeling a little emotional. (six) Among the people I know, at first they all had the beauty of life, and then all of them reached the state of Zen joy, except for Li Shutong, it was Fei Ming.Fei Ming returned to the countryside of Hubei during the war. At first he asked his friends in Peiping to try to send him Shakespeare's plays, but later he heard that he had enlightened to Zen.Earlier than this, when he was still in Peiping, he had gradually approached this way.Once he showed Mr. Zhou Zuoren that he seemed to be in a state of sleep, but he was still awake. His limbs moved instinctively, like a dance, and his whole body felt like a fish swimming in water. He was greatly relieved and joyful.Mr. Zhou was still skeptical after reading it, which made Fei Ming very sad. Mr. Zhou's suspicion is indeed wronged him.A person puts out all thoughts, and his limbs are usually restrained by the will, but at this moment they are suddenly free and play automatically.It would have been possible.I heard from Zhong Yun that there is such a person in my hometown, who is about to achieve a positive result, and can punch a kind of boxing called "Xianquan", which makes the limbs dance automatically. But I don't think there is any mystery here.The automatic dance of the limbs is just waking sleepwalking.Just like sea water, when there is no wind and waves, it is not driven by any force, and it also has a kind of rippling, because it is alive.So lucid sleepwalking is still limited to the human body, and it is based on the dissociation of normal movements.This dissociation is a bit of rebellious freedom in normal movements, but it is not the liberation mentioned in Buddhist scriptures.The liberation mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures is equivalent to a paper kite with a broken string, which will eventually fall.Fei Ming just didn't pay attention to this level. The errors that his poetics led to were similar to his insights into the automatic dance of the limbs.The human emotions expressed in poetry are born from things, but once the emotions are sublimated, they are no longer bound by the signs of things, and become self-fulfilling.But something sublimated still has its roots.If the root is lost, the sublimated thing will only rely on its own water to nourish it, and its brilliance will only last for a while.If it is a flower that is broken off from a branch, it can withstand a night, and the Zen joy that is broken from a real life may be able to withstand decades.In those decades, I was still nourished by the residual water of the previous real life, like a crab out of water, blowing the foam brought from the rivers and lakes to wet myself, it will not work after a long time.A person can be a monk in the second half of his life, nourishing himself with the splendid remaining love in the first half of his life, and it will not be exhausted when he sits in meditation.But if, instead of a human being, it were done by a human being, it would be dreadfully exhausted.Because a monk not only nourishes himself with the rest of his life, but also nourishes himself in the reflection of the sentiments of the people around him.Therefore, Buddhism must be supported by the ten directions.This offering is not only a gift of things, but also a gift of emotion. Fei Ming's poem theory pointed out that the freedom of life's emotions was used to promote the theory of sublimation, but he regarded sublimation as a liberation, and finally came to Zen enlightenment, which became the restoration of art, which hindered the development of art. (This article was originally published in the 10th issue of "Tiandi" Monthly, which was published [Shanghai] in July 33rd of the Republic of China.)