Chapter 16 If you don't believe in youth, you can't call it back

——Written before the publication of "Catastrophe of the Present Text" If you go to the intersection of Nanjing East Road and Songjiang Road in Taipei City and look up, you can hardly imagine the scene of busy traffic and high-rise buildings in the downtown area. More than 20 years ago, Songjiang Road was below Liufu Inn. All the way to Yuanshan, there is a large stretch of green rice fields, which was probably the most extensive wild land in downtown Taipei at that time.I am very familiar with the terrain in that area, because in the 1960s my home was located at the Liufu Inn, which was No. 133, Songjiang Road at that time.My parents live at No. 127, Songjiang Road—it seems to be a "Toyota Motor" now. The house is too crowded. When I was in college, I moved to No. 133, which is the last dormitory on the right side of Songjiang Road. The patchwork wooden houses are quite a bit of illegal construction.As the name suggests, Songjiang Road is the border area in the northeast corner of Taipei City, which is equivalent to the Great Northern Wilderness on the Chinese map. I live at the top of the Great Northern Wilderness in Taipei.In No. 133, there was a wolfhound, a turkey, an oleander tree, and myself. In that wooden house, I worked hard to publish "Modern Literature" and write novels for that magazine.The vast rice field behind the house serves as my back garden, where I often go for walks; in the green rice sea, dotted with hundreds of egrets, a group of egrets rushed up to the blue sky, all rushed When I woke up, the sky was full of white feathers, which was really beautiful-can you imagine that Taipei once had so many beautiful white birds? Now Taipei can’t even find sparrows, probably because the noise scares them away.

One day in 1961, I wandered slowly to the field behind the house, and that day Sanmao—her name was Chen Ping, and she was only sixteen years old—was also walking there. She lived on Jianguo South Road, It was nearby, saw me coming, and fled away in a hurry.She wrote in "Suddenly Looking Back" that she was "terrified to death" that day, because her first novel "Confusion" had just been published in "Modern Literature", and the excitement and nervousness probably had not subsided, and she was embarrassed to see me.In fact, I didn’t know Sanmao at that time. Her first painting was shown to me by her painting teacher Gu Fusheng from the May Painting Club. He said that he had a female student with a strange temperament and that he had no talent for painting. , but his understanding of literature is very high. "Confusion" is a story about the love between man and ghost. It is indeed very strange, and it is full of unusual sensibility. The novel mentions "Jenny's Portrait". At that time, the movie was being screened in Taipei not long ago. It was Jennifer Jones. Starring Joseph Gordon, a Hollywood-style very romantic and bizarre movie about the relationship between people and ghosts, which probably inspired Sanmao. "Confused" was published in "Modern Literature", and according to Sanmao, she was liberated from the world of autism. Since then, she has embarked on the road of writing and finally became a world-famous writer.The first time I met Sanmao, I had to wait until the first anniversary of "Modern Literature", at a banquet held at my house at No. 127, Songjiang Road.Sanmao was accompanied by her cousin that night, because we had to dance after dinner.I remember that Sanmao was wearing an apple-green dress, with a Hepburn hair cut, and she was dressed as a lady. In the crowd, she looked shy and jerky, like a lost girl who was panicked and needed protection.After seeing Sanmao again more than 20 years later, she has transformed into a famous writer who returned from an adventure in the Sahara Desert.Sanmao has created a magnificent romantic world full of legends; there are life-and-death love stories with ups and downs, fascinating and incredible exoticism, galloping in the African desert, exploring the virgin forests of Latin America-these life experiences are beyond the reach of ordinary people. Sanmao is written for young people, no wonder Sanmao has become a youth idol on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.Just as her writing career was in the middle, Sanmao suddenly left without leaving the world.When the news of Sanmao's suicide came last year, everyone was really surprised. There seemed to be a montage of Sanmao with different faces and identities overlapping together in front of my eyes, and finally all of them faded away, leaving only the ten-year-old in the apple green dress. A frightened and shy six-year-old girl—maybe that is the real Sanmao, a lifeless person who refuses to grow up. In order to resist the slowness of time, she kills herself and makes a final protest to Old Man Time.

Many years later, I discovered that there were several other writers living in the field around Songjiang Road, and their first novels were also published in Modern Literature.Jingji (actually her name is Zhu Lili) lives next door to No. 127 Songjiang Road. The parents of the two families knew each other, but we have never had any contact with Zhu’s children. Sometimes I greet her brother, but Jingji It's a girl. There are differences between men and women in adolescence, and I'm always a little embarrassed to meet each other.In my impression, she was wearing the student uniform of white clothes and black skirt, she looked like a second girl, and she rode a bicycle very fast, and she got on it as soon as she pedaled, as if she couldn't wait to leave her home.At that time, she looked like an intelligent and conceited girl who was not easy to get close to.It was not until many years later that I read her autobiographical stories such as "Pumpkin" and "The Hungry Forest" that I suddenly realized the growth of her girlhood. No wonder it was so rough.Those few articles were written extremely touchingly and poignantly, a bit like Eileen Chang's "Whispers".I should be the most qualified to be the witness of those stories. Although our two families are separated by a wall, the servants of the two families communicate with each other and exchange news. Some difficult scriptures in the two families probably passed on like that. passed on.One night, there was a sound of mourning from the other side of Zhu's house, so we knew that Thorn's mother, who had been ill for a long time, had finally passed away. "Waltz of Waiting" is Thorn's first novel, which was published in "Modern Literature". She must have not written the address when she submitted the manuscript, otherwise, I would have been ignorant of that lyrical novel with a rather peculiar style and a touch of surrealism for decades , could it have been written by a neighbor girl back then? There are so many incomprehensible things in life!

In the forty-fifth issue of "Modern Literature", there was an article "A Day in the Life of Professor Tan" written by Li Yang. Who was Li Yang? The most important thing is our teacher, and the details of the Liberal Arts College of National Taiwan University are very vividly described.It was the early 1970s, and the "Diaoyu Movement" by Taiwanese students studying in the United States was in full swing.One day, I talked about "Professor Tan's Day" with a friend for some reason, and praised it greatly. The friend exclaimed: "You don't know yet? Li Yang is Li Li, calling you the makeup artist of the "funeral parlor" That person!" I couldn't help laughing, thanks to Li Li for coming up with such a brilliant term.

It is said that Li Li wrote an article criticizing my novel, saying that I was painting the dying old system. "Professor Tan's Day" is Li Li's debut novel, and it is indeed extraordinary.Not long ago, I had dinner with Li Li, and I happened to talk about it. It turned out that she used to be in Taipei, and her family lived around the field on Songjiang Road.There are such coincidences in the world, but a magazine somehow links the fate of these people together.If one day in the 1960s, Sanmao, Jingji, and Li Li, we walked in the rice fields on Songjiang Road, we met unexpectedly, and I don’t know what it would be like.However, everyone was in the "blue period" of teenagers at that time, and I thought we could only talk about each other when we met.Once, I specially went to the Leofoo Hotel to drink coffee. In the hotel, the clothes were fragrant and the silhouettes were drinking cups. It was the glitz of Taipei in the 1980s.I sat in a corner of the coffee shop downstairs, not knowing where I was.What about the green paddy fields? What about the group of white birds flying all over the sky? What about the many youthful years that flew away without a trace like the white birds? Who said that the sea will not become a mulberry field?

There is a strange scene in the building of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at National Taiwan University. A row of large clocks hangs above the corridor. We spent four years in college in that long-winded building.One evening in 1961, standing under the row of bells in the corridor of the Faculty of Arts, three students who were two years younger than us, Wang Zhenhe, Du Guoqing, and Zheng Hengxiong (Qianshi), found me. Excitedly want to submit to "Xianwen".Wang Zhenhe was holding a stack of manuscripts in his hand, and after some chatter, he stuffed the manuscript into my hands—that was his first novel "Ghost? North Wind? Man".He was probably a little nervous that day, but smiled shyly all the way. "Ghost? North Wind? Man" was published in the seventh issue of "Xian Wen", and it was the main article of that issue. I found an illustration especially for this novel, which was a sketch by Gu Fusheng. human body portrait.At that time, the modernist movement in Taiwan's art world was also in full swing, and the members of the "May Painting Society" were the vanguard of this movement.For those few issues, we hired the "May" artist to design cover art illustrations, so "Modern Literature" looked more modern.The illustration of Wang Zhen and the novel was named by me: "I want to live!" because Qin Guifu, the protagonist in the novel, is such a person who desperately lives on.At that time, I just watched a movie "I Want to Live" starring Susan Hayward, and that's probably where the inspiration came from.When the magazine came out, we put up a huge poster in the Faculty of Arts, on which was a picture of a person who couldn't stand upright, that was Qin Guifu.Wang Zhenhe later said that he stood under the poster, lingered, and even took his mother to see it.The one who drew the posters was Zhang Guangxu, the most talented artist among us. The design of "Xian Wen" was all done by him at the beginning. Such a talented person committed suicide later.In the same period, there was also a novel "Qiao Qi", written by Chen Ruoxi. The story was about a young painter who was spoiled by her parents. She was impatient and committed suicide by swallowing sleeping pills.At that time, Chen Ruoxi told me quietly that she was writing about Chen Ping.This is unbelievable. Could it be that Chen Ruoxi has seen Sanmao’s fate 30 years ago? There are so many unbearable burdens in life! The year before last, Wang Zhenhe passed away. When the sad news came, I felt a chilly wind hit my back .I opened a course of "Taiwanese Fiction" at UC, and taught Wang Zhenhe's works every year. I feel more and more that his novels can stand the test of time, like chewing green olives, first astringent and then sweet.He has been plagued by illness for several years, but he can keep writing, how brave he is.Undoubtedly, Wang Zhenhe's works have become an important part of Taiwan's literary history.

At that time, there was an anxiety of "existentialism" in the Faculty of Arts. We may not have figured out the ins and outs of Western "existentialism" philosophy at the beginning, but some literary works of "existentialism" completely negated the current morality of the existing system. The rebellious spirit and nihilistic emotion seeping out of the works are just right for our appetite.Camus's is a must-read textbook for us, and the "anti-hero" Messo in it is our absurd hero.The subversiveness of that book is formidable.Liu Daren and Guo Songfen were both students of the Department of Philosophy (Guo Songfen later transferred to the Department of Foreign Languages).As soon as philosophy is mentioned, one cannot help thinking of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and those unfathomable weirdos.Students in the philosophy department seem to have weirder ideas than those in the literature department.Guo Songfen took a Russian name of Ivan (Ivan), Turgenev was also called Ivan, Guo Songfen’s behavior at that time was a bit like Turgenev’s Luo Ting, very nihilistic, in fact Guo Songfen was the “existence” among us. Doctrine" really got it right, and he published an article criticizing Sartre in "Present Text", which was of a very high standard. The second issue of "Modern Literature" published Liu Daren's "Big Pocket", and we said that this is good, Taiwan has its own "existential" novels. The first issue of "Present Text" just introduced Kafka. "The Big Pocket" is a fable novel that is a bit like Kafka's nightmare. It is a story about playing billiards in a billiard room; Together ("The Prodigal" starring Paul Newman), the billiard room seems to be a breeding ground for rebels.At that time, the political climate in Taiwan was still quite chilling, and "Free China" and "Wenxing" were blocked at the slightest move.We don't talk about politics, but we are dissatisfied.Nothingness is actually a gesture of protest, just like the poetry and wine feigning madness of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove in the troubled times of the Wei and Jin Dynasties.Later, Liu Daren and Guo Songfen participated in the "Protection of Diaoyu Islands", and Chen Ruoxi went to the other side to start a revolution, all of which have their own journeys to follow.From nihilism to radicalism is a necessary process for many revolutionaries.No wonder so many nihilists emerged on the eve of the Russian Revolution.Not long ago, I saw Liu Daren's masterpiece "Evening Breeze", and I couldn't help but feel a sense of desolation. After all, the "angry youth" back then had already perfected their skills.

"The old man with the green temples is the boss, and the red beam and the new swallow are back again. You must cherish the cup in your hand." ——This is Yan Jidao's "Huanxisha". Only by escaping into Chinese classical literature can the existential anxiety be temporarily relieved.Mr. Zheng admired this little order very much, and rated it as "deeply moved". Thick words and beautiful sentences.In those years, listening to Mr. Zheng's speeches was a great pleasure.There was a time when Mr. Zheng opened "Tao Xie Poetry", and I also went to listen to it. A classmate sitting next to me whispered in my ear: "Here, that is Lin Wenyue." I looked back and saw Lin Wenyue sitting alone in the corner of the window, Sure enough, "Falling flowers are silent, people are as light as chrysanthemums", I don't know why I think of the two lines in the sixth poem "Elegance" of Sikong Tu's "Poetry".When someone talked about Lin Wenyue in the future, I couldn't help but interject: "I wrote 'Tao Xie Poetry' together with her." In fact, the relationship between "Modern Literature" and the Chinese Department of National Taiwan University became deeper and deeper in the later period, because Ke Qingming became a Editor-in-chief, almost all the teachers and students of the Chinese Department had written articles in this magazine at that time.

The bell in the Liberal Arts College of National Taiwan University is still standing there, but thirty years have passed without a sound.The dead are like this, even the saints can't help but sigh with emotion. In the late 1960s, a new batch of talented young writers suddenly appeared in Taiwan's literary world: Lin Huaimin, Xi Song, Shi's sister Shi Shuqing, and Shi Shuduan (Li Ang) were all new forces in the later period of "Xianwen".Lin Huaimin has not yet gone abroad, but he has already published two collections of novels. He has accurately grasped the pulse of Taipei during the transition period. The "savages" in the book are probably the pioneers of the "new human beings" in the East District of Taipei today.As for Lin Huaimin's flexibility and unstoppable vitality, it is no wonder that he later jumped on the stage and created a vigorous Cloud Gate Dance Theater.Xi Song has just been discharged from the army, and he said that he still has the breath of a platoon leader.One summer night in 1969, Xi Song called me, "Bai Xianyong, I want to chat with you." He said.So we went to the "Blue Sky" on the top of the Jiaxing Building to drink. "Lan Tian" was a high-end restaurant in Taipei at that time. Looking down, Taipei is actually a bit hazy and beautiful at night.That was the second time Xi Song and I met, but under the irrigation of glass after glass of Manhattan, the two of them seemed to have talked all their lives that night.That night, Xi Song was too drunk to go home, so I took him back to my home on Dunhua South Road. I didn't know where the power came from after drinking, and I actually carried him from the first floor to the third floor.What a wild and nostalgic time it was in the late 1960s.

There are outstanding talents in Lukang, Taiwan. The Shi family sisters are born. In fact, the eldest sister Shi Shunv also wrote novels in the past, and Bai Birch is her. She published "Head" and "Head" in the 24th and 25th issues of "Xian Wen". "Farewell, Linliu" is very well written, if she continues to write, she may not lose to the two younger sisters.Shi Shuqing also started writing under the pen name Shi Zi. I always thought he was a boy. "Gecko" and "Ling Chi's Suppression" were written really sharply. Later, I met Shi Shuqing at Star Cafe in Taipei, but I was very surprised. Shi Shuqing's novels are better than Her people are much tougher.I gave Shi Shuqing the nickname "Yizhangqing". Shi Shuqing's pen is really like a gun in Hu Sanniang's hand, and he dances with great strength.At that time, it was rumored in Taipei that there was a child prodigy in the literary world, who could write a bold novel "Flower Season" between men and women at the age of sixteen.I still remember the first time I saw Li Ang, she was pushing an old bicycle with a student's head cut off, and there were a few bruises on her face, because she just fell down while riding the bicycle.Unexpectedly, Li Ang would meet in the future.Li Ang can be said to be the "last disciple" of "Modern Literature". When she published her series of very stylized Lucheng stories in "Modern Literature", the first half of "Modern Literature" was coming to an end.It was also because of this magazine that I became attached to the Shi family sisters.Every time I pass by Hong Kong, I would go to see Shi Shuqing for a drink to reminisce about the past. She is writing "Hong Kong Legend", and she plans to leave a record of Hong Kong's prosperity before 1997.Once Li Ang and Lin Huaimin came to Santa Barbara and stayed at my house overnight. Li Ang borrowed a book from me to read, and I recommended Chen Dingshan's "Chunshen Old News" to her. Dinggong's book is a masterpiece. He Bring the old Shanghai to life.There is a story "Zhan Zhou's Killing Husband" in it. Zhan Zhou's husband who was a butcher was cut into eight pieces. This was a sensational murder in Shanghai that year. This is the origin of Li Ang. She moved the murder to Lugang. went.The imagination of a novelist is really unfathomable.That year, I was a judge in the Lianhe Daily Novel Contest, and when I saw this novel, the shocking original power in it was not possessed by ordinary writers. I voted for the first prize without any consideration.

It has been thirty-two years since Modern Literature was first published, and it has been eight years since it officially ceased publication in 1984. It can be said that this magazine has become a historical document.Three years in the making, the first to fifty-one reissues of "Xianwen" finally came out. There are 19 volumes in total, and two additional volumes are attached. These articles are touching, because they are all written with true feelings. They narrate the whole story of each person's relationship with this magazine, but coincidentally, everyone has nostalgia for that long-gone youth. With reluctant nostalgia.Chen Yingzhen's article is called "Youth of Our Generation", and he still remembers the scene of the first meeting between the two of them in the wooden house at No. 133, Songjiang Road in 1961, that summer - 30 Years ago, we were so young.Of all the tragic literature, I think Goethe's "Faust" is the saddest. Only the Germanic nation can write such a heart-wrenching and profound work.Faust, a philosopher who has reached old age, would rather sell his soul to the devil in order to regain his youth.We can all understand Faust's pathos, but the devil's temptation is too great to resist! Just like the title of Ke Qingming's article: Short youth! Eternal literature? Looking back, it is also fortunate that we put The beauty and sorrow of youth are recorded in words and become poems and novels.Literature, I am afraid that there is only eternal literature, which can give us the opportunity to insert an immortal mark in this fleeting life.