Chapter 105 Preface to "Selected Essays of Bing Xin"

Comrade Zhuo Ru showed me the catalog of "Selected Essays of Bing Xin" she compiled for People's Literature Publishing House, and asked me to write a preface. She said: "This is not about prose in general, just talk about your own prose." I agreed. I looked at the directory from the beginning.For some topics, I can remember the background of the writing as soon as I saw it, and I can even recite the sentences in the article.For example, "Return to the South", I wrote it in the memory of extreme grief, almost without thinking, and I didn't have the time to refine words and sentences.Another example is "Send to Young Readers", when I write, it always seems that there are one or several children standing in front of me, laughing and waving.Although I wrote these newsletters somewhat thoughtfully; I thought: what are they going to hear?

What can I write?What am I going to say to them?Wait, but the pen is still extremely fluid and free.Another example is "Past Events", which are all slush claws deeply imprinted on my heart, which are worth commemorating, but it is a pity not to write them down, this is another kind.There are also one person, one place, and one event that touched my feelings and have not been released for a long time, such as "Spring on the Nile", "Night in the Suburbs of Beijing Before the National Day", "A Clog", and the writing is also very natural and fast. .In addition, works in memory of friends, such as mourning Jin Yi, Zhenduo, Lao She... don't need to type out any manuscripts, just write an article according to your own grief.The most prosaic ones are travel notes or interviews about people and events. Generally speaking, they are like slow-flowing streams, with rare ripples.There are also some articles that are in line with the seasons, such as "Every Festival" and "New Year's Message", which are also like rice dumplings at the Dragon Boat Festival and moon cakes at the Mid-Autumn Festival. They have no special flavor.The worst thing is that I accepted the appointment of a friend who is an editor, and requested manuscripts within a deadline; write it, if you don’t have materials, don’t write it, I’m sorry, my friend, so I randomly dragged the title and rushed to rush. I think there may be some of these in this collection class articles.

In short, in the past few decades, I have written more prose than novels and poems, mainly because I think prose is the most convenient and freest form of literature, "inspiration" Or when the "task" comes, you can just pick up the pen and write.Whether it is well written or not is another matter.There are two very interesting proverbs in Beijing that say: "It is better to be able to sing than to be able to listen; to be able to write is not as good as to be able to read." What I have written is left for those who can read to comment!April 7, 1982