Chen Sihe
I. General Preface to "My Own Bookshelf"
"My Own Bookshelf" is a book essay column that I have opened intermittently for decades. There is no preset writing plan, but in the spare time, I have feelings for some of the books I read, and after reading it, I am reluctant to let go of it immediately, so I write down a little idea. It coincided with the media's friends who asked for a manuscript, so they were given it for publication. This habit can be traced back to my trip to Hainan Island in 1982. At that time, Hainan had not yet established a province, so I went to attend the second annual meeting of the Chinese Modern Literature Society and visited Haikou and Sanya by the way. I didn't have any experience at the meeting, but I made a few very good friends when I visited after the meeting, including Huang Hongdi, the editor of the supplement of Hainan Daily. Since then, Brother Hongdi has corresponded with me from time to time, and I have often published some fragmentary articles on the page of his supervisor. The articles are very short, mainly essays and reading essays. It was the first time I had published a continuous reading essay in a newspaper, a bit like a column, but the editor had no specific time requirements, and there was no pressure to write and drop out. I wrote this intermittently for a year or two, and then after a while the wind blew and I quit writing. In the autumn of 1989, Brother Hongdi came to ask for a manuscript again, and I was really bored at that time, and I wanted to read some books, so I agreed to open a column, and I thought of a name called "Reading". I am now looking at the old text and find that the earliest title of "Benyan of 'My Own Bookshelf'" was "'Reading'' Benyan", which was published in the supplement of "Hainan Daily". [1] But for some reason, this "Reading" column did not persist, and only two or three short articles were serialized and ended without a problem. A few months later, Mr. Ma Wentong, the editor of Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao, also wrote a letter to Mr. Ma, and I told Mr. Ma about the idea of the column, and immediately got his support, so I changed it to "my own bookshelf", and officially opened it in the supplement of "Ta Kung Pao" on October 19, 1989.
"My Own Bookshelf" is very mixed, mainly to talk about Chinese and foreign literature books, my main research direction is modern literature, and the books I read are more in that aspect; followed by foreign literary works, which is my favorite field, and later I followed Mr. Jia Zhifang to establish a comparative literature discipline in the department of Chinese of Fudan University, and paid more attention to foreign literature. After 1988, I began to pay attention to Taiwanese and Hong Kong literature books, so that the three parts of the content constituted the basic content of "my own bookshelf". In addition to writing articles in the supplement of Hong Kong's "Ta Kung Pao", in 1990 the Shanghai Writers Association ran a magazine called "Literature Corner", edited by the critic Cheng Depei, and I also opened a column of the same name on it, which focused on books on Taiwan and Hong Kong literature, and also specially used a subtitle "Hong Kong and Taiwan Books". The supplement of Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao edited by Mr. Ma Wentong is very enlightened, and every time I send an article, it is quickly published, and I do not think that the column I wrote is messy and lacks rules. A few days ago, I deliberately checked the old newspapers and periodicals at that time, the first essay "Between Man and Wolf", talking about the British writer Kipling's jungle novel "Tiger and Tiger", the second article about li Hui's collection of essays edited by Li Hui, "The Childhood of Spilling Blood", the third article was a criticism of a Guan Lu biography, the fourth was in response to An interview with Lin Mohan "Before and After the Hu Feng Incident", the fifth and sixth articles were about Metlink's script... I went so tireless in listing the articles to show that I really did not have a unified goal in writing columns at that time, but in the process of reading Chinese and foreign miscellaneous books (there are also publications), I felt a sense and criticized at will. But there is a basic principle: it is all reading experience. This column lasted until about 1993, and then gradually more and more things, the article was written less, and I don't know when it officially stopped. When I was compiling "Sheep Sao and Monkey Sao", I selected a part of the column article and divided it into three series: "My Own Bookshelf A Collection", "My Own Bookshelf B Collection", and "Talking Across the Sea", which were compiled into an anthology and counted as my work during this period.
It's been so long that many details can't be remembered for a while. But my habit of reading miscellaneous books has not changed, I have always been reading and writing loosely. The scope of my academic research, mainly modern Chinese literature, covers 20th century Chinese literature, that is, modern literature, contemporary literature and world Chinese literature in the disciplinary sense, based on these scattered readings; the other major is comparative literature and world literature, although I do not dabble much, but it is also inseparable from the usual like to read foreign literary works. By the mid-1990s, my social activities were more numerous, and I was reading miscellaneous books as usual, but I was writing fewer reading notes. Later, I had an extra job, which was to write the foreword to the young people's new works. At first, the starting point was to promote young people, but in fact, their academic research is constantly opening up my thinking and stimulating my research interest. Many of the prefaces often serve as a platform for my conversations with authors. I rarely praise the work too much in the preface, often proposing higher research goals, and I myself expand the scope of reading by writing the preface, making it a way to re-learn and rethink. The preface is also a kind of reading essay, with praise and criticism, or dialogue on a higher level. The self-aware author will understand what I am talking about, and for the reader, he hopes to pursue a higher academic realm by reading these books and prefaces.
In the Spring Festival of 2006, my college classmate Wang Lechun was the editor-in-chief of Wenhui Reading Weekly, and he came to me to write an article. Brother Le Chun explicitly asked me to set up a reading column. At that time, I was serving as the head of the Chinese Department and the editor-in-chief of Shanghai Literature, running at both ends, taking care of myself, but I still couldn't stop Le Chun's enthusiastic invitation, so I agreed to come down and write a four-thousand-word reading essay every two weeks. I remembered the name "my own bookshelf", so "My Own Bookshelf" opened twice, on February 10, 2006, and the first article was a review of Peng Xiaolian's novel "Beautiful Shanghai". This time, the recommended books on his bookshelf are mostly current literary works, but they are also mixed with some inexplicable books in other fields. For example, there is a pirated book about Kropotkin's "Bread and Freedom", and another is a foreign book about "leisure culture", and I can't remember why I wrote these articles in the first place. Brother Le Chun has unlimited trust in me and is not picky in the slightest, which gives me great freedom and self-confidence. I ran a column in Wenhui Reading Weekly for three years. Later, these articles were collected in a chronicle called the Records of the Sacrifice of Qin.
On my life path, I have had the privilege of meeting many good editors. Some of them are my teachers and elders, who have more guidance and support for my life path; some are my brothers and elders, who give generous love and support on my academic path; and some are my peers and friends, who have more understanding and affection for each other and jointly promote the cause of culture. Now when I recall the writing of "My Own Bookshelf", the slightly older Mr. Ma Wentong, as well as the words and deeds of his contemporaries Huang Hongdi, Cheng Depei, and Wang Lechun, were clearly presented in front of my eyes, and I am grateful to them, without their trust and invitation to me, there might not have been these essays. As excellent editors, they are never condescending and critical about the author's articles, not appearing as censors, nor do they regard the author as a gunner who writes the article, directing you to write this and that, they first regard the author as a close friend, encourage the author to write freely, and enthusiastically recommend and publish the author's article. I am a very sensitive and picky person in terms of submission, as long as the editor shows a slight reluctance, I will immediately stop submitting, unwilling to add trouble to others or embarrassing. However, now that I re-read these essays, I will still overflow with warmth in the depths of my heart, because from these words I can feel the precious friendship and the common ideals of intellectuals.
Regarding "My Own Bookshelf", there are roughly these causes. Three or four years ago, when I was editing the seven-volume Chen Sihe Anthology for the Guangdong People's Publishing House, I did not include my essay works. I had an idea at the time, looking for an opportunity to compile another set of essays. Unexpectedly, the opportunity soon came, and Chen Xu, the editor of Guangxi Normal University Press, took the initiative to write a letter to the manuscript, and I proposed a plan for a series of essays on Xingtou, and immediately received his enthusiastic support. But because I had too much work at hand, I put off this troublesome matter again. I didn't want to spend more than a year, Chen Xu did not forget this invitation, another letter urging, I can not drag on any longer, so in the summer vacation of last year (2020) began to plan, with "their own bookshelf" as the general topic, editing a five-volume collection of reading essays. The content is not limited to the original column, but only to read and talk about books as the theme, sorting out my reading essay miscellaneous notes in the past forty years, divided into five volumes: "Former Generation", "Distant Book", "Current Edge", "Circle of Friends", and "Say It Yourself". Each volume is ready to write a separate afterword to introduce the characteristics of each volume, and there will be no more rap here.
On the evening of November 11, 2020, the fish written in the sea was scorched
Revised on August 12, 2021
II. Afterword to the Compilation of "Former Generations"
In the general preface, I introduced the process of opening the column "My Own Bookshelf" twice. This time, Guangxi Normal University Press asked me to edit a five-volume collection of essays, and the third time it was named "My Own Bookshelf". Naturally, the content is not limited to the original column, and I have collected the reading essays that I have painstakingly written in the past forty years. Of course, this is not all my essays, first, some essay fragments were later written into research papers, included in the volumes of the "Chen Sihe Anthology", in order to avoid duplication, I will not re-collect; second, some of the texts published in overseas newspapers and periodicals, and some although published in domestic newspapers and periodicals, the time is long, and it is difficult to collect for a while, so it is also released.
The first episode, "Former Generations", mainly contains reading essays on literature and history, limited to modern books. This time, each text was re-edited, mainly rhetorically revised; secondly, the books under discussion were checked and annotated in editions. What I call "my own bookshelf" is not a metaphor, it is really a book displayed on my bookshelf. I usually like to buy all kinds of books, but I never intend to collect them, mainly to use, mainly to read. Thirty years ago, I built my own study "Black Water Zhai", and three walls made bookshelves that stood on top of the sky, thinking that it was enough. A friend who reads a book says the room is still too small and you may not be able to put your book down in five years. I said, then I will clean up every five years, clean up the books that are not used, and the books in this room will always be in use. In fact, this cannot be done. Later, the occupation area of books became larger and larger, and after several renovations, the two rooms and one hall all became the storage place for books; another living room was bought, named "Fish Scorched Zhai", which is still full of books. The self-proclaimed five-year cleanup at that time, as far as my current physical strength is concerned, I can no longer do it. Sometimes in order to find a book, I remember where to put it, but I have no choice but to rummage through the boxes and cabinets, and finally ask the library staff to find it in the library to borrow. In recent years, under the development trend of electronic databases, the collection and reading of paper books has become an increasingly luxurious behavior. I often sat alone in the study late at night, silently facing the secret bookshelf, as if facing the old partner, old buddy, and old friend of most of my life, standing solemnly, and it was time to say goodbye to my old friend. Sometimes I want to retire from my job, let go of thousands of dust edges, use the remaining years, quietly browse the books on my bookshelf again, whether I have read them before or are too late to read, I should take a picture of the face, shake my hand once, and say a precious word. As a first step, I first have to sort out these reading essays that have left traces of life, there are no rare books, and my lifelong relationship with books is a partner in desk work, these books are my favorite friends, work assistants, thoughts and feelings of the resources.
I am also in awe of the editing and collation of this collection of essays. When I took a book out of the shelf, double-checked the version information, and touched the books that I had bought and read for thirty or forty years, the scene was vividly remembered. Although the books written in the text are only one-in-ten-thousandth of the books on their own bookshelf, they are lucky. Because they are already with my thoughts, feelings, and life messages.
On November 12, 2020, the fish scorched at sea
"Sheep Riot and Monkey Riot"
/ Chen Sihe / Shanghai People's Publishing House / 1994
The Holistic View of New Literature
/ Chen Sihe / Guangdong People's Publishing House / 2017
III. Epilogue to the Compilation of the Far Away Book
At the end of 2012, I accompanied Mo Yan to Stockholm to attend the Ceremony of the Swedish Academy awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature. On the afternoon of arriving in Stockholm, I attended a press conference. When Mo Yan was dealing with the difficult Western journalists, I sat at the door of the venue and stumbled upon a stack of Posters of Mo Yan's awards stacked on the table, and the pictures of the posters were lined with photos of the 108 winners before Mo Yan won the award. Mo Yan is the 109th, and his photo stands out in front of it. I liked it, took a few copies in my hand, asked Mo Yan to sign it, and came back to give it to some friends as a tourist souvenir. A friend came home and framed the poster and hung it on the wall. It is said that his children will know the names of world-class writers from an early age, and they will be able to consciously read their books when they grow up. I listened to it with great admiration, because I remembered that my own first literary enlightenment began with the acquaintance with the characters of the Water Margin. Therefore, later in the "Six Songs of the Stockholm Chronicle", I had the sentence "The earth is burning and the sky is running again, and the yellow man is worthy of pride".
Let's talk about my impression of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The earliest impression should be during the "Cultural Revolution", when the press criticized the Soviet writer Sholokhov, criticizing his "One-Man Encounter" for preaching the "horror of war", and I don't know why the critics wanted to say that Sholokhov won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965, quoting the Famous Quote of the French writer Sartre: The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Writers of the West and traitors of the East. What exactly this means, I still don't quite understand. If this statement is correct, then why did Sartre, who was a Western writer, also reject the Nobel Prize, while Pasternak clearly refused the Nobel Prize in 1958 and was still regarded as a dissident or traitor. In the mid-1970s, when the "Gang of Four" group tried to resume revision work, a number of foreign literary entries were sent to the Luwan District Library for comments, including Pasternak's entries, all of which were critical. So I remember very well that from Sholokhov to Pasternak, the official understanding of the Nobel Prize in Literature at that time was all negative.
As a result, the Nobel Prize in Literature left a deep impression on my mind and aroused my curiosity. After the reform and opening up, in the process of reading a lot of Western literature with hunger, I paid special attention to the writers who had won the Nobel Prize, and tried to find the works of these writers to read as much as possible. The first person to read it was Roman Roland, who was greatly moved not by "John Christophe", but by the political essay "Beyond the Melee" (translated by Luo Dagang), which set a direct example for my life ideal of how to be an independent intellectual. The second is Sartre, although he refused to accept the Nobel Prize, but after reading "Dirty Hands", "Flies", "Existentialism is a Kind of Humanism", I sincerely admitted that Sartre deserved the Nobel Prize. He was an example for me to follow, and his words and deeds throughout his life taught me how to be a dignified person with a big caps. I embarked on the academic path from the study of Barkin, who once said that the French teachers who taught him the truth were Rousseau, Voltaire, Zola, and I fully understood Mr. Barkin's voice. I always have a similar respect for Romain Rolland and Sartre. Therefore, the idealism emphasized by the Nobel Prize in Literature, which I think is not empty, is indeed a lofty standard conducive to human progress.
It was under the premise of this understanding that I successively wrote down some reading impressions and notes. It wasn't meant to be published, it was just a general sense of reading. Then, by chance, in the early 1980s, I published these childish writing practice works in The Hainan Daily. Newspapers and periodicals require a word limit of 1,000 words. At that time, I was fascinated by two pamphlets, one was Federman's "Reading Plan for a Lifetime", and I remember another one, but not Foster's "Aspects of the Novel", but maugham's reading essay "The Book and You" (I misremembered in the article on "Xiang Di Biography"). Both books are newspaper column articles, a few thousand words, introducing masterpieces of world literature. I wanted to imitate such a reading essay, so I focused the text on a certain feature of the work. In order to let readers better understand these foreign writers, I deliberately add two notes to the end of the published manuscript, one is to introduce the writer's life and the main reason for winning the Nobel Prize, and the other is to indicate the version of the work I read. Now when I include the essay collection, I delete the first comment and keep the second comment. In order to maintain the original true information, I annotated the versions I was reading at the time, some of which were published in internal communication publications, and some were even poems quoted in other people's articles, and fragments became my reading resources.
The essays were not meant to be published, and I knew that I was incapable of introducing foreign literature to the reader, but only privately enjoyed reading. When I later edited the chronological anthology, I only selected a few articles to put into the book, and most of them were not included. This time, in order to compile the "Distant Books", I deliberately read the "Hainan Daily", which has collected yellow and brittle paper for nearly forty years, and asked someone to copy and print these articles. The last part of the first series of this book, "Watching Nobel", contains a letter that I recommended Mo Yan to the Swedish Academy, which was written in Chinese and translated by Chen Maiping (Wan Zhi) into Swedish. In this letter, I talk about the connection between Mo Yan's novel and the Rabelais tradition.
The other sub-collections of this book are composed of a group of articles along the lines of "Reading Western Literature", "Translation and Comparison", and the construction of comparative literature disciplines. The last episode of the essay has little to do with private reading and is mostly about comparative literature. These articles were not included in the "Chen Sihe Anthology" before, nor did I include the special collection of comparative literature " The World Factors of Chinese Literature " , which is a relatively independent set of professional articles. I followed Mr. Jia Zhifang in the collection, collation and editing of the materials of "The Influence of Foreign Thought and Trend Theory on the History of Modern Chinese Literature", and gradually embarked on the road of comparative literature research. I first accumulated a large amount of information on the relationship between Chinese and foreign literature, and then divided it into two steps, one step is to sort out and compile the materials of literary influence, and the other step is to explore the law of Sino-foreign literary relations. The latter completed a "Holistic View of New Chinese Literature", while the former is the basis of the latter, and the "General Theory of the Influence of Foreign Thoughts in the Past Seventy Years", "1978-1982: The Introduction of Western Modernism in China", "Foreign Influences in Contemporary Literary Creation", etc. all reflect the results in this regard, and although the length is longer, it still belongs to the nature of notes. In 2001, I proposed the "Cosmopolitan Factors of Chinese Literature" to question the methods of the French School of Influence Research, which was only questioned by discovering problems in the study of Sino-foreign literary relations. A group of short essays on comparative literature, translation and introduction, and related prologues in this collection are all elaborations around this point of view, and reading them in contrast with the above notes on foreign influences can roughly understand my theoretical explorations and line of thought trajectory in this field.
On August 13, 2021, the fish was scorched at sea
IV. Epilogue to the Editor of "The Present Edge"
The first two episodes of essays are categorized according to the content of the articles, "Former Generations" is an old man in the history of modern literature, and "Far Away Books" is a book about foreign literature and comparative literature. This collection of "The Present Edge" is a review of contemporary literary works, in the form of short commentaries and casual feelings, and is now divided into three series: novels, poems, and overseas books. The "Overseas Books" are limited to the academic works and prose collections of Taiwanese and Hong Kong authors, while the creations of novels and poems are correspondingly classified into the first two series. Because these articles are short in length, there is still a difference between them and long papers, most of them are not included in my chronicle collection, but it is not that these articles are not well written, but they are easily ignored when published in newspapers and periodicals, and when it comes to editing books, they cannot find those newspaper publications, and although there is computer writing later, short articles are still not easy to preserve. If it were not for the fact that the library now has an electronic database and literature transmission, this compilation of essays may also be fruitless and fruitless.
These articles were first written when I was in college. Before I went to college, I studied writing book reviews at the Luwan District Library, and I felt for the edge of literary criticism. In 1977, when the college entrance examination was resumed, when filling out the volunteer form, I saw that the department of Chinese of Fudan University had two majors in literary creation and literary criticism, and I thought in my heart that the original university Chinese department had a discipline of literary criticism, and I was secretly complacent and filled in the volunteer. Only when I entered the university did I know that the original teaching system had changed, and the Department of Chinese abolished the major of literary creation and literary criticism, and restored the formal Chinese first-level disciplines. From the leaders to the teachers, the Chinese Department emphasizes that students must lay a good foundation in professional knowledge, and does not advocate that students publish more articles during their studies. In articles like the oneS I write, teachers always dismissively call it "dried tofu," meaning worthless. However, to be fair, I was not ridiculed by the teachers for publishing "dried tofu" in the press, because after I entered the school, the first comment I published was about Lu Xinhua's "Scars", and it was published in the headline of Wen Wei Po. "Scars" has a great impact, and articles commenting on scar literature have also been stained and valued. Later, I went all the way and wrote a lot of literary reviews. Because the newspaper style requires short and straightforward expression of opinions, although it lacks theoretical depth, it is also a popular form of book review.
Some of these short comments are op-eds published in Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao and part of "own bookshelf", such as those commenting on the works of Liu Heng, Wang Shuo and Ye Zhaoyan. Later, in the "Wenhui Reading Weekly" for the second time to open "their own bookshelf", the length is slightly longer, but there are also many involved in contemporary literary creation, but most of them are casual discussions. I followed a principle in compiling a collection of essays this time, and all the articles that had been included in the "Chen Sihe Anthology" were basically not accepted this time. The critical articles included in the anthology are a bit like the emperors and generals on the stage, wearing robes and armor, with pheasant feathers inserted in their heads, and the short articles included in the essay collection are just like the martial arts students dressed in short fights, or the peddler pawns played by The Little Flower Face, which needs somersaults and gags. The two have different divisions of labor, and only together can they put together a decent drama.
I like that there is a word for "edge" in the title of this collection, which is a very broad concept. I am a person engaged in literary criticism, and it is easy to offend people by doing criticism, especially the relationship between critics and authors, which often produces misunderstandings or unpleasantness. I'm not an unprincipled person who says nice things. There have been a few times, agreed to a friend's request, wrote a preface or wrote a book review, but in the article the words of praise are not much, the words of criticism are a little more, or although there is no criticism, but there is a gap with the author's original expectations, unhappy, so the author is very unhappy, some simply withdraw the preface, even do not greet, and some read it silently delete the words of criticism in the article, leaving only the words of praise. Some friends saw the book review I wrote, and 100,000 urgent calls demanded that the article in the typesetting be withdrawn and not published. I have encountered various reactions. But I would also like to say that there are more authors who have become friends with me because of my criticism. This is a kind of "fate" circling, and criticism is also a kind of fate activity, depending on whether there is enough fate.
On August 14, 2021, yu jiaozhai was fasted
V. Afterword to the Editor of "Circle of Friends"
The fourth episode of "My Own Bookshelf" is titled "Circle of Friends". It is very strange that I am used to not using WeChat, so I have never had any "circle of friends", and the reason why I think of this common name is because the reading essays included in the fourth episode are not classified according to the content of the books, but are specifically about books written by friends, or books recommended by friends. Of course, not all my friends, the reading essays on modern and contemporary literature, foreign literature and comparative literature that have been included in the previous episodes of essay collections are not lacking in books about my students and friends, and naturally cannot be repeated. Not to mention that the author of the book that is not included in this collection of essays is not my friend. This collection of essays is only compiled along the previous one, and the meaning is similar: the focus of the previous book is on the work, and this one focuses on the author; the previous one focuses on the content of literary creations such as novels and poems, and this one has a little more content about prose and scholarship; the previous book focuses on the "fate" of the author, and this one focuses on the "circle" of teachers, students, and friends, and the general difference is these.
"Friend" is a broad concept. For example, I included in the second series of this episode several about books, I do not know the author of the book, nor do I have any intersection, but a friend recommended these books to me, I have a feeling after reading, I wrote some words, there is a media need to recommend a good book, I took it out and published. So "friend" means in a broad sense. As for how to classify, it is also quite hesitant. The era of political commanders who classify friends as "left", "middle", and "right" has passed, and wine friends and jianghu friends will not be related to "books", so most of the friends who are called friends here are friends who read, write books or can talk about books.
The first series is about "Teacher's Book", and the authors of the books we talk about are all my teachers, and I have received their teachings and support when I was studying at Fudan University. Now when I re-read these articles, I suddenly feel a pang of sadness, because several of my respected teachers have passed away, such as Mr. Jia, Mr. Zhang, Mr. Pan, Mr. Zeng Huapeng and Mr. Fan Boqun, who are really longer books than people, and today I am revising my old articles while finding out their works and re-reading some paragraphs and quotations, and my heart is full of gratitude. I have said this in several places: The three immortals of the ancients are said to be meritorious and meritorious; it seems that the more despised is "making words", but in the actual process of dissemination, the immortality of merit and virtue is accomplished by "making words". The words of the sages and the words of the sages are combined, and we need to do such an important work today.
The third series, "The Student's Book," is relatively easy to organize and contains a preface to my book review for a young friend. Many of them have a bit of a teacher-student friendship with me, they study in school, study for a degree, go to various places after graduation, most of them choose to be teachers in colleges and universities, and make achievements in their positions. I said a long time ago that students are my best work, better than my own writings. Some of these prefaces were included in the 2013 edition of Sihe Wencun, Volume 3, which I did not classify as my academic writings, but as my educational ideals and practices. Now, seven or eight years have passed, and the content and number of articles have increased a lot, but the articles included here are still different from the contents of Volume 3 of the Archives. Here's a special note.
If the first and third series mainly talk about the books of my teachers and students, then the second series is closer to the original meaning of "circle of friends", I deliberately selected 31 book review articles, classified by content, the first type is humanistic thought books, the second type is academic treatises, and the third type is prose collections. Among the authors are my teachers, my colleagues, friends from decades, and friends who are new to or not. There are still many articles of this kind, but I can't remember where they were published for a while, so I have to put them into practice.
The fourth series[2] is relatively simple and is the preface I wrote for some of the series. These series are all books that I co-curated or edited. I miss the experience of planning the "Fire Phoenix" series of books, the "Approaching the End of the Century" series of books and the "Biographies of Celebrities of Modern Culture" series in the 1990s, which are part of the collective practical action of intellectuals and the pursuit of the humanistic spirit that responds to the call of the times with practical work. This is probably the period when my personal vitality is the most exuberant, and it is the most idealistic and responsible stage of life. If there is really a "circle of friends" in life, the actions and friendships that many people put into practice together in that period of history are the most heartwarming memories and dreams.
Winter night on January 7, 2021
VI. The Afterword to the Compilation of "Say It Yourself"
The title of the fifth episode is "Say For Yourself", and according to the specifications of the titles of the previous episodes, "say" is not used as a verb, but as a noun, as if it were "say". "Speak for yourself" is also about yourself. So, what exactly is there to say about myself?
This collection is a compilation of my own writings—including chronicle collections, research treatises, creations, dialogues, and prologues to the monographs I have curated or edited. My own monograph reflects my wishes and pursuits, and also penetrates my personal editorial style, so it can be attributed to my own "statement".
I look back on this life, to the 28-year-old university graduation, stay in school to teach as the boundary, the first half of the way of life, mainly reading and learning, the second half of the way of life, is also accompanied by books, in reading, writing, compiling books, teaching decades of time, unconsciously old age is coming. My first book was published in 1986, my most recent book was published in 2020, and there will be some sporadic publications in the next few years, but it is not expected to be too many. So, taking advantage of the "own bookshelf" to be published, I put myself in it to do some cleanup.
It should be said that in the five episodes of essay collection, this episode made me most emotional. As I looked at the old manuscript, I was reminiscing about the path I had taken in life. From youth, middle age to old age, the traces of life are recorded in writing. When I was young, I had a good memory, and I remembered everything in my head, and then I gradually got older, and my memory was not so good, but I also looked down on the world, and I felt that many things were forgotten, and it was not worth remembering anything. However, I finally have a hobby of writing, constantly writing, constantly expressing myself, and whenever I compile a book, I always revise the manuscript over and over again, with deep intentions. Then I like to write in the preface, write and write, and sometimes I can't put down my pen and turn off the computer. It was almost half of my life.
A young friend who assisted me in compiling the book read my prologue and joked: "It turned out that the teacher complained a lot in the 1990s, no matter the prologue, it was all in the words, and then it was different." I laughed. Indeed, young people have their own right to complain, but it is also the tolerance of that era, and when it comes to "later", they probably understand that Feng Chen has expectations for Meng Tianjun, and will have no car to play and no fish to sing. When there is no expectation, it is natural to enter the realm of "but the sky is cool and autumn". However, the coolness of autumn may bring real slaughter, rather than the warmth of spring.
I've had several inflection points in my life. In 1977, the college entrance examination was resumed once, and in 1982, he stayed on to teach at the school once, and in 2001, he also served as the administrative work of the Chinese department of the school. At that time, I still had expectations, like in 2003, I took the liberty of accepting the commission of the Shanghai Writers Association to edit the "Shanghai Literature" magazine, and after hitting the nails a few times, I learned to be "different". I recently stumbled upon a book published ten years ago, and there was an article in the book about the old grains of the time when I edited Shanghai Literature. Author Ye Wei said that Chen Sihe's "after class" "real reason is not those sharp criticisms and foreign documents, but his idealism and the sense of post of the cultural elite to fire his own squid." It dawned on me. The analysis of this article really hits the "key point" that I myself am not yet clear. I had the same experience as the head of the Chinese department, and many people criticized and admonished me in person and behind me, saying that I was too idealistic and too impersonal. Although I have criticized it, I have never regretted it, and I used to feel confused: it is clear that it is clear that it is not clear, why others always do not understand. Now I understand, but I can't let go of the word "ideal" that I have longed for all my life. It's just that I don't look forward to it anymore, neither looking forward to the tolerant and preferential treatment of reality, nor looking forward to the arrival of the ideal in an instant, I let go of all this, but can calmly think about what else can be done later in life. Of course, I also understand that the resistance to social progress cannot be destroyed by the tears of the new pavilion, and the lofty ideal cannot be used as a banner to swing, everything must be transformed into specific work in specific posts, and slowly practice your ideals from the smallest point. That's why I'm a little "different" in progress.
Although I have made a little progress, I read the prologue to my own chronicle collection, year after year, year by year, one by one, and I find that I have not changed much. What was initially insisted on, is still insisted on to this day. It is like a tree, the annual ring expands year by year, but the core of the annual ring does not change. Do not change the original intention, this sentence is meaningless when you are young, and when you are old, you will look back at the road you have traveled, and "not changing your original intention" is the four words that are gratifying. I did not dare to stand up in the midst of suffering like my mentor and confidently say, "In this life, I am still a 'person' who writes correctly." "I have not experienced too much suffering in my life, but the many sufferings of human destiny, I am unforgettable, but I understand the truth that I cannot drink the three mountains and five mountains with my own meager ability." I spent my youth in the 1960s during the rabid epidemic of the virus, which was far more rampant than the current epidemic of the new crown virus, which almost destroyed the vitality of our nation. Therefore, I deeply know that people cannot really write the word "person" in a wrong era, unless, like my mentor, they have fallen into the abyss of eternal disaster, but an ordinary person's efforts not to change his original intention is another way of life used to fight against the changing atmosphere of the times.
I remember chatting with a writer in my youth. He said that a writer's writing requires a lifetime of accumulated energy. As a writer, my wish is to be able to look at the shelves with a whole row of books I wrote in my old age. I was too young at that time to hear this, but think about it, our literary predecessors, like Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Shen Congwen, Ba Jin, Lao She, although their lives were turbulent and they went through all the storms, they all wrote with pens throughout their lives, providing a "whole row" of writings for the cultural construction of modern China. Now this responsibility also falls on the shoulders of our generation, which also needs to be accumulated with the life energy of our lifetime.
On October 15, 2020, the fish scorched at sea
Finally revised on August 17, 2021
Sihe Wencun, volume III
/ Chen Sihe / Huangshan Book Club / 2013
"The Collection of Rooks"
/ Chen Sihe / Fudan University Press / 2020
exegesis
[1] Chen Sihe, "Reading" Benyan," first published in The Supplement of Hainan Daily, July 22, 1989.
[2] This series was later moved to the fifth episode, Say It Yourself. Hereby described.
[3] See Ye Wei, "Bookworm Tired: Chen Sihe 'After Class'", "Cold Eyes on the Literary World: Between academy and media", Jincheng Publishing House, 2010.
Catalogue for Issue 6, 2021
Everybody read everybody
Li Qingxi | absurdity and discipline— a comparison between the text of the novel "The Visitor" and the movie "Away from the Traces"
Cai Tianxin | prisoner of the years, but he taught free men to learn to praise - in memory of W. H. Auden
Critic Research Chen Sihe
Chen Sihe zhou mingquan | forty years of contemporary literary criticism - dialogue with Chen Sihe
Chen Sihe | prologue to "My Own Bookshelf"
Xie Youshun | become a creator—Chen Sihe as I understand him
"Zhongyuan" review series
Wang Chunlin| Dialect Requisition and the "Ritual Collapse and Happiness" of Rural Morality and Ethics: On Yan Lianke's Novel "Zhongyuan"
Zhao Dikai [Meaning] Mo Ran | The Redemption of Taohuayuan: On the Human Situation of Yan Lianke's "Zhongyuan"
New quick review
Xia Kejun | the Wang family's new writing journey: the reverse wandering of modern Chinese poetry
New Poetry Studies
He Jiayu | "Handmade" of Friendship, Action and Poetry: An Observation of Munch's Mimeographed Poems
Zhang Deming | comprehensive poetry and harmonious aesthetics- Wang Xuexin's poetry theory
Hu Qinghua | Language Experiment, Publicity and Another Kind of Everyday Life: On the Spiritual Dimension and Artistic Differences of the Creation of Mainland "Scholar-Type Poets" in the 21st Century
Trends and phenomena
Shi Long | metaphorical re-description: the textual structure and ironic mechanism of self-media writing
Zhang Yidan | the path to solve the dilemma of "Jiang Lang"--a discussion centered on the construction of the "talent" of the creative subject
Writer's Work Theory
Lu Jianhua | briefly discussed the emergence, development and impact of Wang Zengqi's "position theory."
Zhang Wen | Introduction to Zhang Wei's Poetics- Starting from the Book of Non-Fulfillment
Wang Yimei | the lost era, or the preservation of memory: On "Hello, Anna" and "Open Love Letters"
Bi Wenjun | young people who broke into art - Feng Jicai's "Artists" and youth images