×× brother, I received your letter last month, and I want to reply to you from time to time, but I don't know how to write it. You have said so many good things, and of course I will be glad that this will cause me; But to tell the truth, after this short period of happiness, a person sat quietly under the window, looking at the flower bed run by a half-old and a woman who still existed downstairs through the bamboo curtain (this woman, I heard that the wife of a high-ranking leader, often has a Shanghai brand sleeping car parked by the flower bed), although the flower is very prosperous, but what is the use of blooming? Won't I make you angry when I say that? I hope to get your understanding, don't say how my novels, how my prose, how my poetry is, it's best to pour more cold water in the future. I might as well say that in my chest there is always a desire to write, which is like eating, falling in love, drinking and spicy and smoking. Whether the quality of the work is high or not, of course, the author does not need to say that "I feel good", which is very kind of courage to do business, but often leads to a kind of misery. I know that I am very "small", and I am very incompatible with humanity and literature, and this desire is put on graph paper, so as to avoid the suspicion of "pleasing myself with the richness of my works", which is really a great grievance and the anger of asking the master of the blue sky to be the master. The production of the work is all the result of the release of this surging desire. With love, you have to conceive for your loved one, have a big belly, give birth, and love yourself. It is not painful, but a religious happiness. If you seek self-pleasure and write with the richness of your works, why should you be so stupid and tired? At night, accompany the little lover to walk the street, and also learn those lovers in the dark middle school of the small forest on the side of the road, you are romantic, I am romantic, we are all romantic, and that day is twelve points of happiness. In short, writing books for me is for the society, for the times, and for my own use! A chicken has an egg in its belly, can you not let it lay it? Newspapers often cite the example of "Cao Xueqin's 20 years to grind into "Dream of Red Mansions", it seems that every work takes ten years or decades to make Cao Xueqin, and making a small thing in half a year or a year must be a "seriousness" of the creative attitude. This is inevitably a little far from dialectics. I've written a lot of novels, essays, and poems, and of course they're all. The writer's hat is a good one, but he wears it red-faced, and he often feels that he is walking on the street, with pointing fingers behind him, and white and black eyes in the corners of the wall. But I still want to continue to write, and I have a big determination: first, I want to continue to write about the wild mountains and wild land in Shangzhou, second, I want to write about the ancient customs on the Najing River and the Wei River, that is, on the banks of the Jingwei River, and on the thick soil where the Loess Plateau and the Guanzhong Plain meet, and third, I want to write about the citizens in the square "well" shaped streets and alleys of the ancient city of Xi'an. Leaving aside the need to write about anything else, I think these three aspects alone will be enough to bring an end to the next 30 or 40 years of writing.
Having said that, if I hadn't played with a pen in this life, I didn't go to college, I didn't know square characters, and I could only recognize the amount of RMB, my crop work would definitely not be worse than that of the villagers. In the Huji trench in May and June, I asked my wife to bring a pot of clear flower spring water to drink, she offered the soil, and I made the foundation, and its speed and quality made the neighbor's old man very jealous. Or let me do a cotton player, this business is very artistic, a big bow on his back, with a mallet to play the big strings noisy, the small strings clangling; took a bowl of rice and squatted on the steps of the room to eat, slept in the master's doorway at night, looked at the silhouette of the master's daughter-in-law on the window of the hall for a long time, and fell asleep with a smile. This kind of work in the countryside, with and without skills, is very much in line with my state of mind, and therefore often reminds me of whether there is something to do literature now! Since there is no scholarly fragrance in Mendi, when I was young, I can't remember that my grandmother or grandmother once told beautiful stories in heaven and earth, which is congenitally deficient. And today's writers have a theory that they have to see a lot of the world and get in touch with a lot of big people, which is out of line with my character. One reader, out of pure kindness, persuaded me that I was ignorant of current affairs, and that I should write a novel about an indescribably elegant woman in love with a powerful and rich old man, and so on.
I wrote to him in a long letter, telling him that such stories were indeed good, and that they could arouse the hearts of perverted men in their forties, fifties, and sixties, and of young girls whose imaginations and bodies were as mature as mulberries in July, but I would not. I even saw a novel that said that a woman's greatest misfortune was because she wore a dress that she didn't want to wear, and I was puzzled at first, and then I put aside the article and said, "This novel is not for us to read." Later, I also examined myself and reflected that I was a mountain man with the idea of a small-scale peasant economy. But in any case, this virtue is so deep that I can't read that kind of novel. In a very lively place, facing the graceful woman who walked over with her head held high, I hurriedly lowered my eyes and turned sideways to let her pass. I was ashamed of myself, I looked very stupid, I felt very tired, and I thought of the smelly sweaty men and men's mothers-in-law in the country house full of syrup and vegetables, how good it was to be able to smoke the coughing grass smoke!
The mountainous area of Shangzhou is very wild, and you can see everywhere the traces of plank roads that chisel stone holes and stone pillars on the cliffs, as well as the cottage castles and stone caves where bandits and bandits escaped and settled. The loess of Jingwei is very ancient, and the true dragon of the thirteen feudal dynasties, the queen mother, the civil and military generals, the mausoleums are connected one by one. The old ox and wooden plough ploughed in the field, and what was turned up was often the chime of the Shang Dynasty, the bottle of the Zhou Dynasty, and the Qin bricks and Han tiles. In these two places, the peculiar landscapes have formed a peculiar fashion, and the colors are simple and mysterious. The accumulation of culture has made the strong men and feminine women there, as well as the wolves, insects, tigers, leopards, flying falcons and rabbits that live with humans, structure the world of these two places. There are as many beings in this world as ants, busy for food, clothing, shelter and transportation, fighting, dying and renewing a batch, the power of life, and the strength of reproduction, which is rare in the world.
As their writer, it should be one of them first, just like them; And because it's their writer, you can't be like them. Where is their suffering, is it from the outside world or from themselves? Where is their joy, should they be happy or not? Figure it out, that's my responsibility. My duty is for them and for myself. Maybe they read my works, so that they can understand the world and themselves at the same time; Perhaps they never read, and they only packed a few baskets of big characters, and those big-bellied men and women with waists who had good food and drink and good times in the downtown area saw it, and although they laughed at the backwardness, barbarism, and vulgarity of what I wrote, and the stupidity and pity of my writing, I would be infinitely grateful, because after all, they knew that there were so backward, barbaric, and vulgar places and people outside of them. They may go to these places and take the opportunity to buy a few Han Dynasty clay pots and tiles stacked in the corner of the farmhouse's toilet for a few yuan, buy a golden fox fur, and earn a pillow top with seven colored threads to hang on the wall in a glass case, which is certainly a new and elegant fashion.
It seems to be very lively to be a writer now, and every year there are many pen meetings, tourist attractions, TV appearances, speeches and food invitations, and literary teahouses have risen in various places, listening to music, eating melon seeds, drinking tea and chatting. There are always some very important characters and some beautiful women.
Once I was dragged away, there was a couplet pasted on the doorpost of the hall, which was remodeled from the old couplet, on one side it was "no white ding in and out", and on the other side it was "elegant in talking and laughing". I timidly went in and stayed there, looking around blankly, stupidly looking. Later, I danced, there were a few attractive actors, the legend is that the female talent who is good at poetry, piano, calligraphy and painting, invited me to go down to the pool, I made a big appearance, and repeatedly stated that I wanted to go down to the pool but really wouldn't. As a result, my friends ridiculed me, saying that I was uncivilized, and helped me analyze the cause as a "psychological disorder". If I am not civilized, I will not admit it, and I will never interfere with the freedom of others. I can also make friends with these people, and politely invite them to the dormitory for dinner and drink, but I really have a psychological barrier to the atmosphere of that occasion, which is also my lack of interest and the imbecile of being a writer.
Words can't be said to die, maybe one day, my psychological barrier will be completely eliminated, and that will be when I will no longer need to write about the Shangzhou Mountains and the Emperor Tianhou Land on the Jingwei Shore in the old tone. Then, I was the first to be mad, like a fragrant roe deer with a good fur and a strange fragrance.
On the morning of July 11, 1985