Written by Ye Wenfu
[a]
Xijiang month
The willow shore is in February, and the warbler flies and the grass is long. A river of water and a river of incense, rippling to the evening sun.
The world's mountains and rivers are beautiful, and they bring splendid articles. Eight thousand miles of vicissitudes of life, read the text heartily.
Indeed, it was a treat.
Indeed, it is a blessing.
Indeed, it is a spiritual pleasure that life needs so much, and it is extremely difficult to hunt in ordinary moments, a noble happiness that is extremely difficult to harvest - I have reaped it!
With this enjoyment, this happiness, I feel the value of life. This seems to be more difficult than the happiness that comes from the material income that comes from the success of a business, a project, or a business, and it seems to be more reflective of the meaning of life and the value of labor—life needs a true noble spirit, not a false or false noble spirit to sustain it.
So, I casually wrote the above poem "Xijiang Yue" as a feeling after reading.
[b]
I'm imagining now, imagining how excited I must have been when the book came out and Haiyan got it to me.
I'm imagining now, imagining what I'm going to treasure this book when it gets to me – where? Should I keep it at hand and flip through it and read a few lines when I have something to do, or should I treasure it in a bookcase and take it out and taste the aroma on my own when I think about it?
I'm imagining now, imagining that after this book comes out—
What is the cover like......
What is the title page like......
What is the font like......
What is paper like......
How is it designed......
What level of the reader is it......
How excited are readers......
[c]
When Haiyan showed me a sample of his new book, "Willow Shore", and asked me to write some text, I was really not happy with it.
When a person passes the sixtieth birthday, it is like a football game, and when it is time to stop making up for the injury, the sense of urgency is like listening to the second hand ticking in the ear at the same time, which makes people upset. I don't know what minute, God should blow the final whistle, winning or losing is small, and the work under his feet is messed up.
There are two sentences in the famous song before the sacrifice of Miss Hongxia in the opera "Hongxia": "...... How many beautiful scenery I haven't seen yet, how many things I haven't done yet......"
That's what I'm in now.
There are so many things that should be written like a baby croaking in the belly - there is no time, time is divided up by life in a chaotic manner, and there is no time to write a good work.
I should be a member of the time-honored Chinese Writers Association, and the little members and the little members traveled around this country and that continent by plane, and wrote so many gorgeous foreign style chapters and tofu scum poems. And I, who have been a member of the association for decades, have never been to Tongzhou in poor Beijing.
Someone once said that in China, if you don't have the experience of living in the countryside, you will never be a first-class writer. The predecessors did not say that people who have never been abroad cannot be first-class writers - great, fortunately, I have a solid foundation in rural life and military career, I can't write about foreign countries, I write about China, I can't write about others, I can't write about myself, I can't write about the customs of objective society, I can't write about the pain of my subjective world. Just like Van Gogh, he can't paint the sea, paint his own wheat field, paint his own sunflowers, can't paint others to paint himself, can't paint his beautiful self, and can't paint his ugly self. In this way, I have a anxious mentality of "how many beautiful scenery I haven't seen yet, how many things I haven't done yet".
What is a "beautiful view"? What "thing"?
In fact, it is my own excavation of the objective world and the subjective world, like a scientist, struggling to find a new aesthetic point of view, examining the objective world, examining the subjective world, and obtaining a new literary equation that examines the subjective and objective universe. The crowd looked for him thousands of degrees, and suddenly looked back, but the person was there, in the lamplight. It is not easy to seek beauty, to seek new beauty and ugliness from a new aesthetic point of view, to seek a new relationship between beauty and ugliness.
Literature is not a chant of flowers and moons, it is not Sima Xiangru's ability to sing praises of virtue, the essence of literature is philosophy and science.
In today's world, it is a good thing to pay attention to scientific development. Especially for literature, it should be a good thing. Literature is also a science, and I ask that in the era of progress, we can read and understand this sentence that has been exchanged for the lives and blood of countless writers, and do not be stupid enough to sell the so-called great wisdom there, and ruin not only oneself but also the future of the nation.
[iv]
It's painful to write a preface for a person, and to write a good one.
Hundreds of thousands of words of manuscript, to read. After reading it, we should think about it, analyze the advantages and disadvantages, and evaluate it. The most important thing is that you must know that when people ask you to write a preface, they ask you to praise it, and they also want to climb up on your praise, whether it is good or not, you don't need to evaluate it objectively. This kind of market, such unspoken rules, so that many famous people have made great achievements, they go everywhere for people to preface, their "fame" to the extreme, side references, write a large ambiguous ecstasy soup-like text, will need his touted works to blow out flowers. The result is a win-win, but it is the reader who suffers.
According to some surveys, the vast majority of so-called bestsellers are worthless. Of course, there are many reasons, and these self-interest and harm to others may also be a reason that cannot be ignored.
I'm not.
I'm not that kind of person.
Zi Xia said: "Women are gentlemen and Confucians, and there are no villains." ”
It means that you should be a scholar with high morals, not a villain who uses knowledge as a stepping stone and plays the sign of a scholar.
I don't pretend to be noble, I think I'm noble.
My nobility is not only due to my character, but also due to my morality, my cultivation, and even more so my faith.
It is difficult to write a preface, in fact, it is difficult for those who ask someone to write a preface to conquer their own ugliness; In fact, it is difficult for the preface to conquer his own ugliness.
The reason why I want to write this preface well is not that I wanted to write it from the beginning, but I read and read, and I was moved by the article, and I was moved by the author's ability to peel back the surface of things very rationally, whether it is looking at mountains, water, high-rise buildings, villas, history, or reality, with detailed and detailed information, deep understanding and analysis of things, and the bravery that most journalists cannot possess as a journalist at present.
[v]
Read 10,000 books and travel 10,000 miles.
Read more than 10,000 volumes, and write like a god.
Since ancient times, Chinese scholars have boiled down the experience of how to write good articles to "reading and walking", which is a true truth.
Because it's so hard to do both.
I have seen many authors, snuggled in a warm corner, idle, chanting about the wind and moon, and writing graffiti is an article. There is a small fame, a small reward, a small status, a small contentment, enough on the small ground!
You don't understand literature at all, you don't understand that literature is science, and you don't understand that literature needs to be climbed hard before it is possible to reach the peak of glory. I think that literature is a cosmetics, but I just use a little talent to be a courtier like Sima Xiang, and the vulgar people boast of his ability, and that's it. What is it in a contented secular society?
Don't read – no;
Walking, not reading—no;
Only read, not walk – no;
Just read, only walk, don't think, don't explore – no.
What books to read and what path to take, as long as you are really engaged in literature, you must think carefully.
Only by constantly experiencing hardships and dangers on the journey, tasting them, chewing on them, and having the ability to digest them, and by constantly searching for the understanding, interpretation, and exploration of the various hardships and dangers of the predecessors' life and social future, in various books, we may be able to capture the history of literature and the mission of the times.
[f]
After all, Mr. Zhu Haiyan and I have been friends for five or six years.
Over the years, for me, it is like the river of Kuimen, the surface is calm, but in fact, the bottom of the river is shaken by countless dark stones, and there are dangers. If you are not careful, the ship will be destroyed immediately. The situation is difficult, and if you don't experience it yourself, you can't experience the three madhi of cold, warm, and cold.
Over the years, the fate of me and my family has been like Du Fu after the Anshi Rebellion, "there is no family of relatives and friends, and there is a lonely boat for old and sick". In this era, honest poets, including me, or real poets, have been marginalized by life, and art has very cleverly shifted from model drama to cross talk and sketches, and in the face of the severe torture of secular life, in order to achieve a win-win situation, all art and artists have hid behind the scenes and re-made up - I can't do it, I don't know how to wear makeup, and I don't care about makeup, the weak have no diplomacy, so all my relatives and friends hide away when they see me.
All my relatives and friends hid away when they saw me!
Petrel, only Petrel, only Petrel dared to come out the door and make friends with me on her own.
When Du Fu was exiled to Chengdu, when he was helpless, there was a famous general in the Tang Dynasty, Chengdu Yin and Jiannan Jiedu made Yan Wu lend a hand, so that he had a thatched hut to shelter from the wind and rain, although he was still in difficulty, but finally passed a relatively stable life. Future generations do not need to discuss what kind of character Yan Wu is and what military achievements he has, just this act is enough to make him famous through the ages.
Unfortunately, Yan Wu died young (he was just in his early 40s when he died), and he left behind his friendship with poetry and poets, so that Du Fu only lived in Chengdu for a few years, and then he had to break the boat and carry wine in the middle of the stream, and the family lived everywhere in a small boat.
After receiving Yan Wu's letter, on the way back to Chengdu Thatched Cottage, Du Fu wrote a set of seven laws "Will go to Chengdu Thatched Cottage on the way to send Yan Zhenggong first", Yan Zhenggong is Yan Wu, who has been named Zheng Guogong at that time.
A high-ranking general who has been crowned the Duke of the State actually wrote a letter to invite a poet who is almost unkempt to return to Chengdu, which cannot but be said to be a peerless beauty of literature or martial arts. No wonder Du Fu was so passionate on the road that he wrote five poems and seven laws to dedicate to him, and what is even more ridiculous is that after writing, the poet was so enthusiastic that he couldn't wait for himself to go to Chengdu to present it in person, so he sent it to him in advance. This Mr. Du is really pedantic. At that time, the Anshi Rebellion was over, the world was not peaceful, the so-called mail, certainly not today's postal road, let alone express mail, perhaps to invite someone or hire someone to bring poems to Chengdu in advance to present the excitement. Four of them have famous sentences:
Xinsong hates not to be a thousand feet tall,
The evil bamboo should be cut with ten thousand rods.
At that time, it was a sincere praise for Yan Wu's noble personality, and I felt that it was a deep tribute to Yan Wu.
In my time, there are no such Confucian generals who are both civil and military.
Only then did I seem to understand that Tang poetry was by no means a few poets who were mediocre there, they should be islands of all sizes in a literary sea, and the long-term cultural accumulation of the whole nation led to the brilliance of Tang poetry.
When I bow my head to take pity on myself and look around my time, I feel that without the quiet sadness and colorful rhetoric in Du Lao's chest, I would not be able to find the literary sea that nurtures the island. My time is either a model play, or a sketch, either a hero who can never do it or a fool who can never do it, and the artistic images of both are not normal people in life, or deformed people in life. Heroes are majestic on stage, fools pretend to be stupid on stage, how can a poet who is lyrical for normal people be accommodated in an era when deformed people are rampant?
When I came to receive the harsh mockery of life in the name of yet another poet, the petrel, only the petrel, came out the door and befriended me.
When Haiyan walked in front of me, he, and I were past the age of Yan Wu and Du Fu's death. I don't know what Haiyan's self-feeling is, but I know that my own heart is very barren, a feeling that I have lived with others all my life, and I have learned nothing and is not good at anything. In ancient times, our nation had funeral etiquette, and now it has progressed, and now I am a living person, and I have the vivid experience that living is to accompany others to live, which is very remarkable and should be defined as accompanying life.
Haiyan walked up to me, he is the editor-in-chief of China Railway Construction News, the winner of the 6th Fan Changjiang Journalism Award, and is an influential journalist in the Chinese press circles.
[vii]
Undoubtedly, Haiyan is a successful person, a lucky person who has not only worked tirelessly in a difficult environment, but also lived in the process of getting to know him and constantly giving him opportunities to achieve success.
I think he deserves to succeed.
Yes, he had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and fate helped him seize it in time. He was born as a soldier and did not have a university diploma, but his literary talent was recognized and affirmed by General Lu Zhengcao, who loved talent very much. If it weren't for General Lu's appreciation, his life would have been a different one. Han Xin met Xiao He, and Zhou Lang was fortunate to meet Sun Quan, from this point of view, he is indeed a lucky person who is the envy of many talented people.
However, he is by no means just a lucky one.
In my years of association with him, he gave me two most prominent feelings:
1. There is indeed talent, and there is no talent that can be replaced by other people;
Second, he is by no means a character who only relies on talent to pass the time, he has a very serious attitude towards life. The reason why he succeeds is because of his serious attitude towards life and hard work. I simply feel that his diligence is irreplaceable by no one else. In his decades of career as a journalist, he has cultivated an iron pen that controls the wind and clouds in one tube, and everything is like a taboo, including flying rainbows and lightning, and dripping dew into streams, and has written more than 10 million words of news reports, newsletters, essays, essays and poems. In addition, he also helped a group of old revolutionaries write millions of words of reminiscences. These are not counted in the tens of millions of words of his personal works. This huge number is not something that can be done. I don't know much about the news. Listen to him say that on the news front, there are only a few reporters who have written tens of millions of words in their lives for decades.
Moreover, in this era of universal computers, he did not use a computer, and wrote completely by hand. With so many computer-based reporters under his command, the speed of writing lags far behind him.
Moreover, no matter what form or content he writes, he is a success in the first draft. I was stunned by this extraordinary diligence, this extraordinary writing ability and pen effort.
He has a keen sense of smell, a quick mind, and a piercing ability;
He has a wide field of vision, and he has a bird's-eye view. Every thing, even brick by brick, floor by floor, he can follow the historical evolution very rationally and analyze them one by one, so that the article presents the beauty of cooking.
Eye, leg, brain, pen, this is his magic weapon. At the end of a meeting, one of his conference reports was written almost at the same time.
News is the reporting of facts. He is serious about the facts, and pursues 1+1=2, and will never allow 2+2=5 to appear in his reports. The data stored in his brain is at least thousands, accurate to single digits.
He has the hard character of a literati, does not blow or shoot, is bright and upright, and is a frank man.
What's more, he can endure hardship.
When it comes to being able to endure hardship, I should be very talkative. I'm also very good at enduring hardships, eating chaff and vegetables, and working on a rotating basis, which is no problem for me. Seeing the sages and comparing with him, I think that I can endure hardships because my family is poor when I was young, and I am used to enduring hardships. And he, he is not, he can endure hardships, the main reason is that he is dedicated.
When he was a soldier, he participated in the first phase of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, experienced the cruelty of his comrades-in-arms falling from his side, and it is not an exaggeration to say that he has a primitive affection for the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. He dragged his illness all over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau seven times and participated in the whole process of covering the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. From the commander's office to the workers' shed, he firmly tied his life and the honor and disgrace he carried in his life to the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and under arduous conditions, he brilliantly completed the interview tasks that the times required him to complete.
He deserves to succeed.
[viii]
When I read "Willow Bank", I first felt strongly that Haiyan was indeed a free and heroic petrel. The sea is wide and the fish jumps, and the sky is high for the birds to fly. As a professional journalist, he has traveled all over the world, and has traveled to many places that I could not have imagined the wings could fly. Not only did he quickly write down the vivid customs and customs, but most importantly, he also wrote down his true emotions and understanding of the various landscapes and phenomena he saw, so as to accurately and profoundly draw his own unique and true judgment that is not swayed by others.
When I read "Willow Bank", there are many strong feelings that intertwine and collide with each other. Among them, Haiyan penetrates into the soil layer of history through reality, and excavates her own gold-like feelings, so as to finally form her own unique opinion.
My excitement comes from the depth and even heaviness that permeates these unique words.
I envy his life experience as a journalist.
At this point, I have to turn a corner. I've never interacted with any journalists because I'm not familiar with journalism, and digging a little deeper, frankly, I don't like journalists. Journalists have the freedom to be interviewed by journalists, and I have the freedom to dislike journalists – this micro-freedom should be allowed.
I don't like journalists, but I like reporters like Zhu Haiyan.
I don't like journalists, but I like Zhu Haiyan as a journalist.
He has a pair of sound eyes, he has a pair of sharp and deep eyes, he can see things that others can't see, can see or dare to see things with two eyes that others dare to see with only one eye.
He has an intelligent brain, which can quickly, objectively and accurately connect and compare the phenomena of the things he sees with the essence, and rationally draw his own conclusions.
And through his eyes and brain, I saw that he had a firm belief and a seriousness about his career and even about life, which is rare to achieve at the moment. It is difficult for journalists to go to the sky, and life does not allow journalists to have their own opinions. But Haiyan's prose as a journalist has both the sensitivity of a journalist, the rigor of a historian, and the fullness of literature, which is really commendable.
Read 10,000 books - he did.
Traveled thousands of miles – and he did.
He walked, read, and thought.
He reads, walks, and explores.
Reading, using the knowledge and wisdom of the wise to open and expand their cognition, so that their wisdom radiates due light under the guidance of knowledge;
Walking, enriching yourself, testing yourself and sublimating yourself in an all-round way with life, reality and even chaotic exam questions.
Through his work, I felt that his working method was very different from the way journalists who were defined by other definitions, who went to interview wherever they went. Perhaps because of his background as a soldier, his spirit of hardship and hard work is not only carried out throughout his works, but more importantly, no matter what people or events he interviews, no matter where he goes, he is by no means a journalist in the ordinary sense, his whole life and emotions, his whole cognition of reality and history, his review and analysis of history, his worries and reflections on reality, and his vision for the future - no, not only these, I feel his uncontrollable tears, his boiling blood - all at the same time. The way he interviewed or inspected, the way he was a soldier, which company and which squad he was assigned to, everything he did was in place at the same time. Not only is it everywhere, but he also melts everything into the subjects he wants to report, describe and discuss, and expresses the opinions that are not only his but also those of his interviewees from reality in the identity, body temperature and name of his interviewees. Sometimes I joked with him that his interview method was suicidal. The metaphor is not appropriate, but I really admire his divine reverence and devotion to his work.
In Changshu City, at the foot of Yu Mountain, an old house in the Ming and Qing dynasties - Caiyi Hall, is the former residence of the famous politician in the late Qing Dynasty, the emperor of Tongzhi and Guangxu dynasties. is such an old mansion, the author connected the entire history of the late Qing Dynasty around Weng Tonggong, and wrote it with swaying and brilliant ups and downs. Through Weng Tongyi's life, I basically grasped the memorabilia of the late Qing Dynasty. Originally, for some reason, I have never had a good impression of Weng Tonggong, but after reading this essay, Haiyan brought Weng Tonggong's life to the reader truthfully and objectively, and gave me the feeling that you like Weng Tonggong and you don't like Weng Tonggong, it doesn't matter, he recorded the main political activities of Weng Tonggong's life, as well as his moral sentiments in the face of success and failure, all of which are well documented, and recorded them with deep sympathy and respect, at least, It has changed many of my views on Weng Tongyong.
There are many such examples. An unknown mountain, a traceless water, the author can accurately and vividly express its historical evolution in the form of prose, which is both exciting and emotional to read.
No matter what the characters or things are, it is the basic feature of this prose to uncover the phenomena of reality, to go as deep into history as possible, to point to the surface, to the surface and the inside, to explore the historical facts, and to reveal the essence. This feature runs through almost all articles, and this feature is handy to use.
The reason why I say that this is a rare good book, so good that I don't want to write a preface to I want to write a preface when I see it, and I think the most important factor is that I have gained from reading every article, and I can strongly feel that the author has read thousands of books, traveled thousands of miles, and has the author's own unique views on every character or thing. Whether it is praised, criticized, explored, or pondered, it can give readers detailed information, detailed historical facts, or a wonderful angle to observe specific people or things, so as to get an unexpected enlightenment.
Moreover, it is by no means a reference book, it reads with ups and downs, and with great emotion, which gives me the feeling of following the cage of the mine down to the depths of the earth, and seeing a splendid scene completely different from that on the surface.
It's a great feeling! Good enough to make me feel a little refreshed, so good that I almost hallucinated like my eyes were on his head, as if he had my eyes on his head. I am in this poor corner, the outside world that I want to see but can't see is seen by him, what he sees is what I want to see, and what he thinks of after seeing it is really what I want to think. Although they are not the same, what he thinks can ignite my mind is enough to prove his extraordinary ability to dig into the depths of things.
It's a great feeling! It was so good that I almost felt that his eyes were a pair of clear and deep eyes lent to me by God, and I saw what he saw, and he thought what I thought. A mountain, a water, a grass, a tree, a court, a pavilion, a person, a thing, or praise, or criticize, or explore, or think, excellent and firm, heavy and passionate, free and flying.
It's a great feeling! It's so good that I can imagine that after the book comes out, I must keep it in my hand and read everything and everything. When you read literature books, when you read history books, when you read local science books, when you read political books. How to look at literature, how to look at history, how to look at geography, how to look at politics, the author has a profound cultivation that permeates inside and outside the text, such as smelling the curling orchid fragrance and knowing the arrival of spring, smelling the lush laurels and knowing that autumn is coming-there is no mystery and is wonderful.
[ix]
However, after reading through dozens of articles, I still feel that there is room for further optimization. The author is used to writing news, as prose, perhaps because he writes quickly, there are many news sentences. When the shallow water crosses the beach, the sound is loud, and the speed is fast, but it is lost. Deep pool still water, is it not a kind of speed?
News is news, prose is prose. Prose belongs to the category of literature, just like a football is kicked with a foot and a handball is thrown with a hand, each with its own rules of the game.
It can be seen at a glance that I said that "Willow Bank" is good, and it is by no means a grandstanding advertisement; I say that there are shortcomings, and I will never do it. Not to mention whether the preface is well written or not, such an attitude is the value of a preface. Just as this book has outstanding strengths and flaws, it is the value it deserves—it uses the old saying: clear water without fish.
July 2009
Ye Wenfu, born in 1944 in Puqi, Hubei Province (now Chibi), is a famous contemporary Chinese realist poet He began writing poetry in 1966, published his debut novel in 1969, published a collection of poems "Mountain Love" in 1978, and joined the Chinese Writers Association in 1979.
Ye Wenfu's literary achievements are remarkable, and his masterpiece "General, Can't Do This" was published in 1979, which caused a strong response in the Chinese poetry circle and even the whole society, and became a pioneering work in the fight against corruption and clean government. In addition, he has published several collections of poems, including "The Sun of the Male", "Bitter Love and the Tombstone", "The Death of the Swan" and "The Ox Trumpet", among others.
Ye Wenfu's poetry style is direct and passionate, often expressing a ruthless attack on ugliness and a persistent pursuit of light. His poems brought a kind of masculinity and strong bones to the poetry world, not too much pursuit of the subtlety of poetry, but to reveal his feelings, and let his feelings flow.
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