In Jia Pingwa's recent works, Shaanxi Opera is a novel praised almost unanimously by critics. In terms of content, I basically agree with some scholars that this is a novel about "the land is broken", "the end of poetic land history", "returning to the origin of life", "the torrent of details and the exquisiteness of language", but such an evaluation is different from saying that a novel is a good novel, a great novel or an epic work.
Qiang Qin really changed the poetic attitude of the author's love, nostalgia, contradiction and sigh for this land reflected in Jia Pingwa's previous Qinchuan novels, and described the declining trend of this land under the impact of so-called modernization with an almost neutral, noncommittal and hard-to-fill mentality. At the end of the work, the death of Xia Tianyi, the spokesman of Qingfeng Street, and the "white sign" in front of his grave can fully show that the author can't judge the sad mentality of this broken land. But what I want to say is that such a turning point is a turning point of the times and a social transformation. In the face of such a transformation, China intellectuals have basically lost the ability to grasp the reality as a whole, so it is normal to avoid evaluation only as a result of "literature is a reflection of reality". To tell the truth, if you read the works carefully, you can really read what Jia Pingwa called "bitterness and confusion" from the novel, but "bitterness and confusion" is what everyone who loves land may feel in the face of today's land fragmentation. What else can the author tell us?
The changes brought by the changes in reality are not the same as the "changes" in writers' artistic creation, because the latter is not restricted by the changes in reality, but only by their own discovery, experience and understanding, and has relative independence. If Jia Pingwa said that "the writer gave up his cheap judgment and embraced the reality frankly", we would confuse the changes brought by the changes of the times and society with the writer's efforts to break through the shackles of the times. In my view of literature, because art and reality are two different worlds, a writer can paint a prosperous and poetic rural scene through his own unique understanding, or he can write that another poetic tree is growing in the countryside that is losing its poetry in reality. Because of the original function of artistic thinking, it should completely break through the sense of reality and general cultural understanding of most people in our time, and give people inspiration by building another world. Therefore, today's Qingfeng Street, the Qin opera can become a wail, the literati can give up their responsibilities and escape, the protagonist can pervert and castrate their genitals, rural cadres can indulge in the trade of wine, wine and money, rural youth can work in cities in large numbers, and the contracting and leasing market can be chaotic ... Although these have also been filtered by writers, it can only show that our past pure agricultural countryside is declining. However, it cannot explain the decline of the art world of writing Qingfeng Street, nor should it affect the writer's artistic creation ability and passion-these contents of rural life today can be used as "materials" to participate in the structure of Jia Pingwa's art world and play a different significance from reality. Therefore, there is no difference between writing about rural prosperity and writing about rural depression and decline. The key lies in how writers establish their literary understanding of "prosperity" and "decline". Fundamentally speaking, the joyful mood produced by rural prosperity is not superior to the heavy mood produced by rural decline and depression-whether it is joyful mood or heavy mood, it must wait for the writer's understanding before it can be given "another meaning". Even "tears full of bitterness" must be filtered by the writer's creative thinking. Otherwise, no matter what kind of emotional expression, it is of limited literary value.
This involves the structure of the novel. If the early Jia Pingwa failed to break through the overall consideration of land with the concepts of "Tao" and "Zen", then this defect is unlikely to be made up by Qin Opera at once. It can be said that "Shaanxi Opera" is a reduction of the decline of China's contemporary rural poetry, but this reduction only means "uncovering" the conceptual writing of China writers' rural themes in the past, and does not mean building a new artistic world. Otherwise, any writing in the original state of life can become an epic because of depersonalization? It is not impossible to construct a novel with the mixed flow of life itself, but only when this "boring day has passed" presents some philosophical significance similar to Proust's "Remembering Things Past" can "trivial days" become a new creative method and artistic form. At that time, such a "living structure" can tell us that it is not limited to the artistic enlightenment of "bitterness and chaos" mentioned by Jia Pingwa, because "bitterness and chaos" is only an emotion, and what is behind "bitterness and chaos" is artistic significance. Therefore, the reason why art does not stop at "miracles in daily life" (see Jia Pingwa's Dialogue with Xie Youshun, page 153, Suzhou University Press, 2003) is that both a single real life and a rich real life can write good works, but also works that lack spiritual direction and ideological enlightenment. The key lies in the writer's "how to understand simplicity and richness" and can't be satisfied with reality. Therefore, when Jia Pingwa said that he wrote "Shaanxi Opera" to set up a monument to his hometown, I would like to add that even if this monument is set up, it will only set up a monument to his hometown, and it can't cross his hometown to give us enlightenment. Miracles in life also need creative transformation by writers, and cannot be satisfied with "true records", because miracle life is reality rather than art, otherwise all excellent works at all times and in all countries can be subverted, and the true records of "life miracles" like the Cultural Revolution can also become "art classics"?
Secondly, the most artistic feature of "Qin Opera" is undoubtedly the subtle use of details and language by the screenwriter, which has arranged remarkable intensive highlights for trivial rural life. I think this directly comes from the author's difficulty in attracting readers to the "life process" and can only focus on it. I don't know why, Jia Pingwa's efforts in details and language remind me of Wang Meng's efforts in language and skills. Generally speaking, a writer who can exert his strength in details and language is of course talented. In this regard, I would like to understand from the cultural inertia that China culture ideologically restricted China literati, making China intellectuals only realize themselves in style and skills. However, understanding this point does not mean that this state is "should be", nor does it mean that China writers have not made successful individual efforts to break through this cultural restriction. For example, Su Shi and Lu Xun may not be explained by dazzling language and skills.
The reason for this is that in excellent works, language, skills, characters, rhythm and creative methods are not isolated, but stem from the "branches" and "leaves" of the writer's overall understanding of the world. Therefore, a good work is an organic life, and readers will never only pay attention to the details and exquisite language in the work. Just like you said "One Hundred Years of Solitude", you must not just talk about details such as "Ascending from the Blanket" and "Norwegian Forest". You must not only pay attention to Haruki Murakami's language charm and music rhythm, but ignore the overall philosophical significance of his works. When talking about Lu Xun, we must not just talk about Lu Xun's style. I have always believed that whether Simon's "absolute subjectivity is absolute objectivity", Joyce's "stream of consciousness" or Lu Xun's "sketch" can never be understood as just a "creative method", but is closely related to the writer's world outlook. If we only pay attention to language and details, on the one hand, it is easy to get out of touch with the problems existing in the overall structure and implication of the work, on the other hand, it will continue the disadvantages of literary criticism that only connects literariness with language and skills. Just as Jia Pingwa has such a worry: "Pour strong tea into Yixing porcelain bowl, will I be regarded as clear water?" However, if strong tea is not focused on the overall meaning of the work, but only on the details accumulated and expressed by heart, I think the possibility of being regarded as clear water still exists.
Among many exquisite details, the narrator "induced" to steal snow underwear and cut off genitals, which is a more striking one. To tell the truth, although Jia Pingwa wrote the character of "inducing life" more complicated and difficult to describe, its existence essence still reminds me of the "Tiangou" in which he secretly loves "Shi Niang" but can only suppress his own "Tiangou". From Tiangou to Yinsheng, why do writers like to pay attention to these seemingly flawed unrequited love that is entangled in lust? This was originally a detail whose connotation and extension could be enlarged. Through this amplification, the writer can think of Xia Feng, the intellectual husband of Bai Xue, and further think of the writer's love for the land. But after reading the novel, I'm sorry: the screenwriter still wasted such details, just like Xia Tianyi's "Get drunk after eating bean jelly", which can be enlarged but still wasted. I'm not saying that "amplification" should be associated with social significance, but with the "lost days" as the basic idea of the novel, and with the idea that there are things in the "lost days" that will never die. Why does Qingfeng Street feel deserted without "inducing life"? Why does this man who can make the land lively "cut off his own things"? Why can Snow White only give him a pumpkin, but never give herself to someone like Yin Sheng? ..... These can be fragmentary and irrelevant in reality, but they must be related in the novelist's mind, so that "thrilling details" can become "thrilling novels". And from "Tiangou" to "Yinsheng", as a character image, why can only present a typed, vibrant and muddled living state? Why can't we give writers real feelings and healthy understanding in another understanding? It is only because they are in a deformed society that they are happy to see the disaster in Qingfeng Street. So does "gloating" sometimes have a positive meaning? Why can't "top students" further shock and inspire the intellectuals who look down on them through their understanding of writers?
In Qiang Qin, the prominent features of the author's sentences are short and boring, dense and soothing narration, almost freehand brushwork of characters, and slightly simple ancient meanings mixed with dialects and vernacular, such as: "Xia Tianyi said,' What made a bee die happily?' I said,' As soon as the bees saw my bare arms, they thought they were going to sting, and they were so happy!' "and so on. However, Jia Pingwa's language style is his overall language style on the one hand, and it also shows similar characteristics in Ben Before Abortion, Blackstone and Impetuousness, so this characteristic is not necessarily related to the overall meaning of Shaanxi Opera. On the other hand, if we want to praise the language of Shaanxi Opera, we should find the reason why the author is "bitter and at a loss" from the language characteristics of "short, dense and boring", and then find the reason behind "boring days". I regret that behind "bitterness and loss" and "boring days", I don't know what the writer can tell me to understand that "short, dense and boring" language is the inevitable result of expression. Therefore, I think that the language and details of Shaanxi Opera are the same, which is not necessarily related to the overall meaning of the work.
Thirdly, the dissolution of enlightenment identity is another feature of Shaanxi Opera, which has been praised by many critics. What I want to say is that from "enlightenment" to "enlightenment and digestion" is a typical cultural thinking or "non-literary thinking" that puzzles China writers and critics. The reason is simple: the word "Enlightenment" can neither explain the best writers in the West (including those in the "Enlightenment Literature Movement") nor explain such outstanding writers as Lu Xun, Zhang Ailing and Huang Yongyu. Fundamentally speaking, excellent literature itself should be enlightening, whether it is ancient Greek mythology, Kafka or Kundera. Therefore, in the sense of cultural trend of thought, we call modern western writers who have got rid of the shackles of the church enlightenment writers, but we can't call Rousseau and Montaigne enlightenment writers in the literary sense. Because the ideological significance of these writers' works can't be summarized by typology of "science, democracy and freedom", they can only say that they have their own understanding of "faith and science", "democracy and autocracy" and "freedom and attachment". Broadly speaking, any writer must have his own understanding of these problems in human spiritual life, and the literary enlightenment and uniqueness of his works are possible. As far as China writers are concerned, although Lu Xun, as the initiator of the May 4th culture, has a condescending attitude, in his criticism of China traditional culture and China people, Lu Xun never told us the ready-made concept and understanding of "Xinmin". Lu Xun's criticism is directly related to his realization that "value only exists in falsehood". Therefore, Lu Xun is different from Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu and other writers who express their own culture with ready-made western ideas, so we can't call him an "enlightening writer", just as we can't praise Cao Xueqin and Su Shi with "feudalism", "anti-feudalism", "criticism of Confucianism" and "recognition of Confucianism". On the contrary, Mo Yan's and Wang Shuo's novels should have the characteristics of "anti-enlightenment". However, in his so-called "writing as an ordinary person", Mo Yan provided a novel understanding of the world through Red Sorghum and other works (I call this understanding "naive"), while Wang Shuo often had some original opinions in the process of enlightening and dispelling intellectuals (for example, China writers are great, and great works are naturally rare), but he did not use his own understanding of the whole world to structure himself. Therefore, reading Wang Shuo's works, the pleasure of citizenship overwhelmed the enlightenment of thinkers. Although I never refuse "pleasure writing", an excellent writer is definitely not limited to pleasure.
Therefore, today's literary problem is not that Jia Pingwa's "concept writing" caused the disaster, but that what China writers lack most is "their own concept", which not only makes the concept of China writers, but also makes the emotional expression of China writers more similar and repetitive. This repetition is not only manifested in the fact that "inducing life" is the same type of characters as "Tengu" and "Photon", but also in the fact that we can only wander between the collectivized cultural concept and the same collectivized "silence" to reality. If the writers of "new realistic novels" express their helplessness in the reduction description of reality, then I think Jia Pingwa's Shaanxi opera only expresses the same helplessness with bitterness and loss. In a positive sense, this helplessness is a farewell to the past cultural enlightenment and cultural critical writing, but I don't think this farewell is ontological negation or literary creation, just because it is an effort to cover up China writers' own unique understanding of "lost land" with sadness. So "positive meaning" is equivalent to "negative meaning" here. I think this question is not directed at Jia Pingwa, but rather at China literary critics who easily use "masterpieces" and "epics" and "enlightenment/anti-enlightenment" to evaluate literature.
On the variation of "childlike innocence" from sandalwood punishment
On the surface, from the Red Sorghum series to Mo Yan's recent Breasts and Buttocks and Sandalwood Punishment, the author began to affirm the bloodiness and wildness of my grandfather's generation, and gradually moved to show the ugly side of human nature such as cruelty and disability. Both Jintong Shangguan's breast fetishism and Zhao Jia, the executioner, show their sense of accomplishment through the art of killing, which seems to indicate this aesthetic change of the writer's aesthetic orientation. However, from the hint that the generation of "father" in the series Red Sorghum is not as good as that of "grandfather", from the bloody details of uncle Lohan's ears being cut off and his skin being peeled off, and from the "killing" between people and dogs who were not present at the Japanese invasion of China, we can realize that the variation of human nature and the cruelty of people in Mo Yan's works are really just the "other" of the flesh and blood of China farmers. If everyone is a complex combination, in Mo Yan's words, he is both a hero and an illegitimate child, then I can say that farmers in China or people in China have gone from a simple bloody aesthetic existence to a cruel and alienated three-dimensional existence through breast-feeding and fat buttocks and sandalwood punishment. "Childlike heart" has changed from an organic combination of adults and children to an organic combination of ever-changing beauty and ever-changing ugliness.
In Sandalwood Punishment, Mo Yan obviously magnified the "killing culture" implied in the series of Red Sorghum. In my opinion, this amplification implies Mo Yan's artistic efforts: "Killing" is the basic embodiment of China's authoritarian culture, and it is a common phenomenon in the history of China's authoritarian culture to create "fear" in spirit or "extinction" in body. Generally speaking, appreciating and pondering this process of "fear" and "extinction" is also all the possibilities for China people to "make a living by technology"-the so-called "trick" art, "attack" art and "trap" art are all the same. However, because China people are ashamed to show their bodies, there is no appreciation of "naked" human body art in China traditional art, and there is little appreciation of "killing art" in China modern literature. Therefore, it is not only a "cultural humiliation" but also an attractive event to show the process of physical destruction in public. Mo Yan's "amplification" of such an event is the first step for him to "break through cultural norms in art" However, I think the artistic value of Sandalwood Punishment is not only to show the art of instruments of torture such as In the Year, Sandalwood Punishment, but also to understand that "instruments of torture" have become a kind of "exquisite and beautiful art". Not only can this make the emperor's ministers happy and the people excited, but also the executioner so happy and excited. What kind of soil will produce what kind of values: to realize one's own value in the art of killing people, to be more dedicated because it is "the best in the world", to happily experience the praise that "the country has thousands of laws, but it will eventually be implemented on your knife" and to indulge in the life sentiment of "killing pigs three times and killing people nine times". These are Mo Yan. Although this understanding also contains some possibilities among other China writers, it is the first time for Mo Yan, who has a "naive" understanding of the world. Based on this understanding, Mo Yan dispelled our established concept of "killing people like hemp", dispelled our fear and guilt about "killing people", and led readers' artistic feelings to such a complicated situation under the premise of "killing people" in the art life that they marveled, appreciated and described: the cruelty and barbarity of "torture" brought readers hatred of feudal "killing culture". It is inseparable from the executioner's sense of accomplishment of "conscientious" and "killing" as an artistic self-appreciation, which makes you unable to "praise" or "belittle" with a single concept, but willing to participate in the world of "killing carnival" outlined by the writer regardless of your own discomfort, experience "bad taste" with a rational mind, and let yourself be "carved with a knife". Some readers will think that this creepy feeling is no longer aesthetic, but what I want to say is that the most important thing of art is to provide "unique feeling", which gives people inspiration and shock, so art is not equal to beauty.
Perhaps, soil, ideas and works are really integrated, which makes "naivety and clumsiness" become a "world": "naivety" and "clumsiness" permeate each other and become a whole, and can also be transformed into other things that permeate each other, thus becoming a whole world. In sandalwood punishment, we will be indifferent to what we hate. Do we admit it when we like to watch it? In this way, will liking itself become the soil of evil to some extent? Help evil to help others? Therefore, it is impossible to understand why Zhao Jia, the executioner, is fascinated by the "interesting world" unless it is related to the excitement of thousands of audiences full of "evil interests". This is like autocracy is not limited to the Gang of Four, but is created by the cultural soil of "asking others to accept the right things", so autocracy is closely related to the "cultural disadvantages" existing in each of us. Attacking the "killing culture" means attacking the abnormal and evil "interests" that everyone likes to appreciate the "killing process". I think that the reason why Mo Yan described "various execution processes" with the mentality of "being a member of the audience" (Mo Yan himself said "writing as an ordinary person") may be to write the meaning of "executioner" and "ordinary people" being integrated. Therefore, in Sandalwood Punishment, Mo Yan writes not only about Zhao Jia, an executioner, but about the "bad taste" that thousands of China people can accept and participate in "killing people" culturally.
That is to say, if we connect the eyes of adults with rational thinking, then understand rational thinking and experience as hatred and criticism of "torture culture" and "killing art", connect the eyes of children with sensory spirituality, and then connect the sensory spirituality with the watching, curiosity and surprise of "killing", the process of "communication" will become the rationality, experience of adults and the innocence and childishness of children. It can be regarded as the "naivety" of aesthetic phenomenon and can appear as an ugly phenomenon.
Generally speaking, "harshness" is something we can appreciate, while "cruelty" will make us hate and stay away; Bad environment is easy to show heroic qualities and feelings, thus stimulating people's will to life. This is Mo Yan's basic aesthetic choice in the Red Sorghum era: no matter the invasion of Japanese invaders, the rampage of wild dogs or the appearance of bandits, the heroic living environment of "my grandfather" and "my grandmother" can only be formed to show the immortal spirit and vitality of the nation. However, because this spirit and vitality are more based on the instinct and emotion of "self-protection" and lack of rational support in the modern sense, once this external environment that needs "national struggle" no longer becomes the dominant environment, or this "struggle" may loosen the cornerstone of feudal autocracy and endanger the interests of rulers, "struggle" will be added with "elimination", which means that this is a foreign invasion and spread in China history. It is also the creed of Chiang Kai-shek's "setting the outside world first" in China's modern history, the truth of "brutally uprooting the grass" and "brutally killing" party member, and the inevitable result of the sandalwood punishment imposed on Sun Bing, a german resister. Therefore, a hero can be either "Zhao Yiman" who fought bloody battles or "Zeng Guofan" who was completely annihilated. Harshness is always accompanied by cruelty and cruelty, which makes it untrue and incomplete for China writers to express only the struggle between "my grandfather" and "my grandmother", because it is not a complete revelation of China's cultural world. Therefore, it is necessary to get through "harshness", "cruelty" and "cruelty", and to get through aesthetics and ugliness. This is why Mo Yan wants to move from Red Sorghum to Sandalwood Punishment.
On the other hand, "harsh" seems to be the opposite of "cruelty" and "cruelty", but when the living environment created by "harsh" changes, for example, "foreign invasion" turns into "class struggle" within China people, then the "just man" who participated in "my grandfather" and "my grandmother" drinking, fighting and peeing will have blood and blood in those years. I think so because, in a big way, after the success of the peasant uprising, its leaders and members became officials of the new court. Therefore, following the history and background of the executioner, he may not be without the blood and blood-based culture of the peasants, but Mei Niang and her son Zhao are his relatives; From the microscopic point of view, bloody "my grandfather" and "my grandmother" lack rational character because of the patriarchal clan system and the family connotation of blood-so after setting up their own enemy, they can take the position of Zhao Jia, the executioner, and build their happiness on the basis of letting the "enemy" die bit by bit-the so-called "I make you feel worse alive than dead", what's more, this enemy is still uncertain. Many people were like this during the Cultural Revolution. When they were fooled, it was the turn of others to see them happy. This is also true of the "seven intelligences" described by Zhang Ailing-the "suffering" she suffered must be made up by making her children experience the same suffering. Therefore, in the traditional society of China, the torture to the landlords after the successful peasant uprising can be the same as that to the peasants at the beginning. Why is the pain of a nation whose happiness is based on accepting the death of the enemy bit by bit also a bit of pain? That's because the narrow revenge psychology of farmers will turn the tragic "being fooled and killed" into "being happy" when they are in power. Therefore, in this cultural cycle of "beating and killing" and "being killed and killed", "survival wisdom" has become the whole nation.