Comrade Liu Xiangru asked me to preface his prose collection and sent some works at the same time. I agreed and read it carefully, which caused some thoughts about prose. Now write it in words for the author's reference and ask Fang Jia for advice.

The central question is: What is good prose? Personally, I think it can be summarized in eight words, namely: sincerity, sincerity, simplicity and accuracy.

Honesty refers to the conception of a proposition, which runs through the whole process of conception and embodies a serious attitude towards life.

Sincerity means that there can be no falsehood and affectation emotionally. Can't "play" prose.

Simple, of course, is high skill, or no skill, or against obscenity.

Accuracy means repeatedly screening and refining words and expressions, which is not easy and irreplaceable.

If we go further, we might as well point out that the most fundamental thing is honesty and sincerity.

Ancient papers were all about "love". I think the so-called emotion is honesty and sincerity, or thinking of trivial things around you, or looking like flowers, birds, fish and insects. Under the pen of people with integrity and ambition, they can express their feelings everywhere. Because love is really the soul and spirit of the article; Emotion and ambition, prose will be in a perfect state of adding form to disperse but not distracting spirit.

I still understand a little. I believe that as long as the author is conscious and writes something, the idea of pursuing conciseness and accuracy will come true unexpectedly. Simplicity and accuracy are the twin sisters of honesty and sincerity.

So, this involves a product problem. Some people ridicule: personality and literature are divided, even antagonistic, and now they are everywhere, but they can't compare so much! The implication is that you can write a paper without knowing anyone, but I beg to differ. On the contrary, since the literary atmosphere is corrupt, it is increasingly necessary to emphasize the unity of the two. Otherwise, it will be harmful to the present and young people. For the future, it is difficult to distinguish between true and false, and it is difficult to teach history in coastal cities.

I have always respected Comrade Yang Shuo's moral articles. Before I was exiled, I had only a few contacts with him and didn't know much about him. However, after listening to the introduction of friends, everyone praised him for his decent style and touching. It's a great pity that he also made mistakes-the famous work Haicheng in the early 1960s, etc. His elegant artistic conception is too different from the social background of people who starved to death that day, and has been criticized by every knowledgeable person so far.

I think this is really a profound lesson full of tragedy, which is worthy of all comrades' warning.

Of course, it must be pointed out that these works by Comrade Yang Shuo cannot be compared with other people who are regarded as celebrities and deliberately fake and whitewash them. In my opinion, the difference is obvious: some people are illiterate by hook or by crook.

In view of this bad behavior of corrupting prose, I remember I once criticized it in an essay called "Moon Bud Spring and Pseudo Prose". I still firmly reject false prose. Even if you offend a powerful or scheming person, you will never regret it.

Unfortunately, there has always been a harmful formula in the field of prose that prose is "beautiful prose". But I found that behind this kind of "beautiful prose", people who are good at counterfeiting are often able to do things. That scene is almost exactly the same as the fake Maotai exposed a few days ago-adding a little bit of alcohol, and the old bottle pretending to be a new bottle.

How can blindly piling up flowery words be equated with literary talent? Without courage and heart, expression may not be beautiful. This is my creed and the object of my vigilance.

If the above criteria are established, I will say Liu Xiangru's Xi Za, Comet, Fan Hua, Xing Yue Nian, Xiao Di, Yuhua, Ji and Queshu, etc. May be called the truth: not exaggerating the truth, containing philosophy without preaching.

Only in this way can the works prosper and the slogan of prose revival be realized.

Hefei 1987.6. 14

(This article originally published "Essay" monthly magazine "Writer"-Appreciation of Liu Xiangru's prose works.

Guo yin

It should be said that the beauty of Liu Xiangru's prose style is a kind of feminine beauty of "apricot blossom spring rain in the south of the Yangtze River".

He is so careful and gentle; He is such a small bridge, singing while walking.

At the age of fourteen and in grade six, Liu Xiangru published his first novel Wings of Spring in children's literature.

Wings of Spring is about himself, a shy teenager who is trying to spread his wings and take off, but still looks immature. The wings of spring, that is, that era, the young Republic is like a newborn pony, holding its head high and trotting forward.

Liu Xiangru loves spring, nature and birds flying in nature in spring. This beginning doomed him to become a poet and an essayist. Poets and prose writers who explore, discover and praise beauty.

It is precisely because the poet is sensitive to beauty that he can "hear the attractive smell of small morning glory"; He can find that in the open arms of nature, people's pupils are pure and clear again.

It is precisely because of a poet's fascination with beauty that he is fascinated by the "shining stars" in the sky and the "clear frogs" by the river. He is infatuated with the "spring shoots" that exude fresh and moist fragrance, and the "white clouds" that move slowly among distant trees. His heart is full of "love for nature".

His eyes on beauty did not stop at mountains, rivers and flowers, and he also moved his affectionate eyes to our society.

Society is not as simple as nature, it is more complicated and changeable than nature.

It is in this complicated and changeable society that his "wings of spring" are wet by the rain. It should be said that it was a heavy blow. Just because one of his closest relatives is a rich farmer, Liu Xiangru, a brilliant young man, can't go to college even if he gets excellent grades in the college entrance examination and is admitted to Peking University. Perhaps he is eager for beauty, so his temperament is at work; Perhaps it is because he failed to enter the university, but he has always been a middle school teacher and has been able to publish his works continuously. In the works he discovered first and later, he was very loyal to the praise of beauty, but he hated evil and said it was not like that, gnashing his teeth. He seems to obey "gentle and honest, the teaching of poetry"

He sang the praises of a great first teacher. When the teacher taught them the words "man, hand, foot, knife and ruler", he said it well: "A man has two hands and two feet, which can create and walk. What are they afraid of? Knife can cut thorns and open the way. Ruler, use it to measure everything in the world. " It was the enlightenment of the first teacher that made young Liu Xiangru get rid of his fear of comets.

He praised Master Cai. An old intellectual who has been to western Europe told him that the custom in western Europe regards the appearance of comets as a symbol of human happiness and auspiciousness. With this knowledge, Liu Xiangru once made a rural woman who was humiliated by people's superstition "suddenly shine in front of her eyes" and "there was a glimmer of hope in her faint sorrow."

He praised an ordinary farmer. This farmer, like thousands of other farmers in Qian Qian, is eager for wealth and happiness. Sticking up Spring Festival couplets, he asked people to write "the grain is abundant and the livestock is prosperous". He knows where happiness comes from, so he also needs to write "don't forget the digger when drinking water, and don't forget the person who turns over." However, in the ten years of catastrophe, the old farmer, with his simple intuition and simple loyalty, resolutely refused to post the Spring Festival couplets of "rebellion", but wrote "Frost is severe, bamboo is green, snow is big and plum is red". Although full of criticism and "die without regret"

He praised the daughter of an overseas Chinese. The girl suffered this kind of torture under the left-leaning route. After the collapse of the Gang of Four, she went abroad to reunite with her father. However, she began to like the motherland and the old and amiable people who stayed in the motherland. Every time she writes back to China, she always writes a poem repeatedly: "I am a lone star, wandering in a distant paradise." The Milky Way separated, and I dreamed of a lovely image. She said that she was "tired of this weird society, the crazy expansion of human nature and the life that exists for it". "She is eager to return to the rural life in her hometown." She finally came back, because the stars are really inseparable from the moon, and wanderers are always reluctant to leave their hometown. Liu Xiangru also praised a piece of land in the motherland where he once lived for a long time for the Liangyuan, which has made great strides so far. Liang Yuan and Xiang Yu fled in defeat. Wang Shu, a poet in the Qing Dynasty, once lamented that "there is still a long way to go, and there is a shortage of grain". Wen Yiduo, a modern poet, passed by in the melee between warlords and once "rolled down a tear" in the face of the decline of Liangyuan. After liberation, it was once prosperous, but in an unprecedented era, it has become "sad" again. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, spring came again. And the better Liangyuan, "it's only now that the first page is opened."

The author did not focus on a beam garden in the country. But also in 5,000 years, Wan Li, the tentacles of imagination and loyalty extended to infinite time and space. A flute, a flute, reminds him of the southwest of the motherland, Wu in the Warring States and Du Mu in the late Tang Dynasty. Think of the splendid culture of ancient China; I thought of the invasion of the corona, defending the hero of Japan, Yue Fei's "Pu Jiang Hong", ...

The author and his family, like the author's favorite flute, have experienced numerous twists and turns from time to time. After liberation, my brother's flute played the spring of the motherland, leaving the choking flute in a quiet corner. However, my sister-in-law was kidnapped because she participated in the activities to mourn Premier Zhou. My brother played the flute with tears and poured out his grievances, doubts and sadness. The Gang of Four finally collapsed, the sun finally came out again, and the music of "good news" in my brother's bamboo flute filled the earth again. The author happily wrote: Yu Di blows in the Yellow Crane Tower, and plum blossoms fall in May in Jiangcheng. Our poetry is no longer to express the splendor of our life.

How deep and sincere is the author's love for the motherland, all kind people and beautiful things, and how delicate, tactful and firm is the author's loyal brushwork.

I don't want to praise the author's writing skills, and I don't want to praise the author's unforgettable poetic language, because I think this is actually a disrespect for a person who has a deep love for life, the people, the motherland and the national history.

Moreover, for readers with high appreciation level, I don't have to be an incompetent Chinese teacher.

The author is now middle-aged, but he has published millions of articles and more than a dozen works in various newspapers and periodicals all over the country. With his own achievements, he became a member of dozens of literary groups or directors, such as Chinese Writers Association, China Folk Writers Association, China Prose Society and Chinese Film Association.

The road we have traveled is worth reviewing, but it is important to make rapid progress on the road to the brilliant future of the West.

Liu Xiangru is advancing. It is difficult for us to predict which peak he will reach.

Poetry is amiable and lovely, and there will be as many great and deep poems as there are.

The flame of love never goes out, and the spring of poetry never dries up.

The original text of "Freedom of Literature" was written in 1987 and included in Guo Yinmei's Collected Works —— Also on the contextual beauty of Liu Xiangru's works

engine

When Liu Xiangru's novel "Beauty Slope" came out, readers' eyes could not help but brighten. This novel, which reflects China's social life in a vast space-time background, faithfully and vividly reflects the changing social life state in the second half of the 20th century in the historical mirror where morality, justice, evil and fallacy coexist. I can't help but say that he is very generous. The novel's touching emotional exposition, confusing scene description, inner revelation of intrigue characters and vivid characterization make it have shocking artistic power. A kind-hearted and beautiful poem writing style endows many scenes with the beauty of prose poetry, and sincerely shares with readers a person's ideal exploration of the world for survival. The author's grasp of the times and his efforts to describe the scenes, together with those vivid characters and group scenes that are ready to come, outline a vivid literary sample.

However, all this benefits from Liu Xiangru's profound literary background and unique literary context.

As we all know, Liu Xiangru was once a writer who mainly wrote prose, and Beauty Slope seems to be a novel written by him in prose language. His published prose collections, such as Xingyue, Huaishang Customs, Ten Steps Grass, Welcome to the West and Starlight, have been widely welcomed by readers. Appreciating his profound and beautiful prose language often makes readers get carried away. Read Stars and Moon, Notes on the Fish Pond, Comet, Killing Rats, Deserted Goodness, Realm, Life Perception, The Old Man and the Alley, etc. , cut and pasted by many readers, circulated. Readers are familiar with his prose. Unlike some writers, he was hyped as a hot figure by the media, but I don't think he is an ordinary writer. It is in silence that he makes his intriguing works appear quietly, and makes readers who know him influenced by real literature again and again.

Liu Xiangru's works have a special beauty of context and thought, which makes him have a style that many people don't have. Taking a large number of essays he wrote in the past as an example, it is actually a personalized and unique expression of life details. Reading Liu Xiangru's works is reading Liu Xiangru. He is so cautious, gentle, accurate and meticulous; It is wise and profound to meditate like that; He is so meticulous, so enthusiastic, so leisurely, and not in a hurry ... His profound life, warm and romantic literary talent, poetic language atmosphere, picturesque rendering colors, distant and pure artistic conception, philosophical tips and explanations always bring readers to the sincere and rich connotation of life. ...

Twenty or thirty years ago, when Mr. Liu Xiangru first entered the literary world, he deeply touched readers with his unique literary style and language style. I remember that in the early 1980s, when the book Reading of the Stars and the Moon, which was published by Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House as an excellent prose album, was published, the demand in Xinhua Bookstore was in short supply. Many young literature lovers, college students and middle school students lined up in the bookstore to buy books. This scene seems to be a fantasy today! Reading "Reading the Stars and Moon" is like breathing the morning breeze on the vast Yuan Ye and picking beautiful pearls. Everything at the beginning of life is cleverly folded in beautiful words, and a scattered strip river flows out magnificently. Beautiful writing, meaningful artistic conception and touching expression are as melodious as Yue Xian's, and if a warbler burps. The fresh and elegant style has left an unforgettable impression on readers ... If his early works pay attention to artistic expression and give people a sense of beauty, in his recent works, he tends to explore various real and typical phenomena in modern society with keen observation and profound thoughts, and analyze life and society. We can see such a scene from Beauty Slope.

Liu Xiangru published a series of essays a few years ago. The Psychological Notes of Lushan Mountain explored the brush strokes into the hearts of modern people, including female college students living in hallucinations. Some young men are afraid of bodhisattvas; One day, I scolded hundreds of times and didn't like all the old people around me; Some "arrogant" patients think that they can become "great men of the century" ... Modern civilization has made our life rhythm suddenly change, the living space has set off a world of mortals, and civilization has also produced darkness in people's hearts. Mr. Xiang Ru used the writer's sensitive tentacles to explore the social roots that led to it, and presented "black thinking" to people, which should not be underestimated as a warning and shock to readers. In addition, his love volume came out, and its profound human thinking and simple language style enabled readers to listen to the narrative of a noble and wise person. Buddha on the other side, enlightenment, hope of spring, etc. Reveal the simple truth of life to readers in interesting seclusion. From time to time, this kind of prose reveals a detached and calm state, which accords with the nature of the avenue ... He expresses his own voice in the preface and postscript of Love Volume: "Everyone has his own ambition, everyone has his own dream, and he can realize it ..." "It is not seeking and obtaining anything, but purely a natural and emotional flow of the mind ..." and "establishing self-control" Sometimes, Sometimes he doesn't write directly, such as hidden mountains in the clouds and winding peaks, which makes people try to figure out through their own feelings from the aesthetic feeling, so that you can consciously or unconsciously realize another layer of real life meaning. "Think about us China people, they have a lot of wisdom to be proud of, but unfortunately, many aspects are covered by biased habits ..." (Comet); "Life has created prosperity, Excellence and nobility ... and it has sacrificed everything without reservation without casting silent, rarely extravagant, rarely disappointed and rarely dull colors ..." (Wei Nian); "People leave sighs for yesterday, and people leave dreams for tomorrow ..." (Eye of the Night); "Things in the world, sometimes a cicada is the most important thing, sometimes hordes are the least important ... fighting for food in the body, fighting for something outside the body ... all of us just live in a process ..." (Notes on the Fish Pond) "People are trying to get rid of old habits and difficulties all their lives, plus confusion, which is the risk of life. People who follow the rules ... arouse people's initial sincerity with all his pure feelings ... "(Preface to Reading the Stars and Moon). This kind of warning language can be seen everywhere in his articles, and it is organized in the harmonious movement of his works with unquestionable dignity, delicate spirit and romance ... Liu Xiangru opened a double window of literature and life for us with his own experience of literature and life. When some pseudo-literature prevailed in society, writers were not shy or impetuous, but still silently wrote their own real masterpieces, just like an old man who settled down to live a life worn out by life. He silently engaged in his diligent and confident farming and harvest, making impressive works proud, never seeking fame, never grandstanding, and even less. In his own words: be a real person and write a real article. A critic once said that reading Liu Xiangru's works is as pure, profound and beautiful as being intoxicated by moonlight.

There is a man named Zhiren in Zhuangzi's works. Liu Xiangru doesn't think that he is "knowing people and discussing the world", but a high realm worth cherishing. Have a noble artistic taste, a tight national culture, and a time-tested literary soul. Liu Xiangru uses this realm to cultivate himself, constantly create himself, cultivate self-cultivation and have the same human nature. These are the most valuable things. I hope that Liu Xiangru can write more profound and pure masterpieces in his later creations like moonlight.

Written on August 3, 2005 (originally published in Huaxia Prose and China Culture Newspaper)