Wang Zengqi
Whether creation can be taught or not is a worldwide debate. I don't think creation can never be taught. The question is who will teach and how. It's better to be a writer if you teach creation. Teaching is not mainly dependent on teachers, and it is probably impossible to talk about some empty truths in general. Mainly let students practice, write and experience by themselves.
I was born in a landlord family. Grandfather was a tribute in the late Qing Dynasty, and since his subjects, he "abolished the imperial examination and changed the school." He likes me better. One summer vacation, he was suddenly in high spirits and wanted to teach me the Analects himself. I also "opened" the pen in his hand and made some literary compositions called Yi. "Righteousness" is the prelude to eight-part essay. I always remember an essay I wrote: "Mencius is antonym." Mencius went to war with the king and was defeated and returned to the city. He walked at the end. When someone offered him a job afterwards, he said, "If you dare to do it in the future, the horse will not go forward." Why am I impressed by Mencius' anti-tangent? Now that I think about it, this short passage of the Analects of Confucius is a very short novel: there are characters, plots and dialogues. Novels, or articles with novel colors, will leave a deep impression on people. Moreover, this extremely short novel has an impact on my moral growth. Novels are useful to people. I'll talk about the role of literature later. My father is a man of great artistic temperament. He can draw pictures, carve stamps, play the huqin, play various musical instruments and stick kites. The centipede he posted (we call it "Hundred Feet" here) was put with the old string of Hu Qin. Flying a kite with Hu Sheng, I haven't seen the second person. If I have a little aura about literature and art, it is probably related to the genes I received from my father. I like watching my father draw. I like "reading" posters. There are many photo stickers photocopied by Copco Bookstore at home, so I just look at them one by one. I like Shi Tao and Yunnan Tian since I was a child, but I don't like Chou Shizhou and Wang Shigu. Ni Yunlin, I didn't understand. When I was a child, I was also famous as a painter, and I always wanted to learn to paint. After graduating from high school, I wanted to enter Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in Kunming. Until I was in my forties, I wanted to change my career completely and learn painting from scratch at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. I really like looking at pictures, which has an impact on my literary creation. I incorporated painting skills into this novel. It is no accident that some critics call my novel "picturesque". My preference for painters also influenced my literary creation. I prefer light style to rich style, both in painting and literature.
A person's becoming a writer has a lot to do with the Chinese education he received as a child and the Chinese teachers he taught. From the fifth grade of primary school to the third grade of junior high school, it was Mr. Gao Beiying who taught us Chinese (then called "Chinese"). I have a novel Migration, which is about Mr. Gao. Novels are of course fictional, but they are basically written by Mr. Gao. Teacher Gao teaches Chinese. Besides the textbooks formulated by the Ministry, he chooses his own handouts. I wrote in Migration that all the articles he selected seemed to have a standard: sensibility, temperament and naturalness. These articles have a consistent ideological tendency, which can be roughly summarized as "humanitarianism", which is good. He likes Gui Youguang very much and told us A Brief History of Xian Cong and Xuanzhi of Ji Xiang. I still remember him saying that "there is no mother in the world, and there is pain in the sky" and "there is a loquat tree in the court. My wife planted it in her hand when she died, and now it is slim." One summer vacation, I went to his house every morning to learn an ancient prose, and he told me "Banqiao Letters" and "Banqiao Daoqing". My other Chinese teacher is Mr. Wei Zilian. Mr. Wei didn't teach me at school. My uncle and he are friends. One summer vacation, he was invited to teach me and one of my cousins at home. Mr. Wei is a famous calligrapher in our county, who writes about Weibei. He is also a Tongcheng school. Teacher Wei asked me to write a big page every day and write "Many Pagodas". He taught us ancient Chinese, all of which were Tongcheng School. I can still recite some fragments of Tongcheng School's ancient prose. What impressed me the most was Yao Nai's Climbing Mount Tai. "Cangshan negative snow, bright candle day south. Looking at Sunshine Castle in the evening, the water is picturesque and the scenery is picturesque, and the fog in the mountains is natural. " "Cangshan is snowy, and the southern candle is bright." I thought it was beautiful at that time. These dozens of Tongcheng School ancient prose have laid a solid foundation for my article.
1938, my family took refuge in the countryside and lived in a small temple, which was written in my novel the ordained. In addition to preparing math and physics textbooks for the college entrance examination, I only brought two books, one is Turgenev's Hunter's Notes and the other is Shen Congwen's Selected Works. I read these two books again and again, which had a great influence on my later writing.
1939, I was admitted to the Chinese Department of National Southwest Associated University and became a student of Mr. Shen Congwen. Mr. Shen opened three courses in the general meeting, one of which is Writing in Various Styles, which is a compulsory course for the second year of Chinese Department. A creative practice and a history of China's novels. Mr. Shen is from Phoenix. He spoke with a strong Xiangxi accent and his voice was so low that he could hardly hear what he was saying. His lecture can be said to be unsystematic, with no textbooks and no handouts. Just ask students to write an exercise every week and talk about some related problems in class the next week. "Creative practice" can be written by students at will, and "writing in various styles" sometimes has some problems. I remember he gave me a topic in the last class: "What's in our yard". The compositions written by several students are all very good. They were introduced by Mr. Shen and published in newspapers and periodicals. He gave me a topic in the next class, which is a bit strange: Do you remember the air in a room? I don't remember what problems he had in my class. Mr. Shen's method is reasonable. He said, "You have to learn auto parts before you can learn assembly." Now some college students, beginners in writing, write long and big works as soon as they get started, but the result is that they are unattractive and can't stand reading. The reason is that there are few "parts" and insufficient basic skills. When Mr. Shen talks about creation, the most commonly used sentence is "write on the characters". Some of our classmates don't understand what this means. According to my understanding, he means: in the novel, the characters are main and dominant; The rest are secondary and derivative. The author's feelings should always cling to the characters, breathing with them, * * * sadness and joy. You can't leave the characters, express your feelings and make your own comments. The scene written in the work is just the environment in which the characters live. The scenery written is not only in the eyes of the author, but also in the eyes of the characters, which can be felt by the characters and saturated with his joys and sorrows. Environment, inseparable from people, out of contact. In the words of Mr. Shen, it is impossible to "not insist". What he meant, which I later called "atmosphere is character". Some people think this sentence is strange, but it is not. The dialogue of the works must be what the characters can say, just as Li Daiweng said: "Writing a person is Xiao's keynote." When we were young, we often liked to write beautiful, profound, philosophical and poetic dialogues. I once wrote an exercise in which Mr. Shen said, "This is not a dialogue, but two clever skulls are fighting." The more common the conversation, the simpler the better. Tolstoy said: "People can't speak with epigrams." If two people say epigrams at the train station, people next to them will probably think that these two are crazy. I think Mr. Shen's simple words are full of profound realism. Teacher Shen teaches writing more with a pen than with his mouth. He often writes a long comment (sometimes longer than the original) after the students' exercises, or talks about this work, or talks about related creative problems. These reflections are all beautifully written. Together, they will be an exquisite collection of literary theories. Unfortunately, none of them have been preserved, and they have all been separated. There is another unique way for Mr. Shen to teach creation. After reading the students' exercises, I found some works written by Chinese and foreign writers in a similar way, so that students can read them and see how others write them. I remember I wrote an article "In the Light" (this may be my first novel), which was about a small shop and talked about the words and deeds of various characters after the lights were on. No main characters, no main plots, no long speeches. This is the so-called "scatter perspective". Teacher Shen showed me several works written in this way, including his own "Corruption". In this way, guiding students to read works can be compared and referenced, and they will receive great benefits and benefits.
Whether creation can be taught or not is a worldwide debate. I don't think creation can never be taught. The question is who will teach and how. It's better to be a writer if you teach creation. Teaching is not mainly dependent on teachers, and it is probably impossible to talk about some empty truths in general. Mainly let students practice, write and experience by themselves. It is reasonable for Mr. Shen to call his courses "exercises" and "internships". I think it is a better way for Mr. Shen to teach creative methods.
I started publishing at the age of 20, and I am 70 years old this year. My writing career has gone through half a century, but the amount of writing is very small. My writing was interrupted several times. Some people say that my writing has experienced a triple jump. I wrote some in the 1940s. I wrote some in the early sixties. Among them, the "Cultural Revolution" is a "model opera" for ten years. After 1980s, he wrote more novels and essays. My friend's daughter joked that "Uncle Wang was a late bloomer". I am by no means a "big shot"-I have never written a great work, but it is true that I am late. There are few such examples in the history of literature. Many people stopped writing at the age of 60, but I started again. What is the reason? I won't talk about it here.
A critic said I was an aesthetic writer. "Aestheticism" is not a bad word, but it has a bad reputation in China. What this critic means is that I lack a sense of social responsibility and mission, and my works have no strong practical significance and educational function. I have nothing to say here. The role of education has many levels. Some are direct. For example, after watching "White-haired Girl", I was filled with indignation and signed up to fight devils on the spot. Some are more indirect. A more vivid work will always have such an impact on readers' thoughts, feelings and moral sentiments. For example, after reading Mencius, I won't become modest immediately, but I always think it is noble. The influence of works on readers is often potential and the process is very complicated, which is called "subtle influence". As Du Fu's poem "Spring Rain" said: "Sneak into the night with the wind and moisten things silently." I once said that I hope my works can benefit people all over the world, and I hope that I can moisten people's feelings and make people feel that life is beautiful and people are beautiful and poetic. You are very hard and tired. Sit down and have a rest, drink a cup of lukewarm tea and look at some of my works. I am basically an optimist. I think that mankind has a future and China will become better. I am willing to convey these simple beliefs to others. I don't feel so much lost, lonely, absurd and desperate. I can't write such a painful work as Kafka's Metamorphosis, and I don't think China has the conditions to write such a work.
The thoughts of a contemporary writer are always related to traditional culture and traditional thoughts. However, the writer's thought is a synthesis, and he will not specialize in any kind of traditional thought. If a person believes in Zen, he can become a monk instead of a writer. Fei Ming believed in Buddhism in his later years, although he did not become a monk. Some people say that I have been influenced by Laozi and Zhuangzi's thoughts, and there may be some. I liked reading Zhuangzi when I was young. But I still feel greatly influenced by Confucianism. I think Confucius is a man of understanding and character. He is a poet. I don't understand why people who study Confucius' thoughts don't associate him with "deleting poems" He compiled a collection of lyric poems-The Book of Songs. Why? I like "The Analects of Confucius, Lutz, Zeng Xi, Ran Xihua, Public Servant" very much. "In late spring, spring clothes become, the top scholar is five or six, and the boy is six or seven. The bath will be awkward and the wind will dance back. " Ceng Dian's natural attitude towards life is beautiful. A little close to Zhuangzi's thoughts. I like some poems of Song Confucianism very much: "Everything is complacent when it is quiet, and people are happy when it is quiet." "I suddenly feel that my career is very fulfilling, and I should know that many people in the world are suffering." "Business is full", we can be thankful. "There are many people who suffer" and we should sympathize with them. My novels are all about little people and "children", and I am full of warm love and sympathy for them. I once joked that I was a "Chinese lyrical humanist", and that's about it.
A few years ago, the Beijing Writers Association held a seminar on my works. I made a short speech at the meeting, entitled "Back to realism, back to national tradition". Why do you say "go back"? Because I was influenced by western modernism when I was young. Taiwan Province magazine said in the preface of my novel that I was the first writer in China who used stream of consciousness. That's not true. Before me, Fei Ming and Lin both wrote novels by means of stream of consciousness. But I did consciously use the stream of consciousness in my twenties. Revenge, the first part of my novel collection, and The Bell of a Primary School in the first part of the cornucopia published by Taiwan Province Province all show obvious traces of stream of consciousness. Why did you change the original later? There are social reasons as well as my own. To put it simply: I'm from China. I don't think one country will be the same as another. China people will never learn western literature as they do, unless you have lived abroad for many years and think in a foreign language. When I write about China and use Chinese, I must accept the tradition of China, and at the same time, I must be realistic. Language is the most fundamental thing in national tradition. If you don't master your own language, you can't write literature with distinctive national characteristics. But the national tradition I am talking about is a tradition that does not exclude any external influence, and the realism I am talking about is realism that can accommodate various schools. For example, modernism and stream of consciousness are not bad things in themselves. I didn't completely rule out these things later. I wrote a novel "Begging for Rain", in which Wang Er's parents hoped for rain. Their eyes are blue, their eyes looking at the rain are blue, and the eyes of passers-by looking at the children begging for rain are also blue, which is a bit of modernism. The Chronicle of the Affliction wrote that after being raped, Qiao Yun's mind was staggered and scattered, and his thoughts were still a stream of consciousness. However, I put these into my usual narrative language to avoid appearing "lifeless". I advocate accepting foreign countries from tradition, blending the strange with the plain, taking the vulgar as elegance and taking the old as the new.
I don't want to talk about the art of writing today, and I haven't thought about it seriously. I just want to say one thing: I attach great importance to language. Maybe I have pushed the importance of language to the extreme. I think language is not only a form, but also a content. Language and thought coexist and cannot be separated. Language is not only the so-called "carrier", it is the noumenon of the work. Every sentence of the work is saturated with the author's thoughts and feelings. I once said that writing a novel is writing a language. Language is a cultural phenomenon. No one has ever created a brand-new language. As the ancients said, every word has no source. Our languages all have their origins, and they are all inherited from the languages of the predecessors, or they are born out of nothing and have changed. There is cultural accumulation behind language. The higher a person's cultural literacy, the more information his language conveys. Chairman Mao's poem "Reading the Flower Chapter in the Falling Flower Season" written to Liu Yazi is not only the falling flower season, but is adapted from Du Fu's "On Going Downstream". Du Fu's original poem is:
It is common to see you at the home of the King of Qi.
Cui Tangjiu has heard it several times before.
It is the beautiful scenery of Jiangnan.
When the flowers fell, I met you again.
The "falling flower season" contains the meaning of reunion after a long separation.
Language should be suggestive, that is, to make readers feel what is not written literally, that is, the so-called suggestion and implication. On the eve of the government exam, Zhu Qingyu wrote to his secretary Zhang about a bride:
The red candle stopped at the bridal chamber last night.
Pay tribute to your aunt in front of the Dawn Hall.
Ask her husband in a low voice after makeup.
Is thrush deep and fashionable?
The poem doesn't say what the bride looks like, but the poem of the Song people points out that this must be a stunning beauty. Because it's hidden between the lines. Language should arouse people's association, and people can imagine many things. Therefore, don't write everything that is unnecessary, so that readers have no room for imagination.
Language is fluid.
One critic said: Wang Zengqi's language is very strange. It's nothing if you take it apart, but it tastes a little bit when you put it up. I think everyone's language is like this. Every sentence is common, but the problem lies in "putting it together". The beauty of language lies not in every word and sentence, but in the relationship between words and sentences. Regarding Wang Xizhi's ci, Bao said that his vocabulary, word by word, does not feel beautiful or even dull, but every part of the word, between words, is "like an old man with a young grandson, looking forward to affection and touching." The same is true of literary language. Sentences should reflect and look at each other. The language of the work has integrity and internal relevance. Literary language is not like building a wall, brick by brick, but like a tree, it grows together, with juice flowing between branches, one moving and a hundred shaking. Language is alive. People in China like to use running water as a metaphor for writing. Su Dongpo said, "It is roughly like running water" and "My writing is like a fountain". It is called "fluency" to say that a person's article is fluent without stumbling. When writing a work, you'd better think about it all, at least every paragraph, and don't write a word. It is not easy to communicate smoothly like that.
Source of this article: Wang Zengqi Classic, Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, 20 18 edition.