As a myth, the West has been confusing China. In other words, China people have been living in the shadow of western imagination for more than 100 years. At the beginning of last century, the influence of western time concept and historical consciousness on China, as well as the historical situation that China people realized that their destiny could no longer be independent of all mankind and had to seek a way out from the west, gave birth to China people's thinking on the political road, and also gave birth to China modern literature. At the same time, China people's arrogance and heroism began to disintegrate, and China people began to get used to using "the sorrow of the weak" to encourage the development of the country and the construction of literature. Among them, the "New Literature Revolution" which began at 19 17 was the beginning of a literary uprising of this "modern consciousness", and the May 4th Movement was a full-scale explosion of this imagination. At that moment, China people tried to give themselves a comprehensive "facelift" and expected to wake up, and they became Mr. De, Mr. Sai and Miss Fei from appearance to flesh and blood. This "modernity" imagination based on the western world was interrupted after 1949, but it developed more complicated and intense in the 1980s. Today, at the cultural level, China's "Westernization" has reached its climax, and almost all China people have successfully become "foreigners". In the field of literature, it seems easy for us to find the correspondence of China's works in the pedigree of modern western literature. Even our critics subconsciously think that only works that go to the world are good works, as if China had never existed in this "world" for a hundred years.
However, in the process of "modernity", especially at the moment when I think this modernity has been carried out and needs to be reflected, China has three scenes that cannot be ignored. First, today, no matter in what sense we understand "the rise of China", the growth and strength of China's power and the important role this power plays in the world are undeniable facts. The so-called "spirit of the times of poetry" will undoubtedly grow out of the soil of this era, and the so-called "modernity" must start again on the basis of "modernity" with Chinese power. Even modernity and modernism, after nearly a hundred years of historical precipitation, have become a "traditional group" with exemplary significance and are facing the fate of being "modernized". Second, in recent years, in many aspects, such as politics, economy, culture, etc., the once myth-unbreakable western experience tends to fail, and the effectiveness of China's experience is gradually highlighted, which is considered by more and more people, including the western world, to be closely related to China's profound historical tradition. Thirdly, as keen perceptors and prophets of the literary revolution, some poets' creations have integrated the thinking of constructing Chinese modernity on the basis of Chinese "nativity". Li, a poet and poetry critic, put forward the concept of "grassroots" in his poetry creation in recent years. His so-called "grassroots" poetry is actually a kind of poetry creation based on local traditions and personal experiences. Among them, he emphasized the inheritance and development of China's classical poetry, western modern poetry and China's 90-year-old new poetry tradition, trying to change the development idea of "total westernization" of China's poetry.
At the same time, the poet Chen Xianfa's poems gradually attracted people's attention. Some critics say that his poems are "often awakened by some familiar images of ancient poetry, and Chen Xianfa has thus constructed a" vibrant new China pedigree ". Among them, the "nativity" and "modernity" of the theory of multi-integration are essentially the efforts of "modern China" and "traditional China" in poetry. In addition, in recent years, in Shanghai, there has been a tendency of "neoclassicism" with "southern" poetry groups as the core, and one of the forms they adopted is "new quatrains." New quatrains is a four-line poem in form, but it tries to inherit two traditions, one is China's quatrains in Tang Dynasty, and the other is the language, materials and rhythm of western poetry. China's ancient quatrains tried to show a huge inner world or political and social scene in a short space, and the new quatrains also tried to achieve this effect. However, the new quatrains are willing to absorb western poetry materials and writing skills, and try to break through the ancient quatrains in terms of language, content space and paragraph combination. More importantly, he wanted to convey China's temperament and China's spirit in his poems, and to embody a full "China" in form and content.
Therefore, the core of "returning from China to China" we advocate is not only the present, but the whole history of poetry. It not only takes care of modernity, but also takes care of the nativity and China of poetry, and also contains the new modernity of poetry "China" and "Chinese power". The last "China" is not the end. Looking back, we will try to start again with a new "modernity". "
(Excerpted from "China 265438+East China Sea Hot Springs Summit in the 20th Century Poetry Decade")