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【A literary master of light chasing · Commemorating the 110th anniversary of Ji Xianlin's birth】
Ji Xianlin, born in 1911, lived nearly a hundred years old. He began to publish prose when he was young; in his later years, he continued to work hard and became a rare harvest season. It is not an exaggeration to sum up his prose creation and thinking with "Four Seasons Evergreen". When reading his prose, my eyes often swayed in front of me with the evergreen old pines and cypresses. That is the clear image that Ji Xianlin left me.
1. Little love and big love
The word "love" is often inseparable from the world.
Essays are especially empathetic, and ruthless essays are hard to stop, let alone arouse the feeling of spiritual resonance and intimacy.
Ji Xianlin believes that not only lyrical prose, but also general reasoning prose cannot be ruthless.
Prose theorist Lin Fei once described "truth" as the "lifeline" of prose.
In fact, what runs through Ji Xianlin's prose is true feelings, which is the key and hub to understand his prose and life.
Little lyric and personal writing have become an important feature of Ji Xianlin's prose.
This includes the love of mother and child, the love of husband and wife, the love of friends, the love of pets, and the joy of entertainment. It can be seen that the author starts from himself and comes from life.
Here, emotions, especially true emotions, flow like blood, showing the jump of vitality in the knowable and sensible.
"Eternal Regret" is a masterpiece of Ji Xianlin's prose, which is full of heart-breaking mother-sentence, because after he went out to study when he was six years old, he only went home three times, and this also includes funerals for his mother.
It was not until later that the author understood the mother's feeling of leaning against the door for many years, looking forward to the return of her beloved son.
In addition, Ji Xianlin wrote a lot of memoir articles, especially articles about old people and old friends. Among them, the most rare is the word "love". They are like old wines that have become mellow and beautiful after years of brewing, and nourish the hearts of readers.
Little love and personal love are especially affectionate, which makes Ji Xianlin's prose very grounded and true self-expression and expression.
Broad love is another realm and quality of Ji Xianlin's prose.
If you only write your own personal love, no matter how true and touching it is, it will be difficult to achieve the baptismal effect, let alone make the soul and spirit enter a sacred state.
Ji Xianlin's prose can go from self-emotion to love, and it sublimated the work at once.
"Three Little Girls" is about the attachment of two-year-old, five- or six-year-old, and twelve-year-old strange little girl to "I". The author calls this "a great pleasure in life, a strange thing".
Plants, mountains, rocks, and small animals can often enter Ji Xianlin's writings and turn into strands of fraternity, thus catching the reader's compassion.
"Mimi" is about a kitten, from which we can see the softness and kindness of the author's heart.
Therefore, the author stated in the article: “I have always advocated that it is a crime to hit the weak like children and small animals.” In fact, this is not surprising. Because of the compassion and love for the weak, children and kittens do not Fortification, willing to be close to the author "I", it is two childlike innocence that connect the two generations, man and animal together.
Patriotism is another kind of promotion of love, so in "The Voice of an Old Intellectual", Ji Xianlin wrote this sentence: "I have not many merits in my life, but I say that I am patriotic and dare not dare to descendants. Every ash is patriotic.” Of course, he is by no means a narrow-minded patriot, but has human feelings, which is why he wrote in "Xiyu": "Please our heavens The master divided the current spring rain into a part, with the deep friendship of all the Chinese people, and sent it to Africa to save the people, birds, beasts, and plants there, so that the whole world will share the rain."
Personal affection seems to be the root of a big tree, and broad love is like selfless sunshine from the sky. Ji Xianlin’s prose combines the two organically, so he has the feelings of heaven and earth, and also injects vigor and vitality into the prose. The realm of noble spiritual quality.
2. Plain and magical
In the eyes of ordinary people, Ji Xianlin is too plain and unremarkable, whether it is academic life or prose creation.
Therefore, when talking about Ji Xianlin, people always talk about his ordinary appearance and praise him for being mistaken for a cleaner.
In fact, people put too much emphasis on Ji Xianlin's ordinary, but it is easy to overlook his magic.
Indeed, through Ji Xianlin's literary life, you can see his plain and elegant image of a gentleman. This is what he and Zhang Zhongxing have in common, and is also the most lacking spiritual temperament at the moment.
This can be viewed in both human and prose.
This is also in line with the plain and natural nature of prose, and it is a great hiding place for the Taoist.
Just as Lin Yutang said in "Speaking of the Beauty of True Colors": "The literati who have a little bit of wisdom will look down on the piles of rhetoric, and they are gradually flattened, and the flatness is the highest level of literature." However, Lin Yutang went on to say: "Daily and strange. If you can use your thoughts and ideas, it will become the world and the best essays.” The same applies to Ji Xianlin's prose, especially in the "Wonderful Thoughts", Ji Xianlin's prose is unique.
"The Magical Loofah" is about plants, and the title is called "magic", so the author shows us the wonder of the ordinary and usually not noticed loofah.
This is not only manifested in the crazy growth speed of loofah vines and loofah, but also in its own adjustment function, and even full of unknown wisdom.
He wrote: "I seem to think that this loofah has thoughts, it can consider problems, and it also has actions. It can stop the growth of the melons that cannot bear the weight; it can find the weight-bearing melons in the favorable terrain. Place, give special treatment to such melons and make them grow wildly; it can make the hanging melons lie down flat." "This is a silent miracle. The melon seedlings seem to have become a mysterious rope." Such an article is There is a pair of discerning eyes who discover the magic.
"Red" is also getting rid of the plain writing of black and white.
The main line of the overall article is about the mung bean hawker who "has a simple face"; however, the hawker's smile at the "me" as a child shocks "I".
More importantly, this man was once a bandit, but was later caught and killed.
The author wrote that when the hawker was killed, "a red light of blood flashed in front of my eyes. My eyes were dazzled. Looking back at the sunset in the western sky, a big red flower was forming on the edge of the sky."
This kind of story and brushwork, coupled with the sensitivity to "red", suddenly introduces the work into the artistic conception of "red", giving people a sense of magic and unpredictability.
This is a magical way of writing in the plain, which shows the magic of Ji Xianlin's prose and his way of thinking.
"Pagoda Flower" is a prose about the dialectical relationship between ordinary and magic.
The author said that he never felt special about acacia in Beijing, especially in the Langrun Garden of Peking University, but a foreign friend was inspired by its beauty and fragrance; in the same way, he was a big kapok tree in India that rose into the sky and red as the morning sun. Honghua was surprised, but the natives did not feel magical.
For this reason, Ji Xianlin concluded: "The more you are used to seeing things, the less Xi Yan will not observe, and it is difficult to see beauty and ugliness. This phenomenon is easy to explain in psychology: it must be kept in line with objectively existing things. Only at a certain distance can we observe objectively." This is almost a philosophical question about the ordinary and the magic.
Some people think that Ji Xianlin is a good gentleman, and his prose and his views on prose are usually gentle.
Therefore, he even disagrees with Ji Xianlin's prose.
In fact, this understanding is wrong, or at least not comprehensive enough.
Ji Xianlin is also vigorous and even thorny in the plain, gentle and natural, and his personality is unique.
For example, in "Talking about Prose", Ji Xianlin bluntly stated his prose view.
He said: “I think prose is the most handy and flexible among various literary genres.” “Chinese literary creation has made great progress. However, according to my personal opinion, the development of various genres is extremely uneven. The novels, including novels, novellas and shorts, as well as dramas, are completely Westernized in form." "My personal opinion is that the current form of novels is hard to say compared with classical Chinese novels. The same is true for drama. It does not need to be specific. As for new poetry, I think it is a failure. So far, people have not found a form for poetry."
The author also gave the highest evaluation to the prose. He said: "I think the most successful Chinese literary world since the May Fourth Movement is the vernacular prose." He also said: "My ideal prose is simple and not boring, fluent and not slick. , Dignified and not sluggish, elegant and not polished. I thought that prose is the most avoiding flat." "I even want to write prose with the technique of notation and music, around a main melody, add some secondary melody; the main melody can be Appeared many times, with slight changes in form. The purpose is only to see unity in complexity and balance in ups and downs, so as to arouse readers’ interest and obtain a deeper and higher aesthetic enjoyment. With such rhythmic and rhythmic text, recharge The true feelings must be deeply moving." For a long time, in the four major genres of new literature, people have generally overestimated the achievements of poetry, novels, and dramas, and have devalued or even disdaind prose. Ji Xianlin's view is the opposite. , Can’t help but say that he has his own opinion.
In this way, it can be understood that Ji Xianlin's prose has transcendence in the plain and natural, that is, the yearning for magic and change; conversely, the whimsical ideas also make his plain balance more stable and introverted.
This is a dynamic, balanced and changing development process.
3. Reason and poetry
As an intellectual, expert and scholar, Ji Xianlin's prose is a scholar's prose.
But unlike the general emphasis on knowledge, especially the listing and display of knowledge, he is humble, low-key, and even a little self-deprecating.
The most important thing is that Ji Xianlin has the ability to dilute the lumps of knowledge, which makes his prose sparkle with a strange beauty.
Poetry is the most prominent among them.
Ji Xianlin’s essays are rich in rational philosophies, including rich knowledge, rational judgment, the light of thought, and the flash of wisdom, especially thinking about the country, nation, era, society, people, life, and philosophy. It fully embodies the conscience and responsibility of an excellent intellectual.
Ji Xianlin bluntly stated that the rejuvenation of oriental culture represents the future development direction of mankind in articles such as "Oriental Culture Must Reappear Glory" and "Traditional Culture Is Just for Modernization".
His "Thirty Years in Hedong, Thirty Years in Hexi" is even more ridiculed and slandered by many people.
In fact, many of Ji Xianlin’s thoughts are dialectical and forward-looking. For example, he said: “To engage in Chinese studies and traditional culture is precisely for China’s modernization. Modernization without traditional culture is rootless'transformation' and'total Westernization'. ', in China, which has a cultural history of thousands of years, it is absolutely unworkable." This is the view from the 1990s, and this view is also valuable today.
However, there is always a clear spring in Ji Xianlin's prose, which is clear, pure, romantic, and elegantly flowing into your heart.
This is something that many scholars can't achieve in prose, and it should be learnt from.
Many cultural essays, especially large cultural essays, are blocked by knowledge, concepts, logic, and ideas, so they write more and more deadly.
Ji Xianlin's "Inch Grass Heart", "Zhilan Room", "Morning Fun", "Qingtang Lotus", "Mengying Water Tree Tsinghua", "Two Lines of Words Written on the Soil", "My Heart is a Mirror", "Mengying Red Mansion" "Sleepwalking in the 21st Century", "Foshan Heart Shadow", "A Red Dianthus Flower", "Starlight Ocean", "Sea World", etc. You can feel the poetic and beauty in between just by looking at the title, and its poetic heart and poetic eyes , Poetry, poetic interest, make prose more transparent, clear, moist, smooth.
"February Orchid" has purple purity and the breath of early spring, while "Listening to the Rain" integrates itself into the artistic conception of poetry.
The author wrote: "I was sitting there quietly, hearing the sound of raindrops above my head. At this moment, the sound was better than the silent. I felt immense joy in my heart. It's a general idea. The sound is sometimes slow and irritating, sometimes high and sometimes low, sometimes loud and sometimes heavy, intermittently, sometimes like a golden jade vibrating, sometimes like a yellow bell, sometimes like a big pearl and a small pearl falling on a jade plate, sometimes like The red and white coral sinks into the sea, sometimes like playing a piano, sometimes like dancing, sometimes like birds clamoring, sometimes like a rabbit falling falcon, I have my imagination, can't help myself, my heart is in full bloom, and my pen is in full bloom. Dead words seem to be alive. When I get up, I seem to be full of youthful vigor again."
Ji Xianlin likes to express in four words, which adds to the poetic rhythm and beauty, and has a chic in the elegance.
In "Mimi", the author writes about the beautiful scenery of Hong Kong: "Here is the mountain and the sea. I look out from the window. The sea and the sky are mixed, the water waves are not thriving, the blue snails are a few points, the sails are shadowed, and the scenery is exceptionally beautiful. The eight seasons of changchun grass, and the host’s hospitality, I am happy at this time. "The four-character and the long sentence are mixed, and the long and short sentences complement each other, which further brings out the beauty of poetry and the charm of traditional Chinese culture.
The poetic flavor is like the bittern for tofu, which awakens and dissolves Ji Xianlin's scholar's prose, becomes accessible, comfortable and natural, and also has intellectual wisdom and artistic aura, gaining a transcendent understanding of the truth of the prose.
In short, Ji Xianlin’s prose has life, knowledge, vision, affection, personality, thought, inspiration, and wisdom, coupled with a sense of heaven and earth, profound Chinese cultural heritage and self-confidence, as well as modern consciousness and the world. Foresight, this determines that he will not only become everyone, but also an intellectual and wise man with a conscience.
Therefore, Ji Xianlin's prose has lasting vitality, becoming a beautiful flower and fruit in the hearts of readers.
(Author: Wang Zhaosheng, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of China Social Science Magazine)