Life does not dissipate.
This also has a premise, it must be a good person who has a peaceful life, a person who sweats and drops the soil on the afternoon of hoeing day, a person who has a cloudy and sunny moon and lacks people and sorrow and joy, a person who asks what love in the world is and directly teaches life and death, a person who has 30 meritorious achievements in dust and 8,000 miles of clouds and moon, and a person who will not think of each other in his life and harm love! In other words, no matter how many years have passed, some lives will still exist meticulously in the vast annals of history, and in order to describe such things, even the idiom "Dong Hu straight" was specially created. Unfortunately, these lives serve only as a stepping stone to grand narratives.
A person who has never met has been introduced by a friend to send this large stack of novel drafts, and before he started reading, he couldn't help but express some feelings first. A friend's friend is entrusted by others, a friend's friend's friend, nor the owner of the manuscript, the real owner is named Qin Yasi. Generally speaking, his life ended in the year of Huajia. Thirty years after the separation of time life and literary life, the most worthy part of life lives on through the texts he completed by himself.
Engaged in literary work for decades, I have seen all kinds of works, good works with reasons and good works without reasons, nonsense baskets that are too lazy to look at and nonsense baskets that have to be seen, exhilarating and frustrating, unforgettable and passing eyes. Despite all this, when I read Mr. Qin Yasi's text, I still had a sudden surprise. It is hard to imagine that before his death in 1993, under the three mountains and five mountains, in the middle of the east, west, south and north, there was no high-quality slow life, nor did he advocate waiting for a first-class soul. It is also touching that the work scene was much busier than today, and the working time was not measured in weeks, but in months, or even quarters, and there was almost no personal leisure, and the author could still see the sewing needle to squeeze out time to write these heart-pounding novellas. Qin Yasi, who was in the prime of life, fell obsessively with writing, but did not send his finished works for publication or publication. It also proves that the importance of writing is not just to become famous and start a family, but that I need to write, I write; I need literature, I love literature. This truth is too simple, but it makes people blind to the deep meaning.
If literature is compared to an engineering project that must be quantified to measure the importance of each stage, the world-renowned design and construction does not equal the success of the project. A super-fast railway, with only air and sunlight for passengers coming and going, is definitely a deception. A high-rise building ranks first in the world, and the elevator occupants up and down are spiders in addition to mosquitoes, of course, it is a "ghost building". Railways are used to transport people and goods, not to race steel and iron who run fast. High-rise buildings are to make people live and work in peace, not a ladder for Chang'e to run to the moon. In literature, the place of the classics is the dazzling iceberg on the sea, and those works written because of love are the icebergs hidden deep under the sea. Without ordinary works that exist because of love, it is impossible to complete the canonization of literature. Compared with literary classics, using simple love and engaging in simple writing will make others think that they are not good enough, and this angle of looking at things is actually not good enough. A person's literature is, first of all, the pursuit of life quality. That's why we often say that without raising a daughter, the father's deep love cannot be expressed. Without literature in the lives of ordinary people, it is difficult to have the opportunity to cultivate a great love that embraces the world.
In the spring of 2020, the three towns of Wuhan were hit by a sudden outbreak, and 11 million people were confined to their homes, unable to even open their windows. There are also some people from morning to night, cursing the virus there, and even viralizing many things, that strength, that look, it seems that as long as you fight back with words that are more fierce than the virus, you can achieve the effect of fighting poison with poison. The virus obviously doesn't care about these saliva that doesn't hurt its own skin, but it makes some people full of anger that is more terrible than the virus. The so-called Jiang Han was speechless, and in this bitter summer two years later, reading this manuscript left by Mr. Qin Yasi, the deep comfort in my heart has exceeded the words themselves. It's hard to imagine, but it's still imaginable. During the 76 days and nights of Wuhan's "lockdown", the 11 million living individuals did not live as the bitter appearance of a thousand people as some people with ulterior motives believed, and behind those lifeless doors and windows, ordinary people who were once shielded by the colorful appearance of life were able to quietly emit a moving glow. At the most critical moment of the epidemic, some people say that the more sinister and cunning the virus, the more it can stimulate the potential of life and even promote human evolution. At that moment, those who do not like to listen to the big truth, the abnormal reaction can be imagined. After the matter has passed, looking back, there is no need to blush for the earlier excesses, let alone apologize, just be able to distinguish the way of human nature in your own heart. Just like Mr. Qin Yasi's family, on the one hand, like the neighbors, they guard every door and window as a pass, and on the other hand, they rummage through the cabinets to find Mr. Qin Yasi's posthumous works, brushing away the dust of thirty years, the whole family gathers together, word by word, they experience the difficulties experienced by their fathers, and thank them for the beauty left by their fathers. In the words of these junior children, if it were not for the epidemic, where would they remember these texts left by their fathers that never showed their people? If it weren't for the epidemic, where would you think of making these almost life-telling texts publicly available?
Not long ago, more than 100 experts and scholars at home and abroad conducted academic discussions on the thirty years since the publication of "Phoenix Qin", and I once said the following: "A writer who returns to his hometown with his own works is recognized and welcomed by his father and fellow villagers, such an honor, not all writers can do." "In literature, the so-called works that bloom inside the wall and incense outside the wall are abnormal and unreliable. A novel that describes ordinary people, after thirty years, can still have such repercussions in social life, which is really unexpected, which is also a manifestation of literary vitality! As the saying goes, hometown is more timid. Whether it is a veteran writer who is accustomed to showing his face, or an unknown potential writer like Mr. Qin Yasi, it is far more honoring to be able to share his words with the men, women and children of his family than those unbeatable praises.
The posthumous works of Mr. Qin Yasi are successively followed by time clues, like a history of personal struggle from defender of the Republic to builder. The young engineering soldiers in the earliest "Qiongdao Building Dreams", from the Jingjiang River to the coast of the South China Sea to challenge typhoons, build national defense highways and then build new Wuhan Iron and Steel, are full of youth and brilliance synchronized with the Republic. The next "Dawn of the Long Beach" describes that in a special period of ten years, people and society are in the whirlpool of history, no matter how difficult or dangerous, they must watch over each other, protect their homes, and look forward to the future. In the early eighties of "Green Leaves and Yellow Leaves", it was a rare romantic day for history and times. However, the romantic days will eventually come to an end, and the sharing of happiness and romance will inevitably lead to the other side of the contradiction, "Jiang Han Spring Wind" truthfully writes that the reform has entered a bottleneck period, and everyone in it cannot share the all-round difficulties of social life like sharing happiness.
More than 300,000 words, not long, not short, from beginning to end, what makes people feel the most is the simplicity that never fades.
In current literature, there are many simple words, and very few really simple ones.
At the end of the day, true simplicity requires qualifications and qualifications.
Just as it is impossible to ask a chaotic teenager to be simple, let alone blame a young child who has not yet been enlightened for being so simple. Simple is to seek and find cold, cold and miserable, simple is to spring silkworms to the dead silk square wax torch into gray tears to dry, simple is once difficult to water, simple is high places are cold!
Mr. Qin Yasi's simplicity is an innate nature like a historical record.
When I read Mr. Qin Yasi's novel, I was still reading the "Records of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms". Du Mu once said, "Those who destroy the six kingdoms are also six countries, not Qin Ye; Qin Ye, not the world", which means that it is the Six Kingdoms themselves that destroyed the Six Kingdoms, not the Qin State; It was the Qin Dynasty itself that eliminated the Qin Dynasty, not the people of the world. If the six countries each loved their people, they could completely rely on the people to resist the Qin State. If the Qin Dynasty also loves and protects the people of the Six Kingdoms, then the throne can be passed to the third or even to the ten thousand generations, who can destroy them? In this regard, Du Mu further said, "If the descendants mourn and do not learn from them, they will also mourn the descendants"—if the descendants mourn the Six Kingdoms and the Qin Dynasty but do not learn the lessons of the Six Kingdoms and the Qin Dynasty, it can only make the descendants mourn these descendants again.
This theory of rise and fall is also true when applied to literature and art: the peak of literature and art can only be built on the solid ground under one's feet. Simplicity is easily regarded as a floating cloud, as a non-talent, as a chicken feather after tea, and to experience the greatness of simplicity in all aspects, it is necessary not only to be broad-minded, but also to be consistent in a person's appearance. Just as the rise and fall of the Six Kingdoms was determined by the people's hearts, the Qin Dynasty was no longer equally determined by the people's hearts. The simplicity that people celebrate is always used at critical moments to prove how the peaks and troughs of literature and art occur. Without simplicity there is no land, and there is no sublimation of all things; Without simplicity, there is no nutrition, and there is no literary and artistic brilliance.
Those who win the hearts of the people win the world, and those who win the human nature gain life. In life, any ability is not comparable to human nature, human nature is strong, and speech and behavior will contain a multiplier effect with half the effort. In human nature, the most prominent value is simplicity. In the face of viruses that are older than humans, humans should have used the simple ability to evolve better than viruses to find a more reliable way than eliminating viruses. The way to do this is to make yourself stronger without interfering with the strength of the virus. Under great love, life is together, and human beings can last forever. In this world, only the great love of people can overcome viruses that are older than human beings. Mr. Qin Yasi did not know that a brand new virus would appear in the world in the 21st century, but under the epidemic, his posthumous work is a testimony of the hearts of the world, and such a life and death relationship is trustworthy.
4 September 2022 at Stay Court
Liu Xinglong
(The author is a winner of Mao Dun Literature Award and Lu Xun Literature Award)