Most of my friends are bookworms, too. Few friends ask me out to fall in love in spring. Many times, I am always associated with books. Many times, I always shut myself in six stacks and four walls, making nitrogen and daydreaming. My study is neither as luxurious as the Gothic Castle in Horace walpole in the Middle Ages, nor as shabby as the attic in Grub Street. I don't have many books, and I don't have statistics, 1000 or so. "When books are used, we hate them less." After spending so much money on books, I still don't know what to do. I often borrow a book from a friend when I am useful, but I don't return it. When it is useless, it is full of pits and valleys; Bookshelves are arranged neatly, everywhere on desks, chairs, record players, windowsills, beds and beds. Because I write articles for magazines and edit publications, in addition to residents, there are many mobile accounts in my book city, such as Literature magazine, Modern Literature, China and Foreign Countries, Blue Star, Works, Literary World and Free Youth. There are hundreds of satellites in nature.
"My mind is full of poems and books." However, most of those poems are not in the stomach, but on the bookshelf, under the bookshelf, in the corner, and even at the foot of the desk. My study is often full of books, which makes my wife, mother-in-law and maid who cleans the floor care and despair. Every time my daughter sweeps the floor, she always piles books behind the bookshelf or under my bed. My mother-in-law even suggested several times to solve it by Qin Shihuang's method. During a typhoon, there was a big flood in Zhonghe Township, and thousands of blue stars of Xia Qing's family drifted with the tide. When the wind subsided, they found blue stars on the floor, in the kitchen, in the toilet, on the roof of the dog, and even on the trees in the yard, right or wrong. If there is such a flood in Xiamen Street, there will be a more serious book disaster in my home after the flood.
You will say, since you are afraid that the type will be a disaster, why not tidy it up and let it be in the right place? Impossible, impossible! My answer is impossible. Anyone who has several books will probably understand how troublesome and time-consuming it is to manage books. For a bookworm, managing books is a bit sad with memories. No, the title page of this book says: "1bought it in Taipei in April 1952" (you didn't graduate from college at that time! On the back cover of that book, I remember a lovely mailing address of my girlfriend. I don't remember now. Her address is mine. Alas, alas! Is this happiness or confusion? ) There is a book that says, "1959 in the twilight of Iowa". The author died, and his lofty image entered the history of literature. What will it feel like for daughters to read the history of literature in the future? Another book reminds me of a good friend who is poor in a small town on the other side of the Pacific Ocean and hasn't written poetry for a long time. When I opened this red-faced antique poetry collection, I found an oak leaf with fragile veins and about to break, falling to the ground. Which autumn ghost is this? So many books, so many bundles of letters, so many stacks of manuscripts! I have been here, loved and lost-this should be an epitaph for every tombstone. And this is what every writer must feel when sorting out old books. Who can sort out their memories?
Besides, I have to read books at the same time. You can't finish reading books, especially your own library. Whoever wants to finish his book must become a great scholar. Some people must borrow books when reading, but they must not return them. Some people must buy books, but they must not finish reading them. I belong to the latter. Many of my friends belong to the former. This classification is of course purely subjective. Once upon a time, I found that some of my good books, even out of print, had not been returned by friends for a long time, and even had been neglected for a long time. I was so angry that I considered writing an article denouncing these elegant thieves. No, they were "elegant thieves" because their crimes were public. I soon gave up this idea, because I found that I could not avoid the "elegant thief" style. There are some books on the shelf that have been borrowed from friends for a long time-a famous book about poetry borrowed from a colleague in Tamkang, which has not been returned for more than half a year, and he has not come to urge. Of course, such a short period of "living abroad" is not as good as "naturalization". The American Literary Tradition also has a second volume, which was originally borrowed by Mr. Zhu Limin. Later, he expected that I had no intention of returning it, and he was desperate. He simply stated that it was for me and attached the first volume. Dozens of books that have been "naturalized" because of long-term borrowing are mostly the property of the Foreign Languages Department of National Taiwan University. Their "overseas Chinese era" has exceeded eleven years. It is said that the librarian of the department library is still that young lady, which scared me from entering her jurisdiction for ten years. It's immoral to borrow money. Books are also bought with money, but under the psychology of "literature and art have no borders", borrowing books seems insignificant.
In addition to long overdue books, there are many books-almost thirty or forty volumes-that are bought in arrears. They are all bought from the bookstore. I bought it, but I haven't paid for it for years. Of course, I also have collateral-that bookstore sold me more than 100 copies of Halloween and stalactites, and it has never been settled. But I must declare at once that so far, that bookstore owes me far less than I owe it. I don't think I remember correctly, or I can say that I didn't miscalculate, otherwise I wouldn't have kept silent all the time. Probably the bookstore owner felt that he owed me more and endured it for so long.
In addition to the above two books with less glorious origins, some books were donated by writers and friends. Most of them are new poetry collections in Chinese, followed by novels, essays, comments and translations, and naturally there are a few works in English, even in French, Korean and Turkish. Of course, the sources of these books are very bright, because the autograph of the original author or translator on the title page is even more valuable. Frankly speaking, however, I seldom read all these books in detail. I dare say that no writer will read all the books given by other writers. British writer Bayloc has two lines of harmony poems:
When I grow up, I hope someone will say:
He has fewer sins, but his books are read. "
Barely translated into Chinese, it becomes:
When I die, I hope people will say:
"He is guilty, but his book has been read."
What I read here is a pun. It is both a past participle of "reading" and a homonym of "red", so it is impossible to translate it vividly. Bayloc means that no matter how sinful a person is, as long as his works are carefully read, it is commendable. It is conceivable that a person, especially a writer, can't read all the books given by others. On average, 30 to 40 kinds of books (including publications) are received every month. I must admit that I have neither time nor desire to finish reading them. There are actually too many great books. Just a glance at the author's name on the cover, or how vulgar and ridiculous the title is, will make you lose your appetite for gluttony. There are only two kinds of writers in the world-good and bad. With some miraculous exceptions, a bad writer will never be a good writer. Writing the above passage may offend many writers and friends who unnecessarily give books. But I can immediately ask them, "Don't be angry. You can reflect on it. Have you read it, or even read part of it? " I think most people dare not give a clear answer. Who can understand those "difficult" modern poems and those translated poems that "chew rice to feed people"? /kloc-C.L. Dodgson, a professor at Oxford University in the 20th century, presented his fairy tale Alice in Wonderland to Queen Victoria. The Queen liked the book very much and asked Professor Onifu to show his later works. Soon, she received his second masterpiece-a thick math paper. I don't think the queen will read the first page.
The third kind of book should be your own work. They include four poems, three translated poems, a translated novel and a translated biography. Some of these books are 300 to 400, some are only a dozen, and some are even out of print. I still clearly remember the feeling of being swayed by considerations of gain and loss when printing the first book. On the night of publication, I was so excited that I couldn't sleep all night, imagining how that little book would shock the whole literary world the next day, how to reprint the third edition and become a legend like Byron. Mr. Liang Shiqiu, who wrote the book review, is not so optimistic. He predicted that "up to 300 copies can be sold. Just print 500 copies. " As a result, I printed 1000 copies and sold more than 340 copies in China within six months. Soon after, because I participated in the pre-job training of the first college graduates, I did not continue to entrust the bookstore to sell. It has been sold to Mr Zhou Mengdie. At present, I have published five kinds of poems, an anthology of modern poetry translation, a letter from Zeidfield, a biography of the painter paul klee and two collections of essays. If I don't die young-of course, the days of buying half a ticket as a "prodigy" are long gone-by the time I'm 50, I hope I'm a writer with 50 works (including translations), including at least 20 kinds of poems. I'm afraid this wish for Jiuying is a little too big. However, according to the current "output" of writing, it is absolutely not a problem to have 30 books at a 60% discount.
The last category of books far exceeds the sum of the above three categories. They are Chinese and English bookstores that I bought with cash. Every little makes a mickle. For more than ten years, the ratio of Chinese books to English books has become more and more different, and I am ashamed. At present, it is about three to seven. Most bookworms both read and play with books. Reading is the content of reading, and playing with books is the way to play with books. Books are really playable. A beautifully printed book with a gorgeous cover is a beauty in itself. Having bought so many English books, especially the colorful pocket edition series, it is often a big reason to fall in love with those seven-color covers at first sight. The elegance of penguin books, the nobility of modern libraries, the liveliness of pocket books, the Gu Zhuo of ordinary people's libraries, the luxury of garden city books, and the Swiss Skila art series (. Senior bookworms usually have an unsolvable problem. They like to sit at their desks. They don't have to read books or study problems. They just like to touch this one, flip through that one, take photos of the cover, look at illustrations and catalogues, and smell the strange smell of paper and ink (especially new books). In this way, an expensive afternoon was used up.
Dr. Johnson once said, since we can't read all the books we should, why don't we read them willfully? This is my reading. When I was in college, I learned more than 800 pages of "tom jones" and 700 pages of "Vanity City" by myself according to the guidance of the history of literature. I even gnashed my teeth and swallowed "egoist" when I was studying. Since graduation, this suffering has become more and more serious. Up to now, I have been busy writing, translating, editing, teaching and discussing poetry, and I have little time to read poetry or even study. There are always more books on the shelf than in the stomach; I'm afraid less than three-tenths of the books have been read. Despite this, the problem of "playing" books has never healed. Because I often "play", I am familiar with many unfinished books. If I want to mention a point or quote a paragraph, it's easy to turn to that page. In fact, some books can't be enjoyed without playing for a while. For example, Van Gogh's books and Cummings' poems take a long time to play well.
However, after playing for ten years, I am still not satisfied with my study. Because it was too small, there was a book disaster in the study. Those clothes books that climb mountains and valleys and are full of sweat are like gangs that can never be banned. Because they are Japanese, they are too short, and like "sunflowers with their backs to the sun", they always face north and can't get the sun. If there is a gloomy writer in China, this northbound study should be responsible. Sitting in the shadow of this window facing north, I feel like a full southern fruit in the refrigerator. During the day, I seem to be immersed in the bottom of the sea, playing gray music in the silent darkness. At night, I seem to hear the sound of Eskimos sledding, while the long beard of Polaris hangs down, jingling and stringing white stalactites.
However, in this cold art palace, many memories are still hot. When friends come to visit, I often invite them to sit here and chat instead of going to the living room. It seems that this is my "cultural background". If I didn't come here, the hammer of friendship wouldn't fall into my heart. Frost's gaze hangs on the wall, and my tassel is male. Here, I once heard the missing prince Wu in modern poetry tell me some ghost stories about scarlet fever and jade cold. Here, Huang Yong showed me almost all his works, sharpening his cold criticism. Here, Wang Jingyi met Huang Yong for the first time, but to our great disappointment, we didn't quarrel. Here, Chen Lifeng, an awesome editor, also left a black memory ... Compared with these memories, a messy book is much neater.
Snow in Yangguan —— In Yu Qiu
In ancient China, once a scholar, he didn't have a full view. The outstanding feature of civil servants lies in official positions, not in literature. As a scholar, they are not satisfied in officialdom. However, things are strange. When the Hubei official's belt has already been scattered into mud, a poem occasionally drawn by a bamboo pen can actually engrave mountains and rivers, engrave people's hearts and never wander.
I once had the opportunity to look up at Bai Di City in the boat on the river at dusk, climb the Yellow Crane Tower in the thick autumn frost, and touch Hanshan Temple in the winter night. There are many people around me, and almost all of them are filled with poems that don't need to be quoted. People come to look for scenery as well as poetry. They can recite these poems when they are young. The children's imagination is sincere and realistic. So these cities, these buildings, these temples are all built in their own hearts. When they are old, when they just realize that their feet are enough, they are also burdened with heavy debts and eagerly look forward to visiting the poetic realm. For childhood, for history, for many unspeakable reasons. Sometimes, this longing is like looking for the lost hometown and visiting the lost relatives.
The magic of literati can turn such a small corner of the world into a hometown in everyone's heart. What magic is hidden in their faded blue shirts?
Today, I went to Yangguan to watch Wang Wei's Song of Besieged City. Before I left, I asked the old man in the county where I lived. The answer is: "It's a long way to go in Xiu Yuan. There's nothing to see, but some literati have worked hard to find it." The old man looked up at the sky and said, "It will snow for a while. Don't suffer this. " I bowed to him and turned and got into the snow.
Once out of the small county, it is desert. There is nothing but Snow White, not even a wrinkle can be found. When traveling in other places, always find yourself a goal at each road section, staring at a tree and then staring at a stone. Here, I can't see a target with my eyes open, even a dead leaf and a black spot. So, I have to look up at the sky. I have never seen such a complete sky, and it has not been swallowed up at all. The edges are quite scattered and the earth is tightly covered. There is a place where genius is called heaven. On such a day, the earth is called the earth. Walking alone in such a world, the dwarf becomes a giant. Walking alone in such a world, the giant has become a dwarf.
As a result, it cleared up, the wind stopped and the sun cleared up. I didn't expect the snow in the desert to melt so quickly. Just for an instant, the ground was full of sand, but there were no wet marks. A few wisps of smoke gradually floated out on the horizon, stopped moving and deepened. I wondered for a long time before I found that it was a ridge that had just melted snow.
The bumps on the ground have become a shocking exposition, and there can only be one understanding: they are tombs of distant times.
It's far from the county seat, and it's unlikely to be the burial place of city people. These tombs were eroded by the wind and snow, and collapsed with age, thin and depressed. Obviously, no one has ever offered sacrifices to sweep them away. Why are there so many and arranged so closely? There can only be one understanding: this is an ancient battlefield.
I walked blankly in the endless grave, and Eliot's The Waste Land came to my mind. This is the wasteland of China history: like the horseshoe of rain, like the cry of thunder, like the blood of notes. The loving mother in the Central Plains has white hair, the spring boudoir in the south of the Yangtze River is far away, and the children in Hunan cry at night. Farewell to my hometown in Liu Yin, the general glared at me and hunted military flags in the north wind. With a puff of smoke, another puff of smoke drifted away. I believe that the deceased, such as husband, are facing the enemy lines in northern Shuobei; I believe that they really want to look back at the last minute and take a look at the familiar land. As a result, they twisted down and became sand piles.
I wonder if this starry sand pile was exchanged by historians for half a line of ink? Historians turned over the documents page by page, so the land was buried layer by layer. A 25-year-old mountain, written on this wasteland, is quite glorious, because it is, after all, a remote area of the kingdoms of past dynasties and has long been responsible for defending the territory of China. So these sand piles are more comfortable to stand on, and these pages can rattle. Just like the dry, cold and monotonous land, the historical proposition of the northwest frontier is relatively simple. In the Central Plains, it is different. The mountains are heavy and the waters are complex. The maze of years will make the clearest mind faint, and the sound of the morning bell and the evening drum is always so secretive and surly. There, there is no such casual sand pile, everything is stuffy in the beautiful scenery, and countless ghosts who died for no reason can only dive deep into the ground in grief and regret. Unlike here, I can show a dry history and let me touch it with the pace of the 20th century.
There are shadows in the distance. Get there quickly, there is water under the tree and sand has high and low slopes. Climbing a slope, I suddenly looked up and saw a bare mound on the mountain not far away. I am intuitively convinced that this is a sunshine pass.
More and more trees and houses began to appear. That's right, where the important pass is, where the military forces are stationed, these are indispensable. Turn a few corners, then go straight to a sand slope, climb to the bottom of the mound, look around, there is a monument nearby, engraved with the words "Yangguan Ancient Site".
This is a commanding height overlooking the four fields. The northwest wind thundered in Wan Li and came straight. After a few steps, it stopped. My feet stopped, but I clearly heard the chattering of my teeth. My nose must be red with cold soon. Oh, take a breath of hot air into your palm, cover your ears and jump a few times before you settle down and open your eyes. The snow here doesn't melt, of course not. There is no trace of the so-called ancient site, only the nearby beacon tower is still there, and this is the mound just seen below. Most of the mounds have collapsed, and you can see layers of sediment, layers of reeds and reeds flying out, trembling in the cold wind after thousands of years. At present, it is a mountain in the northwest, all covered with snow, layered and reaching the sky. Anyone standing here will feel that he is standing on a rock by the sea. Those mountains are frozen oceans and waves.
Wang Wei is really gentle to the extreme. For such a Yangguan, the bottom of his pen still does not show the color of fierce terror, but writes in a lingering and elegant way: "I advise you to make more wine, and there is no reason to go out to Yangguan in the west." He glanced at the green willow color outside the window of the Acropolis Guest House, looked at his friend's packed bags, and smiled and raised the hip flask. Have another drink, and you'll never find an old friend who can talk about wine like this outside the sun. This cup of wine, friends must not refuse, drink it off.
This is the demeanor of the Tang Dynasty. Most of them will not cry and lament, but will discourage them. Their vision is far away and their life path is wide. Parting is frequent and the steps are open. This style, in Li Bai, Gao Shi, Cen Can there, glow more heroic. Among the ancient statues in the north and south, the statues of the Tang people can be recognized at a glance, with such strong bodies, calm eyes and confident spirit. When you see Mona Lisa's smile in Europe, you can feel it immediately. This serene self-confidence belongs only to those artists who really wake up from the nightmare of the Middle Ages and are quite sure of their future. The smile in the statue of the Tang Dynasty will only be more calm and serene. In Europe, these artists have been making a fuss for a long time, stubbornly trying to convey their smiles into the soul of history. Anyone can figure out how many years after the Tang Dynasty. But in the Tang Dynasty, it did not extend the confidence of artists for a long time. The snowstorm in Yangguan is becoming more and more sad.
Wang Wei's poems and paintings are unique, and the boundary between poetry and painting, which has been repeatedly discussed by western philosophers such as Lessing, is now within his reach. However, the palace in Chang 'an only opened a narrow side door for artists, allowing them to bend down as humble attendants to create a little entertainment. The old man in history stood in awe and turned away, trembling to return to the genealogy of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors. Here, there is no need for art to make a big fight, and there is no need to have too deep sustenance for beauty.
As a result, Kyushu's painting style is gloomy. Yangguan, it is no longer difficult to enjoy warm and mellow poems. There are still some scholars who left Yangguan in the west, but most of them have become officials and ministers.
Even mounds and stone towns can't stand the blowing of so many sighs, and Yangguan collapses and falls into the spiritual territory of a nation. Will eventually become a ruin, a wasteland. Behind him, sand graves are like tides, and in front of him, cold peaks are like waves. No one can imagine that here, 1000 years ago, the grandeur of life and the vastness of artistic feelings were verified.
There should be several voices of Hu Jia and Qiangdi here. The timbre is extremely beautiful, harmonious with nature and fascinating. Unfortunately, it has become the sad voice of the soldiers. Since a nation can't bear to hear it, they disappear in the north wind.
Go home, it's getting late. I'm afraid it will snow again.