【Retrieve the powerful and stylish landscape description】
Author: Yan Shuisheng (Professor, School of Literature, Guizhou Minzu University)
There are complex reasons for the rare and wonderful landscape descriptions in contemporary novels, mainly including the influence of avant-garde novels, the novelist’s life experience, the way of viewing and artistic skills.
The rise of avant-garde novels in the mid-1980s marked that contemporary Chinese novels have truly entered the era of fiction, and the change in the concept of novels caused by this is an important reason why the current novels rarely see wonderful landscape descriptions. The description of the landscape created a strong lyrical mood in novels such as “The History of Entrepreneurship”, “The Forest and the Snowfield” and “The Great Change in the Mountains and Villages”, which made the novels of that period present a unique romantic style and lyrical epic characteristics. The avant-garde novel’s emphasis on fiction breaks the historicism and romanticism of contemporary Chinese novels. The so-called fiction of fiction or narrative fiction is at the expense of the retreat of history and reality. Although avant-garde fiction has always been concerned with history and reality on the surface, But in fact, avant-garde novels describe history and reality as a kind of strange experience or chance encounter, so they make a big fuss about storytelling, thus forgetting natural perception and landscape description. The narrative tradition of avant-garde novels has continued to the current novel creation. Whether it is the creation of novels born in the 1960s and 1970s, or the creation of online novels and science fiction, they all focus on stories rather than natural perceptions and landscape descriptions. Therefore, changing from the concept of avant-garde novels, attaching importance to the integration of narrative and scenery in novels, and regaining the historicism, romanticism and lyrical traditions of Chinese novels, are very important for novel scenery.
On the land of China 67 years ago, a revolution in reconstructing rural production relations was in full swing. Writer Zhou Libo returned from Beijing to Qingxi Village, Xielingang Town, Yiyang City, Hunan Province, and wrote the novel “The Great Change in Mountain Village” based on his hometown, vividly writing this change. This is the style of Qingxi Village today.Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ding Chunyu
Life experience is the basis of literary landscape description. Generally speaking, narration and lyricism are great traditions of Chinese literature, but landscape painting is not an important tradition of Chinese literature. Ancient Chinese literary works are full of a lot of wonderful landscape descriptions, from “Chu Ci” to “A Dream of Red Mansions”, which are closely related to the writer’s life experience. Qu Yuan and Cao Xueqin have rich life experiences. They have traveled to many places. Qu Yuan visited the mountains and rivers during the exile. Cao Xueqin loved the landscape and traveled to Yangzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other places for many times. Li Bai’s “going to the country with a sword, leaving relatives and traveling far away”, Du Fu’s “young and excellent travel” and “Wandering in Shu” also laid a solid foundation for the description of landscapes in their poems. Life experience not only lays the foundation for the description of landscapes in literary works, but also nurtures the writer’s feelings for the mountains, rivers and the earth, and thus sublimates into deep feelings for the country and the country. In ancient Chinese literature, although the emotions contained in the scenery are different, the emotion of family and country is the most common and deepest emotion. The mountains and rivers in the poems of Qu Yuan, Li Bai, Du Fu, and Xin Qiji are all sustenance for their love for the country. , “The eyes are a thousand miles away, sadness is sad”, “Dream around the border city and the moon, the heart flies to the hometown building”, “The country is broken by mountains and rivers, the city springs with deep grass and trees” and so on. In ancient China, the family and the world were a unity. “Tianxia”, “Shenzhou”, “Mountains and Rivers”, and “Jiangshan” were concepts with similar connotations. They reflected the Chinese nation’s spatial imagination of the world. These concepts are mostly found in literary works. Presented as “landscape”. In fact, the life experiences of writers such as Liu Qing, Qu Bo, and Zhou Libo are also magnificent. More importantly, this generation of writers has a very strong sense of family and country, so there are a lot of wonderful landscape descriptions in their novels, such as The Weihe Plain in the early spring morning at the beginning of the first volume of “History of Entrepreneurship”, the icy sky and snow in “The Forest and the Snowy Field”, and the scenery along the Zijiang River at the beginning of “The Great Change in the Mountains and Villages” have enriched the aesthetic style of contemporary novels. Compared with the writers of the older generation, the life experience of young and middle-aged novelists is indeed far behind, which has a great influence on the description of landscapes in their novels.
The way of seeing is an important premise of literary landscape description. Nature is the source of all landscapes, and human’s understanding of nature determines the characteristics and significance of landscape descriptions in artistic works. The Book of Changes, the earliest philosophical work in ancient China, not only revealed the relationship between man and nature, but also created a traditional Chinese way of viewing. “Zhou Yi Xian Gua” puts forward the theory of “feeling of things”, in which “feeling” contains all things in nature, and “feeling” is not only the sympathy between man and all things in nature, but also the induction of man to all things in nature; “Sensing things” and seeing the feelings of all things in the universe and the natural principles of the universe. The “feeling of things” has had a profound impact on Chinese literary scenery. Liu Xie took “feeling of things” as the basis of literary scenery in “Wen Xin Diao Long”. It’s not natural.” Lu Ji’s “Wen Fu” also put forward the view of “looking at all things and thinking about things”, which means that emotions come from the sense of things, and the sense of things comes from nature. Poems such as “Only when the plants and trees are scattered, fear that the beauty of the beauties will be late”, “I feel the flowers spilling tears, I hate the birds are startling” and other poems all reflect the profound influence of “Theory of Material Sense”. “Theory of Material Sense” has far-reaching influence in ancient Chinese literature, which is closely related to the reasons such as the greater contact between ancient people and nature and the slow pace of life. However, the pace of life in contemporary society is too fast, and most novelists not only rarely get in touch with nature, but also hardly have enough time to comprehend nature. There is no doubt that novel parents expect that it is difficult to create powerful and stylish landscapes in high-rise buildings.
Artistic skills are also an important condition for literary landscape description. In “Wen Xin Diao Long”, Liu Xie summed up the landscape painting methods in “The Book of Songs”, “Chu Ci” and “Li Sao”, and believed that literary creation should “look above the scenery and look into the grass and trees”. In “Twenty-Four Poems”, Sikong Tu believed that literary landscapes should be “full of true power”, emphasizing that landscapes must be realistic, vivid and full of vitality, so that the subtleties of objects can be assimilated with nature, so that they can freely control all phenomena and create nature. Although Liu Xie and Sikong Tu’s generalized method of landscape painting originated from poetry, it is not without reference value for the creation of contemporary novels. Zhou Keqin’s “Xu Mao and His Daughters” in Chapter 6 of the cropland scenery appears “full of strength”, which is the novelist’s masterpiece of “seeing” and “seeing the appearance” in the cropland. Writing a scene in a novel requires not only the spirit of prying and research, but also certain writing skills. For example, Zhou Keqin used a lot of rhetoric such as metaphors, personifications, and comparisons when describing the crops, making the landscape descriptions seem appropriate and vivid. A good novelist must be a miscellaneous writer, and they are well versed in the true meaning of artistic blending. In addition to writing skills, excellent novelists must also have a variety of artistic skills. Most of the current novelists pursue the speed of writing and the number of creations. Some novelists even insist on creating a long novel every year. Not only do they have no time to temper their sentences, but they also have no energy to absorb the nutrition of various artistic creations. Although the current novelists do not lack writing skills, they lack the spirit of prying, delving into, and absorbing various artistic creation skills, which also affects the novelists’ landscape descriptions.
The description of landscapes in novels is affected by many factors. If novelists recognize the importance of landscape descriptions in their minds and practice hard in their creations, then the descriptions of landscapes with power and style in novels will no longer be rare. The so-called powerful and stylish landscape description means that the landscape should have a unique artistic style and deep emotional power. Emotion comes from life, and scenery comes from nature, so novelists should perfectly unify emotion and scenery, life and nature. “The country is magnificent and the people are heroic” is an important part of the contemporary Chinese landscape. Novelists should strive to expand their life experience and deepen their feelings for the country and the people; they should also go deep into nature and truly appreciate the magnificence of the country; they should also improve their artistic skills and combine various The art creation skills are melted into one furnace. It is an important mission of contemporary novelists to depict magnificent scenery with deep emotion, and it is also the direction of continuous efforts.
“Guangming Daily” (page 14 on August 10, 2022)
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责编：李宜蒙 ]