Landscape descriptions used to be standard in excellent novels, providing a strong “background” for the development of the storyline, the shaping of characters’ characters, and the presentation of thematic meanings. It can not only be integrated into the narrative of the plot, but also can be selected independently And treat it as “American”. However, the current novel creation generally lacks wonderful landscape descriptions. What is the reason for this? We set up the column “Retrieving Powerful and Stylish Landscape Descriptions” and published a series of articles to try to find out.
“Lu Xun’s Hometown” (Chinese painting) Wu Guanzhong
As early as 2002, I was still working at the People’s Literature Publishing House. In addition to editing publications, I also edited a few books. I remember writing a book by a writer at that time, which was very good and sold well later on. After finishing it, I always felt like something was missing. Oh, a little less landscape description. I have communicated this opinion with the author very seriously, and I hope to revise it once and add some scenery descriptions. It is a bit too “dry” now. The author also listened carefully and said that he would go back and revise it properly. But when he brought the revised draft over to take a look, I said that the description of the scene is too ordinary, and it has no own characteristics. The key is that it cannot be integrated into the whole of the novel. After a while, the author told me with a gloomy face that he couldn’t finish this revision. He thought that the description of the scenery was very simple, but now he finds it too difficult, and it is too difficult to integrate into the whole novel. Finally just give up. The novel came out, and despite being a hit, I felt inwardly that its texture was flawed.
Later, it was discovered that this was not the fault of one author, but the fault of some people, and it has gradually become a weakness of the current novel. In the novels I read, the creations of some writers often have good stories and themes, as well as very suitable character settings, and even wonderful dialogues, but the descriptions of landscapes that we used to be very familiar with and like do not know when Disappeared.
Thought is the light of literature, and landscape description is the wetland in fiction
If it is said that works describing urban themes are not good at describing landscapes, that’s all, because urban literature is still a new topic for writers. Unlike rural themes, which have enough resources for transformation, urban landscapes have no coordinates to refer to. It is understandable to avoid or write poorly. I recently read some novels with the theme of rural revitalization, and found that these works “see things but not people”, and the characters lack the imprint and personality of the new era. The rural landscape is replaced by dull meetings and interpersonal conflicts. The space where the characters live has no scenery, just like the stage set up by building blocks, it is neither vivid nor real.
The description of beautiful scenery is an integral part of literary works. If the scenery is missing in the novel, it is just like the disappearance of the wetland in our living environment, which is crowded, dry and without vitality. Many years ago, some cities were renovated, and the rivers were filled and the wetlands were leveled. The managers at that time thought that these wetlands took up space. When drainage became obstructed, air quality declined, and the cities reverted to wetlands. Are our novels also taking part of the old road of urban construction?
The functions of landscape in novels are various, creating the environment, rendering the atmosphere, setting off the emotions, paving the way for the plot, and suggesting the psychology. If thought is the light of literature, landscape description is the wetland in fiction. Much of our memory of literature is associated with beautiful landscapes. Those famous articles in ancient literature, such as “Yueyang Tower” and “Tengwang Pavilion Preface” still make us linger in the beauty of nature, and the customs and landscapes of eastern Zhejiang, Beijing, western Hunan and other places written by modern writers such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Lao She, and Shen Congwen. The human landscape has become the cultural symbol and spiritual portrayal of a region.
Why is there a lack of beautiful scenery in contemporary fiction creation? Landscape descriptions as “intangible cultural heritage” of literary works are becoming less and less. A city without wetlands is just a cement forest, and literature without beautiful scenery is just a forest of words and language containers. The characters float like empty shells, ungrounded and pale.
The euphemistic and delicate narration of the past is occupied by superficial plots and bizarre stories
The reason for this lack of landscape description is that the fast food culture is constantly intervening in daily life, which has a potential impact on the writing of writers. Since the 1990s, the fast food culture marked by best-selling books, film and television dramas, and online literature has penetrated into every corner of our lives, and literature is no exception. Writers are involved in the writing of these three types of fast food culture to varying degrees, and literary publishing and literary criticism are also naturally influenced by these fast food cultures, and the “harm” to literary creation also occurs inadvertently.
At the end of the 20th century, the core of the best-selling book culture, film and television culture and online literature is business culture, which is the embodiment of eyeball economy. To gain more readers, win more viewers, and gain more clicks, can the eyeball economy and commercial effect be generated. These commercial cultures with traffic as the ultimate goal have had an inestimable impact on contemporary novel creation. Their common characteristics are consumption stories and consumption plots, and scene descriptions are cumbersome in fast food culture, affecting the rhythm of reading and viewing. In the writing of best-selling books, the euphemistic and delicate narratives of the past are occupied by superficial plots and bizarre stories. Fast rhythm is the biggest feature of best-selling books, and landscape belongs to the “slow” writing, of course, it is abandoned like a mess. A large number of writers have joined the creation of film and television dramas, writing blood transfusions for film and television dramas, but film and television scripts are basically the mode of scene and dialogue. How can there be room for scenery to survive? I once read a novel written by a well-known writer in the film and television industry, which was actually a simple rewrite of the TV script. The publication of such scene-plus-dialogue “novels” is a blasphemy for serious novels that focus on psychological and landscape descriptions. Network literature is essentially the product of commercial capital operation. The demand for traffic makes writing an infinite superposition of plot and suspense. Landscape description is at most a buffer to adjust the atmosphere. If you want to enjoy beautiful scenery descriptions in online literature works, that’s the way to go. wrong door.
The lack of landscape description is also caused by the writer’s unfamiliarity with classic literature and absence of classes. The threshold for literary writing of these types of online literature and best-selling books is relatively low, especially the entry-free entry of online literature, which makes some young writers enter the literary world, not from classic literature, but through best-selling books and online literature. Lack of deep reading and understanding of the classics. Literary classics, both Chinese and foreign, have a large number of landscape descriptions. Especially in Chinese classical poetry, it pays attention to the blending of scenes. The so-called “implications” and “outside the realm” are all based on the description of the scenery. “In the past, I have gone, Yangliu Yiyi, now I come to think, rain and snow fall,” the “Book of Songs” is like this, and the “Chu Ci” of “beautiful grass” is also like this. Tang Poems and Song Poems have left countless scenes blending together and the popular landscape classics. The landscape description in “A Dream of Red Mansions”, which is considered to be the peak of Chinese novels so far, is even more unparalleled, and the landscape world that it shows is still talked about by people today.
Some writers have a one-sided understanding of the concepts of modern and postmodern fiction, and they believe that landscape description is classicism, and that pastoral scenery and modern fiction are not the product of the same channel. Postmodernist writing seeks to flatten, abandoning symbolic depth patterns. But the flattening of postmodernism is only the destruction of those conceptual towers of symbols, and scene descriptions are still treated as novel organisms, but they are used more cautiously and more delicately. García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is a representative work of magical realism and a work that is respected by postmodernism, but there are many landscape descriptions in it. Contemporary Chinese postmodern writers Yu Hua, Su Tong, Ge Fei, Bi Feiyu and others have not given up their landscape descriptions. They paid tribute to the classical Chinese and Western landscape descriptions with their graceful brushstrokes.
Landscape description is the basic skill of literary creation. Just like sketching and sketching in painting, it takes hard work and hard work to complete it.
On the surface, the lack of scenery is an unbalanced phenomenon of literary ability, and the deep-seated reason lies in the desolation and impetuousness of the writer’s heart. Modern fiction is the art of narrative in a certain sense, and the art of narrative is often the art of narrative perspective. On the basis of breaking the omniscient and omnipotent narrative perspective of traditional novels, modern novels have created many new narrative perspectives, using different eyes to observe the world, society and life. But no matter which perspective is adopted, it starts from the eyes and sees the world through the eyes. Although many works use the perspective of characters, in fact, the potential perspective of the writer is “speaking”.
Perspective comes from the eyes, and eyes come from the mind. Leonardo da Vinci famously said, “The eyes are the windows to the soul”. As an outstanding painter, the eyes of the characters in Leonardo da Vinci’s works are the windows to the soul, and the emotions revealed in the eyes of those characters in “The Last Supper” are the true portrayal of the soul. For modern novels, what is seen and expressed from the narrative perspective is the projection of the writer’s mind. From the perspective of the psychology of literary and artistic creation, the lack of landscapes written by novelists today is the lack of a certain spirit in the depths of the soul. Wang Guowei said in “The Words of the World” that the realm of literature is divided into “the realm with me” and “the realm without me”, but he emphasizes that “all Jingyu is love language”. This “feeling” is the existence of the writer’s heart. The French neo-novel school emphasizes “materialization” and “zero degree without self”, which is itself a philosophical pursuit. The lack of thought and the poverty of philosophy have created a void in the heart and a void in the eyes.
Landscape description is actually the basic skill of literary creation, just like sketching and sketching in painting, it requires hard work and hard practice to complete. In some recent so-called innovative works of art, novelty is novelty, weirdness is weird, painters are full of imagination and creativity, but due to the lack of basic sketching training, their works can often only be called “installation”, or simply “performance art”. “.
Excellent writers have their own philosophy to support. As a great thinker, why is Lu Xun’s landscape unforgettable? Because these landscapes are the carrier of Lu Xun’s thought. The opening chapter of “Hometown” wrote: “As we approached our hometown, the weather turned gloomy again, and the cold wind blew into the cabin, making a whining sound. Looking out from the gap in the canopy, under the pale yellow sky, there were several desolate and desolate villages in the distance. I don’t have any vitality. My heart can’t help but feel sad.” This is a true depiction of the devastation of the countryside at that time, and it is also a full manifestation of Lu Xun’s sadness and hatred of the old Chinese society. Concerns about Chinese society also permeated it.
Wang Zengqi is a writer who is very particular about narrative, a writer who cherishes ink like gold, but in his masterpieces “The Precept” and “Da Nao breaking latest news”, there are large landscape descriptions, which are integrated with customs and folklore, not only become the organism of the novel, It has also become the “main building” of the novel. This is related to Wang Zengqi’s concept of novels. He believes that the atmosphere is the story, and what he pursues is harmonious aesthetics. In Wang Zengqi’s casual descriptions of landscapes, we read the harmony between man and nature, the environment and life.
Although the landscape description of many novels is missing, it is gratifying that some writers have not given up. In the novels of Liu Liangcheng, Ma Jinlian and other writers, you can still enjoy the beautiful description of the scenery. The rural scene of Xihaigu written by Ma Jinlian is warm and kind. Liu Liangcheng’s “One Man’s Village” and “Send Words” have a strong description of Xinjiang’s scenery, and even make the scenery itself the main body of the novel, which has attracted keen attention.
Gu Cheng has a famous poem, “The night gave me black eyes / I use them to find light”. If a person’s heart is gray, and he sees the world with gray eyes, he sees more interpersonal conflicts, interests and spiritual confusion under the market relationship, how can there be a bright and beautiful world in his heart?
Source: Guangming Daily