People from Wuxian County, Zhejiang Province. 1964 graduated from Shanghai high school. After graduation, he joined Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, worked as a creator and teacher of the propaganda team of agriculture and industry, editor of Xinjiang Literature, and professional writer of Xinjiang Branch of Chinese Writers Association. 1972 began to publish works. He is the author of a collection of poems, The Great Khan Song (Cooperation), The Desert and Me, The Sun in the West, The Black Gobi Rock, etc.
Northwest China and the Poet's Soul —— On Zhang Deyi's Poetry
If Zhang Deyi is a born poet, it is only an exaggeration based on his outstanding talent. In any case, this talent exists. People tell you that Zhang Deyi is a great visionary. Wherever his poems appear, there will be surprises. When you read his poems, what impresses you most is the magnificent imagination flying out of the sky. It is this that makes his poems stand out from the beginning. For example, in "Song of Training Horses for Recruits", he compared Taklimakan to a bus stable, and compared "80,000 Li Sandstorm" to a fierce horse. "The tuyere is a horse's mouth, the sand flow is a horse's mouth, and the sand flow is a ponytail", and the poet himself will ride this incredible giant horse:
Stand up by the horse's mane,
Changfeng holds the reins,
Take a sand column as a whip,
Travel around the world with sandbags.
Fishing out the moon submerged in the sand,
Wash your sweat and hang it tonight.
Dragging clouds out of the sand,
Be my horse!
Although the exaggerated heroism in the poem has passed away today, the wild and mysterious imagination still has some charm.
Needless to say, only by combining this whimsical ability with the poet's realistic aesthetic experience can I get rich connotations and become a vivid creative factor. In this regard, the years of military reclamation provided rich cultural media. On the one hand, it is in the arduous pioneering practice of taming and transforming the northwest that the poet's poetic affinity with the northwest came into being and his inspiration and inspiration came into being. On the other hand, Northwest China was not a passive and lifeless object from the beginning. Magnificent desert sunrise; The mysterious mirage; Dust storms and avalanches that fall all over the sky and cover the sky; It is like a majestic mountain overlooking everything ... Every accidental event, even a quick glance, may arouse Wan Ren's fantasy, which may be transformed into some understanding of existence, thus shaking the poets' thoughts and feelings and accumulating one wonderful moment after another. As a foil and correspondence of pioneers' spiritual personality, what is more abundant and expressive than Northwest China? This two-way construction of natural personification and naturalization of human personality constitutes the far-reaching realistic psychological background of Zhang Deyi's poetry creation.
However, in Jane Deyi's early works, the ability of imagination did not rapidly develop into a style. Although we have seen the embryonic form of lyric style with a central image in many poems, such as Green Painting Plate, Tent Space, and Inscription on the Wall of Fengcang-this lyric style has been developed into a symbol of morality and interests-in more works, imagination is better. The general intention of Zhang Deyi's creation in this period was to publicize the pioneers' ideals. It has become a red line that runs through the two poetry collections of Song of Sweat and Qing Tatar Wood. Passionate and abundant passion pursues an overwhelming expression, so that it is neither necessary nor too late for us to experience the melting pot of imagination. You read this poem:
The sea is high-
Tao Sha is your wrinkle, and white clouds are your hair cover.
Don't brag about your age,
I am still young.
……
You've lived for a million years,
Only wins: thorns, ancient forests and sandbags.
The traces of history are only reed flowers and frost alkali;
The long river of years only keeps the noise of the yellow wind.
……
Oh, give me Shayuan, give me Gobi,
I want to return the spring tide in the oasis to you:
Give me the world, give me the earth,
I want to return you 10 thousand rolls of rosy clouds.
-"to the vast sea"
Here, what is absolutely dominant is the lofty aspirations of publishing dry matter in the palm of your hand and breathing everything into your chest, while comparing Tao Sha to wrinkles, comparing white clouds to hair covers and so on. Although it was also added as an imaginative factor, it did not form an independent aesthetic value. They appear on the peak of emotion and are quickly swallowed up by emotion itself, which is strictly denied. This lyrical way, in essence, belongs to a way of directly expressing feelings and wishes, which embodies simplicity and initial aesthetic mentality. However, it is not this lyrical way and aesthetic mentality that really prevented Zhang Deyi from developing his imagination into an artistic style. Corresponding to the vigorous agitation of youth and ideals, this emotional expression and aesthetic mentality cannot be surpassed. In this regard, it is not difficult to understand as long as you think about the creations of a group of young poets in the 1950s, such as Shao Yanxiang's Go to a Far Away. The poet's old enemy always comes from the opposite side of creation. From this perspective, we can easily find that it is the unchangeable, preconceived ideas and techniques that are incompatible with the essence of poetry creation that hinder, threaten and hurt Zhang Deyi's creative talent from the beginning-we might as well call them "habitual ideas". Obviously, Zhang Deyi's early works were influenced by the empty, big and untimely fashion of the times. Abstract ideals are often regarded as the established starting point and destination, recognized by emotions and attached by beauty. The most typical example is Song of the Tide. Poets describe Hanhai as a rough sea, and they themselves are wave chasers. He used shacks as boats, flat rafts and shovels as paddles to draw water, "idolize month by month" and "making waves on the vast sea every day". This is not a lack of poetry, but when the sentence ends, it suddenly turns:
The boat in the cabin, sailing fast,
Go straight to the capitalist seaport.
Needless to say, this simple "sublimation" is extremely rude, and the result is bound to be that the passionate and vivid aesthetic experience is repeatedly imprisoned and suffocated by boring concepts, and ultimately it cannot be set as a complete and organic artistic conception. The author has no intention of demanding Zhang Deyi. Of course, this stereotype is first limited by society and history. However, once the poet's practice is added to the composition of his creative psychological structure, its negative effect will not disappear easily. In fact, the contradiction between creative imagination and "habitual thinking" is always the basic contradiction in Zhang Qian's moral creation, and the poet struggles with this poetic and non-poetic factor! As a result, creation has become a protracted war that is both happy and painful, both ups and downs!
two
1979' s ideological emancipation movement was another fundamental turning point in the development of China's new poetry. This turning point was initially manifested as an internal crisis. After the idol of modern superstition was shattered, people found that the past life seemed to be in ruins. What followed was a general suspicion of traditional values and a profound reflection on history and reality. Fracture-looking for the universal mentality of becoming a generation of poets, especially young poets. The so-called "rediscovering oneself" is a slogan put forward for the great creation of history and mind under this background.
On the surface, this mental storm left no obvious trace in Zhang Deyi. In 1979 and 1980, he wrote few poems, except Brick Square and Truth. We can hardly read the works that show his reflective consciousness positively, and we can't feel the tension, weightlessness and confusion of learning from mistakes. However, it would be a big mistake to think that he had a muddled attitude towards everything at that time. We can't ask the poet what he must write, only what he wrote. For Zhang Deyi, who has lived in a relatively simple and closed environment for a long time and his ideological quality is not very developed, it is more honest and wise to hold a relatively conservative attitude. However, as long as we extend our eyes a little, it is not difficult to identify the spiritual process of poetry liberation through self-reflection.
The poem "Thousand Springs Waterfall in Tianshan Mountain" published in the March issue of Shanghai Literature 198 1 marks that Zhang Deyi has leapt to a new height. In the preface, the author wrote:
Everyone should be a poem, a unique one.
Poetry, a poem extracted from one's own life.
Every poem should be a person, a person with flesh and blood.
People who are different.
In my constant search, I found myself.
Poetry, discovering my thoughts, belongs to my imagination, belongs to
At my pace.
The consciousness of "unity of poets" revealed here, the strong pursuit of unique style and the basic affirmation of self-exploration should be said to have emerged as the result of their reflection (the poem "Find Yourself" published by Xinjiang Youth in the same period can reflect each other). And if we need such an empty space in life, what we hear is the appeal and call for a poetic living space, that is, it is as vast, solemn and eternal as the "boundless desert sky", and life and fantasy are intertwined; In On the Big Line of the Earth, I saw the poet's recognition and persistence in this world full of "true taste"; In A Dead Corner and A Grain of Sand, I read the poet's sharp criticism and resolute denial of the fleeting time just experienced, such as "no breeze, no spring water", "only sunshine, only storms", as desolate and scorching as "Taklimakan sand disaster". In Missing Tianshan Mountain, I feel the poet's intense joy and profound questioning about life because of "painful and great childbirth" and sudden changes. All this coincides with the theme of "man" in the poetry circle and even the whole literary and art circles at that time and the main tide of reflection, so it is not accidental. The Thousand Springs Waterfall in Tianshan Mountain triggered a surging creative tide. The magnificent reflection affirmed the publicity of the pioneer ideal in his early works, and sublimated it from concrete reference to a poetic realm; At the same time, it denies the experience and concept and the inorganic tendency of separation of flesh and blood caused by "habitual thinking", which has always been a two-way construction of natural personification and naturalization of personality, and suddenly shows charming charm. In a series of works published subsequently, the northwest is no longer just the conquering object and strength foil of pioneers, but a test of life and ideals (the earth has given me a corner of wasteland); Become the counterpart of personality strength (in the chest, put into the vast blue sky); Become the boundary (horizon) of toughness development; Become a medium to experience reality and identify with history (history calls for pioneers); It has become the source of vast, magnificent and boundless beauty (my poems and paintings, the beauty of the desert, etc.) ).
The March of sandstorms,
The crazy rotation of the sand column,
Red willow fire array,
The drums of the rainstorm,
There was a sandy sunset in the evening.
There is lonely smoke in the desert in the morning;
There are clouds and fog in the sky,
There is a long distance under the flat beach.
Beat the eagle wings of the drum,
Wei Zhenzhong;
The sky is covered with sand,
The weather is fine.
-"Beauty of the Desert"
Nervous challenge turned into affectionate gaze, sharp contempt turned into tired praise, and some commentators lamented that his works in this period "lost some original rich life breath compared with the Great Khan Song and the green Tarim" (Shen Yiwei: He reclaimed land in the kingdom of poetry and published it in Xinjiang Literature, Volume 82, No.8, which has a stronger belief and deeper understanding behind all this:
Oh, life, how can there be no open space?
Life without wasteland can only be the graveyard of life.
-"I am proud, I am the son of a pioneer"
In contrast, the romantic pride in early works is inevitably superficial; It is precisely because of this deepening that the poet can treat the northwest equally with a vision that is more in line with the aesthetic essence, and can break away from the stagnation of specific events and find more brilliant poems in the re-examination of the relationship between the two. This equal vision is different from Zhuangzi's "sharing everything" and "traveling together". It is based on the pioneers' deep awareness of their own strength, and accordingly organically combines the two essentially the same themes of praising the pioneers and exploring the beauty of the northwest at a higher level, thus forming its magnificent art. Corresponding to the deepening of the above-mentioned aesthetic mentality, my imagination wings, which have been in a semi-bound state, have also been shaken by internal liberation and immediately showed an upward trend. Therefore, Geng is as big as the vast desert and as small as pebble sand ridge; Suddenly, like a wisp of smoke, it will last as long as a mountain; Even the sunset red willow, sand column whirlwind, falcon wild horse, star and moon rainbow, all the scenery in the northwest is swaying in his imagination, which is meaningless. At this time, his ability to be good at whimsy is even directly reflected in many poems themselves, such as the pupil of the earth, what will be born in the sky, I am standing next to the ashtray of the earth, what is the cosmic pub outside the sky and so on. In his early works, the embryonic lyric way, which set a lot of metaphors around a central image and developed fully, developed into a typical lyric way. Its characteristics are as follows: First, it has an all-round management image and a full perspective. If we take painting as an example, although Zhang Deyi's brushwork is gorgeous, his management structure is different from western perspective-oriented oil painting, and closer to the traditional landscape painting in China. The central image only provides internal maintenance as a unified factor, while the development of specific image is the combination of countless scattered perspectives. In this way, the poet can expand his imagination on the three deep levels of height, distance and flatness mentioned in the classical painting theory, and obtain a circular internal space full of perspective, so the overall artistic conception is broad and vigorous. This feature is not only reflected in such long lyrical spaces as Life Needs Such a Space, Far Away, There is My Sacred Wildfire, but also in such short works as Pupils of the Earth, My House and Umbrella. Among a series of lyric poems such as The Sower and Standing between Oasis and Wilderness, he is the most outstanding. Secondly, dense images, orderly sentence patterns and urgent rhythm have formed an impenetrable and wanton atmosphere in Wang Yang. The new aesthetic discovery made Zhang Deyi continue to show some passion. Although this passion is not the one-sided desire to conquer in the early days, it is a purer spiritual touch after aesthetic deepening, but as a long-term accumulated energy in the heart, it can not be satisfied with the leisurely performance; On the contrary, because of overcoming the inorganic tendency, imagination itself has become a direct form of passion and has an independent aesthetic value, so it has a more exciting and exciting trend. Try a section of "1800 Pan Tian" on the Panshan Highway in Tianshan Mountain:
Oh, this is the earth going to heaven.
Throw out 1800 rolls of rope,
Tie it up.
How many generations have you climbed?
The peak of a dream;
This is the world of the sky.
1800 packing,
The blood and sweat between people
The cycle from this root is upward,
Nourish the garden of heaven;
This is the earth going into space.
1800 giant vines stick out tenaciously,
Determined to make the ideal flower of the rising sun,
Flowering at the tip of the vine;
This is the earth going to heaven.
Jump 1800 spiral,
Giant screws sticking out of the snow-capped mountains.
Fill the sky solemnly!
Fantasy depends on well-organized sentence patterns and strong sense of rhythm, such as huge waterfalls flying down and pearls and jade splashing; Another example is that the sea is rough and layered. Because of the control of the central image, it seems indiscriminate, but the independent image has an emotional orientation of * * *. This lyric way, which can be called "poetic fugue", can form a novel and magnificent double atmosphere, thus greatly strengthening the impact of poetry.
If the deepening of aesthetic psychology provides an internal foundation for Zhang Deyi to form his unique artistic style, it is the above-mentioned typical lyric way that makes it come true and complete. 1in the first half of 982, this state reached its peak through the inner balance of the poet's charm, imagination, skills and beautiful language. But at the same time, it also exposed a certain tendency of self-repetition in Zhang Deyi's creation during this period. This kind of self-repetition mainly refers to the repetition in the use of images as mentioned by some theorists, but the internal repetition in the creation of artistic conception-in fact, the former can only be explained by the latter. Try to compare the first half of 1982 with History Calling for Pioneers, I am proud, I am the descendant of Pioneers, There is my sacred wildfire in the distance, Plantation Owners Stand Between Oasis and Wasteland, and Life and China. It is always a vast and heroic feeling flickering in the dense space of imagination. This makes us have to admire the poet's seemingly endless imagination, but at the same time we feel a repetitive monotony emotionally. In the formation of artistic style, it is characterized by active creative elements, gradually transforming negative and rigid aesthetic inertia; Full of passion turned into a tidal wave of feelings; The changeable imagination can only be shown off when it is completed; The Guo Xiaochuan-style sentence pattern of "everyone is against putting in order" makes people feel depressed and heavy. The above feelings are more obvious after reading the works published in the second half of 1982, such as Far Away, Love of My Life, I Send You a World beyond the Great Wall, Tree Planters, etc.
This situation is the new form of the development of the basic contradiction between creative imagination and habitual thinking in Zhang Deyi's creation, which we pointed out in the first section. The difference is that "habitual thinking" is not mainly reflected in the influence of the times, but in the poet's own aesthetic inertia; Its function form is not the suppression of imagination, but the out-of-control of imagination. It goes without saying that the latter is sharper and deeper than the former. Fortunately, from this embarrassing embarrassment, we also see new creative opportunities.
three
In 1982 published in August, the image of me and the desert and the age difference between me and the world, the "objectification" consciousness of the poet and the northwest appeared. Here, "I" and Northwest China are no longer one-sided objects, but I have you in me and you have me in you, which penetrate each other and complement each other:
I am like a desert: bold, open and broad-minded.
The desert is like me: elegant, passionate and romantic.
Subsequent publications such as Color, Post Station, Life, and Symphony of the Great World, I occupied a vast desert sky, looking for a new world, and the universe and I showed this new aesthetic consciousness incisively and vividly. This change, as a continuation of the above-mentioned deepening of aesthetic mentality, marks the two-way process of natural personification and naturalization of personality, and has risen to a new level in the poet's consciousness, thus injecting new vitality into his rigid feelings and finally freeing him from the domination of the above-mentioned structural formula.
The theme of promoting the pioneers' ideals is gradually diluted and replaced by a deeper revelation of the beauty of the northwest; The latter is no longer limited to the correspondence with the pioneers' spiritual personality, but shows a more free and relaxed attitude. This feature is even more obvious when the objectification consciousness is further sublimated into the cosmic consciousness of "being alone with heaven and earth" in poems such as A Taste Bud, Sculpture, My Floor Lamp, Northwest Dagang and the Soul of Poetry, and Dusk. That passionate state gave way to a more relaxed, quiet but deeper and clearer mental state; The structure of poetry tends to be sparse; The rhythm is also slow. Externally, the sentence pattern of parallelism and antithesis has been broken, and more people resort to more flexible, free and concise expressions. Therefore, although the poets in this period repeatedly claimed that they were pursuing a bold and magnificent aesthetic style, what really reflected his breakthrough and achievements was not the occasional high-spirited agitation of pioneering themes, but the twilight-like melancholy and tragic of beacon towers and ancient battlefields. Such as "mountain" and "watershed"; Such as "Roy" and "I suck the ink between heaven and earth"; Such as "the first spring" and "the village listens to hoofbeats"; Such as Tianshan: Color Trio and Tianshan Butterfly. This trend of diversified styles reflects another liberation from the inside, and the poet's brilliant imagination has become a real "second vision". It has a peculiar penetrating power, which can break the aesthetic hard shell covering the objects that people are used to seeing and describing repeatedly, and highlight a new aesthetic realm. Looking at the mountains, he wrote:
hill
random riprap
diastrophism
A cosmic force that stands high in space.
Wild and fierce.
Infinite conquest of the sky
Force corps
-"Mountain"
How shocking and thrilling! Look at his goose again:
Black spot
black spot
From the stamens of the sunset
Suddenly appear, hovering in the air
-"Early Spring"
How leisurely and comfortable it is, and the charm is not investigated. In "Village Listening to Hooves", we see a more advanced form of this "second vision". The poet wrote that in his sleep, he heard early hooves coming from the window. It is so melodious and gentle that the poet thinks it is a horseshoe and a desert, and the earth is interacting in an orderly way, and even the feeling of "knocking off a little remnant stars and slanting the moon" and "considering the slight temperature of the morning light" is amazing. I didn't expect the poet to start another wave with a change of pen.
suddenly
The opposite of the horseshoe was broken.
Wear, pain and spasm of enough paper.
The earth is not satisfied with the smoothness of horseshoes.
Horseshoe is dissatisfied with the dullness of the earth.
Between heaven and earth, steep mountains suddenly formed.
Give birth to steep mountains, towering mountains.
One peak presses another, and one layer is steep.
Make mines, cirrus clouds, and roll electricity.
The rugged ups and downs are due to the competition of thorns.
10,000-weight sand skin penetrates the stratum.
Next, the pen gesture dropped sharply, "a thousand miles of desert cut off a string of hoofbeats"; So, "the window paper returns to calm/as if in meditation." This is a process from static to dynamic, from slow to urgent, and then to far, which has become a symbol and correspondence between life and soul. It seems that they not only vibrate but also project on the thin enough paper, so that poets can not only hear but also "see"; The organic transformation of emotion in imagination becomes a direct means to deepen emotion and expand artistic conception here, thus becoming the structure itself. Poetry can do this, which is called superb.
On the other hand, the above breakthrough failed to eliminate the ominous shadow of the poet's self-repetition in the previous stage. The repetition at this time is highlighted by the repetition of the central image. For example, the taste buds in the desert, a taste bud in peace, the geese and the first geese in early spring, I am a kite in the last kite, and the pioneers talk about the horizon and the last kite. As the central image, "Poetry Volume" has been used three times in I'm afraid to open my own poetry manuscript, Desert, Frontier Poems Collection and Desert Wind. The realistic motivation of this repetition may be various, but it is it that makes the basic contradiction in Zhang Deyi's creation have the highest form. "Habitual thinking" is directly manifested here as a withering of imagination itself. If the monotony caused by the repetition of previous individual images and inner feelings can be lubricated and balanced in reading because of the poet's ten-fold creation, then in the repetition of the central image, we really hear the harsh noise of his creative key colliding with the bottom of the pot of talent. Because of this, it is not difficult to understand why poems such as "I dare not open my own manuscript" give people the feeling of playing with imagination; However, there are many poems focusing on scholarship in Poems of the Desert Frontier and Desert Wind.