In today's technological age, everything is changing rapidly, and loneliness is unprecedentedly deep. On various social networks and chat apps, people are constantly looking for someone to talk to, and are eager for someone to fill their needs. Loneliness and emptiness.
But some people don't seem to have changed much, and they are not afraid of the "real thing" of loneliness, such as the poet Mo Fei. Whether it is the era of planned economy or the era of market economy, people have been silently writing poems that have nothing to do with livelihood. Could it be who
is? I'm afraid not many people know today that there is a "Poet Mo Fei" in the world. Although the term "Mo Fei" caused quite a stir in the poetry world many years ago, for the increasingly noisy "literary circle" and "poetry circle", Mo Fei, as a poet, has been too quiet in recent years, as if he has never existed.
Until 2018, some kind of fate suddenly happened to Mo Fei, and three publishing houses were promoting his works. Writers Press has released his poetry collection "I Miss You", Peking University Press has released his photography collection "Wind Blowing Grass and Trees", and recently Yuefu Cultural and Commercial Press has published three of his short books "Yisheng's Hutong" "The Time of Orchid" and "One Leaf, One Cave in the Sky". Many readers who have just met Mo Fei read his works and found them pure and natural, full of unspeakable touches. But those who have read Mo Fei's poems in the past are suddenly shocked to realize that this Mo Fei is actually that Mo Fei! Did he finally start writing poetry again?
Mo Fei was born in Beijing on December 31, 1960. Poet, photographer, naturalist. He once worked in the Greening Department of the Beijing Garden Bureau. Began writing in the late 1970s. He has published poetry collections such as "Words and Things" and "Selected Poems of Mo Fei". His works have been translated into many languages, published and published. From July to September 2012, at the invitation of the Catholic University of Ecuador, he inspected and photographed native plants in the Galapagos Islands and the South American Plateau as a nature photographer, and held a personal photo exhibition "The Hidden Words of Plants and Plants" in Quito. In fact,
has been writing. Write in the midst of controversy, write outside the crowd, write in the study, write in the wilderness, write calmly, write without hesitation.
A few days ago, a reporter from the Beijing News went to Mo Fei’s home with several new works and old works that were long out of print. They chatted with him from the sunny day to the dark night, and the conversation got to the fork in the language. It was like falling into time. outside. Could it be that he hadn't spoken to him for a long, long time? Those who had spoken to him over the years were all the plants and trees in the wild. He never looks for comfort from people. In his opinion, "people are lonely only when they are with people." When he gets along with plants, he becomes not more lonely, but more spacious.
"The Hutong of Yisheng", "The Time of Orchid", "One Leaf and a Cave in the Sky", author: Mo Fei, version: Yuefu Culture | The Commercial Press, October 2018
"My first cry predicted my life"
html More than 0 years ago, Mo Fei wrote a poem called "Testament":"Life and death are like wooden bridges and running water, meeting and missing. / This is a destined moment. / I have no legacy worth leaving. / Even my children died of illness in my heart. / My first cry predicted my life. / Life is so short, / Forget about me. / Don’t erect a tombstone in front of my grave. The stone will be weathered. /Tear off my memorial day. /Death is so clear, /O man! You are like the outline of the tomb! /As for my tomb! If the funeral needs to begin, then it should begin. /Don't wait for me. /Really, this is the last request."
After the poem was written, it was left behind. Probably in the autumn of 1985, this "Testament" went to distant Switzerland with Mo Fei's friend Ma Desheng. After his recommendation, it was recommended to Russo, a poet and sinologist at the University of Bologna, and compiled into "Selected Poems of Ten Contemporary Chinese Poems". At the end of 1986, it was sent from Paris to Yan Li in the United States via Ma Desheng. In 1987, it was published in Yi Xing, a Chinese poetry magazine he founded in New York. Later, in early 2009, "The Will" was included in "Excellent Chinese Poetry 1978-2008" by Zhang Qinghua, and triggered a belated discussion.
At that time, the poet Pan Xichen read this poem in the middle of the night and couldn't help but call Mo Fei to pick him up and tell Mo Fei to read him a good poem. Could it be that after hearing this, he remained silent for a long time. After a long while, he told Pan Xichen that when he first heard this poem, his first feeling was inexplicable embarrassment. It seemed that it was a long time ago and had nothing to do with him. The second feeling is shock. The sudden "resurrection" of this poem makes the things written in black and white less clear.
In this collection of poems edited by Zhang Qinghua, the writing time of "The Will" is marked as 2005. But in fact, this time has to go back more than 20 years. At that time, he was 24 years old and had just made a solemn decision to engage in the "career" of writing poetry. He remembered it very clearly because he had never suffered from insomnia in his life. When he was 24 years old, he didn't sleep much for a week and struggled with the question "What should I do in this life?" day and night. Although he started writing poetry when he was 16 years old, and he was somewhat successful when he was 20 years old, he was still a little scared to decide to write poetry for the rest of his life. Finally, he ended the fight. He thought clearly that only writing poetry could truly express and explain himself, and there was no other way.
"I Miss You: Selected Poems by Mo Fei", author: Mo Fei, version: Writers Press, April 2018
Mo Fei has a strong desire to express himself. This desire comes from his childhood. Similar to the fate of all children born in the 1960s, Mo Fei was sent to a ravine in the Taihang Mountains of Hebei Province with his parents when he was five or six years old because of "composition issues." He stayed there for twelve years. He did not want to go into details about this experience, but said that it had a fatal impact on his subsequent writing. If those things had not happened, he might have thought about things like promotion and wealth, like many people.
This also explains why he writes poetry. Because at that time he couldn't talk to the whole world and could only talk to himself. For him, writing poetry is talking to himself. "My understanding of the world began when I was five or six years old. At that time, I knew what human nature was. It was terrible. These things should only be known at the age of eighteen. So I did not have a childhood or a youth. I grew up very early, or I grew old very early. Life taught me everything when I was five or six years old. Later, I tried to live my life backwards,"
Many people said. , this "Testament" seems to be written by an old man. The life and death in this poem is so complete that it hurts. People think this is Mo Fei's masterpiece. But maybe he feels that this poem is too "mature", that it was written at an abnormal stage, and that it is an abnormal poem. Now he will not write it again.
From poetry to photography
It is different from the calm and serene look in the photos. It gives me a serious feeling. It's not that he is serious, but his state. When you look into his eyes, you will feel that there is something very hard and distant in them.
was born on the last day of the year. Now in 2019, he is 58 years old. During these nearly 60 years, Mo Fei wrote poetry for more than 40 years, worked as a gardener for more than three years, and spent nearly 20 years photographing plants. In his own words, "I have never done anything serious since the age of 24." Becoming a gardener is accidental, but being close to plants and trees is inevitable. Before the Cultural Revolution, his home was in Beihai, and there were plants everywhere. Later, he was thrown into the mountains by misplaced fate, and the most important time of his life was spent in the wild.
"Idiot", photographed by Mo Fei (the same below, 2013)
In his first poem, the names of plants and trees are not clear yet, trees are just trees, and leaves are just leaves. "People running in desire/have to wait for every other tree." "Falled leaves bruised by metaphors/are not as solid as autumn." "A table runs down the street without looking back." These poems Full of rough, abrupt and abstract representations.
"Words and Things", author: Mo Fei, version: Huaxia Publishing House, October 1997
In 1991, he completed a collection of poems "Words and Things", most of which were "Yuan poems" that discussed the poetry itself. They are very different from Mo Fei's later poems, full of pain.That was when he was desperately studying philosophy, had just returned from the poverty-stricken place of exile, and was full of hunger for books. He did not have the opportunity to enter school, so he spent all his free time in the library, reading the books he had missed. Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Foucault stirred his heart. They were written into poems and compiled into a book "Spiritual History" (1996). Confusion is carved like stone into his heavy poetic images and emotions, and it also records his most depressed period. But now I feel that they are "very indifferent and have almost no emotional activity."
The influx of emotions happened after Mo Fei came into contact with photography.
"I have been writing poetry for so long, and I reached the bottleneck stage, and then I wanted to find another way to write poetry. I also thought about turning to painting, but I felt that I couldn't do it, so I chose photography."
Zizhu Courtyard (2011)
Could it be that the unit where he used to work was right next to Zizhuyuan Park, which provided him with some convenience. After work every day, he wanders around the garden with his camera on his back, looking for those inconspicuous plants. He felt, "If you can't even figure out what the things around you are or ignore them, then the so-called distant places, Tibet, and Africa have little meaning." Later, he ran out of the garden and often wandered around the Third Ring Road, , for I have lost three bicycles. Later, he photographed the wild grasses on the curbs in Beijing to the wild flowers in the Andes Mountains of South America. He saw a wider world, but he still fell in love with the wild flowers and grass around him. He is accustomed to looking at his feet when walking. Once he finds a target, he will bend down and kneel, or even kneel on the ground.
"Dead Leaves on the Vine" (2015)
One winter, maybe I found a dead leaf of Tianmu Qionghua in Zizhuyuan. This almost defeated dead leaf shrank, trembled, shattered, and disappeared in the cold wind. He was shocked and decided to record it with a camera. In two mornings, he photographed 81 moments before this dead leaf fell, and then wrote 81 poems about them.
In Mo Fei's eyes, turning to photography is not a crossover. If the camera can also be understood as a pen, he is still writing poetry. "I think I am a poet first. When I want to get rid of the dilemma of writing, I use a camera to write. I find that when I use a camera, I write more poems and they are richer."
Could it be that The poems are becoming more and more concrete and gentle and approachable. The painful feeling that pervaded the poem when I was young is gradually diluting.
"I'm afraid of people's maturity"
Could it be that my current home is in a row of buildings next to the alley. Outside the window, I can see the skeleton of the alley. Inside the window, the vines of bitter melon are woven into a curtain. While chatting with him, there was a continuous sound of shouting outside the house, full of the atmosphere of old Beijing alleys. As the sky gets darker and the colors of the setting sun shine in, the sound of returning home, the sound of cooking, and the sound of schoolchildren practicing the piano gradually fill the house. He directed me to see a bitter melon plant.
Bitter melon belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family and can be pollinated naturally in the vegetable garden. If grown indoors, artificial pollination is required. After talking about this, Mo Fei looked for female flowers on the vine for me to pollinate, but couldn't find them everywhere. Just when we were about to give up, he suddenly found one in the corner. "Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting." Mo Fei was suddenly very happy and told me that the seeds of bitter melon are sweet, and so are pumpkins.
"The stupid melon looks calm, like the discarded wheel of a wheelbarrow. This small window sill is a small stage, and persimmons will return to their persimmons and their wishes will return to their wishes." (2013)
These melon plants are probably the objects that give shape to meditative moments. He once wrote a series of "The Biography of Idiots", which is very interesting:
Idiot said that dead ends and thousands of miles of rivers and mountains are the same thing.
Idiot said, if the wood is not long enough, use a flame to connect it.
idiot said, it's not that the situation is too complicated or too bad, it's that the situation is gone.
The idiot sat in the garden all winter without blinking or saying a word.
idiot said, where time does not work, whoever takes it belongs to whom. go quickly.
Idiot said, the stars are so lonely, no one is watering them, no one is watching to pick them, and they cannot be picked away.
In today's technological age, everything is changing rapidly, and loneliness is unprecedentedly deep. On various social networks and chat apps, people are constantly looking for someone to talk to, and are eager for someone to fill their needs. Loneliness and emptiness.
But some people don't seem to have changed much, and they are not afraid of the "real thing" of loneliness, such as the poet Mo Fei. Whether it is the era of planned economy or the era of market economy, people have been silently writing poems that have nothing to do with livelihood. Could it be who
is? I'm afraid not many people know today that there is a "Poet Mo Fei" in the world. Although the term "Mo Fei" caused quite a stir in the poetry world many years ago, for the increasingly noisy "literary circle" and "poetry circle", Mo Fei, as a poet, has been too quiet in recent years, as if he has never existed.
Until 2018, some kind of fate suddenly happened to Mo Fei, and three publishing houses were promoting his works. Writers Press has released his poetry collection "I Miss You", Peking University Press has released his photography collection "Wind Blowing Grass and Trees", and recently Yuefu Cultural and Commercial Press has published three of his short books "Yisheng's Hutong" "The Time of Orchid" and "One Leaf, One Cave in the Sky". Many readers who have just met Mo Fei read his works and found them pure and natural, full of unspeakable touches. But those who have read Mo Fei's poems in the past are suddenly shocked to realize that this Mo Fei is actually that Mo Fei! Did he finally start writing poetry again?
Mo Fei was born in Beijing on December 31, 1960. Poet, photographer, naturalist. He once worked in the Greening Department of the Beijing Garden Bureau. Began writing in the late 1970s. He has published poetry collections such as "Words and Things" and "Selected Poems of Mo Fei". His works have been translated into many languages, published and published. From July to September 2012, at the invitation of the Catholic University of Ecuador, he inspected and photographed native plants in the Galapagos Islands and the South American Plateau as a nature photographer, and held a personal photo exhibition "The Hidden Words of Plants and Plants" in Quito. In fact,
has been writing. Write in the midst of controversy, write outside the crowd, write in the study, write in the wilderness, write calmly, write without hesitation.
A few days ago, a reporter from the Beijing News went to Mo Fei’s home with several new works and old works that were long out of print. They chatted with him from the sunny day to the dark night, and the conversation got to the fork in the language. It was like falling into time. outside. Could it be that he hadn't spoken to him for a long, long time? Those who had spoken to him over the years were all the plants and trees in the wild. He never looks for comfort from people. In his opinion, "people are lonely only when they are with people." When he gets along with plants, he becomes not more lonely, but more spacious.
"The Hutong of Yisheng", "The Time of Orchid", "One Leaf and a Cave in the Sky", author: Mo Fei, version: Yuefu Culture | The Commercial Press, October 2018
"My first cry predicted my life"
html More than 0 years ago, Mo Fei wrote a poem called "Testament":"Life and death are like wooden bridges and running water, meeting and missing. / This is a destined moment. / I have no legacy worth leaving. / Even my children died of illness in my heart. / My first cry predicted my life. / Life is so short, / Forget about me. / Don’t erect a tombstone in front of my grave. The stone will be weathered. /Tear off my memorial day. /Death is so clear, /O man! You are like the outline of the tomb! /As for my tomb! If the funeral needs to begin, then it should begin. /Don't wait for me. /Really, this is the last request."
After the poem was written, it was left behind. Probably in the autumn of 1985, this "Testament" went to distant Switzerland with Mo Fei's friend Ma Desheng. After his recommendation, it was recommended to Russo, a poet and sinologist at the University of Bologna, and compiled into "Selected Poems of Ten Contemporary Chinese Poems". At the end of 1986, it was sent from Paris to Yan Li in the United States via Ma Desheng. In 1987, it was published in Yi Xing, a Chinese poetry magazine he founded in New York. Later, in early 2009, "The Will" was included in "Excellent Chinese Poetry 1978-2008" by Zhang Qinghua, and triggered a belated discussion.
At that time, the poet Pan Xichen read this poem in the middle of the night and couldn't help but call Mo Fei to pick him up and tell Mo Fei to read him a good poem. Could it be that after hearing this, he remained silent for a long time. After a long while, he told Pan Xichen that when he first heard this poem, his first feeling was inexplicable embarrassment. It seemed that it was a long time ago and had nothing to do with him. The second feeling is shock. The sudden "resurrection" of this poem makes the things written in black and white less clear.
In this collection of poems edited by Zhang Qinghua, the writing time of "The Will" is marked as 2005. But in fact, this time has to go back more than 20 years. At that time, he was 24 years old and had just made a solemn decision to engage in the "career" of writing poetry. He remembered it very clearly because he had never suffered from insomnia in his life. When he was 24 years old, he didn't sleep much for a week and struggled with the question "What should I do in this life?" day and night. Although he started writing poetry when he was 16 years old, and he was somewhat successful when he was 20 years old, he was still a little scared to decide to write poetry for the rest of his life. Finally, he ended the fight. He thought clearly that only writing poetry could truly express and explain himself, and there was no other way.
"I Miss You: Selected Poems by Mo Fei", author: Mo Fei, version: Writers Press, April 2018
Mo Fei has a strong desire to express himself. This desire comes from his childhood. Similar to the fate of all children born in the 1960s, Mo Fei was sent to a ravine in the Taihang Mountains of Hebei Province with his parents when he was five or six years old because of "composition issues." He stayed there for twelve years. He did not want to go into details about this experience, but said that it had a fatal impact on his subsequent writing. If those things had not happened, he might have thought about things like promotion and wealth, like many people.
This also explains why he writes poetry. Because at that time he couldn't talk to the whole world and could only talk to himself. For him, writing poetry is talking to himself. "My understanding of the world began when I was five or six years old. At that time, I knew what human nature was. It was terrible. These things should only be known at the age of eighteen. So I did not have a childhood or a youth. I grew up very early, or I grew old very early. Life taught me everything when I was five or six years old. Later, I tried to live my life backwards,"
Many people said. , this "Testament" seems to be written by an old man. The life and death in this poem is so complete that it hurts. People think this is Mo Fei's masterpiece. But maybe he feels that this poem is too "mature", that it was written at an abnormal stage, and that it is an abnormal poem. Now he will not write it again.
From poetry to photography
It is different from the calm and serene look in the photos. It gives me a serious feeling. It's not that he is serious, but his state. When you look into his eyes, you will feel that there is something very hard and distant in them.
was born on the last day of the year. Now in 2019, he is 58 years old. During these nearly 60 years, Mo Fei wrote poetry for more than 40 years, worked as a gardener for more than three years, and spent nearly 20 years photographing plants. In his own words, "I have never done anything serious since the age of 24." Becoming a gardener is accidental, but being close to plants and trees is inevitable. Before the Cultural Revolution, his home was in Beihai, and there were plants everywhere. Later, he was thrown into the mountains by misplaced fate, and the most important time of his life was spent in the wild.
"Idiot", photographed by Mo Fei (the same below, 2013)
In his first poem, the names of plants and trees are not clear yet, trees are just trees, and leaves are just leaves. "People running in desire/have to wait for every other tree." "Falled leaves bruised by metaphors/are not as solid as autumn." "A table runs down the street without looking back." These poems Full of rough, abrupt and abstract representations.
"Words and Things", author: Mo Fei, version: Huaxia Publishing House, October 1997
In 1991, he completed a collection of poems "Words and Things", most of which were "Yuan poems" that discussed the poetry itself. They are very different from Mo Fei's later poems, full of pain.That was when he was desperately studying philosophy, had just returned from the poverty-stricken place of exile, and was full of hunger for books. He did not have the opportunity to enter school, so he spent all his free time in the library, reading the books he had missed. Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Foucault stirred his heart. They were written into poems and compiled into a book "Spiritual History" (1996). Confusion is carved like stone into his heavy poetic images and emotions, and it also records his most depressed period. But now I feel that they are "very indifferent and have almost no emotional activity."
The influx of emotions happened after Mo Fei came into contact with photography.
"I have been writing poetry for so long, and I reached the bottleneck stage, and then I wanted to find another way to write poetry. I also thought about turning to painting, but I felt that I couldn't do it, so I chose photography."
Zizhu Courtyard (2011)
Could it be that the unit where he used to work was right next to Zizhuyuan Park, which provided him with some convenience. After work every day, he wanders around the garden with his camera on his back, looking for those inconspicuous plants. He felt, "If you can't even figure out what the things around you are or ignore them, then the so-called distant places, Tibet, and Africa have little meaning." Later, he ran out of the garden and often wandered around the Third Ring Road, , for I have lost three bicycles. Later, he photographed the wild grasses on the curbs in Beijing to the wild flowers in the Andes Mountains of South America. He saw a wider world, but he still fell in love with the wild flowers and grass around him. He is accustomed to looking at his feet when walking. Once he finds a target, he will bend down and kneel, or even kneel on the ground.
"Dead Leaves on the Vine" (2015)
One winter, maybe I found a dead leaf of Tianmu Qionghua in Zizhuyuan. This almost defeated dead leaf shrank, trembled, shattered, and disappeared in the cold wind. He was shocked and decided to record it with a camera. In two mornings, he photographed 81 moments before this dead leaf fell, and then wrote 81 poems about them.
In Mo Fei's eyes, turning to photography is not a crossover. If the camera can also be understood as a pen, he is still writing poetry. "I think I am a poet first. When I want to get rid of the dilemma of writing, I use a camera to write. I find that when I use a camera, I write more poems and they are richer."
Could it be that The poems are becoming more and more concrete and gentle and approachable. The painful feeling that pervaded the poem when I was young is gradually diluting.
"I'm afraid of people's maturity"
Could it be that my current home is in a row of buildings next to the alley. Outside the window, I can see the skeleton of the alley. Inside the window, the vines of bitter melon are woven into a curtain. While chatting with him, there was a continuous sound of shouting outside the house, full of the atmosphere of old Beijing alleys. As the sky gets darker and the colors of the setting sun shine in, the sound of returning home, the sound of cooking, and the sound of schoolchildren practicing the piano gradually fill the house. He directed me to see a bitter melon plant.
Bitter melon belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family and can be pollinated naturally in the vegetable garden. If grown indoors, artificial pollination is required. After talking about this, Mo Fei looked for female flowers on the vine for me to pollinate, but couldn't find them everywhere. Just when we were about to give up, he suddenly found one in the corner. "Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting." Mo Fei was suddenly very happy and told me that the seeds of bitter melon are sweet, and so are pumpkins.
"The stupid melon looks calm, like the discarded wheel of a wheelbarrow. This small window sill is a small stage, and persimmons will return to their persimmons and their wishes will return to their wishes." (2013)
These melon plants are probably the objects that give shape to meditative moments. He once wrote a series of "The Biography of Idiots", which is very interesting:
Idiot said that dead ends and thousands of miles of rivers and mountains are the same thing.
Idiot said, if the wood is not long enough, use a flame to connect it.
idiot said, it's not that the situation is too complicated or too bad, it's that the situation is gone.
The idiot sat in the garden all winter without blinking or saying a word.
idiot said, where time does not work, whoever takes it belongs to whom. go quickly.
Idiot said, the stars are so lonely, no one is watering them, no one is watching to pick them, and they cannot be picked away.
As soon as I thought about it, all the flowers withered.
Could it be that these interesting sentences were so enjoyable to write at the time that I wrote more than a thousand paragraphs in one go. In Mo Fei's writing, the "idiot" is like a child who is not familiar with the world, but in his ignorance and innocence is deep wisdom. Could it be that
told me a "joke" about jelly: There is a story that parents ask their children, how many jelly is one jelly plus one jelly? The child answered eight. The parent thinks the child is stupid and gets angry with the child.
But Mo Fei felt that this child was quite smart because he did not draw the usual conclusions. "For children, there is no distinction between things. The same is true for poets and artists. They are all childish. Great artists should return to childhood. If they cannot do this, being an artist is very doubtful. So Marx said that ancient Greece Literature cannot be surpassed because it is the work of human childhood. Human beings are very mature, but sometimes, maturity can be equated with stupidity," Mo Fei said seriously.
Speaking of difficulties, Mo Fei showed me his study room. The space of the study is like a deep cave, but it is filled with books, covering the walls, the floor, and every corner. They overflow the study and occupy the entire home. Could it be that he spent all the money he earned throughout his life on buying books. He has a collection of "Chinese Materia Medica" (published by the Commercial Press). In 1992, he encountered 8 volumes in a Beijing second-hand bookstore. Although it was not a complete set, it was also very expensive. But at that time, his entire fortune was only 2,000 yuan. He gritted his teeth and spent the entire two thousand yuan to buy it. A few years ago in Taipei, I encountered two more volumes. Finally, through a poet friend in Hong Kong, I purchased the remaining volumes, and finally assembled the current set of 12 volumes.
A person in a trance, a sycamore tree in a trance. (2013)
Is it possible that I don’t have much time to study in school in my life? When he was in Taihang Mountain, he only went to junior high school. After that, he never had the chance to go to high school, let alone university. Later, after returning to Beijing, he signed up to take a self-study exam and received a diploma from Beijing Normal University. For Mo Fei, these books are his school. Most of the day, he stayed in this small study doing his work, writing poems, thinking, and talking to himself. Could it be that when
decided to write poetry, the atmosphere in the Chinese poetry world was not good. Misty poetry was criticized all day long, and material suddenly expanded. Many people were swept away, and poets gave up writing poetry. "This is a very helpless thing, because you have to survive," Mo Fei said. "But neither the planned economy nor the market economy era has affected me." He has been writing until now, just like the "man who lives in the idiot" in his poem, weaving all things with the vines of words.
A reader who was confused about writing poetry once asked him, what is poetry? Could it be that poetry is doubt itself, "The poet does not know how to write, which is the reason to continue writing poetry." Could it be that what is the doubt now? I didn't ask this question after all. It was already too late.
Could the dialogue be
"The arrogance of intellectuals is very stupid"
Beijing News: Let’s talk about photography again?
Could it be: In my opinion, nature is a perfect book that is truly worth reading. Photographing plants is very enjoyable. I was actually a little greedy when I was photographing, and I always felt that I didn’t really capture their soul. Plants are not people. You can play with people and communicate with them, but you cannot tell a dead leaf what you think. How you compose the picture with wind and light is how you compose it. I will not fiddle with them. If there is fiddling, God is fiddling with it, wind and light are fiddling with it.
Only when you remember something can you respond, and the same is true for taking pictures. This is especially true for me. Because you repeat something repeatedly, your intuition will be open, and you will actually encounter what you want to photograph. However, if you don't repeat it, your intuition will not be opened, and your search state will be slow after you go out. When a person encounters something, it is not completely accidental. There is cause and effect, but you just don't know it.
One spring, I was photographing wild plants in the mountains of Beijing and met a shepherd in his sixties and his more than 30 goats.I asked him about the local common name of Polygonatum odorifera, a lily plant, and he pointed with his hand: "Bingdangcai, there are a lot of these herbs in the mountains." Polygonatum odorifera is called "Lingdangcai" in the local area. The flowers are like bells, and the "cai" can be It is edible and has extremely high nutritional value. This can be regarded as "reading" and reading the annotations. In fact, the knowledge that shepherds know far exceeds the existing imagination of society. I have been with farmers since I was a child, and I have a deep understanding of it, but the social evaluation system is different. So to a certain extent, I am sarcastic about the arrogance of intellectuals. I think intellectual arrogance is very stupid.
"The Wind and Trees Move", author: Mo Fei, version: Peking University Press, September 2018
Beijing News: This reminds me that at the end of 1999, a conflict between "intellectual writing" and "folk writing" broke out in the Chinese poetry circle " controversy, in this regard, you, Shucai and Plantagozi proposed a "third way", which caused a lot of controversy. But you seem to have never written about the “Third Way” since then.
Could it be: is what I did before I was 40 years old. At that time I still had some interest in arguing about these, but not anymore. Mainly, I think the whole "intellectual writing" thing is ridiculous. I think there is only one kind of writing in the world, and that is the best writing. The shepherd wrote a very good poem. What kind of writing is it? Is it Shepherd's Pie? The so-called third way, I think is everyone’s way, and everyone’s way must also be the best way. Even if he is a shepherd, even if he is a pig butcher. I despise some intellectuals who think they are closer to the truth. Writing from an intellectual is not only arrogant, but also stupid. I may be quite extreme, and sometimes I have no choice but to use the word "stupid".
Later, led by the poet Pan Xichen, another poet's convention was established, one of which was "a poet must know more than 24 kinds of plants." This point is also brought up because some so-called poets completely ignore grains when writing about plants. I think, except for some special meanings, poems like " There is a tree under Mount Everest " are unqualified. There shouldn't be just one tree written about, they should have names. It is understandable that the poet knows little about plants, but he cannot always be vague, because the poet is engaged in an extreme language, and this cannot be justified. The plants mentioned in some Western and ancient Chinese poems are very clear. If the "Book of Songs" was not written clearly, there would be no more knowledge of the names of plants, trees, insects, fish, birds and beasts, and the "Book of Songs" would not become a classic.
People's understanding of plants is gradually increasing, and there is also a process for the understanding of nature to enter literary works. Our understanding of plants is different from that in the West. In China, there was "An Illustrated Study of Plant Names and Facts" in the Qing Dynasty, and earlier there was "Erya", which introduced more than 300 plants. There is also a book called "Southern Grass and Trees" written by the Wei and Jin Dynasties, which is the world's first flora and introduces 70 or 80 species of plants. The Ming Dynasty had the "Compendium of Materia Medica". Among the more than 2,000 kinds of materia medica, only more than 1,200 were plants. Stones, animals, and people were all included in the concept of materia medica. This classification is very interesting. To a certain extent, my efforts are actually closer to "natural literature", the poetry of nature. There are landscape paintings and landscape poems in China, but there is almost no nature literature in the modern sense like Walden Pond.
"Southern Plants and Trees", written by Ji Han in the Jin Dynasty, came out in 304 AD and recorded plants in Guangdong, Guangxi, Vietnam and other places. It is the earliest existing flora in China.
Beijing News: Will you continue to talk about writing poetry?
Could it be: I have only done one thing in my life: writing poetry. I have not read many complete works. I have only read the complete works of Lu Xun and the complete works of Kafka. Lu Xun said: First, we must survive, second, we must have food and clothing, and third, we must develop. First of all, stay alive. The difference between some people and others is that some people eat to live, and some people live to eat. I'm actually skeptical about gourmets. I don't mean anything else. I'm just reflecting. If I just sit there in a daze after eating and drinking, I won't be able to accept it. It’s someone else who feels happy after eating delicious food, but if it were me, I wouldn’t feel right. I only eat two simple meals every day.From the time I was born in 1960 to now, it would be great if I could survive without starving to death. Sometimes I think about it, it seems that I have never done anything serious in my life, and I have never done anything to make money, so I also feel that I am quite lucky.
Beijing News: You just said that the other complete work you have read is "The Complete Works of Kafka"?
Could it be: is right. Kafka is worth reading in its entirety. Including the pieces of paper Kafka wrote to his family, I find them very impressive. Even those very childish things are important to examine in the entire collection. You will realize that there is no reason for Kafka not to be Kafka. Kafka made me realize that when a poet has written the last line of his poem, his sentences fall into place. It's like the click of a box lid, it fits perfectly. He can leave. If the last line of the poem is not written well, then his previous writing, all previous honors and praises are suspect.
Note: Regarding the last line of the poem, it was specifically mentioned in an article called "The Wooden Table Lying Halfway on the Road": "Poets always start from the second line and end at the penultimate line. Because You can never have a perfect ending. The last line may have appeared at some point in your writing life, but if you didn't know it, you would have done something else from that moment on. Of course, it is more likely that the last line of the poem is in the hands of death. In that case, the poet can only speculate while he is alive, but cannot see it. "
栝楼, Fruit (2018).
Beijing News: Which poets do you like?
Could it be that: ’s early favorites were all Russian poets. European ones include Eliot, Auden, and Hughes; American ones include Stevens, Merwin, and even earlier, Dickinson. People from the United States in the 1960s really like it. There is also pound . I especially like the time when I was reading poetry. Pound's poems had not yet been translated much. I liked Pound. He was very interesting, but of course also controversial. Pound and Frost were once friends, but their relationship later broke down. However, when Pound was imprisoned, Frost also participated in the rescue. Frost is a true "nature poet". I also loved Stevens when I was younger. Stevens is more advanced. He is a philosophical poet, a poet among poets. I think his position in the United States is roughly equivalent to Borges in Argentina. Borges was every bit an ancient Greek writer, a lifelong reader, and even nonsense was interesting, such as his fictionalized confusing taxonomy of China.
Beijing News: What do you think of Borges’s “Chinese Taxonomy”?
Could it be: The Borgesian classification seems absurd. China does not have such a classification. It is entirely Borges’s imagination as a novelist, but he grasped the essence. Foucault believed it and thought that the Chinese classification was really like this. Because of such a misunderstanding, he inspired his fantastic ideas. Borges was so knowledgeable that people believed him. I love Borges, but I have a hard time imagining myself writing novels like him because I feel that life itself is far more dramatic than fiction, regardless of my imagination. For example, Kafka, his novels are not novels at all, they are simply portraits of the human spirit, more real than reality and not absurd at all. In comparison, life seems even more absurd.
Beijing News: I think of your long poem "Su Bo". You started writing this long poem in 2005, and wrote it intermittently and piecemeal for two years, probably more than 300 pieces. You create a unique fabled world of unnamed chaos. These poems have not attracted particularly widespread attention. Can you talk about the origin of the writing of "Su Bo"? What is "Su Bo" and how did this name come about? I feel that in your poems, Su Bo is sometimes like a cheerful and cheerful child, and sometimes like a gloomy and speechless plant.
Could it be: It is accidental that is called "Su Bo". "Su Bo" is a neutral word with no gender. I have never thought about whether Su Bo is a boy or a girl. I think Su Bo is a character who can speak for me. There are some words that a poet cannot express.I sometimes hate the use of the first person in poetry, because from a certain perspective, there is a distance between life and the first person. I also use the image of Su Bo to mean that the author should not always stand up and speak out. In my early years when I was writing poems, I was always reluctant to use the first person. I felt it was silly. This was a problem that tortured me very much. At this age, when I say how I am, I am relieved. But I couldn't do it when I was young. I struggled for a long time. When I wrote "Su Bo", I was already forty-six or seventeen years old, and I was still struggling.
Beijing News: But I noticed that the first person still appears in "Su Bo", such as verse 76: "Su Bo, I just want to talk to you. In the reflected shadow, our plants are in words Basically. ”
Could it be: It’s interesting that you mentioned this. This is rarely the case. Even if I refer to "I," it is not "I" in the first-person sense. "Su Bo" is completely the product of self-dialogue. In a sense, I'm still talking to myself. The interesting thing is that it avoids "me, me, me" and the feeling of being above everything else. Although Shakespeare said that "man is the primate of all things", this has its background. In the darkness of the Middle Ages, people needed liberation. Looking at it now, this classification is just like the caste system, it is an artificial definition. If you want to classify bitter melon, the world is completely different. To say that plants or animals are "smart" is in itself anthropocentric. I am wary of such claims. In my concept, there are no beneficial insects or pests, good-looking birds or bad-looking birds. The ugliest thing in nature is human beings. Man is no longer natural and completely socialized. Only plants are so natural and pure.
I spend very little time interacting with people, more when I was young, but less and less now. I feel that interactions with plants in the wild are more meaningful and lively than interactions with people. I don't have pets either. Because I think animals are very close to people in a sense, that’s why I say that most of the things that bring us pleasure are plants, and those that bring us trouble are mostly animals. When I say animals, I am not referring to cats and dogs, but to the animal nature of humans. When we say that cats and dogs bring us comfort, it is a very painful thing, because no "people" can bring us comfort, we can only seek that kind of beauty in animals. When I am with plants, my relationship with them is the same as my relationship with Su Bo. They amplify my intuition infinitely, and I become not more lonely, but broader. Nature brings me a broader and purer relationship. Compared with animals, plants have more healing effects and are silent. People will yell at cats and dogs, but they won’t yell at bitter melons. People are lonely only when they are with others.
"Silence has a flame that we cannot see, especially in the husk of the radish." (2013)
Beijing News: I think of you saying that I dream that one day I can put the word "Purple Ground Flower Ding" in the weeds. Basically "dig" it out and make it more natural. Is “making nature more natural” meant in this sense?
Could it be: is right. I am mainly wary of anthropocentrism. This is very scary. I object to the statement "all things are provided for me". If there is some kind of "purpose", this "purpose" is definitely not for people. When all things come to the world, their first purpose is their own survival. This is nature, extremely simple. The simpler it is, the closer it is to the truth.
When I photograph a plant, I feel that the simpler the composition, the better and in a sense the richer it is. I sometimes feel that the background is more important than the subject because it provides a feeling of comfort rather than a meaning. Including writing poetry. I rarely use adjectives, basically nouns and verbs, trying to express the most in the least possible way. So sometimes I speak very extreme words. I feel that what cannot be explained clearly in one sentence cannot be explained clearly in a book. From an early age, I was skeptical of the idea that a book would last forever. Heraclitus The works handed down after his death include only more than 140 fragments, which can be recorded on two pages of A4 paper, but its richness has reached its extreme. Examples abound in art. The computer relies on 0s and 1s to travel across the entire universe.
"Fragments of the Works of Heraclitus", Author: (Ancient Greece) Heraclitus, Translator: T.M. Robinson Chuhe, Edition: Guangxi Normal University Press, September 2007
I have two spiritual mentors, Wittgenstein in philosophy. He is a childish philosopher. His important work during his lifetime, "Tractatus Logic-Philosophica", was a thin volume, but it influenced almost the entire 20th century. After writing this book, he felt that his philosophical research could come to an end, so he spent all his wealth and became a complete poor man. He wanted to become a monk, but others didn't want him, so he became a teacher and carefully compiled a German dictionary for primary school students. As a person, he thinks clearly, practices it personally, and abandons his appearance. I think this is the "minimalist" life. In a sense, Wittgenstein brought me infinite poetry.
Beijing News: Who is the other spiritual mentor?
Could it be: Duchamp. He is another extreme. Because of Duchamp, contemporary artists have a source for whatever they do. He tested his "friends" with a small chamber pot and learned that the so-called pioneers were not really pioneers.
Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 - October 2, 1968) was a pioneer of experimental art in the twentieth century. The picture shows his work "Fountain".
My definition of pioneer is very simple, non-conformist. When taking pictures, I have an argument with myself: Which expression is more extreme, language or image? I don't shoot these for sale, I just find them interesting. It doesn't matter if no one accepts or acknowledges them. One confidant is enough, but what if there are three or five? This is a very fateful thing. Like Du Fu , in the Tang Dynasty, few people paid attention to him, and there were few readers. There was almost no Du Fu in the anthology of Tang poetry, although he made many friends. It was much later that Du Fu was truly praised, and he was ranked alongside Li Bai . We can see it very clearly now, but I don't believe that no one of Du Fu's contemporaries can clearly see the value of Du Fu. I believe that Li Bai understands Du Fu better than us. They lived in that era. I don’t believe that people today are smarter than people in the past. Although we now have smart phones, we are no smarter than the era of Book of Songs or the era of Heraclitus.
Author: Yang Siqi
Editor: Xixi, Xu Yuedong Proofreading: Zhai Yongjun
I asked him about the local common name of Polygonatum odorifera, a lily plant, and he pointed with his hand: "Bingdangcai, there are a lot of these herbs in the mountains." Polygonatum odorifera is called "Lingdangcai" in the local area. The flowers are like bells, and the "cai" can be It is edible and has extremely high nutritional value. This can be regarded as "reading" and reading the annotations. In fact, the knowledge that shepherds know far exceeds the existing imagination of society. I have been with farmers since I was a child, and I have a deep understanding of it, but the social evaluation system is different. So to a certain extent, I am sarcastic about the arrogance of intellectuals. I think intellectual arrogance is very stupid."The Wind and Trees Move", author: Mo Fei, version: Peking University Press, September 2018
Beijing News: This reminds me that at the end of 1999, a conflict between "intellectual writing" and "folk writing" broke out in the Chinese poetry circle " controversy, in this regard, you, Shucai and Plantagozi proposed a "third way", which caused a lot of controversy. But you seem to have never written about the “Third Way” since then.
Could it be: is what I did before I was 40 years old. At that time I still had some interest in arguing about these, but not anymore. Mainly, I think the whole "intellectual writing" thing is ridiculous. I think there is only one kind of writing in the world, and that is the best writing. The shepherd wrote a very good poem. What kind of writing is it? Is it Shepherd's Pie? The so-called third way, I think is everyone’s way, and everyone’s way must also be the best way. Even if he is a shepherd, even if he is a pig butcher. I despise some intellectuals who think they are closer to the truth. Writing from an intellectual is not only arrogant, but also stupid. I may be quite extreme, and sometimes I have no choice but to use the word "stupid".
Later, led by the poet Pan Xichen, another poet's convention was established, one of which was "a poet must know more than 24 kinds of plants." This point is also brought up because some so-called poets completely ignore grains when writing about plants. I think, except for some special meanings, poems like " There is a tree under Mount Everest " are unqualified. There shouldn't be just one tree written about, they should have names. It is understandable that the poet knows little about plants, but he cannot always be vague, because the poet is engaged in an extreme language, and this cannot be justified. The plants mentioned in some Western and ancient Chinese poems are very clear. If the "Book of Songs" was not written clearly, there would be no more knowledge of the names of plants, trees, insects, fish, birds and beasts, and the "Book of Songs" would not become a classic.
People's understanding of plants is gradually increasing, and there is also a process for the understanding of nature to enter literary works. Our understanding of plants is different from that in the West. In China, there was "An Illustrated Study of Plant Names and Facts" in the Qing Dynasty, and earlier there was "Erya", which introduced more than 300 plants. There is also a book called "Southern Grass and Trees" written by the Wei and Jin Dynasties, which is the world's first flora and introduces 70 or 80 species of plants. The Ming Dynasty had the "Compendium of Materia Medica". Among the more than 2,000 kinds of materia medica, only more than 1,200 were plants. Stones, animals, and people were all included in the concept of materia medica. This classification is very interesting. To a certain extent, my efforts are actually closer to "natural literature", the poetry of nature. There are landscape paintings and landscape poems in China, but there is almost no nature literature in the modern sense like Walden Pond.
"Southern Plants and Trees", written by Ji Han in the Jin Dynasty, came out in 304 AD and recorded plants in Guangdong, Guangxi, Vietnam and other places. It is the earliest existing flora in China.
Beijing News: Will you continue to talk about writing poetry?
Could it be: I have only done one thing in my life: writing poetry. I have not read many complete works. I have only read the complete works of Lu Xun and the complete works of Kafka. Lu Xun said: First, we must survive, second, we must have food and clothing, and third, we must develop. First of all, stay alive. The difference between some people and others is that some people eat to live, and some people live to eat. I'm actually skeptical about gourmets. I don't mean anything else. I'm just reflecting. If I just sit there in a daze after eating and drinking, I won't be able to accept it. It’s someone else who feels happy after eating delicious food, but if it were me, I wouldn’t feel right. I only eat two simple meals every day.From the time I was born in 1960 to now, it would be great if I could survive without starving to death. Sometimes I think about it, it seems that I have never done anything serious in my life, and I have never done anything to make money, so I also feel that I am quite lucky.
Beijing News: You just said that the other complete work you have read is "The Complete Works of Kafka"?
Could it be: is right. Kafka is worth reading in its entirety. Including the pieces of paper Kafka wrote to his family, I find them very impressive. Even those very childish things are important to examine in the entire collection. You will realize that there is no reason for Kafka not to be Kafka. Kafka made me realize that when a poet has written the last line of his poem, his sentences fall into place. It's like the click of a box lid, it fits perfectly. He can leave. If the last line of the poem is not written well, then his previous writing, all previous honors and praises are suspect.
Note: Regarding the last line of the poem, it was specifically mentioned in an article called "The Wooden Table Lying Halfway on the Road": "Poets always start from the second line and end at the penultimate line. Because You can never have a perfect ending. The last line may have appeared at some point in your writing life, but if you didn't know it, you would have done something else from that moment on. Of course, it is more likely that the last line of the poem is in the hands of death. In that case, the poet can only speculate while he is alive, but cannot see it. "
栝楼, Fruit (2018).
Beijing News: Which poets do you like?
Could it be that: ’s early favorites were all Russian poets. European ones include Eliot, Auden, and Hughes; American ones include Stevens, Merwin, and even earlier, Dickinson. People from the United States in the 1960s really like it. There is also pound . I especially like the time when I was reading poetry. Pound's poems had not yet been translated much. I liked Pound. He was very interesting, but of course also controversial. Pound and Frost were once friends, but their relationship later broke down. However, when Pound was imprisoned, Frost also participated in the rescue. Frost is a true "nature poet". I also loved Stevens when I was younger. Stevens is more advanced. He is a philosophical poet, a poet among poets. I think his position in the United States is roughly equivalent to Borges in Argentina. Borges was every bit an ancient Greek writer, a lifelong reader, and even nonsense was interesting, such as his fictionalized confusing taxonomy of China.
Beijing News: What do you think of Borges’s “Chinese Taxonomy”?
Could it be: The Borgesian classification seems absurd. China does not have such a classification. It is entirely Borges’s imagination as a novelist, but he grasped the essence. Foucault believed it and thought that the Chinese classification was really like this. Because of such a misunderstanding, he inspired his fantastic ideas. Borges was so knowledgeable that people believed him. I love Borges, but I have a hard time imagining myself writing novels like him because I feel that life itself is far more dramatic than fiction, regardless of my imagination. For example, Kafka, his novels are not novels at all, they are simply portraits of the human spirit, more real than reality and not absurd at all. In comparison, life seems even more absurd.
Beijing News: I think of your long poem "Su Bo". You started writing this long poem in 2005, and wrote it intermittently and piecemeal for two years, probably more than 300 pieces. You create a unique fabled world of unnamed chaos. These poems have not attracted particularly widespread attention. Can you talk about the origin of the writing of "Su Bo"? What is "Su Bo" and how did this name come about? I feel that in your poems, Su Bo is sometimes like a cheerful and cheerful child, and sometimes like a gloomy and speechless plant.
Could it be: It is accidental that is called "Su Bo". "Su Bo" is a neutral word with no gender. I have never thought about whether Su Bo is a boy or a girl. I think Su Bo is a character who can speak for me. There are some words that a poet cannot express.I sometimes hate the use of the first person in poetry, because from a certain perspective, there is a distance between life and the first person. I also use the image of Su Bo to mean that the author should not always stand up and speak out. In my early years when I was writing poems, I was always reluctant to use the first person. I felt it was silly. This was a problem that tortured me very much. At this age, when I say how I am, I am relieved. But I couldn't do it when I was young. I struggled for a long time. When I wrote "Su Bo", I was already forty-six or seventeen years old, and I was still struggling.
Beijing News: But I noticed that the first person still appears in "Su Bo", such as verse 76: "Su Bo, I just want to talk to you. In the reflected shadow, our plants are in words Basically. ”
Could it be: It’s interesting that you mentioned this. This is rarely the case. Even if I refer to "I," it is not "I" in the first-person sense. "Su Bo" is completely the product of self-dialogue. In a sense, I'm still talking to myself. The interesting thing is that it avoids "me, me, me" and the feeling of being above everything else. Although Shakespeare said that "man is the primate of all things", this has its background. In the darkness of the Middle Ages, people needed liberation. Looking at it now, this classification is just like the caste system, it is an artificial definition. If you want to classify bitter melon, the world is completely different. To say that plants or animals are "smart" is in itself anthropocentric. I am wary of such claims. In my concept, there are no beneficial insects or pests, good-looking birds or bad-looking birds. The ugliest thing in nature is human beings. Man is no longer natural and completely socialized. Only plants are so natural and pure.
I spend very little time interacting with people, more when I was young, but less and less now. I feel that interactions with plants in the wild are more meaningful and lively than interactions with people. I don't have pets either. Because I think animals are very close to people in a sense, that’s why I say that most of the things that bring us pleasure are plants, and those that bring us trouble are mostly animals. When I say animals, I am not referring to cats and dogs, but to the animal nature of humans. When we say that cats and dogs bring us comfort, it is a very painful thing, because no "people" can bring us comfort, we can only seek that kind of beauty in animals. When I am with plants, my relationship with them is the same as my relationship with Su Bo. They amplify my intuition infinitely, and I become not more lonely, but broader. Nature brings me a broader and purer relationship. Compared with animals, plants have more healing effects and are silent. People will yell at cats and dogs, but they won’t yell at bitter melons. People are lonely only when they are with others.
"Silence has a flame that we cannot see, especially in the husk of the radish." (2013)
Beijing News: I think of you saying that I dream that one day I can put the word "Purple Ground Flower Ding" in the weeds. Basically "dig" it out and make it more natural. Is “making nature more natural” meant in this sense?
Could it be: is right. I am mainly wary of anthropocentrism. This is very scary. I object to the statement "all things are provided for me". If there is some kind of "purpose", this "purpose" is definitely not for people. When all things come to the world, their first purpose is their own survival. This is nature, extremely simple. The simpler it is, the closer it is to the truth.
When I photograph a plant, I feel that the simpler the composition, the better and in a sense the richer it is. I sometimes feel that the background is more important than the subject because it provides a feeling of comfort rather than a meaning. Including writing poetry. I rarely use adjectives, basically nouns and verbs, trying to express the most in the least possible way. So sometimes I speak very extreme words. I feel that what cannot be explained clearly in one sentence cannot be explained clearly in a book. From an early age, I was skeptical of the idea that a book would last forever. Heraclitus The works handed down after his death include only more than 140 fragments, which can be recorded on two pages of A4 paper, but its richness has reached its extreme. Examples abound in art. The computer relies on 0s and 1s to travel across the entire universe.
"Fragments of the Works of Heraclitus", Author: (Ancient Greece) Heraclitus, Translator: T.M. Robinson Chuhe, Edition: Guangxi Normal University Press, September 2007
I have two spiritual mentors, Wittgenstein in philosophy. He is a childish philosopher. His important work during his lifetime, "Tractatus Logic-Philosophica", was a thin volume, but it influenced almost the entire 20th century. After writing this book, he felt that his philosophical research could come to an end, so he spent all his wealth and became a complete poor man. He wanted to become a monk, but others didn't want him, so he became a teacher and carefully compiled a German dictionary for primary school students. As a person, he thinks clearly, practices it personally, and abandons his appearance. I think this is the "minimalist" life. In a sense, Wittgenstein brought me infinite poetry.
Beijing News: Who is the other spiritual mentor?
Could it be: Duchamp. He is another extreme. Because of Duchamp, contemporary artists have a source for whatever they do. He tested his "friends" with a small chamber pot and learned that the so-called pioneers were not really pioneers.
Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 - October 2, 1968) was a pioneer of experimental art in the twentieth century. The picture shows his work "Fountain".
My definition of pioneer is very simple, non-conformist. When taking pictures, I have an argument with myself: Which expression is more extreme, language or image? I don't shoot these for sale, I just find them interesting. It doesn't matter if no one accepts or acknowledges them. One confidant is enough, but what if there are three or five? This is a very fateful thing. Like Du Fu , in the Tang Dynasty, few people paid attention to him, and there were few readers. There was almost no Du Fu in the anthology of Tang poetry, although he made many friends. It was much later that Du Fu was truly praised, and he was ranked alongside Li Bai . We can see it very clearly now, but I don't believe that no one of Du Fu's contemporaries can clearly see the value of Du Fu. I believe that Li Bai understands Du Fu better than us. They lived in that era. I don’t believe that people today are smarter than people in the past. Although we now have smart phones, we are no smarter than the era of Book of Songs or the era of Heraclitus.
Author: Yang Siqi
Editor: Xixi, Xu Yuedong Proofreading: Zhai Yongjun
