Zhou Tao's Essays: Illustrated Collector's Edition

Author: Zhou Tao
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-05-01
Features: >Exquisite prose and beautiful photography complement each other, serving as both a masterpiece for appreciation and a premium choice for collection and gifting. Chinese prose has a long and profound history. Over thousands of years of prose creation, whether expressing emotions, stating intentions, depicting landscapes, or remembering people, it has inevitably reflected the changes of the times and the thoughts and feelings of the people. These fine traditions of Chinese prose, in the new literature of the 20th century and beyond, not only received comprehensive inheritance but also continued to innovate and develop. To showcase the achievements of Chinese prose since the 20th century, we edited and published the "Treasured Anthology of Chinese Prose" in the early days of the new century, comprising thirty volumes. Five years have passed, and on this basis, we have meticulously compiled this "Illustrated Treasured Anthology of Chinese Prose," consisting of sixteen volumes. Through careful selection once again, this series not only adds over 50,000 new words to each volume but also accompanies them with several precious photographs reflecting the author's life journey. Truly, exquisite prose and beautiful photography complement each other, serving as both a masterpiece for appreciation and a premium choice for collection and gifting. Zhou Tao, once famous for writing frontier poems, has now become a true prose master, with his prose achievements even surpassing his poetry. In Byron's view, writing prose was a form of decline for a poet. However, Zhou Tao, who achieved the status of a prose master, did not succumb to this decline. Writing prose allowed him to find a field that better expressed his talent and a convenient form to convey his life insights. His unique creation has had an extremely profound impact on contemporary prose. Looking back, Zhou Tao abandoned poetry for prose, but his background as a poet meant that his prose was inevitably influenced by poetry—or perhaps, his prose made him a singer of the western natural landscape, and the limitations of his prose themes were inevitably linked to poetry. This paper delves deeply into the poetic phenomenon in Zhou Tao's prose.
I. His prose is highly poetic in its leaps and bounds
If the "poetic" articles of scholars since the Tang and Song dynasties were entirely due to their inability to surpass the peak of Tang poetry, then Zhou Tao's "writing prose with the spirit of poetry" stemmed from his poet's unique way of thinking and his innovative consciousness that transcended existing prose norms. In most of his prose, we can see a clear tendency toward "poeticization": ( the recording of daily life processes), replacing it with interpretations of nature, reflections on society and life, and the free-flowing expression of emotions like a waterfall. He pays attention to creating a poetic atmosphere in the work by describing natural scenery and the author's psychological feelings. For example, in the prose "The Creeping Roof" (), which records the author's journey to the Karakoram by car, Zhou Tao does not, like many works on this theme, follow the axis of shifting time and space to ( record the hardships of the journey), the enthusiasm of the soldiers at the garrison stations, or the noble sentiments of the border guards on the snow-capped Kunlun Mountains. Instead, he writes a spiritual journey—recording the author's insights into the "thief of the gods" () contained in nature along the way. The article presents to the reader the description of the plateau's natural landscape, broad associations, and the author's multi-angle reflections on society and life. The entire text lacks a narrative thread that runs through it, with the content flowing naturally with the author's thoughts and emotions, highly poetic in its leaps and bounds. From this highly representative prose, we can see that although Zhou Tao writes prose, his way of grasping the world is poetic—that is, replacing the examination of life's duration with insights, which is fundamentally consistent with poetry.
II. His prose embodies the spirit of poetry: freedom, lyricism, and imagination
Zhou Tao's pursuit of "poeticization" in his prose differs from the "poeticization" writing of the prose master Yang Shuo, who discovered beauty and sublimity in the subtle details of nature and society and completed his works through the integration of scenery and emotion. Overall, Yang Shuo's "poeticization of prose" is a concrete practice of classical Chinese aesthetic tastes in contemporary prose. However, in terms of content and technique, his prose still remains at the level of poetic and picturesque scenes intertwined with realistic settings. This determines that his prose is still stuck at a shallow level. In contrast, Zhou Tao's "writing prose with the spirit of poetry" is deep, not only because his way of grasping the world in prose is poetic but also because his prose embodies the spirit of poetry: freedom, lyricism, and imagination. Zhou Tao once said, "The 'scattered' () in prose means freedom; prose is free writing, and freedom is the lifeblood of prose." In his creation, Zhou Tao well practiced this concept. His prose is like the "crazy grass" () in calligraphy, with freestyle and unrestrained expression. Reading his prose is like accompanying the author on a spiritual journey that is as boundless as the sky. For example, in the collection "Nomadic Great Wall," the author takes you through time to verify history, comment on facts and legends, and discuss the cultural essence of the ancient Great Wall. The main body of each work consists of the author's rich associations and omnipresent discussions on history and reality. There is very little continuous narration, with the content and thinking jumps being remarkable. In Zhou Tao's hands, prose has become a way for the writer to express his thoughts freely. Out of artistic interest, Zhou Tao has little interest in realistic writing, such as recording life experiences or objectively describing scenery, preferring instead to express imaginative content. Thus, he is fond of touching the "wall of time" ("The Wall of Time" – Part Two of "Notes on Time"), capturing the "time weasel" ("The Weasel We Can't Catch" – Part One of "Notes on Time"), and depicting the impression of the eagle in his heart ("Migratory Bird"). Even when describing concrete things, he incorporates a considerable amount of magnificent and boundless imagination. For instance, in "Jimsar Chronicle #8226; Wheat," there is the following description:
"Our wheat is poured into this suspiciously old workshop, slowly and heavily ground, chewed, and powdered on this mill of life. I imagine the scene of the wheat grains being flattened, crushed, and ground into dust. I imagine them gradually numbing, enduring the torment, a sense of groaning and unbearable suffering rising from my chest, infecting my limbs. I truly feel that I am like them, like this wheat, slowly and painstakingly ground on a similar mill of life."
This is a highly imaginative description. In this passage, the author completely follows the logic of poetic imagination, uniting people and things to express his profound life experiences. Precisely because Zhou Tao's prose is filled with poetic subtlety and passion, as well as magnificent and boundless imagination, the poet Zhang Deyi saw it as "a broader form of poetry, a more powerful and elegant poetry." In the contemporary era, Zhou Tao is a rare writer who applies the logic of poetic imagination and the emotional structure of poetry to prose creation, that is, "writing prose with the spirit of poetry."