Zhou Tao's Prose (Illustrated Treasures Edition)

Author: Zhou Tao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features:">Beautiful prose and exquisite illustrations complement each other, making it both a masterpiece for appreciation and a fine choice for collection and gifting. Chinese prose has a long history. Over thousands of years of prose creation, whether expressing emotions, stating intentions, depicting scenes, or remembering people, it has reflected the changes of the times and the thoughts and feelings of people. The fine traditions of Chinese prose have not only been fully inherited but also continuously innovated and developed in the new literature of the 20th century. To showcase the achievements of Chinese prose since the 20th century, we edited and published the "Treasures of Chinese Prose" in the early days of the new century, totaling thirty volumes. Five years have passed, and we have further refined this into the "Illustrated Treasures of Chinese Prose," sixteen volumes in total. After careful selection, 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, beautiful prose and exquisite illustrations complement each other, making it both a masterpiece for appreciation and a fine 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. To write prose was considered a decline by Byron. However, Zhou Tao, who has achieved success as a prose writer, 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 style has had an extremely profound impact on contemporary prose. Looking back, Zhou Tao abandoned poetry for prose, but his background as a poet inevitably influenced his prose, or to say, his prose writing made him a singer of the western wilderness, and the limitations of his prose themes are thus closely tied to poetry. This paper delves 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, philosophical reflections on society and life, and the flowing expression of emotions like a waterfall. Attention is paid to creating a poetic atmosphere in the work through the description of natural scenery and the author's psychological perceptions. For example, in the prose "The" (The), Zhou Tao does not, like many works on this theme, record the hardships of the journey along the temporal and spatial axis, the enthusiasm of the soldiers at the garrison stations, or the noble sentiments of the border guards on the snow-capped mountains of Kunlun. Instead, he writes a spiritual journey—recording the author's insights into the "thief of time" hidden in nature along the way. The article presents to the reader the description of the high-altitude natural landscape, broad associations, and the author's multi-angle reflections on society and life. There is no narrative thread running through the entire work; the content flows naturally with the author's thoughts and emotions, highly poetic in its leaps and bounds. From this 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 the passage of life 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 so-called "poeticization" writing of the prose master Yang Shuo, who discovers beauty and sublimity in the minutiae of nature and society and completes the work through the integration of scene 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, which 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 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 life of prose." In his writing, Zhou Tao well practiced this concept. His prose is like "crazy grass" in calligraphy, with free and unrestrained expression. Reading his prose is like embarking on a spiritual journey with the author, soaring freely. For example, in the collection "Nomadic Great Wall," the author sometimes takes you through a tunnel of time to verify history, comment on facts and legends, and sometimes discusses the cultural depth of the ancient wall of the Great Wall. The main body of each work consists of the author's rich associations and ubiquitous discussions on history and reality. There is very little continuous narration, and the jumps in content and thought are astonishing. In Zhou Tao's hands, prose becomes a way for the writer to express thoughts freely. For artistic reasons, 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 Time Sketches"), capturing the "time weasel" ("The Weasel We Can't Catch—Part One of Time Sketches"), and depicting the impression of the eagle in his heart ("Migratory Bird"). Even when describing specific things, he blends a considerable amount of magnificent and expansive imagination. For instance, in "Jimsar Chronicle #8226; Wheat," there is such a 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 crushed, split, and ground into powder, imagining their gradual numbness and submission to the torment, a sense of groaning and unbearable suffering rising from my chest, spreading to my limbs, and I truly feel that I am being ground, bit by bit, slowly, 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 humans and objects to express his profound life experiences. Precisely because Zhou Tao's prose is imbued with the delicate and fervent emotions and magnificent and expansive imagination of poetry, it is seen by the poet Zhang Deyi 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 and emotional structure of poetry to prose creation, that is, "writing prose with the spirit of poetry."