Heaven's will pities the secluded grass

Author: Ke Ling
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2007-01-01
Features: At the advanced age of eighty, Mr. Ke Ling is frail, his steps unsteady, and his hearing and sight impaired; yet his prose remains vibrant, like blossoms on an old plum tree, enduring frost and snow while radiating youthful vitality. To read and appreciate his works is to be moved deeply, filling one with a sense of awe and longing. China is a land of prose. Across the vast expanse of time, the great waves have washed away the mediocre, leaving behind exquisite masterpieces that have nourished generations of scholars. As history flowed into the 20th century, the turbulent times, the influx of Western learning, and the collision and fusion of Eastern and Western cultures gave rise to a new realm of prose. As the dawn of the 21st century approached, looking back at nearly a century of modern literary prose, the 1920s and the 1990s stand as twin peaks, their waters flowing gracefully, mountains and rocks bizarre, forests lush, and petals falling in abundance, all breathtakingly beautiful. In the early 1980s, drama, reportage, and poetry once captured the limelight but gradually faded into obscurity, while fiction remained enduringly popular. The comprehensive rise of prose and its grandeur emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and within a few years, masterpieces multiplied like forests, and stars shone brilliantly. The middle-aged and young prose writers were particularly active and innovative. Yet, what shocked the literary world and prompted deep reflection was the miraculous emergence of new works by some "white-haired" writers. As the saying goes, "An old horse at the stable still yearns for a thousand miles; a hero in his twilight years still harbors unyielding ambitions" (Cao Cao, "Step Out of Xia Gate"). Their prose is marked by the vicissitudes of life, the depth of knowledge, the insights of experience, the subtle satire, the refined character, and the precision of expression. Among them, the most prominent include Ba Jin, Bing Xin, Xia Yan, Sun Li, Yang Jiang, Liu Baiyu, Xiao Qian, Ji Xianlin, Jia Zhifang, Wu Guanzhong, Zhang Zhongxing, and Jin Kemu. Ke Ling, included among them, stands out as one of the most outstanding. In his middle and young years, he edited newspapers and magazines, wrote plays and films, and composed poetry and fiction, excelling particularly in prose. During that time, he wrote out of hunger and for ideals, yet he was imprisoned three times and endured great hardships. Amidst the turmoil, he toiled over his words, sometimes "driving away anger" or "expressing melancholy," with sharp wit and elegant yet profound language. In the 1950s and 1960s, his prose was warm and sincere, though occasionally superficial due to the circumstances. Later, his works suffered setbacks, and he endured nine years of hardship. For over a decade after his fiftieth birthday, his fate was turbulent, yet it laid the groundwork for the rise of his literary career in his seventies.
Words and fate often diverge. Poverty often breeds literary brilliance, as it seems to be the case across cultures and eras. As Sima Qian wrote, "Confucius was in confinement when he wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals; Qu Yuan was exiled when he composed the Lament of the Red Cliffs." To think of this is to be moved to the core, yet it only deepens one's sorrow. In the nearly two decades of his later life, Ke Ling's prose, though connected in spirit and essence to his youth, has been refined by decades of literary experience, immersion in classics, and the resilience forged through adversity. His late works, numbering hundreds of thousands of words, exhibit a distinct elegance and already resemble the style of a contemporary prose master.
Ke Ling, having endured countless trials, has grown stronger like the cypress and juniper. His brush touches both the past and the present, his ink spans the vast world. His works include bold pronouncements, intimate musings, historical reflections, character critiques, calls to cleanse the moral landscape, celebrations of virtue, profound insights, and emotional tears. He writes of people, stories,, emotions, history, orations, travelogues, letters, prefaces, and diaries—short essays of hundreds of words to long ones exceeding ten thousand. Unbound by form or genre, unswayed by shifting trends or worldly desires, he focuses his mind and heart on self-expression, as the saying goes, "When emotion moves the heart, it finds expression in words" (Mao Shi Xu), and "I write with my hand, I speak with my mouth" (Huang Zunxian, "Miscellaneous Reflections"). Thus, his prose flows effortlessly, gathering brilliance and pouring out its essence.
"As far as the heavens' edge and the earth's corner,, the soul's depths, the nerves' ends—all are within his reach." The selected works in this collection are his late creations after his seventieth birthday. While not every piece is a gem, some are flawed, yet many are masterpieces, blending erudition, courage, reason, and virtue. With a unique style and distinctive literary grace, his works have gradually reached the realm of "luminous and pure, illuminating the soul."
Throughout history, writing has been praised for its authenticity, often referring to genuine emotions, true words, and the unity of life and art, standing in contrast to falsity, pretense, and deception. Ke Ling's writing, rooted in sincerity, also forges new meanings, pursuing "truth as the bone." The connection between "truth" and "bone" highlights the role of truth in his works while emphasizing the "bone," which encompasses literary integrity, character, spirit, and strength. The ancient literary critic Liu Xie highly valued the "bone" in writing, stating, "Words depend on bone, as the body relies on its skeleton." Thus, isolating his discussion of "truth" fails to grasp the essence of Ke Ling's prose; truth is more profound when combined with bone.
Ke Ling's The Hardship of Ma Sicong and his portrayal of the revelry and enlightenment brought by sudden storms reveal a truth with sharp force and a profound literary spirit. In 1984, in A Farewell to Eileen Chang, when Chang's legacy had been buried for decades, with her fate seemingly settled, Ke Ling boldly expressed his own views, defying conventional opinion. His courage and insight were truly "like a falling pen that startles the wind and rain." His critiques and praises of and the other Zhou brothers, who had long been consensually discussed in literary history, were independent and profound. Long before 1982, Ke Ling had written critiques of Qian Zhongshu, a great scholar excluded from modern literary history, praising his character, integrity, scholarship, and novels like Fortress Besieged, while condemning the tyranny of the "Leftist faction" and the narrow-mindedness and servility of some critics.
Ke Ling seeks the "bone" in his truthful writing, and its value transcends individual articles or specific arguments. The spirit of his "bone" is universal, revealing the underlying causes of similar phenomena in the literary world and the flaws of the era. Truly, "bone is strong, and spirit is fierce."
Similar to "truth," prose should also embody beauty. There are various forms of beauty—described through words, revealed through atmosphere, enriched through character, established through personality, even contrasted with ugliness, or inspired by it. Ke Ling's prose also celebrates beauty, yet he seeks the ultimate artistic goal of "beauty as the divine." The connection between "beauty" and "divine" is a new twist in Ke Ling's prose, emphasizing that beauty must permeate the entire work while also representing the highest realm of elegance, spirit, demeanor, thought, and vividness. True and profound beauty in prose is not merely the charm of plain language, the depiction of beautiful scenes, the richness of elegant diction, the portrayal of virtuous characters, the expression of noble ideas or emotions, or the lively reasoning of arguments. The essence of artistic beauty lies in the harmony of form and spirit. Only when the spirit is lively and the spirit is profound can one reach the realm of artistic perfection.
In Buenos Aires, the elderly writer uses moving brushstrokes to recreate three statues: the "Mermaid" modeled after Hans Christian Andersen's tale, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza from Miguel de Cervantes, and the "She-Wolf with Upturned Snout" from Roman mythology, nursing naked infants. In Ke Ling's portrayal, the scenes are beautiful, yet they also contain the "divine"—a rich and profound philosophical depth, encompassing the impact on human nature, which Ke Ling keenly captures. Static beauty in sculpture becomes exceptionally lively and vivid.
Ke Ling excels at nurturing the "divine" within beauty and transmitting it. In his portrayal of characters, the contrast between the masterful performance of the village artist Anonymous on stage and his humble image offstage, clad in a black cotton coat, brings his demeanor to life. In In Memory of Fu Lei, Ke Ling focuses on the two "no's" in the translator's response and the image of a crane soaring high above the mire, revealing Fu Lei's spiritual realm.
In conveying the "divine" through elegant, refined, natural, and flowing language, Ke Ling stands out among contemporary prose writers. His skillful use of archaic words, uncommon words, common words, repetition, synonyms, flexible word combinations, varied sentence structures, parallelism, and antithesis, as well as the phonetic, rhythmic, and tonal qualities of his prose, elevates his works to a transcendent artistic realm. In Dreaming of Dreams, dreams permeate the entire piece, reflecting the frost and snow of the modern literary world. His pen turns effortlessly, revealing a sense of novelty, depth, and vividness that anyone familiar with modern and contemporary social and literary history would grasp and admire, exclaiming in awe.
Ke Ling's literary life and life's hardships are intertwined. When he writes about them, his words are like jewels, his sentences like tears, his expressions of desolation and insight profound. "The life of a writer is filled with cold and warmth, bitterness and sweetness, fortune and misfortune, countless encounters. The ivory tower, the crossroads, the path to glory, the gates of hell—only a sheet of paper separates them." Not only are his sentences beautiful, but his content is rich, and his conclusion, "only a sheet of paper separates them," is shocking and moving, capturing the fate and hearts of countless cultural figures in modern times!
To write a few strokes into a gem, to convey the spirit in a single sentence—his mastery is unparalleled, leaving me in awe.
Ke Ling's prose, though old, grows stronger, encompassing all, vast yet precise. At the request of the People's Daily Press Publishing House, I was commissioned to compile this collection, and at the favor of Mr. Ke Ling, I was asked to write its preface. My knowledge is limited, and my words are inadequate, but this is what I offer to readers and literary scholars for their guidance.