Memo to the next round of peace and prosperity

It's 1985, and we only have fifteen years between us and the next halcyon era. At this moment, I don’t feel that the approach of a new era evokes any particular emotion. But I don’t want to talk about futurology here, but about literature.

The current round of peace and prosperity, which is about to end, has witnessed the birth and development of modern Western languages, and in terms of literature, it has presented the possibilities of these languages ​​in terms of expression, cognition, imagination, etc. This was also the halcyon age of books, a millennium in which books took on the forms we are now familiar with. We often wonder what will happen to literature and books in the so-called post-industrial technological era—such attention may be a sign of the end of this peaceful age. But I don’t really like to indulge in this kind of thinking. I have confidence in the future of literature because I know there are things that only literature can provide us. I therefore wish to dedicate these lectures to certain values, qualities, or literary qualities with which I wholeheartedly identify, and to try to place them within the vision of the next halcyon age. Lack of literary value.

The first lecture is "Light", quoting Greek mythology, Ovid, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Kundera, Kafka and other works to explain: the heaviness of life must be borne in a light manner; the second Talking about "quick", it explains how to use agility to combine "action" (fast) and "contemplation" (slow); the following third lecture, "accuracy", emphasizes the precision and clarity of language; the fourth lecture, "explicit" , explaining that visual imagination is a medium for understanding the world and oneself; the fifth lecture, "Traditional", is a masterpiece that vividly and wonderfully describes how literature escapes from the norm, and attempts to convey the pain, confusion and pain that human beings face in the face of infinite possibilities. Invigorate.