Writers should be assertive.

Assertiveness is not the opinion of the master, but the idea and opinion that you can be the master of your own house. The assertiveness is not to work hard to be maverick, thinking about the earth-shattering or something all day long, which is easy to utilitarian and more cheesy. Assertiveness is a habit of thinking, a normal state in life, and a basic way of thinking about life and expressing life.

There is a passage in Feng Zikai's "For My Children", which is very enlightening on how to understand assertiveness.

You are especially admirable. You are a real person who is completely open in body and mind. You feel like you're trying to deal with everything with all your energy. A little frustration, like a peanut tumbling to the ground, chewing your tongue, the kitten refuses to eat the cake, you have to cry until your lips roll and faint for a minute or two. Grandma Putuo went to burn incense and bought back the clay figurine for you, how you did your best to hug him and feed him, and one day you broke him by mistake. The sorrow of your crying is greater than the bankruptcy of adults, the loss of love, and the b

oke

hea

t (heartbreak), the sorrow of mourning and the annihilation of the whole army must be real. Two bicycles made of banana fans, trains and cars made of sparrow brands, how seriously do you look at them, straighten your voice and call "Wang-" and "Coo-goo......" instead of Qi Miao. Sister Bao tells you a story, and when she says, "Sister Moon hung up a basket, Sister Bao sat in the basket and hung up, and Zhan Zhan watched below", how passionately you fought with her, saying, "Zhan Zhan wants to go up, Sister Bao is watching below!", and even cried in front of Mangu to ask for judgment. Every time I shave my head, you really suspect that I have become a monk, and you don't want me to hold it for a while. And most so sadly this summer, when you sat on my lap and found the long hair under my armpits, and thought you were a weasel, and you immediately climbed down from me, and at first glared at me, and then wept in disappointment, and look, and wept, as you did to relatives and friends who had been condemned to death. You want me to carry you to the station, and buy as many bananas as possible, and you come back with two hands, and when you come back to the door, you are already asleep on my shoulder, and the banana in your hand has fallen somewhere. What admirable frankness, naturalness, and enthusiasm this is! The so-called virtues of "silence," "subtlety," and "profundity" among adults are all unnatural, sick, and false compared to you!

Every day, you make trains, cars, wine, bodhisattvas, six-sided paintings, and singing songs, all of which are automatic, creating a creative life. The shouts of the adults are "Return to nature!" "The art of life!" "The art of labor!" "It is really ugly in front of you! Those who draw a few strokes and write a few essays are called artists and creators, and they will be even more ashamed of you!

How to understand assertiveness is not a trivial matter for today's writers.

One more thing is quite important. It is necessary to understand or forgive the literati and writers for expressing their opinions, if the literati and writers are silent in an era, it is not the highlight of the era, but the sorrow. I read a more shocking passage, I don't know who the author is, so I can copy it here: "Mr. Qian Zhongshu is very disgusted with politics, but it is not that he does not care about politics, but the politics he sees makes him feel too cold." He was not a man who intended to be a hermit, but the reality disappointed him so much that in the end he was not even interested in talking. Before Mr. Shen Congwen died, his family asked him if he had anything to say, and his reply was: 'I have nothing to say about this world. Mr. Shen is a weak man, but his dying words are a strong voice. "Like Mr. Qian Zhongshu, Mr. Wang Li was later an intellectual who no longer spoke much, and their silence can be understood as an indictment of a shameful era, but that kind of humiliation and spiritual blow to intellectuals are devastating, and such a long period of life can sometimes change a person's character. ”

(This article is a speech at the training course for cultural and aesthetic cadres of the Organization Department of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee)