耿占春

记得是刘思谦老师在面试的时候问李海英，如进入博士阶段准备做哪方面的研究，一般来说，每个人都会直接回答这个应该有所准备的问题，但我听见李海英说：“我想做一个本雅明式的批评家……”不知道在座的导师们满意否，我心想，看来今年就是她了，至少在我的批评写作中，本雅明也曾经是一个路标。

那是我第一次看到海英，但她说不是，她蹭过我在文艺学专业的课，能背出我在课堂上讲的诗。想起来这已经是七、八年前的事情了，海英确实在朝着“本雅明式的批评家”这一自我认知的目标努力。那么，一种本雅明式的批评意味着什么呢？尽管每个人都会有不同的认知，但至少，这是一种将文学研究与文学批评置于更加深远的历史语境中的做法，应该与自足性的纯文本研究拥有迥异的旨趣。这是一种将诸种文学批评的元素置于更普遍的文化功能中去的方式，如将“故事”或叙述置于从神话传说到现代小说的嬗变过程中，将语言与修辞放在从圣言到新闻语言的演变脉络中，将风格与形式的考察置于社会文化体系之中的方式，并且这种考察从不会忽略文本的脉络，仍然是从文本内部出发的活动。

的确，如今可以从海英的这些批评文章中发现这样一种特质。呈现在这本书的文章已显露出这一意义指向。她对昌耀“早期写作”中可能存在的年代措置的质疑，根据一种社会修辞学的考察有依据地提出了“后期修改”的可能性，并质疑了学界相当权威性的前辈们的论断。当然她的质疑并非是某些青年学者有意为之的冒犯，我记得第一次让她写文章是给了多多的一组新诗，一个月后交文章，她拿着1980年署名“多多”的一个小文《坚持冷练的老诗人》问是不是我们说的这个多多，我认为对一组新作进行评论不必考证所有的文本，她居然直楞楞地回我，“要的，不然我怎么知道他以前什么样子。”很快我明白她的坦荡指向的是自身，她要清晰自己的感知或判断，并没有对他者的任何冒犯之意。就像对当代最重要的诗歌史中的若干问题、对最具影响力的几位诗人“长诗写作”的分析，其根本的意图是沟通和维护，出自对文学本质的尊重和期待。当然更见其诗学功夫的是她对一些重要的诗歌文本所作的阐释，如城市与诗歌、地方经验与诗歌、创伤经验与诗歌关系的考察，她对诗歌的理解更多的是对心灵的理解。

当海英企慕做一个本雅明式的批评家的时候，我把这一想法理解为对流行的文献主义的批评，是对排除了主观契机的求知方式的不满，或许，还有对平庸的语言活动所造成的意义之枯竭所做出的否定。这是一个起源为诗的过程，因而研究也就是一种别样的写作了。事实上，她对文献极端重视，一开始我认为与河南大学文学院的训学传统有关，后来觉得可能是性格原因，对情绪敏感，对词语敏锐，对思想迷恋到无可救药，对神秘事物持有热切向往……许多看似矛盾的东西在她身上相持不下，这些东西有利于写作或研究，却也会将心灵置于深渊，她后来又迷恋过鲍曼、博德里亚、列维-施特劳斯、希里斯·米勒、文德勒、威廉斯等人，曾多次眉飞色舞地向我们讲述某个人某本书，旋即神色黯然：“我滑到了黑洞之中”，或许研究和阅读原本是她试图抓住的自救稻草，然而思想与知识的漩涡随时都可以将人吞没，瓦解一种黑暗的同时重建另一种黑暗。

海英说她想做一个本雅明式的批评家时，本雅明并非唯一的参照，本雅明属于一个家族，他在这个谱系之树上属于一个开始者，在形式主义批评之后，那些将文学理论和文学批评，将某种文学元素与政治理论、社会思想以及历史哲学等关联起来的研究都属于这个重新启动的批评传统。这既指向文学与批评本身，也指向批评者自身。从相反的方向看，就像在历史学家海登·怀特那里，把文学理论及文学批评的方法运用于历史哲学，他把这一挪用描述为“对即将到来的启示的理解”的一种思考。去探究文本化了的历史思考或历史叙述，就是去面对“一部尚无立足之地的文学作品”。在怀特看来，不能将文献视为一个开端，那么开端在哪里？转义是一个开端，它发生于其他事物之前。一个批评者如何在总是已经开始的话语中确立一个开端？

这些问题曾让她多次迷惑，甚而陷入困顿，对真理的探究或许一直都是对黑暗的探究吧。萨义德在《开端：意图与方法》中的解决办法是对意义生成的强调，“开端就是意义的有意生成的第一步”，而且，“开端开创了另一种深思熟虑的意义生成……”。在批评方法与批评文体的意义上，这或许是维柯、尼采早已预示的一个问题。但在个体生命的意义上，怎样完成对一个混沌世界的创造性的表达？

海英给自己这些年尝试的批评命名为“未拨动的琴弦”，是其焦虑也是其忧郁。毕加索在蓝色时期创造了那幅著名的《弹蓝色吉他的人》，这一形象被美国诗人华莱士·史蒂文斯用来探索艺术家如何创造性地表达这一主题，琴弦会作伪，如何弹奏事物如其所是？我们无法带来一个圆满的世界，如何尽我们所能将其缝补？这是诗学的难题更是生命的难题，但无论如何，她已俯身那把“蓝色吉他”，选择弹奏——“想象中的松树，想象中的松鸦。”

2017年秋日

Geng Zhanchun remembers that it was teacher Liu Siqian who asked Li Haiying during the interview, such as what kind of research he plans to do when entering the doctoral stage, generally speaking, everyone will directly answer this question that should be prepared, but I heard Li Haiying say: "I want to be a Benjamin-style critic..." I don't know if the mentors here are satisfied, I thought to myself, it seems that this year is her, at least in my critical writing, Benjamin also used to be a signpost. That was the first time I saw Hai Ying, but she said no, she rubbed my liberal arts class and could recite the poems I taught in class. Remembering that this was seven or eight years ago, Haiying was indeed working toward the goal of self-perception as a "Benjaminian critic." So what does a Benjaminian criticism mean? Although everyone will have a different perception, at the very least, it is an approach that places literary studies and literary criticism in a more far-reaching historical context, and should have a very different purpose from self-contained text-only studies. It is a way of placing elements of literary criticism in a more general cultural function, such as placing "story" or narrative in the process of transmutation from myth and legend to modern fiction, placing language and rhetoric in the context of evolution from sacred word to journalistic language, and placing the examination of style and form in the socio-cultural system, and this investigation never ignores the context of the text, but is still an activity from within the text. Indeed, such a trait can now be found in these critical articles by Hai Ying. The articles presented in this book have shown this meaning. She questioned the possible chronological arrangements in Changyao's "early writing", and based on an examination of social rhetoric, she raised the possibility of "late revision" with evidence, and questioned the assertions of her rather authoritative predecessors in the academic world. Of course, her questioning was not deliberately offended by some young scholars, I remember that the first time I asked her to write an article was to give Duoduo a new set of poems, and a month later she handed in the article, and she took a small article signed "Duoduo" in 1980, "The Old Poet Who Insisted on Being Cold", and asked if it was this Duoduo we were talking about, I thought that it was not necessary to examine all the texts to comment on a new set of works, and she actually replied to me bluntly, "Yes, otherwise how would I know what he looked like before." "Soon I understood that her frankness pointed to herself, that she wanted to be clear about her own perceptions or judgments, and that she did not mean any offense to others. Just like the analysis of some of the most important issues in the history of contemporary poetry and the "long poetry writing" of the most influential poets, the fundamental intention is to communicate and maintain, out of respect and expectation of the essence of literature. Of course, what is more visible in her poetic work is her interpretation of some important poetic texts, such as the investigation of the relationship between city and poetry, local experience and poetry, traumatic experience and poetry, and her understanding of poetry is more about the understanding of the heart. When Hai Ying aspires to be a Benjaminian critic, I understand this idea as a critique of popular literatureism, a dissatisfaction with the exclusion of subjective opportunities for intellectual inquiry, and perhaps a denial of the exhaustion of meaning caused by banal linguistic activity. This is a process that originated as poetry, so research is a different kind of writing. In fact, she attached great importance to literature, at first I thought it was related to the training tradition of the College of Literature of Henan University, but later I thought it might be due to personality, sensitivity to emotions, keen on words, hopelessly obsessed with thoughts, and ardent yearning for mysterious things... Many seemingly contradictory things are incompatible with her, these things are conducive to writing or research, but also put the heart in the abyss, she later became obsessed with Baumann, Baudrillard, Lévi-Strauss, Hillis Miller, Wendler, Williams and others, and has repeatedly told us about a certain person and a certain book, and then looked gloomy: "I slipped into a black hole", perhaps research and reading were originally the self-saving straws she tried to grasp, but the vortex of ideas and knowledge can engulf people at any time, Disintegrate one darkness and rebuild another. When Hai Ying said that she wanted to be a Benjaminian critic, Benjamin was not the only reference, Benjamin belonged to a family, he belonged to a starter on this genealogical tree, and after formalist criticism, those studies that linked literary theory and literary criticism, certain literary elements to political theory, social thought, and philosophy of history, all belong to this revived critical tradition. This points to both literature and criticism itself and to the critics themselves. In the opposite direction, as in the historian Hayden White, applying the methods of literary theory and literary criticism to the philosophy of history, he describes this appropriation as a reflection on "the understanding of the coming revelation." To explore textual historical thinking or historical narrative is to confront "a literary work that has no place for it." In White's view, literature cannot be seen as a beginning, so where is the beginning? Escaping is a beginning that precedes other things. How can a critic establish a beginning in a discourse that has always begun? These questions have puzzled her many times, and even got into trouble, and the search for truth may have always been an inquiry into darkness. Said's solution in Beginnings: Intention and Method is to emphasize that "beginnings are the first step in the intentional generation of meanings" and that "beginnings create another thoughtful generation of meanings...". In the sense of critical method and critical style, this may be a problem that Vico and Nietzsche have long foreshadowed. But in the sense of individual life, how to accomplish the creative expression of a chaotic world? Hae-young has named the criticism he has tried over the years "unplucked strings," both anxious and melancholy. Picasso created the famous "Man Who Played the Blue Guitar" during the Blue Period, an image used by the American poet Wallace Stevens to explore how artists creatively express this theme, how strings are falsified, and how things are played as they are. We cannot bring a full world, how can we stitch it up to the best of our ability? This is the problem of poetics and even more the problem of life, but in any case, she has leaned over the "blue guitar" and chose to play - "imaginary pine, imaginary jay." "Autumn 2017（AI翻译）