孙侃
光阴荏苒,而在浙江的诗人、诗评家龙彼德看来,50年前的北大荒艰苦岁月犹在眼前。他在那片黑土地上度过了十个春秋,并在那里写下了数百首“知青诗”,成为一位闻名遐迩的“知青诗人”。尽管他早已远离了艰苦的日子,但那段记忆依然深铭于心,依然是他诗歌创作的主题之一。他为之思考,为之感慨,为之抒怀。
龙彼德是湖南省沅陵县人,1959年考上南开大学中文系,毕业后分配到杭州,在杭州市第一中学(今杭州高级中学)任教。1968年12月,城市知识青年“上山下乡”热潮在全国各地掀起,富有激情的龙彼德当即提出与學生们一起前往边疆扎根的申请。由于教师并不属于“支边”人员范围,校方没有同意,龙彼德竟连写13封申请书。他的真诚打动了众人,终于被批准于1969年3月6日与1064名杭州知识青年一起,乘上前往黑龙江省同江县的火车,成为浙江省唯一以教师身份“支边”的“特殊知青”。
同江县是北大荒的一部分,位于东北边陲的黑龙江和松花江会合处,北面与俄罗斯哈巴罗夫斯克边疆区隔江相望。龙彼德向笔者回忆,在同江农村,那个一年中有二分之一时间处于严寒的地方,他曾经从事过一天17小时的农活,也曾与赫哲族渔民和知识青年一起搏击江涛,捕获鲑鱼。他有过一巴掌打死35只蚊子的体验,也有过一次涉险沼泽差点儿没顶的经历。
龙彼德说,原本只批准他在黑龙江下乡一年,而后来他在那儿待了整整十年,这是因为他已爱上了这片“中国地图大红公鸡鸡冠”上的土地。这十年中,他当过农民,干过共青团工作,担任过公社干部,后来又成为县委宣传部负责人,但他始终不曾割裂与土地、与当地老乡和知青的密切关系。
事实上,早在1958年,他就已在从事课余诗歌创作并在刊物上发表。在南开大学就读时,龙彼德更加热衷于此,写下了诸如长篇朗诵诗《接班人之歌》等作品,在师生中引起较大反响。他的学业功底和创作功力十分扎实。祖国边陲独特的生活体验赋予他灵感,提供了宝贵的素材,也唤起了他强烈的创作冲动。从上世纪70年代初开始,在协助当地办起宣传栏、读报栏,编撰村史,组织文艺宣传队的同时,他利用业余时间铺纸赋诗,写下了一批诗作,并在《黑龙江文艺》《杭州日报》等报刊发表。1975年2月,他的第一本诗集《大汗歌》(与新疆知青诗人章德益合出)由上海人民出版社出版,首印75000册,并得到上海、北京等地多家报刊的好评,更受到了众多知青和广大读者的欢迎。
“打老远望着它在草上起落,/多么像大海上的一柱桅杆。/几百匹烈马跟着它游动,/又像那鲜花开遍草原。”(龙彼德《接套马杆》)生活是创作的源泉,这一理念被龙彼德奉为圭臬。在北大荒,龙彼德运用诗歌这一体裁写知青生活,写当地农民的勤劳,写守卫边疆的勇敢和自豪,写黑土地的美景,写经受生活考验时的快乐,也写纯洁的爱情……他从以往的书本、课堂中彻底走了出来,走进了火热的生活,做到了每首诗都来自生活,都能接地气。
在同江,与当地农民打成一片,从艰苦而多姿的生活中汲取创作滋养,是龙彼德一向所坚持的。他回忆,“老乡们让我融入了大自然,也让我充分感受语言的魅力。他们日常生活和劳动中的对话,很多语词句子十分精妙,值得我学习并渗透到我的诗作中。”他随身带着一个小本子,听到精彩的语言就认真记下来,这成了他积累素材的一大方法。
诗集《大汗歌》的成功,使龙彼德诗歌创作激情大增。他笔耕不辍,又相继写下了《烈马萧萧》《雾中驯马》《赫哲新歌》等大量诗作,并在上世纪70年代陆续复刊的《诗刊》《人民文学》《解放军文艺》等国家级刊物上发表,读者争相传阅,这让他萌生了单独出版一部诗集的念头。1976年,龙彼德又精心收集整理了两本诗集稿《烈马萧萧》《接班人之歌》,分别寄往天津人民出版社和黑龙江人民出版社,受到这两家出版社的高度重视。由于世事多变,虽几经修改,《烈马萧萧》最终未能出版,而《接班人之歌》经编辑和作者的“分析选题,推敲构思,斟酌字句”,最终改名为《春华集》,于1978年6月送到了读者手中。
也就在同江,在一次全县共青团干部训练班上,作为县共青团负责人的龙彼德朗诵了他的诗作,引得团干部们争着找他抄诗。这时,一位聪慧能干、拥有一双水汪汪眼睛的杭州知青马继红走到了他面前,连声称赞他的诗“太好了”,并希望读到他更多的诗作。一年后,“龙”“马”结为连理,并在北大荒结出了爱情的果实。马继红不仅不断给予他创作的激情,还耐心细致地帮他誊抄诗稿,料理家务。妻子的支持,是龙彼德诗兴大发、诗艺精进不可或缺的动力。
《大汗歌》《春华集》等龙彼德的“知青诗”作品,不仅为当时的广大普通读者所喜爱,也被诗歌界、评论界人士所肯定。他们认为,这些植根于现实生活、执着于创作探索的作品,正是时代和社会所需要的。“这些诗不是‘苦吟出来的,而是‘喷发出来的,是诗人投身于社会生活迸射的思想火花,因此不是‘风花雪月的无病呻吟,而是‘风火雷电的高亢战歌。整个诗集语言很干净,也很洗练,没有矫揉造作、佶屈聱牙的句子,读起来琅琅上口,很好记。”上海女评论家查志华推介道。
另一位评论家王工则认为,像《大汗歌》这样的作品,非但具有深刻的教育意义和鲜明的时代特征,在艺术上也值得借鉴。龙彼德优美而感人的诗作,无疑是一股股清流,滋润饥渴的心田。
赞赏龙彼德《大汗歌》等诗作的,还有著名诗人郭小川,当时的他可是中国权威的诗人之一。1975年第8期《中国文学》(英文版)还重点推荐了《大汗歌》,将龙彼德和章德益的诗歌翻译到了国外,这也是龙彼德的作品第一次被翻译并传播到域外。“对于我整个文学创作来说,已出版的30多部专著中,直接或间接写知青生活的虽不足四分之一,但北大荒精神气质贯穿了大部分作品。而且,北大荒时期是我真正进入创作成熟的阶段,决定了我的创作风格。”龙彼德告诉笔者,除了大量诗歌,迄今,他以北大荒生活为题材创作的作品还有长篇小说《小阔里拜师》《大马哈鱼历险记》,散文《知青启示录》《北方二题》《那片神奇的土地》《哈尔滨之冬》《我心中的北方》等。
正是由于文学上的成就,1978年10月,龙彼德从黑龙江调回浙江,在省文联从事编辑工作,后相继担任中国作家协会浙江分会秘书长、省文联图书编辑部主任、《东海》文学月刊主编、省文联文艺研究室主任等职。1983年加入中國作家协会。1999年入选“北大荒知青事业家100强”,2004年被推选为“中国知青百强新闻人物”。
回到南方后的龙彼德,又先后9次重返黑龙江,探访那里的同事和乡亲,寻求精神的源泉和力量。他称黑龙江的黑土地为母亲,把自己比喻为她的儿子“安泰”(希腊神话中的一个勇士,一旦离开大地母亲便失去了全部的战斗力)。与当年在北大荒插队落户的知青们一样,龙彼德对这片神奇的土地始终怀着坚贞不渝的爱和日久弥深的感激。
每当总结回顾一生的文学创作历程,龙彼德总是怀着深深的感恩,念叨着同江,念叨着昔日艰苦的生活,念叨自己的战友和当地老乡。挥之不去的北大荒情结,已经纠缠了他大半辈子。
2016年7月,“龙彼德文学馆”在黑龙江省同江市开馆。龙彼德捐献了一批珍藏已久的黑龙江时期的手稿、书籍、照片以及他的文学创作珍贵资料。之所以把以自己命名的文学馆设置在同江,其用意不言自明。龙彼德不仅将自己最宝贵的青春奉献给了北大荒,还将他半个多世纪的创作成果、几乎一生的心血结晶无私奉献给了第二故乡。
“世间罕有的气味/爱恨杂糅的气味/生死难舍的气味/这就是我的北大荒。”(龙彼德《北大荒的气味》)龙彼德告诉笔者,在知识青年上山下乡50周年之际,最近他又在构思以北大荒期间劳动生活为题材的文学作品,长诗将是首选的体裁。这是因为诗歌最易抒发充沛的激情,这是因为在那个遥远的地方,“有我被淬火过的青春,被冶炼过的理想;有数不清的歌与梦,有表不完的爱与恨,有剪不断理还乱的乡愁,有日久弥新愈远愈醇的记忆。”
(本文照片由龙彼德提供)
Long Bide, a well-known poet and literary critic, owes a great deal to the ten years he spent in the Great Northern Wilderness in the countrys Northeast. It was there that he wrote hundreds of poems and became known as a poet. , a term that came into being in the late 1960s and early 1970s, refers essentially to middle school graduates who were sent to live and work in countryside when higher education institutions stopped enrolling during “Cultural Revolution”.
In March 1969, 1,064 young people left Hangzhou for Tongjiang County in Heilongjiang Province. The 28-year-old Long Bide was among them. He was unique because he was a middle school teacher and all the others were middle school graduates in their late teens. He submitted 13 applications to the school authority before the school finally agreed to let him go for a year.
Long was happy to go and embraced the hard life willingly. Years later, he still remembers clearly about the life there. He worked 17 hours doing farm work one day. He fished with local fishermen and fellow young people from Hangzhou on a river. He killed 35 mosquitoes at one strike with his two hands. He got bogged down in a marsh and almost drowned.
When the one year term expired, he decided to stay. He stayed for ten years. During the years, he wrote poems. In fact, he began to publish poems as early as 1958. In college years he made his campus fame by writing long poems. In February 1975, he and Zhang Deyi, another poet from Xinjiang, jointly published a collection of poems by Shanghai Peoples Publishing House. The first print ran to 75,000 copies. It was a great success and won raving reviews in influential newspapers in Shanghai and Beijing.
In 1976, he sent two collections of his poems to two publishers respectively in Heilongjiang and Tianjin. Eventually, Heilongjiang Peoples Publishing House printed his poetry collection in June 1978. His poetry collections were favorably received by critics and readers alike.
His poems were manually copied and shared eagerly among his fellow people. At a poetry reading event in Tongjiang, he met a girl and fell in love. They got married.
Years later, Long thinks of his life and writing career in the Great Northern Wilderness this way: “Of the 30 plus books I have published, about a quarter is about the life directly or indirectly, but the spirit of the Great Northern Wilderness is in them all. I matured as a writer in those years and my style took shape there.”
Due to his blooming writing career, he was transferred back to Zhejiang in October 1978. Before he retired, he took some important positions in key institutions. In 1983, he joined the China Writers Association and in 2004 he was one of the top 100 People in News in a national survey.
The spirit of the Great Northern Wilderness has kept inspiring the poet and has been the poets dearest memory. Since he came back in 1978, he has revisited Heilongjiang Province nine times. In July 2016, Long Bide Literature Memorial Museum opened to the public in Tongjiang City in Heilongjiang Province. In a collection of the museum are many manuscripts, books, photos and other objects he donated. He agreed to have a museum named after him in Tongjiang because he believes his dedicated youth in Tongjiang is valuable.