豹变

by Mu Xin, 木心

《豹变》的故事描写的是个体的人，大致看得出童年、少年、青年、中年几个人生阶段。私人经历又对应着战前、二战、二战后、建国后、打开国门等阶段，需要在这些历史背景中思考。当然，还有一个重要的阶段：走出国门后的西方世界。

此外，《豹变》收入编选者童明的长篇代序，在世界文学的视野下，如何看木心文学的世界性，从中也可见童明跟木心从1993年夏酝酿，先有美国英文版An Empty Room（《空房》）的十三篇出版，到木心诞辰九十周年，终有中文版全貌十六篇问世，这是飞越二十多年的“文学之约”。

书名源自《易经》：“大人虎变，小人革面，君子豹变。”豹变是由弱到强的过程，隐含一个艺术家的精神成长史。

216 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2017

About the author

Mu Xin (1927-2011) was the pen name of a renowned Chinese diasporan writer and artist who once lived in the New York area. Mu Xin was born in Wuzhen, South China, into a wealthy aristocratic family with business interests in Shanghai. He was among the last generation to receive a classical education in the literati tradition, but he was also exposed through voluminous reading to the highest achievements of Western art and culture.

From 1947 to 1949, Mu Xin attended Shanghai Institute of the Arts. From 1949 until 1982, when he came to the United States, MuXin lived in China. Although he wrote profusely in that period, all of his earlier manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Since 1982, MuXin published twelve books of fiction, prose, and poetry (in Chinese) and contributed to literary columns in Chinese journals and newspapers outside the PRC. Among the Chinese diaspora, MuXin’s works have attracted an intense following.

Few Chinese writers in modern history have as firm a mastery of the Chinese cultural and linguistic heritage as MuXin did. Innovatively combining fiction, sanwen (a Chinese genre which blends characteristics of the essay, fiction, and poetry), and philosophical reflections, MuXin’s writing is both profoundly Chinese and reminiscent of the internalization and unconventionality of Western modern masters. In addition to his literary accomplishments, MuXin was also a well recognized artist whose paintings are preserved, among other places, at Yale University and Harvard University Art Galleries.