Qing Wei 丨 Zhao Defa's works appreciation of 20 "Strings and Determination": The Change of Heaven and Man

Qing Wei 丨 Zhao Defa's works appreciation of 20 "Strings and Determination": The Change of Heaven and Man

Li Hengchang

Time entered 1994, and Zhao Defa's literary creation entered a new stage of development. By this time, his literary dream had been ignited for five years, and he had also created a series of short stories, novellas and prose essays set in the Yimeng Mountains. After a period of accumulation and tempering, he decided to continue to dig on the road of literature and began to create a long novel with weight.

On February 1, 1995, the first day after the Spring Festival, after eating the dumplings of the festival, he picked up the pen in his hand and wrote the five words "Silk and Determination" on a pale green manuscript paper, officially starting the creation of a long novel. This is his first novel, his most successful novel, and also a novel written into the history of contemporary Chinese literature, reflecting his hard work for literary creation and the height reached by his literary creation.

Love the earth, a masterpiece written in the spirit of a farmer

In September 1996, the 5th issue of Literature World magazine published an article by the famous literary critic Shi Zhanjun's "The True Colors of the Farmer - Reading and Interpretation", which comprehensively interpreted "Restraint and Determination", believing that its creation reflected Zhao Defa's true character as a farmer, showing the farmer's involuntary feelings, and telling the story of the farmer sowing seeds on the ground. Shi Zhanjun's comment can be said to accurately grasp the emotional source, spiritual motivation and creative dimension of Zhao Defa's creation.

First of all, the unique relationship with the land is the most important reason why Zhao Defa created this novel. He said, "I grew up in the country land. My feelings for the land cannot be put into words. At the beginning, when he was just transferred to the county town to work, he saw that the "pickpocket army" on the street had pulled out so much loess soil and became a burden, and he actually had a thought, if he could get these soils back to the village to lay a pigsty. When he first entered the provincial city, he did not lament the high-rise buildings in the provincial city, but wondered why he could not see the land, where all the land was pasted with cement from the hard state. At that time, he thought, is there still a way for such a person to live? After staying there for a few days, he was worried and uneasy, and he wanted to come back quickly. Later, he lived in the city and lived in a high-rise building, but he was still unwilling and uneasy. Every time I write for a while, I have a strong desire to hurry downstairs and walk around, preferably on the dirt road outside the community. After a short stroll there, the exhaustion of the body and mind disappears without a trace. At first he didn't understand it, but then he realized that this was because of the breath of the earth. This is actually his unique land love as a son of a mountain.

Secondly, the life contract form is Zhao Defa's most powerful motivation for creating this novel. Zhao Defa later recalled in the preface to Zhao Defa's Selected Works: "I have been writing for some years, and I have also published some novels. But I've always felt that none of them are the things that are most worth investing in, not the things that show the value of my life. So what exactly is written? On an autumn day five years ago I understood. On that day, he returned to his hometown, talked to his parents for a while, and then walked to a weir outside the village and sat down. In front of his eyes was a large area of land, the land on which his ancestors had lived for generations. At that moment, he looked at her, she looked at him, and there was silence all around. It's been a long time, a long time. He was thinking about her billions of years of history, about the struggles that mankind had fought for her over thousands of years. It was a wonderful moment, both hallucinatory and so real. Zhao Defa felt that the earth followed his train of thought, showing her true body to him, so that he could see the blood and tears of the peasants who soaked her whole body in a trance. At this time, his heart turned into a heat wave, and tears came out of the frame: "You are hoping that I will write about you!" In this way, a contract was formally formed. For this contract, Zhao Defa decided to bet his entire life on it. He thought that if he could write this work, he would die without regrets!

Third, the spirit of a hard-working farmer is the biggest support for Zhao Defa to create this novel. Zhao Defa knew that this was a big idea and a very heavy topic. At that time, his immature pen shaft could not bear its weight for a while. There are no shortcuts. The only way is to accumulate and hone well. Since then, he has begun to prepare in many ways: one is to collect materials, the other is to study theory, and the third is to read the works of the master. He made up his mind that if he didn't write it, he would write it as the best in the same genre. What kind of determination is this, what kind of courage is this? Zhao Defa once recalled: "Three or four years of preparation, three or four years of conception, in the autumn of 1994, the protagonist of the work, a peasant with one foot and one foot, appeared in front of my eyes, and a group appeared behind him. The novel, written from 1927 to the present, spans too much and has always overwhelmed me. When I returned from a PEN conference in Guangxi in the winter of that year, on the plane from Guilin to Shanghai, overlooking the mountains and vast land that were in the middle of the yin and yang delivery in the evening, I suddenly captured the feeling of writing this novel and found the key to solving the structural problem. ”

In order to create this novel, Zhao Defa spent almost a whole year. How this year came to pass, even he himself felt a little incredible. Because, at that time, he did not create all day, but to preside over the work of the Municipal Literary Association, writing only to use spare time, generally with "double rest" time. That year, in order to make a living and survive in the Literary Association, he and his colleagues also worked day and night to engage in real estate development - building buildings.

Without sincere devotion, there are no touching works; without hard work, there are no extraordinary results. The reason why "Bonding and Determination" can be successful is fundamentally because of his love for the earth, and in his unremitting efforts and cultivation in the spirit of a farmer.

Facing the vicissitudes, a masterpiece of heaven and man's change

"All things are native to the earth, and the earth is revered from ancient times." ——This is a couplet written by Zhao Defa at the beginning of the volume "Strings and Determination". This sentence is not only a simple understanding of the relationship between land and human beings, but also shows the basis of the novel's literary heart and creative dimension. Zhao Defa created this heavy masterpiece based on his concern for the living conditions and destiny of Chinese peasants, based on the investigation and understanding of the relationship between mankind and land, and based on his understanding and observation of the political and economic life in China's rural areas in the past hundred years.

The creation of "Restraint and Determination" should be regarded as a milestone and a big turning point on the road of Zhao Defa's literary creation. This is not only because "Restraint and Determination" is his first novel, the work itself fully demonstrates his ability to control the novel, and indicates that his literary creation has entered a long period, but more importantly, this marks that Zhao Defa has changed from a writer of vernacular novels in the general sense to a philosophical vernacular writer of "anthropologist mind and mind"; the focus of his mind and brushstrokes has changed from focusing on individual characters and typical events in the countryside to focusing on rural human groups and inevitable events. Of course, this transformation has a gradual process, which is the result of years of thinking and creating. A writer who is not a philosopher's thinker, a writer who simply observes and reflects life in the form of figurative thinking, may only become an ordinary writer and art craftsman in his lifetime, and it is difficult to become everyone, a master or a master. Although word admirer Maramé insisted that "writers do not create with ideas, but with words." Words are important to literary creation. But after all, it is the building material of the building. You know, thought, only thought, design drawings can make building materials into buildings, thoughts can make the stone of words into gold. Zhao Defa's success lies in his flexible use of local literary language without damaging the artistic image of literary works, while naturally infusing his ideas as an anthropologist into his works, so that he has a soul full of vicissitudes, thereby increasing the thickness and amount of alloy of the works.

"Bondage and Determination" is the way to go. It is a philosophical vernacular novel, so its Tao is systematic. Merely he only graphically explains the relationship between man and the earth is not very comprehensive. In fact, what Zhao Defa explains is the complete relationship between heaven, earth and man. It is safe to say that the Tianniu and Tianniu Temple appear in the novel as background objects and life stages, which must be symbolic. The implication is heaven, which is not just a natural heaven, but a social heaven, in Mao Zedong's words, "the present situation." The novel actually reflects the relationship between typical characters and land under the typical situation environment (heaven). Of course, land is also one of the environments in which typical characters live. Because the land directly determines the living conditions of the people. Therefore, the earth is particularly prominent, forming a triangular relationship with heaven and man, thus forming a relatively complete rural social area. In this community, the sky is a surprising day full of variables: Western invasions, late Qing Qingzheng, the Xinhai Revolution, the peasant movement, etc. Although these "tianniu" descending from the sky come from the outside world, they collide with the land and have a wide and profound impact on the local area. People erected temples for the "Tianniu", which shows the influence and erosion of the external situation on the local area. The role of the "Tianniu Temple" in the community is not oppressive to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. These days of foreign visitors have seriously impacted and influenced the development of the small peasant economy. At the same time, the land at this time is no longer the land of the past, the population growth, the advancement of urbanization, the relative reduction of the number of land, the change of the nature of the land god secretly flirts with women. This poses a serious challenge to the survival of farmers who depend on the sky to feed on the land. Since ancient times, traditional Chinese culture has said that "the heavens, the time, the place, and the people", no matter what you do, you must get the time of heaven and the place, and there are people in the middle. However, in the modern society, for a long time, Chinese peasants have not been able to enjoy the time and place, but also rarely have people, so it is inevitable as Mr. Pang An analyzed in "How to Tie The Strings and How to Decide": "In the face of the great changes in social movements, policy integration, economic development, and changes of the times, on the one hand, Chinese peasants are still persistently studying the dream of land ownership, and this lingering feeling has become a collective complex of small-scale peasants in China, and the formation of a huge inertia plays an important prescriptive role in the development of the countryside On the other hand, China's small peasants, in the process of great social development, were unable to grasp their own destiny, and were forced and helpless to go to the sacrificial fields of the rural land. This is the Word of Restraint and Determination and its immense tragic power.

Ingenious carving of dragons, a well-deserved masterpiece

The first draft of "Bondage and Determination" was completed on January 1, 1996. In May of the same year, its first volume was published in everyone in the 5th issue of 1996. In December of the same year, it was officially published by the People's Literature Publishing House.

On May 30 of the same year, the People's Literature Publishing House and the Shandong Writers Association jointly held a seminar on "Restraint and Determination" in Beijing Wencai Pavilion, which was presided over by He Qizhi and Wei Xuyu, and experts and critics such as Lin Weijin, Cai Kui, Bai Ye, Niu Yuqiu, Chen Juntao, Hu Depei, He Xilai, Zhang Zhizhong, and Radar spoke highly of the book.

While the work received wide acclaim, it also won many awards. In February 1998, he won the Literary Work Award of the Fourth "Fine Project" of The Construction of Spiritual Civilization in Shandong Province.

In April of the same year, in the "1997 National Top Ten Novels" selected by 196 writers and scholars invited by the "Writers Daily", "Strings and Determination" ranked first in the novels. In September of the same year, "Restraint and Determination" was shortlisted for the Fifth Mao Dun Literature Award, and was one of the 25 candidate works.

Why did "Restraint and Determination" receive such praise, why did it receive so many awards, and why was it written into the textbook of contemporary literary history? There are three main reasons:

First, its historical continuity in the history of literature – which reflects the author's contributions and deeds. Since entering the new era, excellent realist works represented by "Ancient Ships" and "White Deer Plain" have appeared in the contemporary literary world, but such works are rare, and there was a situation of lack of successors. The emergence of "Bondage and Determination" broke this situation in one fell swoop. It follows the path of neorealism of contemporary rural themes pioneered by Zhang Wei and Chen Zhongzhong, inherits their fine traditions, and forms a chain of excellent novel creation in contemporary rural themes. The famous writer Bai Ye pointed out at the seminar on "Tie and Determination": "In contemporary novels, "Tie and Determination" is the most important work after "Ancient Ship" and "White Deer Plain". ”

Second, it reflects the epic nature of the content – it reflects the responsibility and responsibility of the author. The content of the work is not a time period, not a part, it has been involved in up and down for a hundred years, it is a microcosm of China's rural society, the history of the changes in China's land in the past hundred years, and the history of the development of the fate of Chinese peasants. Cai Kui praised at the seminar "Strings and Determination": "It has the same style as epic and encyclopedia. Its content is very thick, as summarized in the minutes of the seminar on "Bondage and Determination", it is "a masterpiece as thick and dignified as the land." Hu Yuping, the responsible editor of the book when it was published by the People's Literature Publishing House, believes that it is "a long volume of the history of rural change."

Third, it shapes the vividness of the characters – which reflects the author's skill and level. "Restraint and Determination" has created a large number of characters living in this land, who have distinct personalities, flesh and blood, which make people deeply impressed and unforgettable, and greatly enrich the group portraits of peasant figures in contemporary Chinese literature. In particular, the image of a big foot and a small foot, the image of embroidery, and the image of Fei Wendian can be said to be his character label and representative. Critic Weng Hansong once pointed out: "As a work of rural themes, the novel can be called one of the best classic works, and its portrayal of rural Characters in China is vivid, successful, mature and accurate, just like aged wine can withstand the delicate tasting, just like a slightly damp tree can burn and burn again for a long time." Marked by the advent of this novel, the Chinese literary circles have gained the glory of literature and art, as well as the glory of social philosophy. The critic Chen Zhiqiang also published an article in the "Literature Newspaper" that "Tie and Determination" "set up this record for Chinese peasants." We can see that this "stored photograph" depicts the spiritual outlook of Chinese peasants, the marks of the years, and the vicissitudes of the past century.

(This article is excerpted from Li Hengchang's "Song Yin Zhao Defa Creative Commentary on the Land", published by Times Media Publishing Group Co., Ltd. and Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House in August 2021, price: 62 yuan.) ）

About author:Li Hengchang, male, Han ethnicity, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Railway War Preparedness Zhouqiao Division, Vice Chairman of the Jinan Railway Writers Association, Contracted Writer of Jinan City. He has published 10 literary works. The collection of essays and essays, "The Vastness of Love", won the 8th Shandong Provincial Spiritual Civilization Construction "Quality Project" Award, and the literary review "Wang Xiaobo's Novel Misreading" won the 8th China Railway Literature Award. In recent years, he has completed and successively published nine works of "Contemporary Writers' Creation Commentaries", including "Mo Yan Creation Commentary", "Wang Meng's Creation Commentary", "Tie Ning's Creative Commentary", "Zhang Wei's Creative Commentary", "Zhao Defa's Creative Commentary", etc., and presided over the creation of large-scale group poems "Nine Songs of Quancheng: Poems of Jinan", "Flying Songs of the Earth: Poetry of China's High-speed Railway", and reportage "1976: Iron Blood Boat Bridge".