The "Handmade Exhibition commemorating the 125th Anniversary of Mr. Mao Dun's Birth" was held at the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature on December 21. In order to better inherit Mr. Mao Dun's literary heritage and exalt his literary ideals, the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature and the Tongxiang Archives of Zhejiang Province have selected 60 kinds of rare archives from their collections to display to the public to commemorate this great writer.
Mao Dun (July 4, 1896 - March 27, 1981), formerly known as Shen Dehong, was a pioneer of China's modern progressive culture, a great revolutionary writer and one of the earliest party members of the Communist Party of China, who made significant contributions to China's revolutionary literature, art and cultural movement, and enjoyed a high reputation at home and abroad.
The main visual wall of the exhibition hall is real
Published in 1933, Midnight is a masterpiece of Mao Dun's novels. In the autumn of 1930, Mao Dun was unable to read because of an eye disease, so he often went to his cousin Lu Xuepu's Lu Mansion to listen to people in the industrial and commercial circles and financial circles talk about how they did public debt and how to run enterprises. After that, he went to the bond exchange market for field research.
Memoirs of Mao Dun
In "Before and After the Writing of 'Midnight'" Mao Dun also mentions Qu Qiubai's contribution to this novel. "Midnight" was published in February 1933, and in March of the same year Qu Qiubai published "Midnight and the Year of Domestic Goods", believing that "Midnight" was "the first successful novel of realism in China" and "the application of real social science to express China's social relations and class relations in literature and art cannot be said to be a great achievement." These evaluations are not only literary assistance, but more importantly, encouragement and affirmation of certain exploratory attempts in Chinese literature.
Mao Dun insisted on giving voice to society and the people with literary works, and his literary path was born in conjunction with the realism that advocated "art for life": during the May Fourth period, Mao Dun and Zheng Zhenduo and others initiated the establishment of the "Literary Research Association", they emphasized "literature of blood and tears", the purpose of which was to make literary creators face up to social reality, and re-establish the relationship between literature and social real life on the basis of a critique, that is, to completely open the creator's social horizons and remove the barriers between creators and contemporary social life. Let literary creators feel and experience the lives of ordinary people in the vast social world, oppose vassalage and elegance, and emphasize realistic techniques rather than fabricated techniques to the wall to create literature.
After the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Mao Dun wrote articles such as "Exchange of National Forms," "Old Forms, Folk Forms, and National Forms," as well as commentaries such as "On the New Water Margin" and "On How to Study The National Forms of Literature," and actively participated in the discussion on "popularization of literature and art and national forms," pointing out that the broad masses of progressive literary and art workers should go to the masses, go to the liberated areas, contact the broad masses of the people, and strive to make literature and art serve the anti-Japanese national salvation movement.
On November 7, 1957, in order to commemorate and celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, Xinhua Bookstore held an open-air book market at the Working People's Cultural Palace, and Mao Dun was invited to participate and sign for readers. (Tongxiang Municipal Archives Collection)
Mao Dun translated the manuscript of the Soviet novel "The People Are Immortal" in 1945. The novel is written by Vasily Grossman. The book recounts the story of the most difficult phase of the war in the early autumn of 1941, when the Red Army resisted strongly but had to continue to retreat. The novel reveals that the victory of the Red Army is neither a fluke nor a "miracle", but a logical necessity. Mao Dun successfully translated "The People Are Immortal" from the English translation, which was published by the (Chongqing) Wenguang Bookstore in 1945.
Mao Dun translated the novel "The People Are Immortal" from the former Soviet Union, 1945 (Tongxiang City Archives Collection)
In his memoirs in his later years, Mao Dun said: "I promised Cao Jinghua to translate 'The People Are Immortal', but it took almost a year to submit the manuscript. The reason was that I had several consecutive illnesses in the first half of 1944. However, I am still satisfied with the translation of "The People Are Immortal", because this translation has been corrected word by word by Ge Baoquan against the Russian text, reaching a very accurate degree. ”
Mr. Mao Dun wrote a wealth of works in his lifetime, but also left a large number of handwriting, which has become an extremely precious literary heritage. Therefore, this exhibition has a rich variety of varieties, in addition to Mr. Mao Dun's letters and diaries, there are also novels, poems, memoirs, literary and art criticism of the creation of manuscripts, as well as notes, miscellaneous copies, ancient poetry annotations, translations... All are neat and neat in writing, the font is elegant, and the handwriting reflects the gentle and elegant manners and elegant bones, with important documentation and exquisite artistry.
Manuscript of Mao Dun's Midnight (Collection of Modern Chinese Literature)
The exhibit contains more than 20 letters that have not been included in the Complete Works of Mao Dun, the Complete Works and Addendums of Mao Dun or the Collected Letters of Mao Dun, including 11 letters from Mao Dun to Xiao Sanshujian and more than 10 letters to Chen Baichen, Sha Boli, Pushik, Ke Ling and others; and the precious manuscripts and photographs of Mao Dun provided by the Tongxiang Municipal Archives were publicly displayed in Beijing for the first time. These extremely precious manuscripts are of great significance to promoting the study of Mao Dun's life, thought, and works, and to promoting the study of revolutionary literature and art in the early days of the founding of the Party in our country.
Letters from Mao Dun to Friends (Collection of Modern Chinese Literature)
Mr. Mao Dun is one of the most typical representatives of the "skinny" in literati calligraphy. Throughout his life, he has been diligent in writing, and has always maintained the habit of writing with a brush, whether it is an office or a study at home, brushes and brick tables are his desk objects. This handmade exhibition captures some representative manuscripts and makes banners, trying to show the basic appearance of Mr. Mao Dun's handwriting. Admiring Mr. Mao Dun's handwriting, you can not only feel the pulse of history, but also harvest abundant artistic enjoyment.
This exhibition carries out Mr. Mao Dun's literary spirit throughout, and tries to taste his different ideological charm through the yellowed paper with the visitors. The exhibition designs many interactive projects, and strives to enable the audience to communicate with Mr. Mao Dun across time and space in a lively and interesting way, and to feel the endless pulse of Mr. Mao Dun's spiritual inheritance in the context of the new era.
A word, a life, a spirit. The exhibition selects 10 famous quotes of Mr. Mao Dun as bookmarks for visitors to choose and collect. Perhaps through a short line of words, I thought about what Mao Gong said and thought, and the words were still in my ears and touched. I will write down my thoughts after watching the exhibition, my feelings after reading the writings, and the views I want to exchange with my literary predecessors.
The exhibition will run until February 20, 2022, and visitors can make an appointment through the WeChat public account of the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zhang Enjie