Brilliant Poetic Heart and Fire Passion- Reading Wang Meng's Novel "Monkey and Youth"

"Monkeys and Teenagers" Illustration ma Yuhan painting

Wang Meng's novel "Monkeys and Teenagers" (published by Huacheng Publishing House in December 2021) inherits his consistent brilliant poetic heart and exuberant passion, and in the form of recollection, recounts the past of Shi Bingyan, an old man with a back on his back and a foreign literature expert, who was sent to the countryside after "stalling things". In this past, the monkey "Third Young Master of the University Scholar" and the "Walnut Boy" Hou Changyou played an important role, especially the "Monkey Three Young", which Wang Meng called the "favorite" in his works.

The "Third Young Master of Monkey University" in "Monkeys and Teenagers" is a vivid and interesting artistic image contributed by Wang Meng to the literary world, and from the perspective of biology, ecology and life science, Wang Meng has written about "monkey sex". The unique "personality" of the monkey three youngsters who are clever and witty, flashing and moving, free and free to play with themselves, not afraid of people, disobedient, and not pleasing to people, makes a deep impression, especially the description of the monkey brother and the second uncle playing the monkey, "the three young masters looking in the mirror", it is simply wonderful - looking left and right, scratching east and west, stretching forward and shrinking back, impatient and crazy, monkey state is full of flowers. From the perspective of a monkey, it is really interesting.

When I first read "Monkeys and Teenagers", I was a little confused about the "Third Young Master of Monkey University" created by Wang Meng, and then I read the works several times and had a little understanding. Is the monkey also a carrier of meaning for Wang Meng's philosophy of history, cultural philosophy and psychology in the novel? The details of "monkeys looking in the mirror" highlight the symbolic significance of the three monkeys. Monkey Sanshao, Shi Bingyan and Wang Meng are mirror images of each other, each other is "me in the mirror", is the self-esteem, narcissism, and self-pity in Shi Bingyan also the "self" in the monkey three mirrors? In the sense of human development, "monkeys" are the original mirror images of human beings. From apes to men, labor plays a decisive role. This is also the reason why Shi Bingyan does not dislike manual labor. He believes that labor creates man, and labor creates the world, which is his belief and original intention. "Shi Bingyan is proud of his labor history, and is full of a sense of fulfillment and a sense of happiness and success!" Labor is his god, labor is his beloved, labor is his intoxication, labor is his poetry! Shi Bingyan, as Wang Meng's "mirror me", his recollection and his views on history will naturally receive Wang Meng's praise and positive response. Wang Meng witnessed the historical process of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the War of Liberation, the founding of New China, the socialist revolution, and construction for nearly a hundred years. In Wang Meng's words: "I caught up with the era of passion, heavy suffering, serious choice, courageous charge, triumphant victory, cheering and twisting, difficulty and exploration, turning over and turning the past, a hundred years - perhaps longer - unprecedented historical changes, a thousand years of unprecedented social and production and life development and change, and I live to experience and participate in all this, can I be indifferent? Can I lie flat? Can I be insensitive? Can I be unmoved, unemotional, silent, 36.5°C in duplicate? From the "Long Live Youth" at the age of 19 to the "Long Live Youth" at the age of 87, it shows the essence of Wang Meng's passionate poet.

The "true and false treasure jade" set up in the novel, that is, Shi Bingyan and Wang Meng appear in the novel at the same time, is not without intention. As a mirror image of Wang Meng, Shi Bingyan's experience and emotional orientation, and even what he thinks and thinks, can be said to be extremely similar or even the same as Wang Meng. From Wang Meng's autobiography "Half a Life", it can be verified that the story of "Monkeys and Teenagers" is a real experience in Wang Meng's life. However, I think that Shi Bingyan and Wang Meng are still not exactly the same - Wang Meng ≥ Shi Bingyan. As a listener to Shi Bingyan's recounting of the past, Wang Meng is actually a narrator, a taster, a scrutinizer, and an interlocutor. From the perspective of reader acceptance, Wang Meng, as a large-scale writer and scholarly scholar, his dialogue with Shi Bingyan naturally has the breadth of thought and the depth of understanding. Therefore, I do not agree with the simple idea that Monkey and Boy is "an echo of Long Live Youth". "Monkeys and Teenagers" is not only a song of passion and youth, but also a work of reflection and examination of history, reality and even the future, and the other side of Wang Meng, who is a philosopher in the work, "cold and rational self" flashes from time to time.

Shi Bingyan's "seven i's"—unlucky eggs, revolutionaries, blamed, adaptors, naïve optimists, witness recorders of the times, and literary people—are actually Wang Meng's examination of "self" and "self-examination." Borrowing from the mirror effect theory of the American communication scientist Cooley, Wang Meng is not holding a mirror in his hand, but a multi-faceted and multidimensional mirror. In different mirrors, different "self" and "self-self" are reflected, so that they are infinite, and Wang Meng named it the "corridor effect". How to look at the history he personally experienced, for Wang Meng, the discord and contradiction between emotion and reason is obvious, which is intertextual in his novels such as "Activity Transforms Into Human Form" and "Season Series". Now in his old age, Wang Meng looks back on the past and can stand on the peak of time with more confidence and calmness to observe history, and he tries to examine the past with a panoramic view of history. Those passionate years with fiery temperatures made him fascinated, infatuated, dizzy, but also accompanied by sorrow and heavy costs, and even absurdity. In "Monkeys and Teenagers", Wang Meng, as always, focuses on the big times and big history, and he pays attention to the general trends and trends of history, but also pays attention to the folds of history and the fate of individuals in history. His characters, with their legendary experiences and ups and downs, are breathtaking and sighing. However, the great river goes east, the wind flows through the ages, the past has been exhausted, the heart is particularly strong, it is really "the green mountains can't cover it, after all, the east flow goes" "If the sky is full of love, the sky is also old, and the right way in the world is vicissitudes"!

It can be seen that the setting of Shi Bingyan and Wang Meng as mirror images of each other increases the sense of chaos, three-dimensionality and turbidity of the novel, and also broadens the field of dialogue and intertextuality of the novel. Wang Meng not only has a dialogue with Shi Bingyan, but also with history, reality and even the future. Time is moving forward at a rapid pace, not giving up day and night; everything is leaping forward, everything is also being interrupted in continuity, "life is leaping, unprecedented, a thousand years of changes, stable as Mount Tai." Wang Meng's "Monkeys and Teenagers" is both gushing and wanting to say goodbye, casting a novel that is wanton and unrestrained, and at the same time chaotic and mellow, hazy and ambiguous.

(Author: Guo Baoliang, Professor, College of Literature, Hebei Normal University)

Source: Guangming Daily