The famous writer who wrote "Love, Can't Be Forgotten" is gone! Her name is Zhang Jie!

Author: Xu Yang

He has twice won the Mao Dun Literature Award, and opened an exhibition of self-taught oil paintings at the age of 77... The famous writer Zhang Jie died of illness in the United States on January 21, 2022, at the age of 85. When the news came, the literary circle publishing circles mourned and lamented. Just as one of her masterpieces, "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten", Zhang Jie's works and demeanor also exist in the hearts of readers.

Writer Zhang Jie has authored many works such as "Heavy Wings" and "Wordless", which have a wide influence. (File photo)

"Others are afraid of being forgotten, but Zhang Jie does not want to be remembered." Li Jingze, vice chairman of the China Writers Association and a critic, once described "our beloved and revered Zhang Jie" in "Notes on Zhang Jie's Painting Exhibition" - "the Zhang Jie who holds his chin high to the world, the Zhang Jie who has roses and guns in his eyes, the Zhang Jie who is as humble as a grain of dust ready to forget and be forgotten at any time, the Zhang Jie who stands on the ground and floats in the sky stained by the deep blue, the child who is destined to run and is destined to be lonely..."

"The Man Who Hurt Me The Most In the World Went" brought me to tears when I read it. Zhang Jie wrote with love, but the ending was the love of parents, which is common in the world. From this, we can also find a little bit of the writer's understanding of love in the world. Everyone has had such emotions, but we can't write such words, Zhang Jie did it. Wei Xinhong, a senior publisher in Shanghai, wrote in the circle of friends with regret, "Even the most beautiful and brave people must leave."

As an important representative writer of Chinese literature in the new era, Zhang Jie is the author of the novella "Heavy Wings", the novella "Emerald", the short story "The Child From the Forest" and "The Conditions Are Not Ripe", the short story collection "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten", the novel prose collection "Ark", the essay collection "On that Green Meadow" and so on. She has won the second and sixth Mao Dun Literature Awards for "Heavy Wings" and "Wordless", and has won the National Outstanding Novella Award and the Short Story Award for many times; some of her works have been translated into various languages, and she has won the Italian Knight's Medal and the German, Austrian, Dutch and other multinational literary awards.

In the eyes of critics, Zhang Jie is a female writer who calls for a sense of truth and reality, and is also a writer who pays attention to the fate of the country and the nation, constantly advancing to a deeper level of humanity and literature. In the early days of reform and opening up, Zhang Jie completed the novel "Heavy Wings" with full passion and sharp language, focusing on the reform of the industrial economic system, which was published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 1981, which caused a wide impact. She painstakingly and painstakingly revised over and over again in the process of creation, reflecting the writer's strong practical concern.

While inking the grand proposition of the times, she also presents the ups and downs of the fate of several generations of women with a keen female eye and delicate feelings. If the early novel "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten" is to build an ideal temple for love and become Zhang Jie's declaration of love; to "Emerald", it transforms the ideal of love into the selfless love of Zeng Ling'er, showing the broad spiritual strength of women; and when the disappointment of reality dissolves the shell of love mythology, it is not the display of the three female characters of Cao Jinghua, Liu Quan and Liang Qian in "Ark".

In 1991, Zhang Jie's octogenarian mother died. She wrote "No Word" to commemorate her mother, and the novel takes the life experience of female writer Wu Wei as the main line, and reflects the great turmoil of the times with the marriage story of three generations of women in the family. Zhang Jie changed his manuscript several times, compressing more than 1 million words to more than 800,000 words, which took 12 years to complete. She also wrote a long story "The Person Who Hurt Me the Most in the World Has Gone", in which the gentleness and fragility of the text are entangled, pouring out her thoughts about her mother, which makes generations of readers feel empathy. Since then, the work has been adapted into a film of the same name, starring Sichen gaowa, Huang Suying, etc., and sees the truth in the ordinary.

Putting down the pen, Zhang Jie, in her later years, picked up the brush, and she explained her experience of learning to paint in this way: "A doctor's accidental suggestion, I began to paint in 2006. Like writing a novel, it is also self-talk (painting), never learned, for the first time I don't even know how to get a paintbrush, only a cavity of love. In 2014, she held a solo oil painting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature, describing it as a "farewell performance" - "Zhang Jie said goodbye!" Death is not terrible, what is terrible is life without content. She said she had no hobbies and was "boring", couldn't play mahjong, couldn't sing karaoke, didn't like to attend dinner, and only liked to draw. At that time, the writer Tie Ning wrote in the article that Zhang Jie's home was full of canvases and paints, and the walls of the room were full of paintings, and Zhang Jie at this time was "free and calm". She said that she was touched by Zhang Jie's paintings and re-recognized her old friend in the canvas, "Zhang Jie is like a 'lone man' walking the world."

The poet Nishikawa commented in "Landscape Without Heart Is Not a Landscape" written for Zhang Jie's painting exhibition: "It is not uncommon for writers and poets to paint in the circle, because they are amateurs, so I am never demanding." However, after seeing some of Teacher Zhang Jie's paintings, I was quite surprised. Zhang Jie inadvertently said a sentence that has affected him to this day: Don't think that the life of others, the life of a distant place is life, your here and now is life. (Xu Yang)

Source: Wen Wei Po